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In torturers we trust

Our military’s notorious SERE program was back in the news this month. Well, the national and international news, anyway. The media in Maine continue to act as if the Navy’s SERE “torture school” in the mountains northeast of Rangeley doesn’t exist — which is exactly how the spies and sadists involved in the program want […]

My un-opinionated observations for the week

This week, I’m taking a vacation from writing opinions. Instead, I’ll just list some recent observations from which you can draw your own opinionated conclusions… • New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie makes a presidential campaign appearance in Portland, interrupting the breakfast of maybe a couple dozen people at Becky’s Diner. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders does the […]

Mark Rees: The accidental tourist

So long, Mark Rees. We hardly knew ya.And that was a big part of the problem.The announcement this week that Portland City Manager Mark Rees is resigning after three years as the boss of Maine’s largest city, and nearly a year before his current one-year contract is set to expire, has Portlanders all asking the […]

The unseen and unheard among us

It was during a dreary stretch of winter in late January of this year that I got an unusual inquiry regarding freelance work. The freelancer herself didn’t contact me. Rather, the query came from an employment specialist in Scarborough on behalf of a “talented creative writer who is also working on a novel.” I provided […]

Signs of the times in Portland, Maine

In Gaza, hundreds of women, children and other innocent civilians were being blown to pieces by an Israeli military armed and funded by our tax dollars. World leader like United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon were denouncing Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of homes, schools and hospitals as a “moral outrage” and a “criminal act,” while witnesses […]

“Green” Bud Kelly for guv’nah

Maine’s gubernatorial race, a rather sleepy affair so far, just got a whole lot livelier with the recent announcement of a new write-in candidate: “Green” Bud Kelly. Kelly is a contractor on a midcoast island whose services include house painting, dry walling, landscaping, carpentry and masonry. He has not, to my knowledge, run for political […]

What the real aliens would do about immigration

The headline atop the BDN’s homepage certainly grabbed my attention: “LePage says 8 ‘unaccompanied alien children’ put in Maine without his knowledge.” “Oh, my God,” I thought. “The federal government” — long suspected of hiding evidence of extra-terrestrial contact on secret bases in the Nevada desert — “has shipped the spawn of space creatures into […]