A young woman pointed to the seat next to mine on a recent flight, prompting me to stand in the aisle so she could move in.

It’s Iowa minus one month, and barring yet another resurrection, or something of similar improbability, it’s Mitt Romney vs. Newt Gingrich. In a match race, here’s the scorecard:

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. You turn on the TV and the Christmas ads are nonstop.

When a 3-year-old plops himself down on the floor, starts to howl and scream, and refuses to move until he gets what he wants, we call it a temper tantrum.

It’s hard enough wading through the tax code in preparing your personal tax returns. But parsing the blizzard of proposals for tax increases, tax cuts and tax reforms offered by President Barack Obama, lawmakers and GOP presidential candidates can be overwhelming.

In late May 1865, Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman issued a congratulatory order to his soldiers who had fought in the great military campaigns of 1863-1865.

Some people see the recent slowdown in the Chinese economy as good news for the United States and other western economies. But those who subscribe to the “misery enjoys company” theory forget that good news for some isn’t necessarily good news for all.

The Occupy Wall Street (and now “Occupy everywhere”) movement went from a protest of 1,000 people organized by anti-commercialism magazine Adbusters just over two months ago in the streets of New York, to the spark for occupations all over the country and for a national debate over inequality and corporate control of government and politics.

On Friday morning, Nov. 18, I nearly choked on my breakfast cereal when I opened the Kennebec Journal and saw, spread all across the top of the op-ed page, a diatribe against deer hunters by Paula Moore of PETA, the radical national animal rights organization.