A message from Maine GOP Chair Mark Ellis:
A Petition to the Statehouse from Maine’s Hard Working Families and Businesses
Don’t add to our burden! Don’t break our backs!
When the halls of the state capitol cleared this week after the “Maine Can Do Better” rally, it was [...]
From AsMaineGoes:
Republican First District Congressional candidate Dean Scontras deserves high marks for holding an economic teleconference on Monday night open to the public and the press. Attendees were told at the start by campaign staffer Dan Schuberth the event would be 30-45 minutes long with a 10-minutes of opening remarks [...]
From Tony Payne at the Alliance for Maine’s Future :
It’s as insidious as climate change. You don’t notice it until you look back at solid data and ask: How did that happen?!? Fortunately for Maine, the remedy to our economic woes is within our control - either change policies or [...]
Maine Heritage Policy Center launched a new website called MaineVotes.org. This is a great project, here’s the press release:
The Maine Heritage Policy Center (MHPC) has launched a new website that allows users to easily track legislation and monitor legislative activities at the State House. The website, www.MaineVotes.org, is [...]
Here’s a campaign update from the Charlie Summers for Congress campaign:
Dear Friend,
I am so proud and thankful of every person that has stepped up to the plate to help with Charlie’s campaign. It is because of you that news about Charlie, his experiences in Maine and his outstanding record [...]
MPBN’s Maine Things Considered aired a report last night that was pretty blunt about the direction of the Tom Allen for Senate Campaign so far. Here’s how it started:
As Senator Susan Collins and First District Representative Tom Allen inch closer to a political showdown in the race for US [...]
This is a press release from the Scontras for Congress campaign:
Business Leaders Back Scontras for Congress
Growing Number Supporting Political Outsiders Economic Message
PORTLAND Candidate for Congress Dean Scontras today released a list of more than 50 prominent Maine and national business leaders who are supporting his bid to win the [...]
Maine House Minority Leader Josh Tardy and Maine Senate Minority Leader Carol Weston have teamed up to launch MaineGives.com, an effort to replace the funds for Special Olympics Maine that are slated to be cut from the budget. I’m proud to have helped with this project, and am really [...]
Maine’s Republican legislative leadership continues to exhibit a significant lack of unity. This issue has become one of the ‘givens’ of Republican politics in this state, and unfortunately it continues to interfere with the Party’s ability to counter the economic maelstrom wrought by Maine Democrats over the last three decades. [...]
This clip floored me when I saw it tonight. According to Fox News, Hillary Clinton made the outrageous statement that Lyndon Johnson, likely the most corrupt politician to ever roam the face of this earth, was more important to the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. than Martin Luther King [...]
This is Maine Senate President Beth Edmonds, (D-Lalaland), discussing why Maine people need to give more to the state government, on WLOB’s Fox Morning News. She wants to raise taxes and stop the talk of cuts to the budget.
Republicans need to wash these Dems out of Augusta with [...]
The Portland Press Herald ran an op-ed by Edward Erickson, a graduate student from Bowdoinham, that lays out an interesting perspective on the relationship of the Iraq War to the upcoming Maine Senate contest:
Allen may be misreading discontent over war
Iraq doesn’t seem to have been the driving issue for [...]
Governor Baldacci’s efforts to accelerate a small-business diaspora continue. This time, Baldacci’s economic stormtroopers are trying to stamp out the last vestiges of potential tourism revenue from airfield hangers across the state. Here’s the AP report:
Looking for revenue, states go after out-of-state plane owners
When Steve Kahn got a $26,000 [...]
Scott Taylor at the Lewiston Sun Journal has an interesting story that illustrates a rather dramatic contrast in the transparency of Maine’s Senators and Maine’s Representatives:
“We don’t provide lists of requests that are not ultimately approved, because that would put the people asking at a disadvantage,” said Mark Sullivan, [...]
Penobscot Bay Regional Chamber of Commerce CEO Bob Hastings has a great post over at his No Pecksniffery blog, titled ‘Blame it on the dog‘:
Late last summer, State Treasurer David Lemoine invested $20 million in short-term Maine funds in a high risk offshore venture. In November, the Treasurer meekly [...]
The Maine College Republicans have launched a great new website, www.MaineCR.org, built on the open-source CMS Drupal. I had some fun helping with a few parts of this, and it’s great to see the Maine CRs ahead of the curve in yet another venue.
Here’s their press release:
Maine College [...]
I generally don’t like to talk business at MWR, but I’m pretty pleased about this.
I recently worked on an extensive website project with Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors magazine, along with my good friend Jamie Bloomquist. Jamie and I have teamed up on a [...]
