When Florida’s commissioner of education resigned Thursday amidst a scandal over fixing the grades of a political donor’s charter school, we expected some comment from Maine education officials.

Most of us try to clean off our desks before summer vacation. Not wanting to come back to a half-done to-do list, we finish all pending items on our agenda, then take off for some rest and relaxation.

America’s consumer choices, voting trends and viewing habits help fill in the mosaic of this big economically, politically and socially diverse country.

Jailbreaks are common in Iraq, but the brazen assaults on the prisons at Abu Ghraib and Taji recently are in a class by themselves. The attacks freed perhaps as many as 800 militants, who are now sought by Interpol as a “major threat” to global security.

Facing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently, Samantha Power, President Barack Obama’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, surely didn’t expect to stir up the proverbial hornet’s nest.

The height of the tourist season is an odd time to get into a big fight over relaxing Maine’s clean air standards, but the LePage administration has picked this time to exempt Maine industry from federal air-pollution standards.

Rogue raisin farmer Marvin Horne owes the U.S. government hundreds of dollars in unpaid fines and millions of pounds of raisins.

Colorado is the site of two of the most horrific gun massacres in recent history — Columbine High School in 1999 and an Aurora movie theater last summer. It’s also where two state senators face recall elections next month because they dared support a sensible package of gun-control measures that could make future massacres less likely.

Perhaps the most promising thing that can be said about anticipated Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations is that we don’t know much about them.

A counterterrorism policy should be guided by thoughtful realism, not by fear. Too often, that’s not the case.