Number 44 must execute a crackdown on the southern border. Securing the frontier with Mexico is a key security issue.,Whoever’s elected in 2008, he or she will have a daunting first term. In this special feature, Beacon opinion editors suggest tomorrow’s answers to today’s biggest problems.

Number 44 must execute a crackdown on the southern border. Securing the frontier with Mexico is a key security issue. Waves of illegal immigrants threaten to undermine America’s labor base and traditional culture. However, those aliens already here must be dealt with in a sane and humane fashion. Some will have to go-certainly those with criminal records-but many are well integrated into America’s social and economic fabrics. They should be provided a tough but fair path to citizenship, with full assimilation as the end goal.

-Philip Primeau

Same-sex marrige is an issue we must confront in the near future.The viable candidates all resist allowing gays to wed, but they also oppose a Constitutional amendment to ban it. McCain believes individual states should decide, while Obama and Clinton embrace “civil unions” as an acceptable alternative. Frankly, these options are equally displeasing. The next president should make the progressive choice of supporting equality for all Americans. If he or she does not, the matter will hopefully go to the judiciary, with the Supeme Court establishing the equal rights of gay citizens.

-Douglas P. Case,Philip Primeau, Douglas P. Case