There’s someone you probably are forgetting this Christmas: the person who owns the land where you picked fiddleheads or mushrooms, hiked, birdwatched, snowshoed or rode your snowmobile or ATV, hunted or accessed the water in 2011.

This week, the Maine Legislature will consider a devastating package of cuts proposed by Gov. Paul LePage that would cut off health care to hundreds of thousands of Mainers in order to close what he says is a $221 million deficit in the current budget

As winter tightens its grip, and our sidewalks and streets turn icy, it is worth remembering how falls pose a threat to seniors.

For someone so famous for inspiring the imaginations of her readers, J.K. Rowling now seems determined to cut them off at the pass.

Not long ago I had a column in which I made light of the “issues” issue, arguing, in effect, that, in American politics, issues are determined by the candidates’ pollsters, not their issues advisers.

The campaign of Mitt Romney, the Rip van Winkle of presidential politics, finally awakened last week with a savage counterattack against Newt Gingrich, the man who against all odds is threatening to wrest the Republican nomination from the former Massachusetts governor.

In the first month of his presidency, Barack Obama averred that if in three years he hadn’t alleviated the nation’s economic pain, he’d be a “one-term proposition.”

The story of Gulnaz, a young Afghan woman who was raped and then jailed for having sex out of wedlock, has once again drawn international attention to Afghanistan’s legal system and its institutionalized discrimination against women.

The United States has always placed freedom of religion among its highest values and most-protected rights, so it seems odd that its largest Christian church felt the need to establish a committee specifically to protect the religious freedoms of believers of all denominations.

The post World War II generation, of which I am a member, has used up much of the world’s oil, turned our air into carbon dioxide — and taken all the jobs. So there are pitifully few left for the next generation.