On the cover of the December issue of the Maine Townsman, the publication of the Maine Municipal Association, an oddly hued assembly of silhouetted legislators are depicted as striding (or perhaps floating) across Astroturf hills toward the looming State House.Growing in the middle of a muddy path leading to the capital’s dome is a tilted […]

There is a gaping opportunity on Lisbon Street for two private-sector developers to cooperatively strengthen and enliven the downtown in this city known for its private- and public-sector collaboration.Following an arson that destroyed four all-but-abandoned downtown buildings just before Christmas, three of the buildings are now gone, and the fourth – the condemned New England […]

It remains widely known, and wildly unfair, that Americans pay higher drug costs than most of the world.This, despite the fact that much medical research is funded in whole or in part by taxpayers, and that U.S. taxpayers often subsidize the educational expense of training the scientists who develop the drugs. Meanwhile, U.S. drug companies […]

We start 2007 today and wish a good riddance to 2006. The year ended badly, with too many families grieving too many people who died too soon. Death just seemed to loom over Androscoggin and Oxford counties.It started in April with Kenny Jellison of Auburn dead on a street in Lewiston, the victim of a […]

Christine Savage is a retired town manager and ought to know how strapped taxpayers are and how much they resent unnecessary government spending.Why, then, would this veteran state senator from Union submit a bill “at the request of a constituent” to make negative campaign ads a Class E crime?Negative speech is objectionable, but it’s protected […]

Eleven people died on Maine roads between Dec. 20 and Dec. 28, with the Christmas Eve crash in Poland accounting for six of those dead. The other wrecks were in Dayton, Calais, Waterville, Naples and Winthrop.The highway death toll for the year, as of Thursday, was 185 people. That’s 16 more than last year, which […]

President Gerald Ford is being remembered as a humble, honest compromiser who was able to heal a nation in the wake of political scandal and an unpopular war.In an era of fresh political scandals, scorched-earth political tactics and another unpopular war, the nation may just be in need of a similarly steady hand at the […]

The spotlight is still on us.The Dec. 11 edition of The New Yorker magazine examines the phenomenon of “The Somalis of Lewiston.” It treads along well-worn paths: The immigration. The letter. The rallies. The racism. The pig’s head.Three years after Lewiston earned international attention, observers still consider us a cultural petri dish. The caption of […]

Let’s hope you never run into Michael Whitney or, more likely, he runs into you. The 20-year-old Auburn man is a habitual motor-vehicle offender and should not be driving a car. If you see him doing so, please call police.That may seem harsh, but Maine needs to find a better way of keeping people like […]

They say every dog has its day. Rudy the Reading Dog is getting another one.A crew from CBS weekend news recently came to Otisfield Community School to film Rudy, an affable Irish setter and symbol of the school’s successful literacy program. Students read to Rudy, whose furry brown bartender’s ear builds confidence in uncertain youthful […]