Just 10 days ago, a Seattle Court handed down a decision with significant ramifications for the company that owns daily newspapers in Portland, Augusta and Waterville in a ruling that has been fueling speculation about the future of the parent company’s largest newspaper, the Seattle Times. By extension, such speculation is also attending the future […]

The masters of punctuation have given writers two squiggles to worry about. There is the lower squiggle, known as the comma, and the upper squiggle, the apostrophe. Both of them came to England in the 1500s. They have been perplexing writers ever since.Let us worry about the comma tomorrow. Today’s topic is the singular upper […]

Saddam’s reign of terror in Iraq was overlooked by mainstream media. John Burns, the great New York Times reporter, offers us a brutally blunt assessment of how badly Western correspondents covered Saddam Hussein’s regime. His report, excerpted by The Wall Street Journal and Editor & Publisher, is spreading rapidly on the Internet and is bound […]

I recently had a terrifying experience. It was exactly like a scene from a horror movie, when the actors find themselves in a house that is obviously possessed by Evil, with doors slamming by themselves and blood dripping from the ceiling, but the actors are such morons that they stay in the house anyway.“With these […]

Here’s how area members of Congress were recorded on major roll call votes in the week ending Sept. 26. HOUSE Billion dollar house Voting 371 for and 56 against, members on Sept. 24 adopted a conference report (HR 2657) containing the first annual budget for the House of Representatives ever to exceed $1 billion. The […]

Editor’s note: The following letters to the editor were written by students in the 8th-grade accelerated reading program at Carrie Ricker Middle School in Litchfield. Students were asked to respond to stories they read in the Sun JournalDA’s mistake I am responding to the article “State DA’s oppose casino question” (Sept. 9). The story was […]

Q My dictionary defines “pork barrel” as a federal project or appropriation for the benefit of local constituents. I would like to know where the expression originated and how it came to be associated with something less than noble. – H.C., Whiting, N.J. A: The use of “pork barrel” to describe federal appropriations of public […]

WASHINGTON – Armies are fragile institutions, and for all their might, easily broken.It took the better part of 20 years to rebuild the Army from the wreckage of Vietnam. With the hard work of a generation of young officers, blooded in Vietnam and determined that the mistake would never be repeated, a new Army rose […]

Three recent and important news stories all have roots in the destructive nature of absolute religious certainty. They showed us again that people who think they know all the cosmic answers cause us monumental grief.First was the emotional dispute about the Ten Commandments monument in an Alabama courthouse. Soon after that, Florida executed an unrepentant […]

As with many Mainers, fall is my favorite time of year. The arrival of Labor Day marks the return of my children to school, a more structured work schedule and football games on all levels. The nights become cooler, the foliage arrives and, yes, the Red Sox usually begin their yearly swoon in the standings.Fall […]