Free Republic

JONESBORO, Maine - When John Cox heard about plans to turn 87 miles of inactive rail bed in Washington and Hancock counties into public trails, he hoped someone would start a petition against it.

Rotting holes in steel support beams, enormous rust patches, small splits in steel girders and broken bracing are evident all along the underside of the John Greenleaf Whittier Bridge, the heavily traveled Interstate 95 span that crosses the Merrimack River between Amesbury and Newburyport. A just-released state safety report filed in the wake of last year's disastrous collapse of the similarly designed Interstate 35 bridge in Minneapolis gave the 57-year-old Whittier Bridge "poor" ratings due to deterioration. On a 10-step ranking system, the rating is just two steps above the point where engineers consider closing a bridge due to safety...

Portland, Maine - An adult adoption involving lesbian partners and a claim to a share of a family fortune built on IBM has been annulled, bouncing the case to Maine's highest court. At issue is whether it was legal for a judge to allow Olive Watson to adopt Patricia Spado in 1991 in Knox County, where the longtime partners spent several weeks each summer on an island in Penobscot Bay. Watson was a daughter of Thomas Watson Jnr, who took International Business Machines Corp from punch cards into electronic computing. The relationship between Spado and Watson ended a year after...

The Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram are eliminating 31 jobs and closing their four news bureaus in response to a continuing decline in advertising revenues, their publisher said Thursday. The cuts come more than three months after The Seattle Times Co. said it was seeking to sell the Portland newspapers, along with the Kennebec Journal in Augusta and the Morning Sentinel in Waterville. The Portland newspapers have had two earlier rounds of job cuts this year aimed at offsetting rising costs and declining revenues. In the latest cuts, 25 employees accepted voluntary severance packages and six were laid...

Lancaster Morgan Funeral Home Darlene L. Brennan (August 6, 1942 - June 7, 2008) DARLENE L. BRENNAN CARIBOU – Darlene L. Brennan, 65, passed away Friday June 6, 2008 at a Caribou hospital. She was born August 6, 1942 in Thomas, West Virginia the daughter of the late James and Lillian (Watring) Nutter. Darlene served in the U.S. Military and then as a civilian worked as a travel agent. She is survived by a daughter Robbin Persing and her husband Henry L. Persing of Madison, Alabama, as well as a grandson Brennan Persing. A memorial service will be conducted...

Mainers call the black fly the state bird. Residents and tourists have long steeled themselves against the flies' annual warm-weather onslaught, sometimes duct-taping pant legs and wearing screened hoods to keep the deceptively small bugs from delivering bloody bites or crawling into seemingly every body crevice. But there are now more black flies in more places in Maine, and the reason may be surprising: It's the success of the environmental movement.

That’s the word not from Chicken Little, but from former Maine Governor Angus King, who says he doesn’t use the term “catastrophe” lightly. “This is a human catastrophe coming at us in the state of Maine in terms of energy supply and costs,” King said last week at a daylong seminar on harnessing tidal energy and offshore wind to confront runaway energy costs, costs he sees as a direct threat to Maine being habitable. “This winter, the cost of fuel oil is going to more than double,” he said. “What’s being quoted now is $4.96 — $5 a gallon. That’s...

Last week my husband and I were fortunate enough to spend some time with former President George H. W. Bush and Mrs. Bush in Kennebunkport, ME. The first evening, a group of us gathered at Walker's Point, the Bush family compound that sits on a rocky outcrop on the Maine coast. As former President Bush showed us around, I was struck by how many times this man had contributed to the nation, in position after position, crisis after crisis. Yet many, even those in his own party, have tended to overlook his extraordinary accomplishments. After drinks at the Bush home,...

Why am I running?I really like this man's attitude, but in a state whose governor blames all shortcomings on lack of federal funds, I'm afraid he doesn't have a chance...What say you?

Important Vote in Maine Tomorrow! A key RLC race is tomorrow, so make sure to tell your friends and family in Maine to vote! Please support Charlie Summers in the Republican primary for Maine's first Congressional district. In the RLC's endorsement of Summers, Governor Christie Whitman said, "I am impressed with Charlie Summers' thinking on a number of issues - I know he will fight to end the tax-and-spend culture of Washington, and look for common sense solutions on issues such as alternative energy, health care and immigration. Charlie has the experience, the character, and the commitment to results to...

AUGUSTA — Thousands of Mainers who were expecting a stimulus check from the federal government have gotten an unpleasant surprise. Instead of a check, they received a notice that the money has been seized by the state to pay overdue taxes or some other obligation, including child support. "As of this afternoon, we have a total of 1,137 stimulus refunds" that were seized, Jerome Gerard, acting executive director of Maine Revenue Services, the state’s tax agency, said Thursday. "That’s a total of $624,000 so far." Another state agency that benefits from the "offset" provisions of federal law is the support...

