Author: Sam Patten

It goes without saying the pro-war crew — with cheerleaders like John Bolton and Lindsey Graham — is still ecstatic over the latest round of strikes against the faltering Iranian regime. Those who took Trump at his word about no new foreign wars are understandably nervous right now. But no matter how much Congress screeches about the War Powers Act, the current administration might best heed the advice of the late Fred (“Mr.”) Rogers: “Take your time and do it right.” America’s war on Iran didn’t start this past weekend, and contrary to appearances, we didn’t draw first blood. Ever…

Back in those early, heady days of the Biden administration there was some loose talk about nominating U.S. Sen. Angus King (I-ME) to be director of national intelligence. It didn’t last long, but in the forty-five seconds or so that it percolated, I fired off a column suggesting that – should the new president make such an astute call – Gov. Janet Mills ought to nominate state Rep. Jeffrey Evangelos (I-Friendship) to fill his seat. That outside-the-box suggestion put me on Jeff’s radar screen, and he invited me to coffee at Moody’s Diner. While there was much on which we…

It was a tragedy piled on a tragedy is how one Lincoln County resident described the December 27 homicide of a 41-year-old Corinth woman, allegedly at the hands of her 22-year-old son, who until recently lived in Damariscotta and Waldoboro. Penobscot County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Daniel Derosier on Saturday after he fled the trailer where he’d been staying with his birth-mother, Abigail Thomas, lay slain by a gunshot wound. Witnesses told law enforcement Derosier pulled the trigger. Until recently, the accused killer lived in Lincoln County where, public records show, he had racked up a troubling career of violent crime…

Every generation in American life is marked by a crime that captures its dark side and because of that becomes hard to shake. For instance, I grew up in the shadow of the Charles Manson murders which spoke to a six-year-old me, whose Boomer parents left Helter Skelter lying around to read and discover how terrifying adults could be. Today’s zeitgeist slaughter may well be the killings of Hollywood producer Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, at the hands of their deranged son, Nick. While the Manson murders were really the boomers’ baggage, they nonetheless haunted me. Between kindergarten and…

Just when you thought a young Mainer might be catching a break, The Establishment struck back with a new poll showing Governor Janet Mills with what appears to be a ten point lead in the primary race between her and Sullivan oyster farmer Graham Platner for the Democrat Party nomination to take on U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) next fall. Platner led Mills in a couple other polls, but this one – conducted by a firm headed by former state Democrat Party chair Victoria Murphy – weighted its sample with enough old people to give the 77-year-old, two-term governor the…

Democrat Senate hopeful Graham Platner has weathered the news about his tattoo and past Reddit posts, as a new poll shows he maintains a substantial lead in his race with incumbent Governor Janet Mills for their party’s nod to take on U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) next year. The 20-point advantage seen in survey of Maine voters by a progressive group suggests Platner’s double-digit besting of Mills first seen in a University of New Hampshire poll in mid-October has some serious staying power. According the survey of 1,482 likely voters – with an oversample of 630 Democrats – the political…

“Two things for you to think about,” the high-priced, quite possibly best in the business First Amendment lawyer told me. “First, I’m not sure you can really afford us right now, and second, more importantly, I don’t think you need to worry too much about Olivia because she’s going to get what’s coming to her anyway.” On both scores, she was right, though it took six years for the second, pro bono prophesy to manifest. When I agreed to give Olivia Nuzzi exclusive access to my sad story, I was pretty desperate and figured not much more could go wrong.…

A federal judge today dismissed the government’s case against former FBI director James Comey, whose strained relationship with the truth is the stuff of legend. A Clinton-appointed judge threw out the charges against Comey of making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation because, she ruled, the prosecutor was improperly appointed. The same judge, Cameron Currie, also dismissed the case against New York Attorney General Leticia James on the same basis. Her ruling does not mean Comey is an honest man, but it does mean that in Washington it is process and not justice that prevails. Six years…

A few years back, a man who was then a state representative shared with me a frustration he had about someone. He told me he had wanted to impeach former Governor Paul LePage and had called together a group of colleagues to strategize on the matter. One of those other reps, he said, then went and snitched to the attorney general at the time, who proceeded to throw cold water on the plot. The then-attorney general was Janet T. Mills, and the snitch was Jared Golden. As history went on to demonstrate, impeaching a chief executive just to score political…

