Street crime is nearly always hollow and pathetic, minor hoodlums risking major jail time for purse snatchings and convenience store stick-ups that probably net them a day’s worth of narcotics. But we’ve had a rash of them over the last two weeks, which should concern us all. A grand jury last week indicted Rodney M. […]

Cheers to tenacious Husson University student Jesse Hladik of Buckfield. She, along with four other students, intervened to help a woman who was being attacked on campus Wednesday. Hladik and another student, Heather Mann of New Hampshire, heard someone crying out for help at around dusk, and ran to help. Mann called police and ran […]

We commend the efforts of  Oxford County’s Emergency Management Agency to prepare for the worst while hoping it never happens. The agency’s director, Scott Parker, is a master of planning and practice and on Wednesday Parker again demonstrated why Oxford County is lucky to have him at the helm. About 65 emergency staff, many of […]

In 2004, Carlos Osorio was injured by a table saw while working as a flooring installer for a company in Medford, Mass. The jury decision that resulted has rocked the tool industry and will, unless reversed, have serious implications for manufacturers, employers and consumers. Osorio was “ripping” a piece of flooring on a job site, […]

More states have finally taken up a cause we have recommended for years — applying sales tax to online purchases. In preparation for next year’s legislative session, Maine should be laying the groundwork now to join that cause. Colorado, North Carolina and other states — all hard-hit by the recession of 2008-09 — have passed […]

Normally, the Maine Heritage Policy Center would be happy to know a candidate for governor had adopted its position on an issue. But the organization has a right to be miffed when a candidate takes the center’s word-for-word testimony and presents it as his own. Friday, the website Pine Tree Politics revealed that gubernatorial candidate […]

Two chatty teenage girls. A dark road, a fast car and an intersection. In her new book, “Spoken From the Heart,” former first lady Laura Bush describes how those factors combined to end one young life and nearly ruin several others. The painful story says several things. First, that the fatal consequences of distracted driving […]

Finally, someone has said what many of us have long suspected: “PowerPoint makes us stupid.” That conclusion comes from a plainspoken expert on the subject, Gen. James N. Mattis of the U.S. Marine Corps who, you may safely conclude, is not a fan. A story in last week’s New York Times revealed how some officers […]

Really? You drive a Jeep and that’s not manly enough to prevent you from kicking and punching an elderly man’s car? On Monday morning in Wilton, the driver of a black and blue Jeep tailgated an elderly driver on routes 2 and 4, leaning on the horn and flashing his lights until the victim pulled […]

Fish are like people in at least one respect — some try harder than others, and you have to respect the ones that do. That’s why it’s difficult not to be moved by the story of one American shad, we’ll call him Charlie, who tried to climb the fish ladder at the Brunswick dam 58 […]