When Senator John McCain delivered the keynote address at the National Federation of Independent Business 2008 National Small Business Summit last month, he did much more than speak to several hundred interested small business owners. He pushed the concerns of a significant voting bloc to the forefront of the presidential campaigns. In fact, both Sens. McCain and Barack Obama have spent much time specifically addressing the No. 1 issue among small businesses—healthcare. And it’s about time.

Recognizing that healthcare costs have become unmanageable for many entrepreneurs, Sen. McCain said, if elected, his administration would introduce healthcare reform that would provide hardworking Americans more options and expand portability of coverage.

Our youngest child was cyber-bullied this year – someone gained access to his Webkinz page, left foul language, and destroyed what he had created. How should we handle this?

Our oldest child likes to communicate with his friends through texting. Should we even allow text messaging on his phone?

Perhaps the greatest conservationist to occupy the Oval Office, President Theodore Roosevelt once said, "Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us."

Certainly, President Roosevelt was a champion for the great cause of preserving our natural legacy; yet, he also understood that environmental protection and economic growth are not mutually exclusive. In that spirit, we announce the formation of Citizens for Sound Conservation, a group dedicated to both the economic and environmental health of our State.

f I was a betting man, I’d wager that most people haven’t followed the debate on REAL ID. If you indeed missed it, I would ask that you take the time to learn about what I consider the most troubling piece of legislation I’ve seen come from Washington since I’ve been Governor.

REAL ID would surreptitiously require all 50 states to change their driver’s licenses to act as de-facto national ID cards. It’s outrageous, and not just because it was a backdoor way of doing something proponents in Washington have never been able to pull off in the past. I say "outrageous" because Real ID was never really debated in Congress; because the cost of its implementation is handed down to states and individuals; and because it is an affront to Americans’ privacy concerns. .

The police, fire and EMS stories that appear in this edition of the paper were written with information provided, in part, from those very departments of government. These departments, as well as numerous political leaders at various level of government, have cooperated with our reporters on numerous occasions.

This is not always the case of all departments at all levels of government. Without access to information, our readers go uninformed.

For example, this past summer, our coverage of local police activities was severely limited and hampered by a now-revoked policy of the city police department.