News & Commentary

Next Friday, at 1pm, Maine's Transportation Committee will hear LD - 1561, Act To Regulate the Use of Traffic Surveillance Cameras. 

Last night in his State of the Union address, President Obama called for the repeal of  the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.

With the news yesterday that teen pregnancy rates have increased for the first time in 2005-2006 since the 1990s, the debate over abstinence-only education versus comprehensive sex education has been revived. Fortunately, this fall President Obama signed the Fiscal Year 2010 Omnibus Appropriations bill, which ended “funding for the failed Community Based Abstinence Education program and instead directs significant resources into medically accurate, evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs.” Those significant resources are split 75%-25%, with the former including programs that have been proven to work and the latter including “innovative possibilities”, and it is possible that ab-only programs would be included in the latter 25%.

Yet more evidence that full body scanners do not work.  This was posted by Suzanne Ito on the ACLU Blog Of Rights.

The Legislature needs to hear from us! Join members of the MCLU at a Statehouse Day of Action on Tuesday, February 9th from 9am – noon. 

I spent most of today in Augusta with ACLU of MAINE staffers Brianna Twofoot and Alysia Melnick.  It was an inspiring day with a press conference to formally launch a campaign to limit the use of solitary confinement.  You can read a brief version of the MPBN story here.   Look for more news in tomorrow's Bangor Daily News or watch it on WABI Television Friday, 1/22.  Sam Shain also did a thorough story for Village Soup here. 

In a free society, we don’t censor our critics. But about six years ago, the Bush administration decided to surrender that crucial First Amendment principle.

I write from the legislative library.  I just finished by testimony before the Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs in support of Senator Justin Alfond’s bill, “An Act To Increase Maine's High School Graduation Rate”  No one testified in opposition, probably because no one is opposed to increasing the graduation rate.  How we go about making that happen, however, is vitally important.  <

On Friday, the ACLU announced that the Defense Department released a list of the people imprisoned at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.  The Defense Department had refused to make the list of 645 prisoners pub