During the first Trump administration, some wondered why the president so proficient at parceling out nicknames insisted on calling the then-Senate majority leader “Cryin’ Chuck.” Six years later, the answer to what’s behind Schumer’s tears has become clearer: his own party is ready to plant at least 23 daggers in his back. Speaking in Brewer yesterday, progressive Democrat candidate for the U.S. Senate Graham Platner gave voice to mounting discontent among Democrats about their leadership by calling on Schumer to throw in towel. Doing so worked well for him in the sense that a half-dozen or more national outlets cited…

In the wake of a top-level staffing exodus in recent weeks, U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner (D) is doubling down on his progressive bona fides by hiring the deputy director of the Maine Peoples’ Alliance (MPA) to take the helm of his campaign. Ben Chin, 40, will serve as Platner’s campaign manager in a move his supporters hope will bring stability to the Senate bid. To date, the campaign’s political director, finance director, and campaign manager have quit for various reasons. Genevieve McDonald, the former political director, has been the most outspoken of these, citing a clash of values following…

For all the sound and fury surrounding Question 1 on Tuesday’s ballot, Question 2 seems like a forgotten sibling about whom there’s been spoken nary a word. That silence is odder still when you consider that while polls show the first question on voter ID to be a virtual tie as of the third week of October, more than one-in-five respondents appear undecided on whether Maine needs a “Red Flag” law allowing authorities a freer hand in seizing guns from citizens. Do 22 percent of Mainers really not know how they’ll vote on Q2, or would they really just rather…

Twenty-one years might be a social generation, but in other terms it is just the blink of an eye. Whether you’re talking about Derry, Maine or Randolph, an unsolved wrong will go on to haunt residents until the ghosts are put to rest by some modicum of justice which has, until now, been denied Lawrence Farrell, aka Bicycle Larry. The eyes of the waitress at the A1 Diner in Gardiner, across the Kennebec River from Randolph, brighten at the mention of Bicycle Larry, who disappeared from the area in November 2004. “It seems like yesterday,” she recalled wistfully. Some say…

It takes a surfeit of sympathy really to feel badly for a Member of Congress, but when one votes for a bad-sounding bill for a good reason watching them struggle to explain themselves makes for one of those rare occasions. Because they are political animals, congressmen and women intentionally engineer legislation in such a way that it is rarely “clean” and almost always comes with strap-hanging compromises. Direct democracy should be simpler, right? If Question 1 on next week’s ballot is any indication, it isn’t. A citizens’ initiative, Question 1 at its core calls for a voter ID requirement in…

How smart would it be to tie the economic fate of Midcoast Maine to Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Some residents of the towns surrounding Wiscasset believe the answer to that question is probably “not very.” If there is a ghost of Maine Yankee, its name is controversy. But today the debate is no longer about nuclear power — nearly three decades after the Wiscasset plant shut down, Americans are revisiting the value and benefits of deriving energy from splitting atoms — but rather now is about power consumption, and whether there is wisdom in proceeding with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) data…

An old Maine saying counsels “if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.” If any real stock is to be put in the results of a push poll floated over the weekend, the same unpredictability applies to the fickleness of Democrat voters in the state. According to the little-known SoCal Strategies, Gov. Janet Mills now leads Graham Platner by five points in the primary race to decide who will challenge incumbent Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) next year by a 41:36 spread. One week before Halloween, the ghouls and goblins on Mills’ campaign team worked feverishly to project any evidence…

Pine Tree State Polls are rarely as interesting as the most recent one. As the current occupant of the Blaine House is gobsmacked with the uncomfortable truth that Chuck Schumer lied to her, oysterman and political neophyte Graham Platner’s commanding lead among Democrats for the nomination to take on incumbent Senator Susan Collins next year suggests the old tricks just don’t work anymore. Perhaps the only way left for Governor Janet Mills (D) to re-boot her campaign by projecting vigor and fresh thinking would be to – Titan Cronus style – eat Hannah Pingree whole, but that would probably not…

Most of us who won’t be voting in the Democrat primary next year noticed something interesting this week: within 24 hours of Janet Mills announcing for her party’s nomination to challenge incumbent Senator Susan Collins, a flood of previously-scrubbed posts by progressive candidate Graham Platner hit the news — thanks, no less, to CNN. When asked at a brewery in Freeport on Thursday about Platner’s past musings about why black people don’t tip, why rural white folk are stupid and racist, or why rape victims shouldn’t make themselves vulnerable, Mills feigned ignorance. Pour me another. Hate to be that guy…

