Afghan President Hamid Karzai is fundamentally telling U.S. and NATO forces to swap the rubric of counterinsurgency — control, hold, build — for a new strategy: stop, sit, leave.

Lawmakers trying to push a long-range tax reduction scheme through the Legislature should have to answer a question: What’s the rush?

The natural reaction to Vladimir Putin’s recent election as president of Russia would be, “He’s back” — but for the fact that he never actually gave up the presidency, even though he deeded the position four years ago to Dmitry Medvedev.

That’s how centuries of warriors and politicians have described what’s currently known as Afghanistan.

A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York states that student loan delinquency rates are much higher than previous estimates. Although conventional measurements indicate around 15 percent of student loan accounts are past due, the new report suggests that as many as one in four student loan borrowers might be delinquent in repayments. In addition, total student loan balances are now at $870 billion — higher than the nation’s credit card debt and higher than total car loan debt.

Maine has never been a particularly partisan state.

Plum Creek’s plan for 975 house lots and two resorts near Moosehead Lake would be the biggest development the North Woods has ever seen.

With last month’s observance of leap day, we are inspired to consider the future of a much smaller time correction: the leap second.

We knew that House Speaker Bob Nutting was a skilled politician, but we didn’t know he was a mind reader.

The producers of an Internet video about the African warlord Joseph Kony already have proven one of their main points. Social media, the film’s narrator proclaims at the outset, are “changing the way the world works. The game has new rules.”