VIENNA, Maine -- The owner of a machine shop where thieves stole $3,000 worth of scrap steel, iron and aluminum wasn't going to let it happen again. After Saturday night's theft, Joseph Lord loaded his shotgun and laid low, expecting the thieves to return. They came back on Tuesday, in broad daylight. When Lord saw their 2008 F-250 pickup truck, he shot out its tires and windshield and blasted its radiator, Kennebec County Sheriff Randall Liberty said. The startled thieves took off on foot, but investigators quickly tracked down the truck's operator, who will be charged with theft, Liberty said....

SKOWHEGAN — Hold the drawn butter, please. A national animal rights group says it is cruel and unusual to boil and eat Maine lobster and they want to draw attention to the suffering of Maine’s trademark crustacean. So, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have an idea for the century-old Somerset County Jail — turn it into a “lobster empathy center”. The county jail is up for sale, as the sheriff, staff and inmates prepare for a move to a new, modern facility in East Madison this summer. “No building would be more appropriate than a jail to...

LEBANON, Maine—Authorities say two teenage girls apparently sunbathing on a railroad trestle were struck and seriously injured by a freight train in Lebanon, Maine, on the New Hampshire border. more stories like this Police Chief Mark McGowan in Milton, N.H., says the engineer sounded the horn and tried to stop but the train struck the 13- and 14-year-old girls late Wednesday morning. McGowan tells Foster's Daily Democrat the girls were sunning themselves on the tracks and may have fallen asleep. Lebanon Fire Chief Skip Wood says both girls suffered amuptation injuries. The newspaper says one of the girls lost a...

The get-out-the-vote effort in Maine broke new ground Wednesday when more than 200 inmates in the Maine State Prison registered to cast ballots. Prison officials said it was the first prisoner education and registration drive held at the facility. Deputy Warden Leida Dardis said the event, which was organized by Maine chapters of the NAACP, allowed representatives from the state Democratic, Republican and Green Independent parties to meet with prisoners in morning and afternoon informational sessions. Maine and Vermont are the only states that give people convicted of felonies the right to vote while in prison. Some states bar felons...

A lobby for homosexuals and transgenders in Maine has announced plans to shadow individuals who will be working to collect signatures on the "YES for Marriage and Equality" pro-family referendum, which is intended to put a marriage protection plan on the 2009 election ballot. In a report in the New England Blade this week, Betsy Smith, executive director of the Equality Maine activist organization, outlined "a plan that asks volunteers to stand with the people the [Christian Civic] League recruits to collect signatures for the petition." "I think it is disgusting that so-called 'gay' groups plan on harassing dear Christian...

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Maine voters shows that the state’s U.S. Senate race has gotten a little bit tighter this month. In her bid for re-election, Republican Senator Susan Collins now leads Democratic challenger Tom Allen 52% to 42%. Collins’ lead has decreased from sixteen percentage points last month to ten points this month. But, the incumbent still earns support from 89% of Republican voters and 34% of Democrats. The candidates are tied at 44% among unaffiliated voters. When it comes to voter ideology, Collins earns support from 74% of conservatives, 55% of moderates and 27% of...

Having finally worked out the kinks in using more biodiesel in its 600-bus fleet, TriMet is not sure it can afford it because of skyrocketing biodiesel costs.

The Perpetual Motion BS Generator: Democrat Propaganda for the 21st CenturyWARNING: CONTAINS VULGARITY Both Democrats and Republicans have long understood one of basic truths about the US: "In America, you never outgrow your need for bullshit." The difference is that the Republicans seem to want to apply that maxim to make profits and get rich, while the Democrats want to use it to obtain power to take away the profits from the rich -and everyone else - through taxes and regulations. When it comes to making money, the Republicans utilize bullshit brilliantly. Advertising, Marketing, Point-of-Sale, Packaging, Sales Pitches -- all...

The Navy's newest guided missile destroyer was christened Saturday with the name of a fighter pilot who spent 7 1/2 years in captivity in North Vietnam, received the Medal of Honor and served as presidential candidate Ross Perot's running mate. Four Medal of Honor recipients and seven former prisoners of war attended the ceremony at Bath Iron Works that marked a milestone in construction of the 9,200-ton ship named for Vice Adm. James Stockdale. Stockdale's widow, Sybil, who suffers from Parkinson's disease and uses a wheelchair, let loose a champagne bottle propelled by rope that swung across the Stockdale's bow....