Pumpkinfest — what has long been a non-political, family-oriented festival of seasonal fun in midcoast towns of Newcastle and Damariscotta — was nearly up-ended by a radical agenda on Sunday when activists tried to, at the very least, shut down traffic on Main Street, which runs between the towns. Ironically, but also somewhat typically for midcoast protests, the gesture was dramatically out-of-synch with world events. Pro-Palestinian advocates briefly raised a wire barrier across the road before local law enforcement swiftly removed the obstacle an arrested one of the demonstrators for blocking a public thoroughfare. According to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s…

When the late, one-term U.S. Senator Bill Hathaway passed away a little more than a decade ago, Mainers were too polite to ask out loud: “what was the point of him, anyhow?” Yet at least a few might have quietly wondered. Like Don Quixote’s lance, Hathaway’s main claim to fame lay in puncturing the invulnerability of iconic Senator Margaret Chase Smith, whose “Declaration of Conscience” speech on the Senate floor has been invoked by many a Democrat in recent years in similarly quixotic efforts to shame Republicans. Yet Hathaway’s anemic legacy comes to mind as Maine Governor Janet Mills, 77,…

(City of Ellsworth, photo by Main Street Maine)

“What is more dangerous in Ukraine than in Washington or Chicago?” Andrey Baida, a Ukrainian, commented on the Facebook post of a Ukrainian blogger on Tuesday about the brutal slaying of Iryna Zarutska on a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina which occurred last month but the world has only learned about this past week. The most chilling aspect of the video of Zarutska’s senseless killing that has now gone viral on the Internet is the look of terror on her face when she looks at her attacker. I know what it’s like to be in her shoes. Nearly…

Some say even a broken clock is right twice a day, while others suggest that Washington, DC has a moderating effect on people over time. Whatever the case may be, blogger and accused conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer hit it out of the park on Tuesday when she managed to get Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) dis-invited from a briefing at the National Geospatial Agency in his own constituency of Springfield, Virginia. Sen. Warner, Loomer argued, is such a deep state tool that he’s actually a threat to national security. She may be right. For the normies, the mere mention of Loomer’s…

The throng of Suburus headed south on 295 towards Portland yesterday competed with the ordinary exodus of Massholes from Maine on Labor Day suggesting that something perhaps bigger than the migration of Canadian geese was in the air. Progressive icon U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was coming to the Pine Tree State’s most progressive city which in itself could be a cause for celebration of Maine leftists, but there was something else going on as well. What drew Senator Sanders to Maine on the day that not only marks the end of summer but also the national holiday of the…

Susan Collins is probably used to getting a lot of free advice from various people by now, many of whom may not necessarily mean her well. Take for instance Gordon Weil, a man whose very existence was unknown to me until a friend pointed out an op-ed he’d penned for the Bangor Daily News yesterday entitled “History calls on Susan Collins to rebuild the traditional Republican party.” Weil’s words were evocative of the words of another sage, former U.S. president Joseph Robinette Biden who, in his feckless, single term in the White House, often mused about how the GOP is…

Peter Velanzon took citizen activism to a new level this year when he appealed to the Maine State Legislature for help in guaranteeing his voice could be heard in municipal meetings in Waldo, where he resided until recently. Velanzon told The Maine Wire that public comment in town meetings kept getting curtailed or suspended every time he tried to be heard on a host of issues over the past decade. In 2014, he started filming municipal proceedings in the Waldo County town of 795 souls and when then former first selectwoman Kathy Littlefield learned he’d been doing so, she began…

With less than two weeks to go until kids across Maine go back to school, law enforcement and some educators gathered in Brewer earlier this week to prepare for the unthinkable: an active shooter in a place of learning or other public venue. Coming on the heels of an active shooter incident on Route 302 in Windham late last week, the grisly prospect – while thankfully unprecedented in Maine to date – is not inconceivable, and a tactical trainer from the state of Florida walked attendees through procedures and best practices that might just minimize the losses in such an…

