Ben Bragdon

Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel

Latest

Published
July 8, 2023

Jay Ambrose: Being fair to each other helps us all

The Supreme Court just acted to get rid of decades-long practices at colleges and universities that have been an illegal, unconstitutional, unprincipled means of discriminating against qualified applicants wanting entry as students. Some instead granted admission in accordance with skin color, which happened in this case to be black, the exact opposite of white preferences […]
Published
July 4, 2023

‘We hold these truths to be self-evident’

The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 2, 1776, and published on July 4 — 247 years ago today. In Congress, July 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected […]
Published
July 2, 2023

Our View: State budget proposal would do a lot of good for Maine families

The full Legislature should support the bipartisan spending plan passed last week by the Appropriations Committee.
Published
June 30, 2023

Ben Bragdon: Maine voters deserve more from Susan Collins than a defense of Donald Trump

Collins, a longtime member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, should recognize the severity of the former president’s actions.
Published
June 29, 2023

Our View: Once again, gun rights win out over everything else

The Maine Senate missed an opportunity to make the state a little safer by implementing background checks on private firearm sales.
Published
June 28, 2023

Commentary: 20 short observations from a high school teacher at year’s end

As school wraps for the summer, these notes provide a view into today’s classroom. 1. Students tell me they need their iPhones because their brains are wired differently than mine. One said, “Mr. Miller, we need the dopamine hit.” 2. By accident, an intruder alarm warning went off in one of our district schools, and […]
Published
June 27, 2023

Tom Waddell: Maine should cut funding for private school altogether

A recent article in the Morning Sentinel reported, “A federal lawsuit is once again challenging Maine’s limits on sending public money to religious schools.” The discrimination argument the plaintiffs are using now is the opposite of their previous argument. One commentator on the above article summed up the plaintiff’s argument by writing: “Previous arguments claimed […]
Published
June 25, 2023

Commentary: Are book bans unconstitutional? They are certainly political

In Missouri, the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel “Maus” about the Holocaust faces possible removal from schools for at least the third time over its depiction of a female character in a bathtub. In South Carolina, an Advanced Placement teacher has been forced to abandon her lesson about systemic racism using “Between the World and Me” […]
Published
June 21, 2023

Commentary: Immigration should be about more than politics

Whichever side of the spectrum you’re on, the topic of immigration has never been more political than it is today. I know because I had to speak in public about the migration crisis recently, and it was a real challenge to decide whether to speak about the disappointment and heartbreak in my heart or whether […]
Published
June 19, 2023

Commentary: Gender crisis is really a marriage crisis

So many political issues, from debates over abortion and school curriculum materials to budget cuts, are framed as attacks on “women” as a group, and polls and statistics showing that women’s votes lean left are usually cited as evidence on behalf of the idea that the Republican Party is anti-woman. But these gender gap statistics […]