Maine’s struggling economy and anger over taxes make a casino attractive, but a better deal should be negotiated. We’re bleeding manufacturing jobs. We’re limping under the highest tax/income burden in the country. We’re starving with the fourth lowest incomes in the land.But things could be worse, you know. We could lose our traditional hunting and […]

I guess I’m obligated to be offended by this new board game. After all, Al Sharpton says I should.And not just Rev. Al, either. Many other people – including NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and radio host Tom Joyner – have pronounced themselves offended by the game. Not that I blame them.It’s called Ghettopoly, a take-off […]

The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif., Oct.29The egg on FEMA’s face could fry in this firestorm.Oct. 23: The Federal Emergency Management Agency advised President Bush not to declare the San Bernardino Mountains a federal disaster, despite acute fire risk.On Oct. 27, nearly a week after the Grand Prix Fire north of Fontana ignited, FEMA recommended that Bush […]

Everyone in Washington is congratulating themselves on an agreement last week that will probably lead to the creation of a new $400 billion prescription drug benefit. It is part of a long-running project – Operation Please Granny – to turn almost the entire federal treasury over to the elderly, at the risk of bankrupting the […]

Farmington’s actions are shocking. Really.Selectmen decided on Tuesday to take a chance with public safety. That’s unconscionable and is begging for a lawsuit.Last summer, both people and animals were shocked during damp weather by 15-year-old lights on Main and Broadway. Much to their credit, selectmen moved to have the lights repaired.A contractor went to work […]

Question 1 on the Nov. 4 ballot was born of anger and frustration. That’s no way to write tax policy.Voters are asked to choose between three options. Question 1A directs the state to increase its share of funding for education next year from the current level of 43 percent to 55 percent, including paying for […]

NASIRIYAH, Iraq – This provincial capital 200 miles southwest of Baghdad is the quietest region in Iraq. There has yet to be an attack on coalition forces here. It is worth examining why.This city of 360,000 has narrow, traffic-choked streets crammed with one-story storefront bazaars. Nasiriyah looks as though it hasn’t changed much since the […]

I understand the need to prosecute Nathaniel Heatwole.After all, the 20-year-old college student from Damascus, Md., reportedly admits that earlier this year, he snuck box cutters and other banned items aboard aircraft at the Raleigh-Durham and Baltimore-Washington airports. He’s even said to have e-mailed security officials, telling them where the items could be found and […]

A print advertisement, paid for by the people who want to put slot machines at commercial race tracks in Maine, doesn’t lie. But it comes close.It is duplicitous, misleading and plays games with numbers.Brought to us by the Maine Coalition for Racing and Agriculture, the ad claims that: “40% of the new state slot-machine revenue […]

During the past few weeks, there’s been a rash of tiger “nonattacks” in the United States. Las Vegas performer Roy Horn is still hospitalized from what people around him insist was not a tiger attack during one of his shows. New York City “tiger man” Antoine Yates will tell anyone who will listen that the […]