I leave the state for a few minutes, and do people behave? They do not.

Let’s start with Matthew Dunlap, Maine’s secretary of state. For weeks, he’d been predicting a record turnout in the Nov. 4 election, based on the large number of absentee ballots being cast. But as soon as I slipped away for a little break from my onerous responsibility of keeping everything in order, Dunlap told the Associated Press he might have miscalculated. All those early voters weren’t

In on the arrest: Westbrook police know how to time a bust. The local cops staged (and I do mean staged) the apprehension of Abbas Al-Hamdany of Gorham on Nov. 21 for maximum public exposure. Al-Hamdany was taken into custody at his Main Street convenience store in Westbrook in the

Financial pitfall: Thomas Cushing Munjoy is back to blogging about the follies of the Portland Press Herald’s management at a new online address.

The pseudonymous critic is raising some interesting points about

There’ll soon be one less Village Soup newspaper. The Rockland-based chain announced today that it was merging its weekly paper in Camden, the Camden Herald, with its thrice-weekly paper in Rockland, the Courier-Gazette. The new paper will be called the Herald Gazette and will be published three

The Blethen Maine Newspapers have been sold to Maine Media Investments. According to a report on the Bollard Web site, a purchase and sale agreement was signed today, and a story on the sale will appear in tomorrow’s newspapers.

Maine

Gone – almost: WCSH-TV, Channel 6 in Portland, is no longer producing a 10 p.m. newscast on WPXT-TV, Channel 51. According to the North East Radio Watch Web site, the contract between WCSH, the top-rated NBC affiliate,

The pharmaceutical industry may be trying to change its image. After years of putting out miracle drugs with names that sounded like they were stolen from comic-book villains (“End the curse of restless cuticle syndrome with new Volterannz. See your doctor if your fingers stiffen for more than four hours, as this may be a sign of a rare-but-serious side effect for which you will need prescription-strength Glactophantec, which should not be used if you are sleepy, intend to become sleepy

The ugly aftermath: The Times Record in Brunswick has finally made mention in its pages of the manslaughter conviction of Topsham selectman-elect Paul S. Bennett Jr.

But the newspaper

No sale – yet: A month ago, it appeared the sale of the Blethen Maine Newspapers to Maine Media Investments – a group consisting of former U.S. Sen. William Cohen, developers

A steer walks into a barroom in Livermore Falls and asks the bartender for a glass of absinthe.

“Jeez, pal,” says the bartender, “I don’t think that stuff is legal in Maine.”

“You’re behind the times, my good man,” says the steer, brandishing a recent issue of the Bangor Daily News, featuring an article on the absinthe revival, after more than a century of the liquor being