A 40-year-old oyster farmer from Sullivan announced on Tuesday that he will seek the Democrat nomination to challenge U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME). Graham Platner served eight years in the U.S. military in as many combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, first as a Marine and later with the U.S. Army Special Forces after exceeding the maximum number of deployments the Marines allowed in such a period. After studying at George Washington University on the GI Bill, Platner returned to Maine to help his mother run a restaurant in his native Hancock county and launch the Waukeag Oyster Company, which…

Every self-proclaimed Russia-expert in America — including the collective mainstream media whose finger in the wind on such questions has proven bent more than once — seemed to be tripping over one another in the immediate aftermath of Friday’s Alaska meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to call the high-stakes encounter a bust. “Give me my show,” CNN’s Jake Tapper demanded in an embarrassing hot mic moment captured during a momentary broadcasting glitch from Alaska on Friday, just before turning to an inaudible feed from inveterate liar and once-censored congressman/now U.S. Senator Adam Schiff…

Despite being the oldest state in America, Maine has in recent years been surprisingly tolerant of young candidates seeking election to high office. State House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, 32, is one who has benefitted from this, but now the young representative is apparently calling out seniors who also want to get into the political fray for their advanced years. According to Biddeford Gazette editor Randy Seaver, Fecteau recently posted on Facebook that candidates for Biddeford city council should be identified by the number of years they’ve walked the earth. In particular, Fecteau asked – apparently rhetorically – how old Clem…

Beyond Big Balls and the beating he received while defending his date last week, the federal government’s recent move at the direction of the Trump administration to oversee security in Washington, DC is leading to the same sort of confused reaction that has followed other unexpected initiatives emanating from the White House since late January: is it intrinsically “Orange Man Bad” or might it actually be a good idea? Still smarting over its exile from the White House briefing room following the Gulf of America/Mexico flare up, the Associated Press went out of their way on Tuesday to suggest the…

When Washington, DC super-lawyer Marc Elias gleefully “threaded” a story about Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows telling the U.S. Department of Justice to go jump in the Gulf of Maine after it requested access to the state’s voter registration rolls, he neglected to note that Bellows’ campaign for governor has been cutting his law firm checks. That wasn’t, after all, the point. At the 30,000-foot level in swampy maneuvers, such disclosures are — as former Elias client Hillary Clinton once famously said — “for little people.” If any Augusta swamp-creatures have noted a new spring in Bellows’ step recently,…

Ever since Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, the former comedian and current Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been seen in the West as a symbol of resistance to the out-sized aggression of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Yet Ukrainians themselves are now beginning to show signs of discontent with Zelenskyy, whose elected mandate expired more than a year ago. Taking to the streets of Ukraine’s capital city Kyiv this week, ordinary citizens are speaking out against what they see as worrying signs of democratic backsliding by a government whose major claim to legitimacy and global support has been…

About a year ago, disgraced former CIA director John Brennan was scheduled to give a talk in Damariscotta about ‘Navigating Global Politics,’ until an expected letter in the Lincoln County News raised an objection. The letter-writer expressed concern about how Brennan’s record reflected on his moral character and fitness. Within days, the event was cancelled “for security reasons.” Dubious hero though he was to some merely for his role in the anti-Trump “resistance” from 2016-20, reminders about Brennan’s role as an architect and enthusiastic champion of the CIA’s torture program proved too much for the gentle people of Damariscotta. The…

Days after the arrest and preliminary charging of a suspect in the murder of Sunshine “Sunny” Stewart, a new question has begun to surface in the towns surrounding Union, Maine: could 17-year-old Deven Young have acted alone in the brutal slaying of an innocent paddle-boarder? Or, if the young man with apparent cognitive issues is indeed brighter than he looks, was Sunny Stewart his first victim? Killers often botch their first attempt at murder, and Stewart was a capable woman by all accounts. Were Young able to murder her single-handedly and evade detection for two weeks, there is some reason…

Midcoast Mainers breathed a collective sigh of relief on Thursday to learn that Sunny Stewart’s killer was in custody, but as the young man who has been charged with murder denied responsibility in a court hearing in Rockland Friday morning, a troubling pattern re-emerged: Too many people are too hesitant to talk about what happened on Crawford Pond earlier this month. Why are folks so tight-lipped up here in Maine, outsiders have been asking as news of Sunny’s killing has gone national. Is it because we’re taciturn Mainers, or we don’t talk about about our neighbors? Yes, there was a…

