Great things have been achieved in 55 years of space exploration. But accompanying those achievements are a half-million pieces of space litter in orbit around the Earth.

It’s a given, during the presidential primary debates, that the billions of federal “stimulus” dollars were wasted. That money was said to be gone, vanished, and for no good purpose.

We agree with Gov. Paul LePage that education systems should be focused on students and their success. We also agree with state Education Commissioner Steven Bowen that 200-year-old town lines should not be the sole determining factor in deciding where a child should go to school.

Gas prices are soaring, and as the most oil-dependent state in the nation, Maine people have plenty to be concerned about.

Experience teaches us that proposals to “simplify” taxes ought to be viewed with skepticism.

Here’s some uncomfortable good news: Colonoscopies really do save lives.

For reasons clear perhaps only to the French establishment and French feminist groups, the government is phasing out the lovely and elegant word “mademoiselle.” As of now, it is to be stricken from all official documents.

The culture wars have been fought in the classroom for decades, waged over such issues as school prayer, the teaching of evolution and whether the Pledge of Allegiance should include the phrase “under God.” But the conflict usually pits backers of religious instruction against secularists. The latest skirmish, by contrast, is centered on a scientific issue that has nothing to do with religious teaching: climate change.

A quarter-century ago, 65 percent of Americans thought interracial marriage was unacceptable for themselves or for other people.

Michael Gerson, Bush’s chief speechwriter and senior policy adviser for five years and now a Washington Post columnist, wrote this week, “No president — Republican or Democrat — would have allowed the economic collapse of the Upper Middle West in the midst of a national economic panic.”