The Norway chief of police blames others for a pattern of alarming behavior. Last week, a woman asked a court for a protection order against Norway Police Chief Tim Richards. She alleged that Richards, her former boss, won’t stop calling her and that he has assaulted her.The woman says she and the chief have had […]

Bangor Daily News, Feb. 25Maine cannot escape the national and global urge toward economic efficiency that sends jobs to where they can be done most cheaply, homogenizes downtowns or erases them altogether, that makes once-thriving rural communities all but obsolete. But it can preserve its memory of what makes Maine the place it is and […]

Shaquille O’Neal was casting about for something nasty to say about George Karl.This was 1998. The then-coach of the Seattle Supersonics had complained that the L.A. Lakers center throws elbows and commits traveling violations.That angered O’Neal, who wanted to label the coach something truly and memorably insulting. So he called Karl a woman.“He’s been crying […]

Town leaders from Buckfield, Greene, Leeds and Turner did a good thing Wednesday during a meeting with Gov. John Baldacci: They stood up for open government.Well done.The governor, if only temporarily, did not.At the beginning of a meeting in Augusta with town and SAD 52 leaders, Baldacci asked a reporter from the Sun Journal to […]

America is in the midst of a new Great Awakening. It’s the mainstream media, prompted by excitement over the Mel Gibson film “The Passion of the Christ,” waking up to the fact that the country still has an enormous block of orthodox Christians. You can sense the bemused astonishment behind some of the press reports: […]

What’s the hubbub over Ralph Nader?Democrats are crying foul, arguing that Nader’s ego-driven campaign will hand the presidential election to George W. Bush – just as it did in 2000.Sure, there’s some truth to the argument that without Nader drawing votes from Al Gore in Florida and New Hampshire, the Democrat would be living in […]

It’s a little known fact that Martin Luther King didn’t really lead the March on Washington.What actually happened is that the marchers, a quarter-million strong, grew impatient waiting for the event to begin and stepped off the curb ahead of schedule. When they found out what had happened, King and other march “leaders” had to […]

Just once it would be nice to get the bill for something and have the price be lower than expected.The Lewiston Public Library will go to the City Council March 2 and ask for an additional $269,000 for the renovation of the Pilsbury Building on Lisbon Street.The city already is committed to raising $1.7 million […]

Meet the new Florida. He is the former Democratic senator from Georgia, Max Cleland. Just as the 2000 Florida voting fiasco symbolizes for Democrats the election-stealing illegitimacy of Bush Republicans, Cleland’s 2002 re-election defeat represents their low-blow tactics on national security. Cleland, who came back from Vietnam a triple amputee, travels often with Sen. John […]

The ladies and gentlemen of the Legislature’s Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee need to reach for their checkbooks.They owe the state a $500 fine for holding what appears to have been an illegal meeting behind closed doors, with the intent being to shut out those pesky members of the public with an interest in what […]