I recently interviewed Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos who claimed the president’s proposed $4.8 trillion budget includes “a significant step toward returning flexibility to the states through a proposal to block grant all of the elementary and secondary education funds … and let (states) prioritize where those funds are going to be best utilized.” DeVos […]

I recently had the honor of testifying before the Maine Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee in favor of LD 1760, “An Act To Support Children’s Healthy Development and School Readiness.” If passed, LD 1760 would establish community-based, comprehensive, high-quality early child care and learning programs for at-risk Maine kids. I offered my views as […]

On Friday, Feb. 7, in a vindictive and retributive move to punish witnesses who testified against him in the House impeachment proceedings, President Donald Trump fired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, cirector for European Affairs for the United States National Security Council, and Ambassador Gordon Sondland, United States ambassador to the European Union. Rep. Eliot Engel, […]

That often means “I don’t know,” or “It’s none of your business.” But nothing significant is ever simple or easy and that is particularly true of health costs in America. We are again immersed in a quadrennial flood of promises to make health care and medications at once less costly and more accessible. Most propose […]

Bernie Sanders was supposed to run away with the New Hampshire primary. This is his kind of state, where Democrats are mostly educated liberals. Yet the national celebrity from next-door Vermont bested Pete Buttigieg, recently an unknown from Indiana, by less than 4,000 votes. It appears they are both walking off with nine delegates. And […]

After 2016, the Democratic establishment would have been justified in getting out of the business of presidential politics. It swung so strongly behind Hillary Clinton that it discouraged any serious contenders from getting in the race. Her competition was a motley collection of people who didn’t get the message or didn’t care — including a […]

Two months have passed since Dec. 9, 2019, the day Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz exposed the profound damage done to a judicial institution vital to successfully defending America in a world of complex threats: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISC. The damage done to American public trust in the court is not […]

People keep asking me about George Simon. They want to know why I created him and if it was hard to do. One person told me I was “brave.” I wasn’t trying to be brave. I was trying to write my latest novel, a World War II story called “The Last Thing You Surrender.” But, […]