As a family doctor, I see every day what happens to Maine people who don’t have health insurance. They delay treatment and end up in our emergency rooms. Or their bills pile up, pushing them toward financial ruin.

It’s heartwarming and heartbreaking. The 2012 annual report from Avian Haven, a wonderful team that cares for injured birds in Freedom, will bring forth every emotion.

No matter what Barack Obama does, he cannot escape the shadow of his former political opponent.

The attempts by King George and Parliament to abolish town meetings in 1774 was one of the sparks that led Paul Revere and John Hancock to incite the Revolution that soon followed.

Before the 2012 election, the president wanted it. The leaders of both political parties in Congress wanted it. And on March 1, sequestration arrived.

I was asked recently if people shy away from my dog, Martha, because she is, mostly, a pit bull.

“Exceptional egg donor needed,” said a recent ad in The Harvard Crimson. The couple who’d placed it are working with a “prestigious Los Angeles IVF clinic,” it noted, in search of a “100 percent Korean woman” with an excellent education, “outstanding” test scores, “extremely healthy family history,” plus an “altruistic nature” and a “slim build.” The Nobel Prize in Physics is only optional, I guess, since the ideal candidate sought in such notices must also be under 28.

Last week’s 10th anniversary of the Iraq War passed quietly, and that’s not a bad thing.

The proposition that entitlement curbs are the key to maintaining national solvency is widely accepted, though not by many congressional Democrats. President Barack Obama, however, has endorsed it on various occasions. And he could make it happen.

It did not escape some people’s notice that President Obama boarded a Boeing 747 to fly all the way from Washington to Illinois last week to give a speech about the necessity of saving energy.