Any teenager can buy a movie ticket for “This Means War,” a comedy featuring gunplay, fisticuffs, car crashes and “romantic stalking.”

For the last three months, the LePage administration has been clear about two things: the size of the shortfall in the Department of Health and Human Services budget and its cause — overly generous eligibility standards for the state’s low-income health care safety net.

It’s not clear that Israel is convinced, but President Barack Obama deserves credit for his forceful argument that the Jewish state shouldn’t precipitously attack Iran’s nuclear program.

Back in the ’90s, Maine looked like an island of moderation in a country divided. We had two Republican senators, two Democrats in the House, a closely split Legislature and an independent governor who was broadly popular across the political spectrum.

The political reform movement Americans Elect has chosen an odd way to go about opening up the presidential nomination process to disaffected voters: Instead of being transparent in all of its activities, the group that plans to put an Internet-selected ticket on the ballot in all 50 states won’t say where it gets its money.

Andrew Weaver, the respected Canada research chair in Climate Modeling and Analysis at the University of Victoria, and a lead author with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, recently confirmed what we’ve been saying for a long time: The demonization of Alberta’s oil sands is vastly disproportionate to its actual impact.

Iran is turning a wheel with four spokes to ratchet up tension in the region.

The profession is routinely denigrated by critics or those with political agendas, so it is easy to forget that journalism is an often thankless, endlessly difficult and, at times, life-threatening occupation. Marie Colvin reminded the world of that.

Unlike their dysfunctional cousins in Washington, the members of the Maine Legislature have managed to steer clear from the kind of partisanship that gives politics a bad name.

A bill designed to reform the Maine State Housing Authority has been criticized here and elsewhere as a blatant attempt to politicize an independent state agency.