I Think We Have A Moral Obligation

Incivility Is A Symptom, Not The Disease. We've Always Had Partisan Conflict In Congress, And We Always Will. Yet When I Worked For A Year (1970-71) On The Staff Of Sen. Ed Muskie Of Maine, This Was A Different Place, More Collegial, More Sensitive To Data, More Concerned About All Of The American People. I Think Because The For-profit Media Prizes Conflict Above Cooperation And Sound Bites Above Analysis, Politicians Have Learned To Adapt To Those Tendencies. Consequently, Our Public Debates Are Dumbed Down As Our Problems Grow More Complex.

The Offshore Ocean Area Under U.s. Jurisdiction Is Larger Than Our Land Mass, And Teems With Plant And Animal Life, Mineral Resources, Commerce, Trade, And Energy Sources.

Yet, Much Of What Lies Beneath The Ocean's Surface Remains A Mystery, And Our Nation Continues To Rely On A Confused, Antiquated System Of Ocean Governance.

The Argument On The Other Side Of Special Rights Is Completely Bogus. It's Bogus Because You Could Make Exactly The Same Claim About Racial Or Ethnic Or Religious Minorities.

If The Parties Get Too Close Together They Lose Their Identities, If They Get Too Far Apart You're Not Going To Get A Whole Lot Done Because You Almost Always Need To Have Some Folks On The Other Side Of The Aisle To Accomplish Anything.