<p>BANGOR, Maine â€” Stephen King has fired back at conservative critics who attacked him over a remark he made a month ago at a writers symposium for high school students.</p> <p>A blogger jumped on King’s statement at the Library of Congress about the importance of reading in which he suggested poor readers have limited prospects, including service in the Army.</p>

AUGUSTA, Maine - It is only partially true that in presidential elections "as Maine goes, so goes the nation." The term emerged in the 19th century because at the time Maine held its elections for statewide and congressional offices in September, not November. The proximity of the September-November voting made Maine a bellwether for forecasting how the rest of the country would vote. In modern elections, held with the rest of the country in November, Maine chose Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy in 1960; Hubert Humphrey over Nixon in 1968 (it went for Nixon in 1972), Gerald Ford over...

AUGUSTA, Maine --GOP organizers welcomed Maine caucuses winner Mitt Romney on Friday while warily watching insurgent supporters of Ron Paul as the Republican State Convention got under way. Invited to make the keynote address, Romney praised putative presidential nominee John McCain repeatedly as "tested and proven." "He is a known individual and a strong leader," Romney told reporters. The former Massachusetts governor shrugged off questions about assuming second place on a Republican ticket. "I don't think that's very likely," Romney said, adding he came to Maine to support McCain's candidacy and was not worrying about the vice presidency. "I just...

Each Sunday, worshippers file into the York-Ogunquit United Methodist Church beneath a cross and, since February, a symbol of another sort. The church's roof is now partly covered by an array of solar panels that make electricity to run the lights and heat inside the sanctuary. It's perhaps the most visible evidence yet of a growing environmental ethic spreading through Maine's religious communities. "Certainly we want to lower our power bill," said William Wieting, chairman of church's board of trustees. "But the enthusiasm didn't derive from the monetary value to the church as much as it was the right thing...

The state’s top drug prosecutor was fired on Friday, hours after reports were published that he was under investigation for possessing child pornography. Assistant Attorney General James Cameron of Hallowell, who worked as the drug prosecution coordinator for the Attorney General’s Office, had been on paid administrative leave for several months, according to one law enforcement source.

AUGUSTA, Maine -- Gov. John Baldacci signed into law a bill to tighten standards for getting a Maine driver's license, acknowledging that the measures were a tough issue for lawmakers. Under pressure for the federal government, Baldacci wasted little time before signing the bill Thursday night after the Senate approved it by a 19-15 vote despite criticism from civil libertarians. With the bill's enactment, Maine joins 44 other states, including the rest of New England, in making proof of legal U.S. residency a requirement for getting a driver's license, the governor said. Previously, the state did not require any proof...

VIDEO: Maine College Republicans have posted a video showing the desecration of our American flag at the University of Maine, Farmington, by an 'art' student. Vet restrained from picking flags up off the ground.

New Bill in Maine Makes “Visual Sexual Aggression” a Crime It might be 2008 in the rest of the USA, but in Maine, it’s 1984. A new bill in the Pine Tree State would make it a crime to peer at children in public. It’s been asserted that some legislators can justify making any action a crime–as long as they add the magic words “for the children” to the mix. This Maine bill adds proof to that assertion. State Rep. Dawn Hill, D-York, is the head cheerleader for a bill only a fan of police state actions could love.

Dealing with border-jumping duffers Enhanced security putting the future of unique Aroostook Valley Country Club at risk By Mark Rickard and Madeleine LeClerc Published Friday April 11th, 2008 Appeared on page A2 Will the only golf course that sits on both sides of the Canada-United States border fall victim to enhanced border security? The future of the Aroostook Valley Country Club – which has served both Americans and Canadians for 81 years – is in doubt if United States Customs border patrol officers enforce entry regulations at the club. For more than eight decades, Aroostook Valley has been a unique...

SKOWHEGAN, Maine --Some Maine syrup producers say the season is off to a late start with delays caused by cold weather and taps and tubing hidden by snow in northern Maine. Bob Moore of Bob's Sugar House is busy boiling sap this week, but he'd be a lot busier if he could tap all of his trees. He said at least 75 percent of his 5,000 trees are unreachable. "I have trees that still have 3 feet of snow around them," he said. "It's not looking good right now." Maine's maple syrup production can start anytime between mid-February and late...

AUGUSTA, Maine - While in a small southern Maine grocery store with his mother last June 12 to buy sandwiches, Shane St. Pierre picked up a miniature baseball bat and flicked the switch to see what would happen. A flame shot out, singeing the 6-year-old’s eyebrow and burning part of his face. His parents called the state fire marshal’s office and were surprised to learn that Maine had no law banning so-called novelty lighters. That’s no longer the case. Today, Shane stood next to Gov. John Baldacci as he signed legislation that makes Maine the first state to outlaw the...

