One way or another, we are all Maine taxpayers, whether we’re buying a roll of paper towels or filing our returns every April. Those tax dollars pay the salaries of our bridge inspectors, forest rangers, state troopers, game wardens, child protective service workers, arson investigators, the people who provide us with courts where we seek justice and even the people who make sure that our food and water are safe.

Gabrielle Giffords passed me on a Washington, D.C., sidewalk last week, her husband, Mark, holding her hand, slightly ahead, directing her along. Her haunting grin and distant gaze stuck with me.

Local lawyers will visit 40 libraries across Maine on May 1, Maine Law Day, to speak with library patrons about the challenges an individual faces when confronting a legal problem.

Julia Bruss is 23 years old, a Harvard graduate student and because she is young and very smart, she figured out how to best retaliate against whoever bombed her neighborhood.

We try to teach our children to be fair and kind from an early age. My preschool-age son talks about such lessons each day. My first-grade daughter recently brought home a kindness award for her willingness to help others without being asked.

WASHINGTON — Terrorism is speech — speech that gathers its audience by killing innocents as theatrically as possible.

WASHINGTON — Is there nobody who can tell Ted Cruz to shut up?

Things are mighty heated these days. Tempers are flaring and minds are closed. Here’s the solution: the wit and wisdom of Will Rogers.

I heard a news story recently about a new item at Taco Bell — the Cool Ranch Doritos taco.

The let’s-cut-entitlements crowd say what’s wrong with America is that seniors are living too high off the hog. With the cost of medical care still rising (though not as fast as it used to), the government is shelling out many more dollars per geezer (DPG) than it is per youngster (DPY). The solution, we’re told, is to bring down DPG so we can boost DPY.