Americans elect members of Congress to do one basic job: make laws. On U.S. immigration, Congress has repeatedly, decade after decade, since at least 1986, failed to do their job of taking what is very wrong with current U.S. immigration law and making it right.

"I will work with the new Legislature to achieve the best education for our people, from preschool through college and beyond, beginning with full and fair funding for schools, including our career and technical centers." So said Gov. Janet Mills in her inaugural address, a week ago.

Earlier this week, the Legislature released a preliminary list of bills. There are the normal ones, looking to change the tax code in one way or another, several around energy – including a proposal for a Maine version of The Green New Deal – Republican proposals to undermine the state’s referenda process and a bill to codify the protections of the Affordable Care Act in Maine law.

The makeup of legislators in Maine’s current 129th Legislature is almost identical to Maine’s 115th Legislature. I was first hired as a legislator staffer for the second session of the 114th Legislature. The 115th was my first experience working for a full two-year session of the Maine Legislature.

Dear Gov. Janet Mills, By the time you read this, the word "elect" will have been dropped from your title, and you will be our new governor. I say "our" new governor, because too many politicians of both parties forget that they have been elected to represent everyone, including those who love them and voted for them, and also those who do not and did not. Believe it or not, I actually think that fact will not stray far from your mind, and that you actually will remember.

It’s a new day -- and a new year -- for more than 70,000 Mainers who have been waiting years for health care coverage. New Gov. Janet Mills has vowed that she will begin to implement Medicaid expansion as soon as possible. She has tapped Jeanne Lambrew, a national recognized expert on health care, as commissioner for the Department of Health and Human Services to reform and revitalize the department.

My grand uncle Charlie Fish was one of my paternal grandfather’s two brothers. What little I know of Grand Uncle Charlie is mostly from my father. Uncle Charlie could play any musical instrument, and he was his family’s black sheep, my father said. That is all I know of a relative I would have liked to have known. I started thinking of relatives who were part of my life. What firsthand details of them will my future family members have?

As 2019 looms many people will think about making resolutions.

Christmas is a time for giving, and boldly predicting what will happen next year has been my gift to you every year since 2011.

For much of the 2018 campaign, Democrats ran hard on the issue of health care, determined to hold Republicans accountable for their efforts to take coverage away from millions of Americans. Republicans, reading the tea leaves and the polls, had a death-bed conversion, particularly when it comes to protecting people with pre-existing conditions and ensuring that they are still able to get health care coverage.

Have I told you how Eileen met Santa Claus? December 9, 2016 (Was it that long ago?) Eileen and I were in Augusta, Maine shopping, browsing, and visiting her parents’ gravesite at Central Maine Veterans Cemetery. The day was overcast, sunshine breaking through the clouds now and then, but not enough to mitigate the chilly mid-20s temperature, 12 mph wind combination.

The more I read about the relationship of the White House press corps with recent US Presidents, the more I appreciate President Trump’s use of Tweets to communicate with Americans.

At what point in your life are you most likely to spend extravagantly? When are you most likely to waste? When are you most likely to purchase the thing you don't need, or indulge yourself on the thing that you want, or eat out more often, at more expensive restaurants?

From time to time, all of us should take a look at ourselves and the things that we do, say and care about and re-evaluate them. Traditions, heritage, ideas and images that mattered to us in the past are all important. They help to form who we are as people. But that doesn’t mean that these things are free from challenge or that we shouldn’t be willing to look at them with new eyes.

I was primarily working in politics throughout the 1990s. In the early ‘90s, with the introduction of email, a growing internet, internet accessibility, and affordable computers, I saw potential for the legislators I worked with to have communications networks with their constituents. Actually, I envisioned legislators’ email communication networks branching in all directions: legislator to constituent; constituent to legislator, and all the networking variations therein.

In the past several days, you have heard many things about George Herbert Walker Bush. His decency and goodness. His commitment to service. His dignity. Yet, the former president's most enduring gift to the American people is not only his demeanor. Rather it is in something that never actually even happened. And the legacy of that gift is so tremendous, and his leadership so central to it, that each and every one of us should give thanks for his presence.

US Rep. Bruce Poliquin lost his bid for re-election to Congress. He was defeated by former Marine and Maine legislative leader Jared Golden in an election decided by ranked-choice voting.

Political irony is on full display in Maine. The staple of many a politician, hypocrisy has now been foisted upon the voting process. Ranked Choice Voting, toddling mere months into its infancy, was found unconstitutional by the Maine Supreme Court for use in state elections, has now mired the state into the muck of necessary legal challenges into its Federal constitutionality, and media punditry has circled the wagons around their collective talking point that challenging Ranked Choice Voting at the federal level erodes the people’s confidence in the “institution” of voting, seemingly oblivious to the millions of dollars, and years of political spin, spent on ads, campaign mailings, and signature drives, all in a effort to erode the voters' confidence in Maine's already constitutionally established voting system.