In comedy, timing is everything.Maybe that’s true in tragedy as well.When Lewiston City Administrator Jim Bennett went before the City Council on Tuesday night asking for more money for the Colisee and a parking garage, there was a collective cringe. The timing just couldn’t be worse.We are less than six weeks away from an election […]

After concerns to the contrary, President George Bush and Sen. John Kerry have agreed to meet three times in the coming weeks to debate the issues of the campaign for president.When negotiations began with the Commission on Presidential Debates, the president was reluctant about one forum, a town-hall-style debate in front of undecided voters who […]

The Board of Trustees for the University of Maine System approved a restructuring plan Monday that is ambitious and growing more and more controversial.The plan would merge the University of Maine at Augusta with the University of Southern Maine, as well as create a consortium of the campuses at Machias, Fort Kent and Presque Isle.The […]

CBS News apologized Monday for a segment on “60 Minutes” about President Bush’s service in the National Guard.It’s an amazing embarrassment for CBS News and anchor Dan Rather. For more than two weeks, Rather has defended the authenticity of documents that seemed to establish that Bush had received preferential treatment during his time in the […]

Russian democracy is under assault.The attackers are not the terrorists who repugnantly murdered children during the siege of a school in Beslan. It’s not the rebels in Chechnya who have waged a decades-long battle for independence against Russia.The threat comes from President Vladimir Putin, who is using the slaughter of more than 300 people as […]

A report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education had some nice things to say about Maine.The state receives good grades on preparing students for college, on graduation rates and on the benefits that higher education brings to the community.There’s bad news, though, according to the report. Maine gets a big, fat […]

Sen. John Kerry is being characterized as a big-spending, Massachusetts liberal. It’s true he has a liberal record in the Senate. And he’s definitely from Massachusetts.But the prize for big-spending proposals in this year’s election actually goes to President Bush. It’s counterintuitive, but a cost comparison of the proposals outlined by the two men running […]

The joke goes something like this: “Global warming. I’m all for it. It was colder than a midnight trip to a brick outhouse last winter.”But the facts about global warming and climate change aren’t funny. There’s a political debate about whether global warming is real and if it possesses a significant threat to the planet. […]

The Drama Club at Edward Little High School feels unappreciated, and it’s easy to understand why.Each year, the club puts on a number of productions at the city-owned Great Falls School. The students use the old school’s auditorium and share space with a number of other community groups. Over the summer, EL’s principal, Jim Miller, […]

The Post-Standard, Syracuse, N.Y., Sept. 15 When the White House announced its Medicare prescription drug plan, it said the program would cost a whopping $400 billion. But the truth was the program would cost at least $100 billion more, a fact former Medicare chief Thomas Scully knew but wanted to keep secret, according to the […]