Donna Paradis, seven months pregnant, was just murdered in Lewiston. Her killer can be brought to justice for her death, but not the death of her unborn child. In this state, justice for her child is unavailable.Because if you want to see lawmakers do a soft-shoe through a political minefield, ask them about the statutory […]

The vain in Maine is found mainly on its…plates.Maine has the sixth-highest percentage of vanity license plates in America, behind the attention-hogs in Virginia, New Hampshire, Illinois, Nevada and Montana. Some 107,000 personal expressions are affixed to vehicles here, about 10 percent of the state’s 1.1 million total registrations.Most are innocuous – family affections, sports, […]

Race played a role in what happened to Mohamed Noor – a cross-country race.Noor, a top runner for Lewiston High School, allegedly had sand or household cleaner tossed into his face during the New England regional championships in Cumberland last weekend. The unknown assailant was said to have been distributing religious materials before the race, […]

Schemengee’s history is as colorful as its murals of dogs shooting stick and cheating at poker. The pool hall’s former owner, it’s said, bore an uncanny towheaded resemblance to one of the Shmenge brothers, an accordion-toting polka star played to late-night comedic perfection by Eugene Levy in the 1970s.A few months after Levy’s debut, Waters […]

Enduring the worst of Maine’s winter means waiting stoically for spring, which administers antidotes to winter’s wounds: longer days and warmer temperatures. The tradition is time-honored.“Everybody gets through the winter somehow in Maine,” says Jamie Py, president of the Maine Oil Dealers Association, according to a recent Associated Press article. “It’s always been that way.”It’s […]

It is so easy to continue to lean on the ghost of Sen. Edmund Muskie for support in the ongoing campaign for clean air because he was right.He was right when emission standards were first suggested for cars more than a quarter-century ago, and he remains right to this day.Why, then, do states have to […]

We salute our nation’s warriors on Veterans Day. It’s a time to highlight their stories and sacrifices, while also examining their needs. After all, how we treat our fighting men and women, after the battles have ended, reflects our values as Americans.That’s why there was an outcry about the horrible conditions at Walter Reed Army […]

The debate in Washington over whether waterboarding, the practice of subjecting captives to the simulated experience of drowning, constitutes torture is pointless.Of course it’s torture. Sen. John McCain, who knows more about torture than we should ever care to learn, says it’s torture, and that’s good enough for me. But there’s also a whole body […]

The question of whether waterboarding constitutes torture is a no-brainer. Our nation and many others have recognized for decades that it does. One doesn’t have to have been “read into” the details of a classified program, as President Bush has suggested, to reach a judgment about this interrogation technique. Common sense is the only tool […]

Maine’s high court is weighing the constitutionality of a law that prohibits something that rarely happens: the unauthorized use of an endorsement by a candidate for public office.Michael Mowles Jr., of Cape Elizabeth, used endorsements from Sen. Olympia Snowe and Sen. Susan Collins he garnered in 2004, during his unsuccessful bid in a 2006 legislative […]