When the legacy media in Maine latches onto an idea, many who have been around the block more than once take a skeptical pause. For reasons that are themselves eyebrow arching, Maine’s “mainstream” press seem intent on the idea that long-time summer person and recent year-rounder Jonathan Bush should be the Republican nominee for governor next year. On Monday, the Bangor Daily News ran an exclusive story that Bush, 56, has launched an exploratory committee. A nephew of former president George H.W. Bush and cousin U.S. president George W. Bush and Florida governor Jeb Bush — as well as Billy…

Late last week the spokeswoman for the Maine State Police broke her silence on the brutal slaying July 2nd of a Tenants Harbor woman in Union – not to inform the public on the status of the now ten day old investigation, but instead to lash out against a national news network for suggesting a serial killer could be one possible explanation. “Floating unverified claims without facts fuels fear. It’s irresponsible,” Maine Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Shannon Moss told the Bangor Daily News, referencing the appearance of a former New York City police officer on FOX News suggesting the…

One week after the brutal slaying of a Tenants Harbor woman on a pond in Union, what is taking hold in at least two impacted communities is a mixture of anxiety, despair and concern about the tranquil images of summer in Maine being shattered by an awful occurrence many cannot comprehend. “If anyone lived up to their name, it was definitely her,” Tenants Harbor’s Schoolhouse Bakery proprietress Carol Sanidas told The Maine Wire of the victim, “she was an absolute ray of sunshine. She could fix anything and anyone.” The one fact that shines through an array of troubling questions…

Since Thursday, when authorities declared the death of a Tenants Harbor woman on or near a pond in Union to be a homicide, few answers have emerged to how 48-year-old Sunshine Stewart was killed last week. “If you don’t like your life, change it,” read the tattoo inscribed on her shoulder, which seems to reflect the powerful sense of positive energy this Knox County woman inspired in others. “To know her was to love her,” wrote her friend Rob Wood on Facebook, adding “She was a force to be reckoned with. Those bright beaming eyes that smile, that laugh. Oh,…

Cling though one might to the old saying ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover,’ it’s difficult to look at Bryan Kohberger – especially at the creepy vacuousness of his eyes – and not conclude there is something seriously wrong with this dude. Why did this apparent freak of nature slaughter four college students in Idaho in their sleep with a hunting knife four years ago? Thanks to a new plea deal Kohberger’s attorneys have reached with the State of Idaho, we’ll never know. “We are beyond furious with the state of Idaho,” the family of one of the…

Senate Appropriation Chair Susan Collins (R-ME) supported a motion Saturday night to advance President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” towards final passage this week in a close 51-49 vote. In doing so, though, she warned that she “is leaning against the bill,” if further changes aren’t made before a final vote. “I am planning to vote for the motion to proceed. Generally, I give deference to the majority leader’s power to bring bills to the Senate floor. Does not in any way predict how I’m going to vote on final passage,” Sen. Collins told reporters on Saturday. “I will be…

Probably the most likable candidate for governor of Maine last time won less than two percent of the vote. Sam Hunkler, a retired physician from Washington County’s Beals Island, struck me as an all-around good guy when I interviewed him over coffee in Rockland. It also quickly became apparent that Sam didn’t have much of a plan. He wasn’t going to get into staking positions on issues, he told me. First he wanted to study them, which seemed both naive and refreshingly honest. The fact that he was against the COVID vaccine mandate and for tribal sovereignty was enough to…

When tragedy gives way to triumph, it can be a beautiful thing—not unlike a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly. That indeed was the vibe as New York City model and step-daughter of failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris marched to the polls in the Big Apple on Tuesday. “Feeling so many emotions right now,” Ella Emhoff shared, explaining “It was a little traumatic walking to the same voting place that I did in November. But I feel so much hope for New York and what @zohrankmamdani will bring.” https://twitter.com/ThomasPhippen/status/1937852828824830144 For some, trauma can mean losing both legs to a landmine in…

There’s an old Persian saying that goes “if either side walks away from a negotiation feeling good, it was a bad negotiation.” In other words, when negotiating with Iran, the process is usually painful and always long. Whether or not Iran and Israel have actually agreed to a Trump-brokered ceasefire, this is nonetheless well worth bearing in mind. Years ago I hired a Swedish lawyer to help with a project and in our initial discussion, he told me about a trip to Iran he’d taken for a previous client who’d hired him to get her son back in a custody…

