Free Republic

State legislators around the country have introduced more than 200 bills aiming to nullify regulations and laws coming out of Washington, D.C., as they look to rein in the federal government. The legislative onslaught, which includes bills targeting federal restrictions on firearms, experimental treatments and hemp, reflects growing discord between the states and Washington, state officials say. “You have a choice,” said Kentucky state Rep. Diane St. Onge (R). “To sit back and not do anything or say anything and let overregulation continue — or you have the alternative choice to speak up about it and say, ‘We know what...

Workers at a Maine Goodwill store got quite a shock when they opened a donated book: They found a gun inside. . . The book was actually a small safe and inside was a .31-caliber black powder pistol. Detective Dorothy Small says the department is turning to social media to try and find the gun's owner.

Issues Action Items.... End Obamacare... Ending Obamacare and allowing Americans to shop across state lines to buy health insurance will lower unaffordable monthly premiums.... Millions of Americans are also losing their doctors and hospitals of choice because they don’t fit into the Obamacare-mandated health care systems. Others are suffering dramatic increases in their monthly insurance premiums, another broken promise from Washington.

A tanker offloaded enough liquefied natural gas at Boston Harbor last week to heat 30,000 homes for a year, bolstering New England’s tight pipeline capacity just as a new wave of below-average temperatures threatens to strain energy supplies. But some advocates say this strategic slug of LNG during the coldest days of the winter can do more: It may help lower wholesale power prices from Connecticut to Maine, helping to hold down the cost of electricity for homeowners and businesses. That’s a debatable claim, but it highlights the intensifying dispute over whether New England power customers should spend billions of...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Monday that both Nevada and Tennessee have joined the Lone Star state's challenge of President Obama's executive amnesty, bringing the total number of states fighting Obama's unilateral immigration policies to 26. “Texas is proud to lead a coalition that now includes a majority of the United States standing up against the President’s rogue actions,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. “The momentum against the President's lawlessness continues to build with Tennessee and Nevada joining the effort to protect our states from the economic and public safety implications of illegal amnesty. As President...

Prospective Buyers Emerge For Shuttered Maine Paper Plant Andy Szal, Real Time Digital Reporter, Manufacturing.net A federal judge is holding an emergency hearing Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015, to consider offers to buy the shuttered paper mill. An Indian firm, and potentially others, are interested in buying the mill and operating it as a paper-making enterprise. The hearing comes as a labor union has filed a lawsuit to block the sale of the mill to a scrap metal recycler. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File) In this file photo made Sept. 20, 2013, steam from the Verso paper mill is backlit by...

KITTERY, Maine —Maine U.S. Sen. Susan Collins says a new federal grant of $1 million for the Sarah Long Bridge replacement project should help expedite the construction of a new bridge. Collins said Sunday the additional funding from the Federal Highway Administration will enable the Maine Department of Transportation to hire a construction manager/general contractor to hasten the design process and consult with the private sector.

AUGUSTA, Maine — While Gov. Paul LePage and U.S. Rep.-elect Bruce Poliquin were the ones giving victory speeches after Election Day, it’s arguable that another Republican was an equal winner: political strategist Brent Littlefield. A consultant who crafted the successful campaigns of both LePage and Poliquin, Littlefield proved beyond a doubt in 2014 that he’s got a winning strategy for electing conservative Republicans in Maine. But he’s not telling anybody what that strategy is. “I don’t want to give away the secret sauce just yet,” Littlefield, a Maine native who lives in the Washington, D.C., area, said in a recent...

On his way out of the door, his final day as a U.S. Senator, Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) released a blistering oversight report that finds the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) isn’t “successfully executing any of its five main missions.” Coburn’s criticisms include, but also predate, the Obama administration. Among the key findings: · DHS spent $50 billion over the past eleven years on counterterrorism programs but cannot demonstrate if the nation is more secure as a result. · 700 miles of the Southern border remain unsecured. · DHS is not effectively administering or enforcing the nation’s immigration laws. Only...

