The latest mission of an American spacecraft to the International Space Station was one of those marvels of balletic NASA precision. Except it wasn’t a NASA spacecraft that splashed back to Earth on Thursday. It was the Dragon, built by a private company called SpaceX.

Only time will tell whether Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s solid victory in Tuesday’s recall election will resonate nationally as other voters go to the polls in November.

After a regime change, it’s always tempting to blame all the new administration’s troubles on the last one.

Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican, and 1st District U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat, don’t find themselves on the same side of many issues, so we should pay attention when they line up together.

President Barack Obama recently visited a factory in Newton, Iowa, that builds wind-turbine blades, contrasting the industry of the past — Maytag left the town in 2007 — with a vision of a future with middle-class green manufacturing jobs. Who could be against that?

America has tried everything to improve its educational system, and has failed. Everything.

When a report showed that thousands of registered voters in Florida were, in fact, dead, it played directly into the suspicions that some have about the prevalence of voter fraud.

The classic, justly admired Simon and Garfunkel album, “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” has sold 25 million copies around the world since its release in 1970. But when a newly re-mastered edition came out last year, Roy Halee, one of the disc’s producers, made a startling admission — because the master tapes for the disc were in such terrible condition, the engineers doing the sonic spit-and-polish might have been better off finding a pristine vinyl copy for their work.

People like to bury political parties. It was only four years ago, after losing the Congress and the White House, people said the Republicans had lost touch with the country, were on the wrong side of demographic trends and were destined to go the way of the Whigs.