Ding! Round two.Hearings begin today at Sugarloaf USA, in Carrabassett Valley, on Maine Mountain Power’s renewed renewable energy plan for Black Nubble Mountain. MMP, rejected by the Maine Land Use Regulatory Commission last year, now wishes to build 30 turbines on Black Nubble alone.The Redington Pond Range, a key part of MMP’s first proposal, is […]

In the lawless world of Internet discussion, one rule does apply. It’s called Godwin’s Law (after its coiner, attorney Mike Godwin) which states the longer an online argument lasts, the “probability of comparison to Nazism, or Adolf Hitler, approaches one.”The same is true outside the Internet. Usually, those invoking imagery of swastika-adorned storm troopers have […]

When a car crashes, a house is burning, or a wayward bovine blocks a roadway, those seeking help through the local dispatch center care little who pays the person answering the phone.Yet who funds this service, and for how much, is a ceaseless source of debate between cities and towns, as large communities feel they […]

Imagine our surprise.A few weeks after lauding Rep. William Walcott, the former Democratic representative from downtown Lewiston, as an “honest man,” allegations emerged he diverted some $4,800 in clean election – read taxpayer – funds for his personal misuse.Then, in an attempt to cover his tracks, Walcott admittedly fabricated expenditures to account for the missing […]

ATLANTA – Hell was a housing project.East Lake Meadows was built of bricks and ringed by barbed wire and called Little Vietnam because it was a war zone. “Do you know where you are?” a horrified cop once demanded of a lost driver with out-of-state plates. An official of the Carter administration once accompanied the […]

There is no photograph of Satan, so we must improvise with what we have: Osama bin Laden.Looking like a Middle East version of a bad “Just for Men” beard dye commercial, OBL has resurfaced to deliver another rambling address to America. Conversion to Islam, he said, would mean no taxes, just a low single digit […]

Smokestacks are coming down in Berlin, N.H., as the Androscoggin River city copes with post-paper existence. Destroying the dormant sentinels is symbolic for this city of 10,000, which now has high hopes for a federal prison and an all-terrain vehicle park for its economic survival.“I think this place really wants to change,” Claudette Boutin, a […]

For daring burglars, every copper theft could be their last. Starting to mess around with electrical substations to steal the precious metal carries with it the real possibility of a shocking end.Maine’s Public Utilities Commission is calling attention to copper thefts, in the wake of a series of break-ins at utility companies across the state. […]

Though Lewiston’s deal with Casella Waste System’s Inc. is “dead,” to use the parlance of the city administrator, residents must realize the problems that caused this issue to arise are still alive and kicking.Lewiston, and Auburn, still have access to a landfill with a six-century capacity, but one that now requires millions of dollars of […]

At this pace, reducing the size of the Maine Legislature could be done by attrition.The latest is Republican Rep. Phil Cressey, who resigned his House District 99 seat effective Tuesday, after concerns were raised about his conspicuous lack of qualifications for legislative service.Such as his working in Massachusetts during the week. Cressey defended this situation […]