Common Cause issued this press release yesterday, note the alliterative title:
Common Cause Commends Collins on Campaign Contribution Controls
Time to end the presidential fundraising race
Restoring the broken presidential public finance system is a first critical step we must take in reforming from top to bottom the way we fund [...]
Baldacci and company seem to be covering all the bases when it comes to ludicrous government policy. Here’s a press release from the Dean Scontras campaign:
Dean Scontras Calls for End To Maine’s Status as a Sanctuary State for Illegal Aliens
1st District Congressional Candidate Urges Governor Baldacci to
Rescind Executive [...]
Jeff Inglis at the Portland Phoenix About Town blog has published “Tom Allen’s Bill of Wrongs”, a list of grievances expressed by advocates of impeaching President Bush, some of whom were escorted by police out of Allen’s Portland offices in recent weeks:
A BILL OF WRONGS
for Congressman [...]
WGME has a story on impeachment protesters getting the police treatment again at Maine Congressman Tom Allen’s Portland office. Note the blue masking tape keeping grandma attached to her chair:
More on this story:
WGME
Jeff Inglis at The Portland Phoenix - also here
Press Herald
1st CD GOP congressional candidate Dean Scontras has an opinion piece in the Portland Press Herald about how Maine deals with illegal immigrants and drivers licenses:
Most Mainers don’t realize that our state already issues driver’s licenses to people who are in the country illegally.
But the situation is even [...]
Press release from the Maine College GOP:
Maine College Republicans Demand Immediate Action on Flag-Burning Extra Credit Offered by University of Maine Professor
ORONO - The Maine College Republicans are demanding immediate action in response to the offer by Professor Paul Grosswiler to provide students extra credit if they burned [...]
In honor of veteran’s Day, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has put together a way for Americans to send a thank-you to US troops at [www.nrsc.org].
Please take a moment to say ‘thanks’, there’s no donation required, just a simple way to show your support for the military personnel sacrificing [...]
From the AP, via Portland Press Herald:
PORTLAND - Sen. Susan Collins held a 20-point lead over Rep. Tom Allen in the 2008 Senate race, while candidates vying for Allen’s congressional seat showed little success in distinguishing themselves in the minds of voters, according to a poll released Friday.
The Critical [...]
The Media Research Center’s Newsbusters.org has a weekly online comedy show called NewsBusted (I’m a contributor to NB).. Here’s the latest episode:
Self-declared Republican ’smart special ops guy’ David All is receiving some very harsh criticism from a few major voices in the GOP tech world. David blogs at TechRepublican.com, and runs a DC based internet consulting firm called The David All Group.
Erick Erickson of RedState.com and former Bush-Cheney [...]
$1 million in negative ads by MoveOn.org and friends yield no results
The extreme left-wing website DailyKos.com, which hosts Maine Congressman Tom Allen’s blog, has been commissioning polls from a company called Research 2000. Kos published the results of an October 15 poll on the Maine senate race [...]
MoveOn announced earlier today that they were pulling their trademark filing with Google and - in an unexpected twist - has joined the chorus of critics against Google’s overly broad trademark policy.
While it is to be expected that political opponents are not going to see eye-to-eye on most [...]
This is from a segment I did on Monday 10/15 with Ric Tyler and George Hale on WVOM. I just got the audio on this (thanks Scott!), I’m back-dating the post so it fits in the chronology of the press coverage.
[...]from Wired magazine:
The left-leaning political advocacy group, MoveOn.org, is backing down in a flap over the use of its name in online advertisements, permitting an influential Republican senator to criticize the organization in a reelection ad on Google’s search engine.
“We don’t want to support a policy that denies people [...]
Tons of coverage of this story, I’ll get the video out as I get it:
Robert Cox has a piece in today’s Examiner about Google’s restriction of ads I tried to place with them on behalf of the Collins for Senator campaign:
Internet giant Google has banned advertisements critical of MoveOn.org, the far-left advocacy group that caused a national uproar last month when it received [...]
Despite the fervent, bi-partisan condemnation of the ultra-liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org after their inexcusable personal slander of U.S General David Petraeus, Maine Congressman Tom Allen continues to accept their money and support with open arms.
MoveOn.org is featuring Allen front-and-center on their home [...]
Press release from the Scontras campaign:
1st District Congressional Candidate Dean Scontras Announces 3rd Quarter Fundraising Results
Eliot, Maine - Republican 1st District Congressional candidate Dean Scontras announced today that his campaign received approximately $92,000 in contributions from July 12th to September 30th of 2007. The Dean Scontras for Congress Committee received [...]
