Legislative and congressional redistricting can cause some of the toughest political fights any state can have.

The timing was fortunate, if mostly coincidental. Within days of the final installment of MaineToday Media’s six-part series on the state’s problems with prescription drug abuse, Attorney General William Schneider announced plans for a task force to address the issue.

The state’s revenue picture has brightened, officials say — $6 million more than expected rolled in during the first quarter of the fiscal year, not to mention $23 million more than the same quarter last year — but budget cutting is still the order of the day.

If being a teenager weren’t hard enough already, now the years when fledglings want the most to flee the parental nest and begin to flap their wings have one more obstacle to freedom:

In the history of modern brutal dictatorships, the 42-year rule of Moammar Gadhafi over the North African nation of Libya had its unique aspects.

Only a tiny sliver of Planned Parenthood activities is tied to abortion, and no federal money can be spent on the procedure. But this limitation isn’t good enough. The organization — and an estimated 5 million low-income women served by Title X — must be cut off.

During centuries of exile and wandering, the Jewish people have, sadly, accumulated immense experience with extortion and abductions. Wherever they went, Jews tended to excel but, unfortunately, often lacked the means to defend the fruits of their labor. Too often they became easy prey for kidnappers.

The steady slowdown of the world’s second largest economy may disappoint those who are hoping it will be the driving force for the global economy, which is teetering on the edge of a double-dip recession.

Just as government critics conjure images of bureaucrats shoveling money into a furnace, gambling advocates paint portraits of needing wheelbarrows to spread the money collected from dice, slots and cards around a community.

In a perfect world, with a thriving economy, with jobs plentiful, with unemployment a temporary setback rather than a way of life, would anyone embrace gambling as an economic lifeline?