The presidential debates usually are tightly scripted and well-rehearsed joint press conferences. But because they’re one of the few places where our next president can speak to the country at length and unfiltered by the media, the debates matter now more than ever.

In the old days, saloon owners would put out a lunchtime plate on the bar so that customers wouldn’t go elsewhere to eat.

The targeting of Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old girl shot two weeks ago by a Pakistani Taliban assassin, brought back memories of my teen-age years in Tehran, where theocratic zealots were similarly in control. The words of the Taliban’s chief spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, had a chillingly familiar echo in my ears. A bullet had Malala’s name on it, he explained to the news media, because “she has become a symbol of Western culture in the area; she was openly propagating it.” He also called her “the symbol of the infidels and obscenity.”

In his book, “Mere Christianity,” C.S. Lewis recognized this key fact: “[A] man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales-resistance.”

He was neither as good as you remember nor as bad as his opponents want you to think, but Angus King can cut through the ugly partisanship in Washington, D.C., and that’s why I’m voting for him on Nov. 6.

On Oct. 13, the headline in the Kennebec Journal read: “Petition targets group homes; Signers: Augusta residents unfairly forced to live among mentally ill killers.”

Perhaps you saw our sign that read, “Yes, we have made a mess of traditional marriage but the answer is to refine it, not redefine it.”

Last Saturday morning, in a break between sessions of the Colby College Board of Trustees, I met with two students who have been circulating a petition requesting the resignation of Robert E. Diamond, board chairman.

Fifty years ago, the biggest event in human history almost happened. During a fateful 13-day period in October 1962, the Soviet Union and the United States balanced at the brink of nuclear war as the Soviets attempted to establish nuclear bases in Cuba.

Democrat Mike Michaud and Republican Kevin Raye both spring from the sacred soil of the state of Maine, although both are a bit tainted by associations with Washington, D.C.