Watching the health care reform debate from the perspective of an interested citizen in Maine, I cannot help but mourn the absence of Ted Kennedy. But not for the reasons you might think.

At the time of his death, Senate leaders noted that the passage of a major health reform...

As the Massachusetts General Court debates whether to give Governor Deval Patrick the authority to name an interim senator to fill the seat of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy until the special election to fill the seat his held in January, Republican cries of partisanship fill both the State...

Labor Day weekend. The traditional start of the school year -- though every school district I know of seems to have started earlier this year.

Labor Day weekend. The date marking Congress's return from its August recess. Our representatives are back to work, trying to take into account the...

Frequent readers of these comments know that I am an ardent devotee of Sunday morning talk shows and of the New York Times. This morning's talk shows and various Times articles of the last week have put the problem of the debate over health care reform into clear focus for...

My wife is an economist -- and I study politics. But on President Obama, she has been right all along. From the start she understood that he was speaking to the nation in a way that resonated uniquely with voters; I was skeptical.

Now, she understands that his lofty...

I am so confused. I have long stood in awe of Republicans as political strategists. The brilliant team that designed Ronald Reagan's strategy; Lee Atwater, Karl Rove -- I might not have agreed with them, but if winning is all you care about, they were good. I think Mary Matalin...

In 1973, Colby College awarded the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for Courageous Journalism to Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, for the paper's extraordinary coverage of the Watergate affair. The award went to Graham, not to the reporters or to the editors, because Graham risked her paper's entire future...

I have just finished watching the Sunday talk shows. David Gregory had his exclusive interview with Vice President Biden; much of the rest of the talk was about health care reform and its chances of passing in the Senate.

Too much of the talk centered on the politics of the...

I have not commented on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, because I was not certain there was anything more to say. After all, I am not a constitutional scholar; I have not read her opinions. I am not "inside the Beltway."

Oh, wait! That's the whole point. As someone outside...

Warren G. Harding, John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama. What do they have in common? They represent the sum-total of all Presidents of the United States who have gone to the White House from the Congress since 1900.

You can add three more names to that list -- Harry Truman, Lyndon...

David Hayes will someday be an answer to a trivia question. Or maybe even Alex Trebek's successor will pose the query on Jeopardy! : "The first Obama nominee thwarted by the U.S. Senate."

The Senate did not move forward to consider Hayes' nomination for the second ranking position in the...

Two Democratic governors -- John Lynch of New Hampshire and John Baldacci of Maine -- face ethical dilemmas in the next week. In each state the legislature has passed a Gay Marriage bill. Each governor has opposed gay marriage in the past and must now decide how to respond to...

Bloggers and political analysts from the right and left have commented on Senator Arlen Specter's switch to the Democratic party. So too have politicians. And most of them are missing the forest for the trees.

The focus has been on Specter's obvious political motive, on the whether...

I guarantee that Maine will pass the Gay Marriage bill. I hope and believe that the legislature will pass it this year, but I know it will be law eventually.

Social progress moves in only one direction -- forward. The history of social progress in this country --...