Jeff Inglis at the Phoenix has an article about the problem Congressman Tom Allen seems to be having with protesters at his office:
Neither US Senator Susan Collins nor the man challenging her for her senate seat will mention an important difference between the two: First District US Representative Tom [...]
Update: from Maine GOP Chair Mark Ellis-
October 2, 2007
“It has come to our attention that Congressman Tom Allen was in Bangor on Monday attending the funeral of a family member. Without question, the most difficult times in our lives are those in which we grieve for the loss of [...]
The Morning Sentinel has an article weighing the chances of a Senate run by Dexter Kamilewicz, titled “Democrats losing sleep over Kamilewicz Senate bid” (emphasis mine) :
Dexter Kamilewicz may be Tom Allen’s worst nightmare.Bill Slavick is not a sweet dream, either.
Running against [...]
I’ve started blogging at Fox 23’s website, MyFoxMaine.com . I’ve got a post up this week called ‘The fading promise of Internet politics’ that deals with the regressive effects of the Netroots on American politics.
Click here to read it >>
I’m in Baltimore for Tavis Smiley’s PBS All American Presidential Forums, this time for the Republican candidates. The Media Bloggers Association is working with PBS to aggregate blogger coverage, and we’ll have a large group of credential bloggers here tonight. This event has already sparked a little controversy, as the [...]
There is a new blog that has popped up called Allen vs Collins, its author is anonymous but describes him/herself as a college student in Maine interested in politics. The few posts so far seem to be pretty unbiased and quite thoughtful, including the latest one, titled ‘On [...]
Portland talk radio personality Ray Richardson has started an audio blog called Ray Richardson Speaks. The format is very interesting, he uses a service called Hipcast that allows him to record his posts via telephone.
It’s great to see Maine’s blog [...]
Senator Collins has a new post up on her blog at SusanCollins.com. Here’s an excerpt:
This was another very busy week in Washington. I spent a lot of time meeting with a bipartisan group of Senators seeking a way forward in Iraq. In addition, Senator Ben Nelson, a Democrat [...]
UPDATE from Maine GOP- see below
Jason Clarke is reporting that Maine Congressman Tom Allen is continuing his effort to disprove the adage that ’showing up is half the battle’, by, well, not showing up:
While Congressman Tom Allen has been busy chastising fellow Maine lawmakers for how they voted in [...]
This is especially pertinent to Maine Democrats, whose candidate for U.S. Senate has received more money from MoveOn than all of the Presidential candidates combined:
We’re very pleased to launch the campaign website for Senator Collins, SusanCollins.com .
This is the first wave of the site, we’ll be adding more features in the coming months. One of the features I’m especially excited about is Senator Collins’ blog. She’s [...]
from a Maine GOP press release:
Does Tom Allen Share Leftist View that Our Top Military Leader Has Betrayed Us in Iraq?
AUGUSTA- Maine Republican Party Chairman Mark Ellis today posed the question as to whether Senate candidate Tom Allen agrees with the assessment of ultra left-leaning political action group MoveOn.Org that [...]
We got a chance to ask Congressman Paul a few questions after Wednesday’s debate:
Fox News Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron was on location at a restaurant in Durham New Hampshire to gauge voter reaction to last night’s GOP Presidential debate. We caught up with him briefly to hear his take on things:
My lightening pick: Giuliani wins, Ron Paul lost bad
Jason Clarke’s: Giuliani and McCain, tie for win, Paul and Romney tied for losers
Scott Fish: “I’d say Huckabee hurt himself most. He had a chance to put himself ahead tonight. instead, i think he took steps backward.”
(I’ll be updating this post for most of the debate)
Pretty lively beginning here, Hume’s first question about Fred Thompson got a ton of laughs. I’m pretty struck and how high-energy things seem tonight, the questions are really biting, and the candidates seem ready to go. Pre-debate chatter was that [...]
(Post updated below)
Jason Clarke and I are just settling in at the University of New Hampshire’s Media Center, in preparation for tonight’s Fox News Republican Party Presidential Debate. The setup is great, the room is barely full right now, [...]
I just got the word that Jason Clarke and I have been granted media credentials to cover the UNH/ Fox News Republican Presidential debate on September 5.
We’ll be blogging and filing video updates from the debate and the spin room after the debate, our coverage will be available at [...]
‘’You know the difference between cannibals and liberals? Cannibals eat only their enemies.'’
Lyndon Johnson
Maine Congressman Tom Allen has expressed his solidarity with the extreme Left of the Democratic Party in a number of ways recently. He blogs at the notorious Daily Kos website, which came under fire in a [...]
