The final flight of Endeavour (and the penultimate voyage in the Shuttle program) is scheduled to blast off at 7:48 p.m. on Monday, April 19 and will be commanded by Mark Kelly, wife of Arizona Congrsswomen Gabrielle Giffords, who may attend the launch.

Watching a Space Shuttle launch has been on my bucket list for some time. I’ll admit it: I’ve been a bit of a space geek for most of my life. I can name all the Mercury astronauts, AND the Gemini astronauts, AND every astronaut that went to the moon. Every school kid knows Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon. But who was Armstrong’s co-pilot on his near-death experience aboard Gemini 8? I could tell you (and my twin brother could too). Somewhere in my collection of dusty books I even have a Space Shuttle operator’s manual, and I’ve read it cover-to-cover. Several times.

I was the resident space-nerd at the Portland Press Herald the day the Challenger exploded in 1986. In those days they published an afternoon paper, and the editors had a problem. There were initial reports that maybe the astronauts could have survived and NASA wasn’t saying much. The editor came over to my desk, sat down, and said, “We’ve got to go to press. Is there any way the astronauts could have survived?’ I shook my head, sadly, and told him there was no chance. They were nine miles high traveling at the speed of sound, almost 800 mph, when the Shuttle disintegrated. No chance. He would be safe with a headline like, “Astronauts perish….” Like a lot of Americans, he was shocked to discover that the astronauts had no parachutes on board.

Naming all the astronauts became a lot more difficult after the Shuttle made spaceflight almost routine, sending up six and eight member crews of faceless engineers and scientists. You could actually impress strangers at a party by claiming to be a Shuttle astronaut (who would know?). As a result, the space program lost some of its pizzazz. It was no longer a small bunch of swashbuckling space explorers, but instead became the domain of some rather dull techo-nerds. And I’ve never been able to figure out what they’re really doing up there in that space station, whether it’s actually useful, productive research or just an excuse to keep the federal space bucks flowing to Florida and Houston. Maybe I’ll find out on this trip.

But everyone who’s ever been to a Shuttle launch will tell you how thrilling and awesome it is, and I’m looking forward to it. I’ll be right at home with all the other space-geeks, and we’ll all be Tweeting, Facebooking and Skyping the entire event. Better tune in. After June, we may not see Americans blasting off into outer space for some time.

Maybe the Republicans Were Right: For years, when Republicans complained of bloated state budgets, they usually pointed the finger at that old rubric of “waste, fraud and abuse.” God forbid that they’d actually risk political backlash by targeting some big-money programs like education and health care. And Democrats were quick to seize on this, claiming that the state budget had been pared to the bone, that all the fat was gone, and any cuts would have to slice into important programs and services.

But since taking office, the LePage Administration has been handed several examples that suggest maybe the Republicans were on to something. It’s mostly coincidence, of course, but first there was the Democratic-controlled home weatherization program that received $1 million from the federal government, but didn’t seem to do anything with it except put some friends on the payroll. Then there is the head of the Maine Turnpike Authority, another Democrat, who resigned after it was discovered that for some inexplicable reason he handed out tens of thousands of dollars worth of gift cards to a variety of groups that have no connection with the Turnpike (some that claim they never saw them), paid for by yours and my toll money. Finally, LePage claims that Baldacci officials overpaid hospitals more than $60 million at a time when hospitals were whining that the state owed them money (go figure). Democrats dispute the whole thing, but LePage is sticking to his story.

So what’s going on? My spidey sense tells me they’re always doing more than you think they are, and these examples – while, like most Maine scandals, are mostly small potatoes – could be the canary in the coal mine. What else is the state wasting money on?

Where can I get me some of that BPA? There has been a lot of newspaper ink dedicated to LePage’s proposal to roll back environmental laws, especially his apparent decision to repeal a law to phase out products – mostly baby bottles and sippy cups – containing a potentially nasty chemical called bisphenol-A, or BPA. LePage’s comment that the worst effect from the chemical is that women might grow “little beards” dominated the news for days and made national headlines.

LePage’s rational seems to be that the BPA phase-out is another one of those pesky laws that sends a message that Maine is unfriendly to business. But what business is he talking about? Maybe I missed it, but left out of the BPA coverage was the fact that most big retailers in Maine have already phased out products that contain BPA. Walmart stopped carrying products containing BPA back in 2008, and recently banned a flame retardant commonly used in couches and carpeting (another chemical targeted by Maine’s “cumbersome” environmental laws). Other retailers like Whole Foods and Toys 'R Us have done the same.

So the biggest retailer in Maine could care less about a law to phase out BPA. They’re way ahead of the state (and federal) government. So, Gov. LePage, what businesses does a BPA ban send the wrong message to? Mardens?

And since we're on the subject of symbolic gestures: The latest LePage kerfuffle also making national headlines concerns the removal of some artwork at the Department of Labor depicting key events in the history of Maine's labor movement. LePage says the mural represents a one-sided, unbalanced view in a a department that should be working to bring both labor and management together.

Fine. But you don't achieve balance by eliminating one side. If LePage was serious, he'd bring in a bunch of pictures showing LL Bean and other Maine employers and industrialists to display along with the artwork of Maine workers. That's how to achieve balance. If he takes Caesar Chavez's name off the door and replaces it with Ronald Regan,  his motives will become more obvious than they are already.

But the big question is, why is he even picking these needless fights? He may win some points with his (shrinking) base, but he's only enraging his opponents, attracting embarrassing national attention, and diverting attention away from any real work he may or may not be accomplishing. He's turning into a circus sideshow.