The Greek swimming-pool story is legend by now. In the wealthy suburbs north of Athens, 324 residents checked a box on their tax returns acknowledging they had swimming pools, which triggered a special tax on them. Tax investigators, meanwhile, facing an edict to raise more revenue, studied satellite photos of the area and found more […]

The loss of two young women in Casco Bay Sunday is a painful reminder that while warm weather has arrived, warm water has not. The bodies of 18-year-old Irina McEntee and 20-year-old Carissa Ireland were found Monday morning, still wearing their life jackets, several miles from where they were last seen on Ram Island. The […]

Can it be? Lewiston and Auburn city workers are testing new computer programs this week to create a joint — as in same, together — planning and permitting system. It’s not a done-deal yet, but city governments on both sides of the river appear to be moving forward with a common software platform for planning, […]

Renowned British physicist and deep thinker Stephen Hawking recently raised the prospect of aliens arriving on Earth to exploit our natural resources. We suspect their first reaction will be, “Dude, who wrecked this place?!” They will see the oily mess off the coast of Louisiana. Then the smoke rising from the clear-cuts in the Amazon. […]

A story last Sunday clearly illustrated one of the weaknesses of our energy strategy in the U.S. The wood pellet market has cooled, the story said. One local shop was selling 10 to 20 pellet stoves a day a couple of years ago. Now it sells that many in a week. Last year, a wood […]

Cheers to the Maine Criminal Justice Academy’s Board of Trustees for officially validating the actions of Sheriff Guy Desjardins and county commissioners to discipline former jail guards Sgt. Kevin Harmon and Cpl. Patrick Gorham. Trustees revoked the corrections certificates after an investigation by the Academy’s Complaint Committee. The two guards were involved in duct-taping a […]

One of L-A’s proudest moments came in January 2003 when a handful of white supremacists crawled into town, were roundly rejected and left with their tails between their legs – meaning under tight police protection. Matt Hale, pontifex maximus of the white separatist World Church of the Creator, was the scheduled speaker on Jan. 11. […]

While it’s clearly not a hate crime in the legal sense, the fury expressed by the vandals who damaged a building and equipment owned by the Mexico Recreation Department was singularly shocking. The cowards caused more than $10,0000 damage to a storage garage, dump truck and ball fields early Saturday morning. They kicked in an […]

What can a guy do to get some support for a southern casino in northern Maine? Peter Martin of Black Bear Entertainment must be wondering that after twin rejections by the Bangor City Council and the Passamaquoddy Tribe in Indian Township in recent weeks. The answer is simple — not much. It’s not for lack […]

A newspaper is always a collection of incongruities and coincidences, the bizarre next to the mundane, the loathsome next to the sublime. Rarely are those contradictions and connections as apparent as Sunday’s Sun Journal. Dominating the front page was a warm photo of mothers dancing with their young sons at the first Mother-Son ball at […]