People will soon be able to walk up the stairs and face a veteran, eye to eye, when a new monument is erected by the L&A Veterans Council in Lewiston’s Veterans Memorial Park.Bertrand Dutil, who is one of the organizers on this $40,000 project, said the memorial will honor what he calls “the whole melting […]

So for now, at least, it looks as if LeBron James is out of trouble.Of course, trouble is a relative term. There’s scant reason to weep for an 18 year-old who is expected, after his high school graduation, to sign a multimillion dollar contract to play basketball and a similarly lucrative deal to endorse athletic […]

Foreign policywise, President Bush is batting in a sticky wicket.Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered the American indictment of Iraq at the United Nations, connecting Iraq to Al Qaeda, masterminds of the aerial ambuscade on Sept. 11, 2001. The intelligence data were somewhat surprising, and bundled with the expected train of charges about Iraq’s “weapon […]

“In the simplest terms, we have a serious revenue shortfall because there isn’t enough money coming into the state to pay for all the programs and services that we offer.”That is Gov. Baldacci’s take on the looming $1.1 billion shortfall.He’s right, but it’s also fair to say taxpayer dollars aren’t used efficiently.What Baldacci has done […]

Can France be serious?Even though the French foreign minister’s response to Colin Powell was scripted in advance of Powell’s presentation at the United Nations last week, the divergence in worldviews and resolve couldn’t have been more striking. It’s hard not to think we’re at a seminal moment in which the world is dividing into those […]

Albert Einstein’s years of daydreaming wrought a simple formula that rocked the world. E=mc2, his special theory of relativity, defined energy in mathematical terms.The United States government also has defined energy by the numbers: 23.4 billion of them. That’s the proposed budget, in dollars, of the U.S. Department of Energy for fiscal year 2004.Secretary Spencer […]

Would a war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq be a just war?Not in the eyes of the many religious leaders who are invoking this ancient theory to preach against a war that they believe violates the definitions of justice and morality. Not in the words of peace protesters who borrow the language of St. Augustine and […]

I want to say something wise and enlightening here, but I keep coming back to the same question:What in the world were they thinking?I am talking about 20-year-old Jason Bautista and his 15-year-old half-brother, Matthew Montejo. Law enforcement officials reported recently that these two young men, both from Riverside, near Los Angeles, recently got it […]

Jack Lousma, the commander of the third Columbia shuttle flight in March, 1982, was shoveling snow outside his home in Ann Arbor, Mich., when his son called from Texas to say, “Turn on the TV, something has happened to Columbia.” Lousma, who was also a crew member on one of the Skylab missions in the […]

The Maine Turnpike Authority intends to focus on the miles north of Portland for the next 10 years.The turnpike will be easier to navigate and it will be easier to pay tolls. Not cheaper, but easier.Good.The Turnpike Authority has long — and correctly — been criticized for focusing on its holdings in southern Maine. Since […]