Cosmopolitan with a twist

What better way to usher in the hissingly hot dog days of summer, otherwise known as August, than with a high-wire verbal duel between CNN senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta and White House sniper Stephen Miller. The sniping began during a news conference Wednesday, the same day President Donald Trump endorsed Senate Republicans' plan to reform legal immigration from family-based to skill-based standards.

Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2017: Sen. Collins shows courage, Fulford for Congress, don’t use pesticides

Maine has a proud tradition of independence and leadership. Decades ago, Sen. Margaret Chase Smith stood up to partisan bullying in the Senate in a famous floor speech , and recently Sen. Susan Collins has shown the same courage.

We face greatest threat to voting rights of past half-century

Two years ago, President Barack Obama marked the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act with a White House summit on protecting and expanding the right to vote. As California's chief elections officer, I was invited to this significant event.

There’s no such thing as a Trump Democrat

If so, you may have taken interest in a new mythical creature that appeared during the 2016 election: the Trump Democrat. It has become an article of faith that an unusually large number of people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 or 2012 switched sides and voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.

LETTERS: “Volunteer one to two hours per week to help with the…

As a 28-year member of the Volusia Literacy Council, I remember when I first joined, 1 in every 4 folks in Volusia County could not read or write past a fourth-grade level. Fast forward 28 years later, and as many as 1 in 4 adults still cannot read past a fourth-grade level.

National View: David Ignatius – For once, on Russia, Trump may be right

When all right-thinking people in the nation's capital seem to agree on something - as has been the case recently with legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia - that may be a warning that the debate has veered into an unthinking herd mentality. Sanctions were already an overused tool of foreign policy before President Trump last week peevishly signed into law a measure imposing new penalties on Russia, Iran and North Korea.

Immigration fight cripples Alaska fishing as foreign help vanishes

Not many Americans want to spend the summer processing seafood in Alaska for 16 hours a day, seven days a week, earning $10 an hour straight time and $15 an hour overtime. But the prospect of working 112 hours and grossing about $1,400 a week - in a good fishing year - appeals to workers from countries where the pay for unskilled labor is a good deal lower than $10 an hour.