And take it with a grain of salt BY AL DIAMON

Here in Maine, we’re just shy of civil war between the state’s urban south and rural north. It’s also impossible to have a polite discussion about abortion, same-sex marriage, gun control, or gambling without somebody threatening to splatter the walls with somebody else’s internal organs. And before anybody calls an ambulance to treat the wounded, keep in mind that disagreements over health care can quickly turn uglier than public reaction to another proposed LNG terminal.

You want to ban clear-cutting. I work for a paper mill.

You want to steam lobsters. I’m a member of PETA.

You want to borrow $450 million to cover a hole in the state budget. If I’m a Democrat, I want to raise taxes. If I’m a Republican, I want to . . . well, uh, I don’t know what I want to do, except I don’t want to do whatever you want to do.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

It would be easy to conclude there’s no subject on which Mainers agree. But there’s still one area of public policy that unites us. No matter where we live, what political philosophy we espouse or who we have sex with, we’re unanimous in our disgust with candidates who lie.

So let’s get together for a big lovefest, and make telling a falsehood during a campaign illegal.

According to Stateline.org, 18 states currently have laws banning political prevarication, and another three states are considering similar legislation. Imagine how much fun it would be to have a statute like that in Maine.

If Democratic Governor John Baldacci kicks off his campaign for re-election next year by claiming to have balanced the budget, State Police officers could arrest him and haul him into court to explain the $450-million deficit in his latest spending plan.

After his conviction, Baldacci could share a cell with former Republican Governor John McKernan, who’d still be serving his sentence from the 1990 campaign, when he claimed the state didn’t face a budget crisis. Once the votes were counted, he conveniently discovered a massive revenue shortfall. McKernan would also be serving a concurrent term for telling gay-rights advocates he’d allow an anti-discrimination measure to become law without his signature. Instead, he folded under pressure from right-wingers and vetoed it.

If lying legislation were the law of the land, both our US senators would be doing hard time. When Republican Olympia Snowe was first running for the US House, she said she supported limiting congressional terms to 12 years. After a dozen years in office, Snowe denied making the statement. If she wins re-election in 2006, she’ll begin her 13th year in the Senate.

During Republican Senator Susan Collins’ 1996 campaign, she issued a flyer that falsely implied her Democratic opponent, Joe Brennan, held anti-Israeli views. And Collins claimed she wasn’t the source of a story about the Democrats hiring an investigator to dig into her background, although her campaign manager later admitted leaking it.

Former Attorney General James Tierney, a Democrat, tried to boost his sagging 1990 congressional campaign by claiming to have been "instrumental" in settling the court case involving the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. All he did was join numerous other public officials in signing a letter urging a settlement.

In 2002, Democratic state Representative Michael Quint of Portland insisted he had a degree from the University of Southern Maine. The school said otherwise, thereby scuttling Quint’s bid for the state Senate.

And is there enough Super-Max space for the leaders of the Maine Municipal Association, who promised that if voters boosted school spending during last year’s referendum, property taxes would go down?

While it would be immensely satisfying to make reservations in iron hotels for all these truth twisters, it’s unlikely to happen. In most states with anti-lying laws, the legislation has proved impossible to enforce. Courts have overturned the statutes as violations of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, or it proved too difficult to determine what was a lie and what was an opinion.

Another problem: Brooks Jackson, director of Factcheck.org, a Web site that tracks political misstatements, told Stateline.org, "I don’t know how you pass a law making it a crime to utter a falsehood in a political debate without giving some government official the power to decide what’s false and what’s not."

A Maine political activist pointed out a fundamental flaw in truth-in-campaigning statutes: "The reason these laws don’t work is that most claims made by candidates have shades of the truth, and the disagreements are about emphasis and spin. In my opinion, debates about what is true are what campaigns are all about."

Or as P. J. O’Rourke once put it, "All political views are rude. Political views lead to anger, outrage, gross certainty, and other boorish displays of feeling."

Which is probably why we can’t agree on anything.

Which is what I like about this state.

Go ahead, disagree with me by emailing ishmaelia@gwi.net