A seemingly throwaway line in a now viral interview by Tucker Carlson of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) put Maine Senator Susan Collins briefly in the spotlight as the staunch ally of Israel and one-time presidential candidate suggested his colleague from the Pine Tree State is partially to blame for Washington D.C. effectively becoming a pile of “garbage.” “When am I going to see a Republican senator say: ‘I just walked to work this morning over people dying of drug overdoses, and we’re going to shut this place down unless they fix it’ … why don’t Republicans assert their constitutional…

The mark of a real politician is their ability to eat your lunch while still smiling as if you’re best pals. Despite his lack of any experience getting elected himself, Angus King III demonstrated these chops as he lorded over Hannah Pingree at a joint appearance during an anti-Trump rally in Rockland on June 14. While the offspring of their famous Maine namesakes currently serving in Congress, to wit, U.S. Senator Angus King (I-ME) and U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-CD1), were wearing color-coordinated outfits of blue and green, it was elder, less politically-experienced Angus King III, 54, who garnered more…

Israel’s remarkable series of strikes against Iranian military targets — including nuclear sites — early Friday morning elicited simultaneous feelings of awe and anxiety. In what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called an initial wave of targeted attacks, his country’s military hit a range of sites in Tehran and Natanz, killing at least nine Iranian generals and nuclear scientists. The awe that often follows Israeli military actions comes from the intelligence-driven nature of the strikes as well as their boldness. The anxiety shared by governments and populations alike around the globe is driven by the prospect these actions raise of…

If the closings of birthing units at multiple Maine hospitals were not enough of a red flag signaling the downward descent of its demography, a new report shows that one of the few areas of growth in the Pine Tree State is among DINKs. According to ManlyBands, Maine now ranks seventh among U.S. states riding the DINK wave. That eyebrow-arching acronym refers to that sub-sect of the population known as Double Income, No Kids (DINK), which is a trend also rising in California, Maryland, Alaska, Nevada, Vermont and Rhode Island — all ‘lifestyle’ states, which is another was of saying…

A bid by a land trust to broker a deal between a paper company and the federal government is on skids after local officials effectively nixed the plan last Wednesday. Three out of five Somerset County commissioners voted on June 4 not to sign a letter of no objection to the $2.1 million sale of a 1,845 acre tract of wilderness between Moxie Pond and Bald Mountain by the Weyerhaeuser Corporation to the Trust for Public Land, which intends to finance the purchase largely with a federal grant. “I’m not comfortable with turning over the sovereignty of Maine land to…

Remember the Disinformation Complex that thrived under the Biden administration and effectively throttled conservative media online? Three years ago this month, the Biden White House paused its plans to establish a Disinformation Board within the Department of Homeland Security and install “Scary Mary” Nina Jankowicz as its “disinformation czar” when Congress balked at the Orwellian dimensions of this scheme. But undeterred, these government-sanctioned censors merely burrowed into the Deep State. Piggy-backing on successful whole-of-government efforts to brand as threats to public health any voices not on board with mandating an untested COVID-19 vaccine for millions, this movement gathered force as…

How long is the line between James Comey and Elias Rodriguez, the 31-year-old Chicago man accused of murdering two young Israeli diplomats in Washington, DC last week? For a local perspective, one could of course ask Waterville High School English teacher JoAnna St. Germain who late last month directed Secret Service agents to “take out” President Donald Trump and his entourage. Should St. Germain’s attorney be advising her not to answer such questions, here’s an educated guess: not all that long, really. Former FBI Director Comey, who has lied about everything from not being a weasel to serendipitously discovering an…

When I saw Alexi Whitney the second time, nearly forty years after the first, I was stunned.  My vague memory of meeting him when we were both small children is that he was a wild child.  But at that second meeting, my second cousin was wholly transformed.  He’d served in Afghanistan and Iraq as a Force Recon Marine, the best of the best, and seemed tranquil but was hyper-aware, and engaging.  My wife at the time and I had him for dinner as he was passing through Washington. Later that year, he threw me a small piece of contract work,…

