THIS MONTH, THE state’s hospitals received checks in the mail to finally pay back $500 million in unpaid Medicaid bills.

SOMETIMES IT TAKES disruption in our everyday lives to bring attention to what is really happening around us.

THERE’S LIKELY TO be a surprise winner in one of the crowded primaries in Maine’s 2nd District congressional race. It was like musical chairs for a while, with many wishful candidates moving around the vacancy left by Mike Michaud, hoping to be the last one seated when the music stopped for good.

FOR YEARS, WE’VE been told Maine needs “tax reform.” We’re told that Maine’s tax code doesn’t produce a steady stream of revenue and it is too volatile.

You may be worried about a government shutdown, but I’m not. I’m not worried about a shutdown because we’re all about to die anyway. Superbugs are going to kill us.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA has explained why American national interests compelled him to threaten military action against the Syrian dictatorship. Am I the only person who noticed? So far I haven’t found a single citizen who could give me the president’s rationale, and I spoke to quite a few while serving at the Franklin County Republican Committee’s table at the Farmington Fair.

IN THE ARTICLE that you published on Sept 10 headlined “Winslow Lab’s Illegal Shipments May Have Helped Syria,” you state that “a Maine company may have helped Syrian dictator Bashar Assad build his biological-weapons.”

IN THE LIBERAL remake of “Casablanca,” the police captain comes upon the scene of the shooting and orders his men to “round up the usual weapons.”

THE TOPIC OF climate change is heating up again, even though the Earth isn’t. The fifth report from the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change is due next week.

DID YOU CELEBRATE Constitution Day on Tuesday? Would you have celebrated it if you had remembered that Sept. 17 is officially Constitution Day?