A California Democrat’s ties to a radical group don’t seem to generate any attention. The mainstream press has been doing a miserable job covering Cruz Bustamante’s ties to the creepy Chicano secessionist group MEChA. This may not be the biggest story of the California recall election, but voters surely have a right to expect some […]

CONTOOCOOK, N.H. – I engaged in fund-raising not long after I passed this intriguingly named town as I headed south on Interstate 89 recently, doing my best to avoid presidential candidates.I was in the parking lot of a combination rest stop and New Hampshire state liquor store south of Concord when I spotted a penny […]

Iraq is now “the central front” in the war on terrorism. So the president told us on Sept. 7.But he didn’t tell us why.Bush again implied a link between Sept. 11 and the Iraq war. The administration never put forth any evidence of such a link before the war, although the president’s rhetoric convinced a […]

Flower girls have a very important job at a wedding. I’m not saying it’s easy to be the father of the bride. I’m just saying it can’t be any more stressful than being the father of the flower girl.I found this out when my daughter, Sophie, age 3, was asked to be a co-flower-girl with […]

Section 215 of the Patriot Act could conceivably be used as a basis to seize a reporter’s notes. Ask a journalist about the Patriot Act, and the response may strike you as overly suspicious or even paranoid. But those who have submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to a federal agency know better.Consider FOIA […]

The report on the Columbia disaster has been released, but it didn’t disclose everything. The panel that investigated the Columbia shuttle disaster, in which seven astronauts were killed Feb. 1, has released its accident report. Retired Adm. Harold Gehman, chairman of the investigation board, handed it over Aug. 26.What Gehman issued, however, is the abridged […]

Bombing that killed a key Iraqi Shiite cleric was meant to perpetuate chaos, stoke civil war. The murder of a leading Iraqi cleric by a horrific car bomb Aug. 29 was more than a tragic blow to Iraqis.It was a deadly challenge to the whole Iraq policy of the United States.There was a ghoulish strategy […]

Scientists report that the whole universe is slowly fading into darkness. At first I thought it was just my aging eyes. Things haven’t appeared as bright in the world. Maybe you’ve noticed it, too. It’s as if a cosmic rheostat has been nudged down ever so slightly, making things seem dimmer.(When I say “things seem […]

Few spoons stir the local political pot as vigorously as selection of a high school principal, but when for the first time in 25 years a vacancy occurred in the leadership of Deering High, one of Maine’s largest and most prestigious, the pot boiled over for Portland’s School Committee. At issue was the committee’s decision […]