Valentine’s Day brightens the long, cold winter.  Women dream of roses, jewelry, and romantic candlelit dinners. Woe betide the husband or sweetheart who forgets his wife or girlfriend (hopefully he doesn’t have both).  

There is a Democratic candidate running for president right now, and she is very liberal. At a press conference where she stood next to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, this candidate made clear that she supports a Green New Deal. This candidate is also firmly pro-choice, has a 100 percent voting record with both Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America, and has called for federal funding for abortions.

Former US Rep. Bruce Poliquin is running, only this time it’s not into a bathroom to hide from reporters. Poliquin has found the courage to venture back in public since his defeat by US Rep. Jared Golden in 2018.

I am digging through storage boxes of books, papers, and music CDs, stored in the basement here at Camp Marlene; stuff that dates back -- some of it -- to the 1970s when I was living in Davenport, Iowa.

There is a place, ladies and gentlemen, where magic happens. It is a place where men and women parade around on a stage and recite lines they memorized in their head, and try to make you feel like what they are saying is natural and spontaneous.

Democratic voters in Iowa will caucus next week, becoming the first to weigh in on who should be the nominee to challenge President Donald Trump in November. I’m going to let you in on a little secret that only experienced and wise political columnists know.

Who elected these people? I asked myself that question a few times working in the Maine Legislature. I wasn't being cruel. Neither was I being wholly dismissive of the legislators in question. Rather, I was thinking first about the duties, the job of being a legislator. It can take only one vote to have a majority of legislators raise taxes, end charter schools, end the definition of marriage, change the way we vote -- the opportunities for legal mischief making are endless.

Principles are pretty easy to have. It doesn't take much effort to say that you believe in things like free expression, multiculturalism, religious tolerance, a limited government, social justice or fiscal austerity.

The editorial board of The New York Times thought it was endorsing its preferred candidates in the Democratic primary for president this week.

While recently going through family photos I found the one taken the day my father left for the Army in World War II. Dad, his parents, and siblings lined up on the lawn. Their body language and faces told how sad they were. Right in the center was the family dog, Mauser. Mauser had his head toward his worried-looking people and his rear solidly facing the camera. It looked as if he wanted to stop my Dad from leaving.

The news came through first at 7:12 pm; a voice message from friend Chip Stern, driving his taxi in Brooklyn, N.Y. But I hadn't checked my phone. At 9:30 p.m. Eileen received a text message from her daughter, Leanne: "Tell Scott I'm sorry to hear about Neil Peart."

As a general rule, I try to avoid actually watching political debates anymore. They have long since stopped being either useful or meaningful, and the media's obsession with them as some kind of important guidepost for the campaign is as disappointing as the event is predictable.

Bath Iron Works is one of the most important companies in Maine, but that doesn’t grant it immunity from basic oversight of tax programs designed for its sole benefit.

"According to a new study in [the Journal of the American Medical Association] JAMA, life expectancy at birth stopped increasing since 2010 and actually decreased in the US for three consecutive years. To put this in perspective, the last time we saw three consecutive years of declining [life expectancy] was 100 years ago, coinciding with the flu epidemic of 1918." That is the lead paragraph from a December 29, 2019 email update I received from Dr. Peter Attia with the equally attention grabbing subject line: "Why is life expectancy in the US declining?"

Welcome, friends, to the new year. And, welcome to the 200th year of Maine's existence. Our state has a very proud heritage, particularly given the nature of its official beginning. Maine was admitted as a "free state" to balance the admission of Missouri, which was being added as a "slave state."

The longer President Donald Trump talks, the more lies he tells. And now, at a time when the world may be teetering on the brink of war, the president and the U.S. are paying the price.

Newly elected British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is in the news this week for his plan to modernize the English government bureaucracy after England exits the European Union. I heard radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt was discussing Prime Minister Johnson's bringing of the bureaucracy into the 21st century, breaking bureaucratic stagnation and its disservice to the public

Commemorating a new day, at the beginning of a new year and a new decade, I stood the other day on a hilltop of a popular hiking spot and I surveyed the Atlantic Ocean to the east — I could almost see the Appalachian Trail far to the west and the lights of the cities to the south — and I thought about the past and the future of our great state.