Are the Coors Light “twins” endangering the health of our kids?Of all the questions to ask about the buxom blondes that anchor the Coors Light marketing campaign, this would seem to be far down on the list. More pertinent would be: What do they have to do with beer? And: Shouldn’t they be doing ads […]

Death is an everyday fact of life for American soldiers in Iraq. Be it a comrade, enemy guerrillas or civilians caught in the crossfire, the daily casualties are a reminder of the grim realities of war.Here at home, those realities are sanitized into faceless, bloodless statistics. Each dead soldier’s homecoming is shrouded from public view. […]

More bad news on the fight against AIDS was released last week by the United Nations.According to a report by UNAIDS, 5 million people contracted HIV last year, increasing the number of people living with the virus to about 40 million worldwide. Of the newly infected, 700,000 are children. Of the approximately 3 million people […]

“You can’t clean it up!”Doug Rokke, a career soldier who describes himself variously as a peace warrior and the ultimate garbage man, repeats this phrase with escalating amazement, lest anyone fail to get it.When he speaks, he burns like a flare. He knows too much; it’s eating him alive. He has seen the future of […]

Lost in the excitement of energy and Medicare legislation, a voluminous spending bill awaits Congress on its return from Thanksgiving recess.The bill funds seven of 13 federal agencies – including the FBI – for the fiscal year that began in October and comes with a price tag of around $373 billion in discretionary spending. Government […]

Bangor Daily News, Nov. 26A recent alliterative observation about racino was memorable but probably off by one level of government.Of the November vote on the slot machines, Stan Bergstein, vice president of the Harness Tracks of America, identified developer Shawn Scott as “the man who sold the racino version of the Brooklyn Bridge to the […]

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, that state’s highest court, decided this month that the state’s constitution does not forbid same-sex civil marriages. It therefore paved the way for legal recognition of gay and lesbian marriages there. The decision has already heightened the national debate concerning same-sex marriages. And if at least one similar long-ago […]

So this president and this football player meet in a bar …“O.J. Simpson, is that you?”“Yeah, who wants to – George W. Bush? Hey, how you been?”“Real good, Juice. So, what you been up to lately?”“Well, George, I’m still searching for the real killers. If I can bring them to justice, maybe people will … […]

Maybe it is just a slap on the wrist, but the reduction in the amount of loan guarantees Israel will receive from the United States at least sends a message: The United States won’t help pay for policies it disagrees with.The Bush administration announced the reduction – about $290 million – before Thanksgiving. The money […]

At an afternoon union rally in New York City, Howard Dean is trying to be uplifting. He is talking about progress made in the civil-rights revolution, despite awful setbacks. Dean recalls how we “lost” Martin Luther King Jr., “lost” Robert Kennedy and “lost” schoolgirls in the Birmingham, Ala., church bombing in the 1960s, but before […]