Back in the days of Saturday morning westerns, I loved the situation where the bad guys almost got away only to be headed off at the pass – a situation filled with high excitement and a particular inevitability.Today, in an age of infomercials and televised extravaganzas, when much of what is broadcast demands our attention […]

Why should you care about the Blaine House Conference on Maine’s Creative Economy?What does it matter to you?On the surface, it’s an easy question to answer. About 600 leaders from the business, education, arts and development community will descend on the Bates Mill Complex for a two-day event, which starts this morning.They’ll get a firsthand, […]

DUBLIN – The Irish have never needed a reason to party, but the expanded European Union on May 1 (including eight formerly communist countries) has given them a respectable one. And their pride is enhanced because their prime minister, Bertie Ahern, is the president of the European Council of the EU. Ahern presided at ceremonies […]

We used to know them by name.Maybe you remember. American soldiers were fighting in Afghanistan and every time one died, we learned his name. Not only that. Reporters told us about his life, introduced us to his newly bereft widow and suddenly fatherless children. Made us feel the weight of that singular death.You had to […]

Back in February 1992, John Kerry stood up on the Senate floor, “driven by personal reasons of necessity.” He professed to be saddened by then-Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey’s criticism during the Democratic primaries of Bill Clinton’s lack of service in Vietnam. “We do not need to divide America over who served and how,” Kerry said. […]

Bob Woodward got three and a half hours alone with President Bush while writing his new book. The president spent far less time with the Sept. 11 commission, and only in the company of vice presidential chaperone Dick Cheney.Anyone else think there’s something wrong with this picture?“To govern is to choose,” John. F. Kennedy said […]

An open letter to my colleagues in the news business.The silence is getting loud.It’s been nearly four months since the scandal broke. Four months since Jack Kelley, star foreign correspondent for USA Today, was found to have lied his way through his professional life for the last 13 years. He lied about where he had […]

PARRIS ISLAND, S.C. – A morning here is punctuated by shouts and yells. Standing at an area reserved for martial-arts training sometime around 7 a.m. – practically afternoon by Parris Island standards – I can hear platoons in the distance well before I can see them. There are the distinct, barking voices of drill instructors, […]

John Kerry made a familiar statement about abortion recently. Bill Clinton said it before him. Many Democrats who wish to remain in the good graces as well as the political clutches of the abortion-rights lobby say it. Kerry said he wants to keep abortion “safe, legal and rare.”I understand “safe” (though it’s never safe for […]

“When E.F. Hutton talks,” the famous TV ads for the financial firm once declared, “people listen.” No one is going to make TV ads on his behalf, but the same deserves to be said of Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington, the most important political scientist in America. His last book, “The Clash of Civilizations,” forecast the […]