AUGUSTA — Gov. Paul Le-Page’s administration is firing back at the federal government over its policy of putting welfare recipients’ photos on the cards used to access food stamps, which federal officials have warned could cause Maine to lose some program funding. In a Dec. 18 letter to the Food and Nutrition Service obtained by The Associated Press, Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew responded to several concerns raised by the agency last month and blasted officials for consistently putting up “roadblocks and barriers” in the state’s effort to prevent fraud and abuse.

IN 1982 a Chinese aquaculture scientist named Fusui Zhang journeyed to Martha’s Vineyard in search of scallops. The New England bay scallop had recently been domesticated, and Dr. Zhang thought the Vineyard-grown shellfish might do well in China. After a visit to Lagoon Pond in Tisbury, he boxed up 120 scallops and spirited them away to his lab in Qingdao. During the journey 94 died. But 26 thrived. Thanks to them, today China now grows millions of dollars of New England bay scallops, a significant portion of which are exported back to the United States. As go scallops, so goes...

Justin Ramos, a sophomore at Bowdoin, is the son of Rafael Ramos, who was killed in his patrol car with fellow officer Wenjian Liu on Saturday.Bowdoin College is waiving tuition for a sophomore student who is the son of one of the New York police officers killed Saturday in Brooklyn, campus officials announced Monday. Bowdoin will provide full financial aid to Justin Ramos, who is scheduled to graduate with the Class of 2017, for the remainder of his education. “We are eager to welcome Justin back to campus for the start of our second semester in January, or whenever he...

Paul LePage: America's Governor.

Alexander (R-TN) Ayotte (R-NH) Barrasso (R-WY) Coats (R-IN) Cochran (R-MS) Collins (R-ME) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Enzi (R-WY) Flake (R-AZ) Graham (R-SC) Hatch (R-UT) Heller (R-NV) Johnson (R-WI) Kirk (R-IL) McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY) Murkowski (R-AK) Toomey (R-PA) Wicker (R-MS) Not Voting Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK)

A police sweep at Oceanside High School East in Rockland last week has stirred up a passionate debate over how to balance the individual rights of students with "zero tolerance" drug policies. Principal Renee Thompson said that although there have not been any specific drug problems at the school, she organized the raid by the Rockland Police along with the Knox and Lincoln County Sheriff's Departments in an effort to "send the message that we have zero tolerance for drugs, tobacco and paraphernalia brought on school grounds." According to Rockland Police Detective Sergeant Chris Young, it's the first time in...

A Maine school superintendent is allowing students to display a poster protesting grand jury decisions not to indict two white police officers who killed unarmed black men.

The states challenging President Obama’s deportation amnesty have already won the first round in court after the case landed in the lap of Judge Andrew S. Hanen, a Bush appointee who issued a scorching rebuke to the Department of Homeland Security last year, accusing it of refusing to follow border security laws. It could hardly have been a worse outcome for Mr. Obama, who, in order to preserve his policy, will now have to convince a judge who is on record calling his previous, less-extensive nondeportation policies “dangerous and unconscionable.” Led by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, the 20 states...

A Maine court has awarded the family of a transgender girl $75,000 in a settlement of her discrimination lawsuit against a school district where administrators made her use a staff, not student, bathroom.

Democrats question how 21 more votes from Long Island, all for the Republican, turned up in the very close District 25 recount. Maine Democratic Party is calling for investigation into ballot count discrepancies on Long Island The party’s claim involves 21 ballots from the island town that appeared on Nov. 18, when the Secretary of State’s Office conducted recount in the race between Republican Cathy Manchester of Gray and Democrat Cathy Breen of Falmouth. The ballots were not tabulated by Long Island officials on election night Nov. 4, and all 21 of them were cast for Manchester, according to written...

Gov. Paul LePage’s administration is facing a potential loss of federal funding to administer its food stamp program over concerns about state’s decision to put photos on cards used to access the benefits. Federal officials said in a letter to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday that recipients are being given information that makes it seem like they’re required to have their photos placed electronic benefit transfer cards, even though the program is voluntary. The Republican governor’s administration must make it clear to recipients that their decision to not have their photo placed on the card...