There are a few new blogs that I’d like to give some attention to, it’s great to see these voices being heard:
- Penobscot Bay Chamber of Commerce CEO Bob Hastings has launched a stand-alone version of his popular VillageSoup blog, called No Pecksniffery. Hastings is a great writer, and [...]
Fellow MBA member, expatriate Mainer, and publisher of Dodgeblogium, Andrew Ian Dodge, is in the final tier of a contest to get himself in a Super Bowl ad:
FuelmyBlog and MyBowlAd.com are holding a contest to find a star of a Superbowl commercial early next year. As part of it [...]
Patrick Ruffini, Bush-Cheney ‘04 webmaster and former eCampaign Director for the Republican National Committee, wrote a post at Townhall.com Saturday titled ‘Kos Smears Maine Blogger, Gets Pwned’ (definition of ‘Pwned’ for the uninitiated, from the Urban Dictionary-”It basically means “to own” or to be dominated by an [...]
After The Lewiston Sun Journal, Portland Press Herald, and Bangor Daily News all published editorials this week condemning them for bringing dirty politics into the Maine senate election so early, the Maine Democratic Party has issued a letter in response:
Since Tom Allen entered the U.S. Senate race both the [...]
I’ve hesitated to moderate comments in the past here, it’s always been a pretty moderately-low trafficked site and I’ve never really had an issue with commenters getting out of hand. Plus, I’ve always felt that people posting opposing views either enhance the dialog by challenging my logic, or display their [...]
UPDATE - More on this story:
Newsbusters
Ian Schwartz
186K per Second
Markos Moulitsas has decided to resort to the lowest in political tactics in response to the growing awareness of the vulgar commentary on his website. In a post today, Kos tries to create an equivalence [...]
UPDATE: The Lewiston Sun Journal also weighed in on this:
The appearance is one of tracking, for tracking sake. Though politicians must tolerate an interrogatory spotlight - of their own choosing, we point out - what happened to Collins was still political skullduggery, not “research,” as it has been called. [...]
UPDATE: A lot of press about this:
Bangor Daily News - “Collins to Allen: Call off tracker”
Portland Press Herald - “Collins says ‘tracker’ got in her face”
MPBN- Audio clip from Maine Things Considered
AsMaineGoes.com
MaineToday.com - Comments on Comments
Politics 2.0 - [...]
Tom Groening has an article in today’s Bangor Daily, titled Maine firm appeals tourism contract:
AUGUSTA, Maine - A Maine business is crying foul over the Maine Office of Tourism’s decision to grant a $600,000 contract to a Canadian firm.
Davidson-Peterson Associates-Digital Research of Kennebunk, which lost out on the [...]
A few things I’ve been meaning to post about:
- Maine Web Report is now a part of Skinny Moose Media. Steve Remington and his father Tom have put together an extensive network of outdoors blogs, featuring some great writing about hunting, fishing, conservation issues,etc. They were nice enough to [...]
From Martin Kady at The Politico:
Sen. Susan Collins is the Cal Ripken of Senate roll call votes — she hasn’t missed a floor vote since she was elected in 1996. That’s 3,525 straight “yeas” or “nays” for the Maine Republican.
But thanks to a miscommunication between a committee chairman [...]
John Bambanek at BlogCritics has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against DailyKos.com, citing publisher Markos Moulitsas’s recent proclamation that the purpose of the site is to get Democrats elected:
Today I filed an Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint against Kos Media, LLC., better known as DailyKos.com. [...]
From Saturday’s Bangor Daily editorial:
The new script from the Democrats for the Left is to assert Collins says one thing at home and votes another way in Congress. This strategy assumes Collins cannot be unhappy with the way the war has gone without also supporting whatever the Democrats want.
Collins [...]
Democratic Senator Ben Nelson, who was named Most Popular Senator in the Country by Survey USA in 2006, had an opinion piece in the Bangor Daily News this week, explaining the proposal he and Senator Collins have offered to change direction in Iraq:
Recent headlines such as “Al-Qaida gaining strength” [...]
From the Bangor Daily News:
The first American to orbit the Earth touched down briefly in Bangor on Thursday after his automobile developed problems with its built-in navigation system.
Former astronaut, U.S. senator from Ohio and presidential candidate John Glenn and his wife, Annie, were headed toward Bangor from Bar [...]
From Mark Ellis at the Maine Republican Party (h/t to AMG)
Collins Provision Included in Final 9/11 Bill Agreement
Maine GOP Praises Collins for Efforts to Make Nation Safer , Asks: Why Is Tom Allen Siding with Trial Lawyers rather than Public Safety?
AUGUSTA- The final version of the 9/11 legislation will [...]
