We are still waiting for answers seven years after Maine privacy advocates asked the questions.

By the usual standards, members of the Appropriations Committee did a good job last week. They have come up with a balanced budget proposal that reverses some of the worst proposed cuts in Gov. LePage’s spending plan, raising revenue from temporary increases to the sales tax and meals-and-lodging tax and protecting the state’s property tax relief programs.

The full impact of the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of hundreds of conservative groups’ applications for nonprofit status for delay or rejection was provided this week in congressional testimony by the leader of one of those groups, Becky Gerritson, of Wetumpka, Ala., whose voice cracked as she said:

The ubiquitous cellphone has many functions in everyday life. It allows us to take pictures, make calls, send email and text messages. But for police, cellphones serve an entirely different purpose: tracking the geographic location of a cellphone user in connection with a criminal investigation.

No one would listen to Navy servicewoman Ruth Moore when she was sexually assaulted by her supervisor. No one would listen to her when she was discharged after a suicide attempt and asked for help from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Seventeen years ago, Mark Bechard killed two Waterville nuns. He was found not criminally responsible by reason of mental illness and committed to a state psychiatric hospital.

A recent hilarious account of yard sales by J.P. Devine in this newspaper brought back a lot of memories — most of them bad. In 1998 my family hosted its first — and last — yard sale at our Mount Vernon home. Son Josh was 16 and daughter Hilary 13 at the time.

Politics gets a lot of bad press these days. It’s usually a code word for officials positioning themselves for the next election when they should be looking out for the people they represent.

Congress is again debating what to do about interest rates for federal student loans, which are set to double July 1, to 6.8 percent. Several proposed solutions are being debated, but none tackles the real issue: skyrocketing college costs.

Big things can start small. That was the hope Friday, when the nation’s first floating wind turbine was lowered into the Penobscot River, to be towed to a mooring off Castine.