WASHINGTON - Homeland security officials on Friday hinted at a possible face-saving deal to end their standoff with a handful of states over new driver's license rules — a dispute that, left unresolved, could cause big air travel headaches. For weeks, the Homeland Security Department has been headed toward a showdown with some states over a law called Real ID, which would require new security measures for state-issued driver's licenses. Yet a late Good Friday letter from a top DHS official suggested Washington may be backing away from a messy fight. South Carolina, Maine and Montana are the only states...

The Blethen family makes the 'painful decision' after a decade of ownership. The Seattle Times Co., parent company of the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, is putting its Maine media properties up for sale. Charles C. Cochrane, president and chief executive officer of Blethen Maine Newspapers, said the decision is based on The Seattle Times' need to focus on operating its newspapers in Washington state. "The decision to explore a sale was painful," Cochrane said, "but a sale might be the best opportunity for the long-term survival of our newspapers in Washington and those in Maine." The Seattle Times Co.,...

Trinity graduate has family history of schizophrenia "Voices" in the head of an award-winning Irish computer science graduate told him to rob a bank, it was claimed yesterday. Niall Clarke (27) was suffering from schizophrenia when he carried out a botched bank raid in Maine, a mental illness also suffered by his grandmother, said his solicitor yesterday. The brilliant Trinity graduate from Kilrush in Co Clare was sentenced to almost 10 years in prison earlier this week after the 2006 robbery of the Bangor Bank of America. "He was hearing voices that the bank had to be robbed. He said...

Even if you live in the most heavily taxed state, Maine (which collects an average of 13.5% of residents' income), you might not be ready to high-tail it to Alaska, the state with the lowest taxes (6.6%, and the only state that lacks both sales and income taxes), unless you have an affinity for mosquitoes and seemingly endless tundra. But in certain cases -- say, if you're about to retire and need to make every dollar count -- moving to a less expensive state might make some sense. More on that later. For the rest of us, it's at least...

How Does Tom Allen Keep His Promise to US Vets If....? Would Tom Allen Recognize a U.S. Vet if He Saw One? Tom Allen’s campaign for U.S. Senator website is promoting a feature called, “Keeping Our Promise To American’s Veterans,” with a series of photos. But how does Tom Allen keep his promise to American Veterans if he doesn’t know what one looks like? The picture below from Allen's website is a stock photo of a Royal Navy sailor. A U.S. Navy sailor would not be wearing a beard. The weapon in the picture is a British weapon. This isn’t...

Call him Mr. Goosebumps. No, it's not his real name. The Cumberland County Sheriff's Office announced this week that his true identity is safe with them because, when it's all said and done, he's committed no crime. Still, when you dress up in women's underwear and repeatedly jump out of your car while stunned female drivers pass by, you're more than just what police have ever-so-carefully referred to as a "person of interest." You're a risk taker. You're a walking civics lesson on what does -- and doesn't -- constitute criminal behavior. You're Mr. Goosebumps. "When the private spills over...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday tossed out Maine's law taxing the Internet sales of tobacco products, a statute intended to keep cigarettes out of minors' hands by regulating transportation companies. In a unanimous ruling, the justices concluded the federal government's overall interstate commerce authority trumped the state's public health policing powers. A federal appeals court earlier had found the law unconstitutional. "Despite the importance of the public health objective, we cannot agree with Maine," said Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the majority. Federal law says "nothing about a public health exception," he noted. Maine's Legislature passed the law four...

Red Alert On Tolerance by: Malcolm A. Kline, February 12, 2008 Look out children: academics are now entranced by something called “Teaching Beyond Tolerance.” Since their emphasis on tolerance netted us about a couple of hundred restrictive speech codes at about as many colleges and universities, who knows what the new fad will yield on American campuses. Shana Agid and Erica Rand give a preview of coming attractions, sort of, in the latest issue of Radical Teacher. “We wanted to imagine another set of possibilities for educators and students alike, grounded in a different set of assumptions: that so-called ‘hate’...

By Karen Dandurant kdandurant@seacoastonline.com February 08, 2008 6:00 AM PORTSMOUTH — Rochester physician Terry Bennett said he rented a city building to people who worked for Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign — and skipped town without paying the bill. Making matters worse, Bennett said, the 3,000-square-foot building at 236 Union St. was left trashed. Campaign signs were left lying all over the place, he said. Interactive Map Loading... Landlord: Clinton staff stiffed me on rent 5 km 3 miData ©Navteq,TeleAtlas©2006 Yahoo! Inc.Related Stories Clinton doesn’t pay, others say CLINTON PHOTOS Photo galleries of Hillary Clinton's visits to the Seacoast, N.H....

Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the Conservative Talk Radio Party (CTRP) took a meaningless beauty contest of fewer than 10,000 people in Maine and spun it up nicely on Monday to assure listeners across the country that Maine was proof positive the other McCain surge wasn't working. To be fair, Romney trounced McCain in the weekend caucuses. From various reports, it was pretty clear that the Romney people had a plan and executed that plan flawlessly. The McCain people, on the other hand, had little or no organization -- and it showed. more..

Jeanette Symons was a Bay Area telecommunications wunderkind and a devoted mother to her son and daughter - she'd moved them out of San Francisco a year and a half ago so she could raise them in the country, where they could ski and bike and enjoy carefree childhoods, friends said. Symons and her son were flying back to their home in Steamboat Springs, Colo., on Friday, after a week at a ski camp in Maine, when the jet she was piloting crashed a few minutes after takeoff. Both Symons, 45, and her 10-year-old son, Balan, died in the...

Throughout the state of Maine, people have gathered at their local caucus site over the last two days and cast their vote for conservative change in Washington. With only a few caucus sites left to report tomorrow, Governor Romney issued the following statement concerning his victory in Maine: "Today, the people of Maine joined those from across the nation in casting their vote for conservative change in Washington. All across the state, men and women gathered to help chart the future course of our country. Tonight, they have made their voice known and have endorsed our conservative vision for a...

According to the Associated Press, Mitt Romney won 53% of the vote, followed not at all closely by John McCain, who won 21% and Ron Paul, who won 19%. Mr. Romney's campaign spent money to turn out voters, whereas Mr. McCain's did not. But every statewide elected official was with McCain,

Notice that under the candidate tab of the posted URL that McCain's delegate count is 97 which includes the regular delegates plus unpleged RNC delegates. Notice at the same time that the delegate count for Romney is 74 which is 67 delegates plus 7 unpleged RNC delegates. Romney seems to be way ahead in Maine where there are 18 delegates and 3 unpleged RNC delegates. We can only conclude that in a few hours Romney will have 95 delegates to McCain's 97. If McCain won Maine in 2004 but lost it by a landslide today, this is not by any...

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — Mitt Romney maintained his lead in presidential preference voting by Maine Republicans as returns were counted Saturday from the party's municipal caucuses, which were heavily attended across the state. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, had 53 percent of the vote with 47 percent of the towns holding caucuses reporting. John McCain trailed with 21 percent, Ron Paul was third with 19 percent, and Mike Huckabee had 5 percent. Undecided votes accounted for 2 percent. The nonbinding votes, the first step toward electing 18 Maine delegates to the Republican National Convention, were taking place in public schools,...

Feb 2, 2008): Early results in the Republican caucuses showed former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney leading Sen. John McCain and dark-horse candidate Rep. Ron Paul by a wide margin. With just over 12 percent of Maine precincts reporting, Romney had 53.2 percent of the vote, with Paul in a distant second at 20.6 percent and McCain at 18.3 percent. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee was fourth at 5.2 percent. The only candidate to visit the state leading up to this weekend's primaries, Paul, a 10-term Texas congressman, proved to be far more popular in Maine than in other parts of...

AUGUSTA, Maine - Mitt Romney took an early lead in presidential preference voting by Maine Republicans as the first returns were counted Saturday from the party's municipal caucuses, which GOP officials said were heavily attended across the state. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, had 59 percent of the vote with 3 percent of the towns holding caucuses reporting. Ron Paul trailed with 19 percent, John McCain had 18 percent, and Mike Huckabee and undecided votes each had about 2 percent. The nonbinding votes, the first step toward electing 18 Maine delegates to the Republican National Convention, were taking place in...

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, had 59% of the vote with 3% of the towns holding caucuses reporting. Ron Paul trailed with 19%, John McCain had 18%, and Mike Huckabee and undecided votes each had about 2%.

Romney Leads in Maine GOP Caucuses By Glenn Adams Associated Press Writer Fwbruary 2, 2008 CBNNews.com - AUGUSTA, Maine - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is off to an early lead in the Maine GOP caucuses. Maine has a different way of doing things. It's Republican caucuses began on Thursday, with a couple dozen jumipng in on Friday, but most of them began on Saturday. The remainder join in on Sunday. The stakes are fairly big in Maine, as the nonbinding caucuses are the first stage toward electing the 18 delegates to the Republican National Convention. Turning the tables, McCain...