AUGUSTA – Maine’s two-year, $5.21 billion budget – up from $5.1 billion – begins July 1 and will drive everything from state universities and local schools to prisons, Baxter State Park and nursing homes. State leaders didn’t raise taxes to do it, but there will be pain.Several fees were raised. Going up are hunting and […]

The Court of Peeves, Crotchets and Irks opens its summer assizes with separate petitions from Bud Morrison and Elinor H. Norcross, both of Columbus, Ohio. They ask for a ruling on “of a.” The petitioners are not in doubt about such ancestral forms as “son of a gun.” Their question goes to an idiomatic “of […]

The following editorial appeared in the Detroit Free Press on Friday, June 27: The Supreme Court was disappointing in two decisions on the First Amendment this week, but neither will prove fatal to free speech.The court punted Thursday on a much anticipated ruling on whether Nike’s corporate ads and statements about conditions in its overseas […]

Thirty years ago, affirmative action may have been a necessary step to open doors for blacks. Not so now. When my grandfather grew up, white people told him he wasn’t good enough, but black people said he was. When my father grew up, white people told him he couldn’t compete, but black people said he […]

WASHINGTON – Here’s how Maine’s members of Congress were recorded on major roll call votes in the week ending June 27. HOUSE Homeland Security Voting 425 for and two against, the House on June 24 approved the first annual budget for the new, 170,000-employee Department of Homeland Security. The $29.4 billion appropriations bill (HR 2555) […]

Plenty. And we’re searching for one that identifies our region with pride.By Ben StackhouseRegional Editor Dick Brooks of Phillips doesn’t favor pasting a new name on western Maine. “It is a terrible idea,” he wrote in response to a request last month for suggestions. “I hope your readers will agree with me and pan the […]

Gone are the days when readers took for granted that newspapers printed only the truth. We are worried, here in the newspaper business (motto: “What, YOU never make misstakes?”). We’re hearing that you readers have lost your faith in us. Polls show that, in terms of public trust, the news media now rank lower than […]

Business executives and government officials on both sides of the Atlantic have increased dialogue. WASHINGTON – Now that the hard feelings are subsiding between the Bush administration and Old Europe, the conferences, seminars and roundtables have begun. Sponsored, for the most part, by trans-Atlantic organizations or multinational businesses, they are bringing together the usual suspects […]

The following editorial appeared in the Kansas City Star on Friday, June 20: Government and private groups are focusing more attention on the difficult question of when elderly drivers should give up their licenses. For everyone’s safety, the issue needs study.The American Medical Association plans to issue guidelines in July that will help physicians know […]

Q How did “lazy Susan” come to be used for the rotating tray? – M. M., Coral Springs, Fla. A: “Lazy Susan” made its first written appearance in a Vanity Fair advertisement for a “Revolving Server or Lazy Susan” in 1917. The device itself predates the name “lazy Susan,” as many antique shoppers can tell […]