Tom Allen’s fellow DailyKos blogger declares US troops ‘a bunch of idiots’, ‘morally retarded’
The website that Maine Representative Tom Allen chose to be the centerpiece of his online outreach efforts, dailykos.com, is having a bit of a hard time lately. After JetBlue withdrew their sponsorship of the blog’s annual convention, [...]
While the efforts of Maine’s Democrat Party increasingly mirror the pitchfork and torch scene from the end of Frankenstein, Maine Republicans are starting to provide some considerable and positive indications that a conservative revival is afoot in this state. One such example is the recognition by the College Republican National [...]
UPDATE: This is a little late, but for those dozens of commenters who have been insisting all day long that I was wrong about this, your pal Kos finally acknowledged he was wrong:
JetBlue caved
by kos
Fri Jul 20, 2007 at 10:16:03 AM PDT
Okay, so JetBlue, after deciding [...]
UPDATE: The Bangor Daily weighs in on this in an editorial from this morning:
Now for the 2008 senatorial election, Maine has “toothiness,” a political smear that will be noticed more for its pointlessness than its intended message. Maine voters deserve better…
Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, naturally, is welcome to [...]
Newsweek’s Evan Thomas and Eve Conant featured discussions with Senator Susan Collins in an article titled “Refusing to Lose: As public pressure to withdraw from Iraq increases, the president is losing GOP supporters in Congress”. The article describes the continued effort by [...]
Maine expatriate, conservative rock and roller, podcaster and SecondLife icon Andrew Ian Dodge is knee-deep in an interesting effort to put Lee Rotherham in the Mayor’s office in London, from which he will, apparently, negate the office:
Andrew is involved in promoting the new media aspect of this [...]
When Barbara Merrill stood in my kitchen last year, my wife and I both handed her checks for $5 to help in her pursuit of enough qualifying donations to receive state funding for her gubernatorial campaign. I handed her my check because I thought she deserved a chance to get [...]
From a Bangor Daily News editorial today:
All signs point toward a good year for Maine’s number one industry, tourism. This is quite a change from last year’s rainy spring and slow start.
Travel on the Maine Turnpike for Independence Day week was up 6 percent over last year, and the [...]
Instead of finger-pointing and blame, it is time for leaders of both parties to work together and for the President to be willing to pursue a new strategy that embraces political and diplomatic means and decreases our military commitment, as recommended by Sen. Lugar and the Iraq Study Group, which [...]
A lot of stuff out there today on Al Gore’s Live Earth debacle, including this summary of sentiment from Instapundit:
“I’ll start acting as if it’s a crisis when the people who are telling me it’s a crisis start acting as if it’s a crisis.”
Or, more aptly, Madonna:
“If you want [...]
These last few weeks since I jumped on board with the Collins campaign have been extremely hectic. (Thus the lame lack of posts here…)
We’ve got huge plans, and for someone like me who loses sleep every time some new widget gadget or tech [...]
Following on the heels of the Libby Trial credentialing, the Media Bloggers Association is working with PBS to credential bloggers for their Presidential Forums. We will also be delivering a real-time aggregated news feed of the coverage through the PBS and MBA websites. I most likely will not be down [...]
I’ve been meaning to give a big huge plug for my good friend Jason Clarke’s new blog called ‘The Living Well Report‘. Here’s how he describes it:
The Living Well Report is a website devoted to positive nutrition, good health, and living well. That means we’ll have photos, videos, news, [...]
Tony Payne, Executive Director of The Alliance for Maine’s Future, is reporting on his site an interesting communication from Democrat State Representative Troy Jackson of Allagash:
——Original Message——
From: Troy Jackson [mailto:jacksonfor1@hotmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 7:33 PM
To: [send email to tpayne@allianceformaine.org via gmail] [...]
Update-more press:
This is Al Gore in 1992, chastising Bush 41 for not taking action against Saddam Hussein, despite widespread reports of his use of chemical weapons and attempts to procure nuclear technology. Not that it somehow insulates W from criticism, but it certainly brings an interesting angle to the possibility of [...]
Here’s the press release, hot off the presses:
MCLU Applauds Ground-Breaking Senate Vote on Net Neutrality
Maine Poised to Lead the Way on Net NeutralityAugusta- Today the Maine State Senate took a stand for net neutrality when it approved a resolution stating the importance of internet non-discrimination principles to Mainers [...]
Portlandmaine.tv has a great feature video about the incredibly forward-thinking things Jeff Wheeler and the town of Hermon have been doing lately. I had the opportunity to speak at length with Jeff about a year ago about the thin-client, open source approach he has taken as head of the [...]
