There are three bills before the Maine Legislature that fully rub against the spirit of Kennedy’s sentiment of cross border collaboration. LDs 194, 479 and 641 all aim to limit the rights of “foreign owned” companies’ role in Maine’s referendum process. However altruistic this may seem, there is more to the story.

Those who think President Biden’s aggressive climate change agenda is radical should think about how very radically their world will change if the trend continues unhindered. Meeting the challenge will be the ultimate moon shot – making the defeat of COVID seem easy by comparison.

Not until 1846 did a senator use the filibuster to successfully kill a bill, in this case an appropriations bill funding the Mexican War. With the coming of the Civil War in the late 1840s and the 1850s, lawmakers became much more likely to use floor speeches to obstruct. By 1863, they started calling such tactics the filibuster.

It would be wrong if anybody said it. But yes, it is more wrong because you [Sen. Tim Scott] said it. Your ancestry, your biography and the very color of your skin tell us that you know better. Yet you said it anyway.

From where Biden sits, why not spend as much as possible under the rubric of “COVID relief”? To paraphrase Rahm Emanuel, a pandemic is a terrible thing to waste.

Humankind’s greatest needs are less economic and political than spiritual and moral. No politician can redeem the soul, though Biden vowed to “restore the soul of America.”

Can’t you just see it now? “Hey, Jude, long-time no-see. You been vaccinated? Got a paper to prove it? Oh, yeah. Hey, man, c’mere. Gimme a hug.” Or, “No passport? Sorry, dude, let’s just bump elbows.”