Maine's laptop saga continues, as Governor King continues to push for his $25 million initiative to outfit all of the state's middle school students with iBooks, while opponents of the plan insist that the money would be better spent on more vital social services in this faltering economy. Meanwhile, Apple remains caught in the middle, with the "biggest education computer purchase ever" hanging in limbo, and Uncle Steve wondering if the residents of Maine will derail his deal and make him regret trumpeting that sales coup before the money ever changed hands. It's one thing to count your chickens before they're hatched, but counting government money before the check clears is just plain reckless.

So here's the latest: while the controversy is raging as hot as ever, the Sun Journal reports that one Maine senator has proposed an interesting compromise. Senator Peggy Rotundo's approach is the essence of simplicity: basically she says, hey, instead of blowing $25 million on iBooks for every Maine junior high school student, why not spend $12.5 million on laptops for just the seventh-graders, instead? The idea is that the money saved "could restore education and social service cuts" while Maine could still "keep the contract the state has signed with Apple." Oh, sure, it would no longer be the biggest education computer purchase ever, but heck, even Uncle Steve would admit that it's better than nothing. Everybody would be (sort of) happy.

Everyone, that is, except for Maine's middle schoolers and Peggy herself. Anyone who has even the faintest recollection of that Deepest Pit in Hell known as "junior high" and the denizens of said infernal region will immediately spot the two little flaws in her plan. The first, obviously, is that if only the seventh-graders get iBooks, then the eighth-graders will just beat them up and steal their gear. The second is that poor Peggy would also be spending the entire following year dealing with toilet paper in her trees, eggs on her car, and flaming doggie doo on her doorstep as swarms of disgruntled eighth-graders across the entire state make pilgrimages to her home town of Lewiston to exact their revenge on "that lady that denied us access to the Promised Land of wireless Internet porn."

If Senator Rotundo is willing to endure that sort of torment for the good of the state (while also sacrificing the lives of some 18,000 seventh-graders-- but what the heck, they can't vote anyway), then more power to her; we like politicians that can make bold and selfless decisions. Personally, though, we'd call this a "back to the drawing board" sort of situation...