Gov. Paul LePage, as all governors before him, is duty-bound to manage state spending and duty-bound to promote Mainers’ common well-being. The pending crisis to resolve the $220 million debt in the Department of Health and Human Services’ budget pits these duties against one another, and a solution is as imperative as it will be […]

We all have encountered bullies, some more than others. In Dixfield this week, educators at Dirigo Middle School confronted the problem of bullying with an assembly to talk about the harm of name-calling and other forms of harassment. As part of that work, blank posters were hung in hallways on Tuesday so that, on Wednesday, […]

As it becomes increasingly difficult to balance the federal budget, it will clearly take a combination of ideas to make ends meet. One obvious solution is to make sure we are collecting the taxes already on the books. Tax evasion on a massive scale has emerged as one of the key components of the Greek […]

Canadians should know by now that it takes our political system about a year to elect a new president. Until that happens, our federal government’s small capacity for rational decision-making evaporates entirely. All that became painfully apparent last week when the Canadian government’s desire to run an oil pipeline across the U.S. was rejected by […]

Washington County Sheriff Donnie Smith has taken a firm and ethical stand in announcing that he will end his affiliation with the Maine Sheriffs’ Association if Penobscot County Sheriff Glenn Ross continues as the organization’s president. The mission of the nonprofit Maine Sheriffs’ Association is to raise “the level of professionalism in the criminal justice […]

Political scandals? A dime a dozen. What we don’t often see is a culinary/medical/media scandal as outrageous as TV chef Paula Deen’s recent admission that she has had Type 2 diabetes for three years. Family history and genes play a large role in this often debilitating disease, but activity level, excess body weight and poor […]