There wasn’t a dry eye in the Blaine House on Thursday when Maine Governor Janet Mills (D) broke the bittersweet news that Hannah Pingree, director of the Governor’s Office on Policy Innovation and the Future (GOPIF), would be moving on as soon as tomorrow, May 16. In a fulsome statement, Gov. Mills went to great lengths to highlight an embroidered roster of the achievements Pingree has spearheaded while serving as her chief advisor on the future, broadly speaking: “When I proposed an ‘Office of the Future’ in 2019, I asked Hannah to lead its creation because with her background as…

From Peace Pops to Capitol cops, Ben and Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen has long been a pioneer of cause-based marketing. This week, he took his kabuki dance to the Senate where his long-time friend and beneficiary Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was co-chairing what was supposed to be a serious event. Cohen’s antics on Wednesday at a budget hearing the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP Committee held to probe Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on proposed cuts played to the ice cream man’s “can’t pin me down” brand as he lashed out from the peanut…

Eastern European elections rarely make headlines in the U.S., but when Vice-President JD Vance spoke to the Munich Security Conference in February he made Romania’s recent round of elections a key theme of his argument on where Europe is going off track. This past Sunday’s result suggests Vance may have been prescient. Romanian voters, it seems, were more keyed into the line of thinking that the controversial American vice-president was expressing than what their own elites have been telling them in less convincing terms. “Now we’re at the point, of course, that the situation has gotten so bad that, this…

Imagine two nuclear-armed, global superpowers sleepwalking into a war that would, by conservative estimates, cost at least 10,000 American lives but probably many more. That is the altogether possible scenario playing out between the United States and the Peoples’ Republic of China that CATO Institute senior fellow Doug Bandow described to a group of lawyers in Portland on Thursday. The best way to avoid that conflict, Bandow advised, is to do a better job understanding how China thinks and start playing three dimensional chess instead of Chinese checkers, or even the Western variant. A former special assistant to the late…

There’s an old saying in Washington that goes “where you stand is where you sit,” which is to say too much of the federal government’s time and our tax dollars are wasted every day on bureaucratic infighting. If his planned streamlining of America’s oldest federal department goes forward, Secretary of State Marco Rubio might change that. “In its current form, the Department is bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition,” Secretary Rubio asserted on Tuesday. “Over the past 15 years, the Department’s footprint has had unprecedented growth and costs…

Why would a nationally-recognized Democrat pollster pen an article about her political research in the state of Maine? It could be that Celinda Lake is just really interested in the showdown between Maine Governor Janet Mills (D) and U.S. President Donald Trump (R) over whether transgender students should play on girls’ school sports teams. Or, more likely, she was paid to do so. As The Maine Wire reported last week, Maine’s Equity Commission awarded Lake’s firm a head-scratching $200,000 in 2023 in a no-bid contract. [RELATED: Maine’s Equity Commission Doled Out Lucrative No-Bid Contracts to Politically Connected Consultants, NGOs] Last…

If you wanted to build a name for yourself with Maine Democrats to lay the foundations to run against Republican U.S. Senator Susan Collins in 2026, what would be your smartest play? Silly question, I realize, the answer is so obvious: convince elite audiences in Washington, DC that you, in fact, the man. That’s exactly what Jordan Wood, 35, a former chief-of-staff to progressive California Democratic Congresswoman Katie Porter, is now doing through back-to-back media hits in POLITICO and on NPR. Betting on the odds that what Maine Democrats desperately need now is another insider, Wood is going for broke.…

“Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” — Luke 23:43 Recent news flashes about convicted murderers in Maine prisons seeking special accommodations for their transgender needs play to a broader theme in both state and national news, but they also miss an important point. April, the month when Christians celebrate Easter and the resurrection of Jesus, is Second Chance month. Christ was clear in his thinking on second chances. Not only did he show mercy, compassion and a kindred spirit to those crucified beside him on Calvary as the passage in Luke reflects, but…

A solution to the long-standing challenge that has vexed every American president since Dwight D. Eisenhower may be at hand, former senior diplomat Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian told an audience at the University of Southern Maine’s McGoldrick Center on Wednesday in calling for a “grand bargain” that could bring peace to the Middle East. Djerejian served eight U.S. presidents from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton, and was ambassador both to Israel and Syria, as well as assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs in the George H.W. Bush administration, during which time the Madrid Peace talks were brokered, raising the…

With over 10,000 overdoses last year alone and fatalities — many of them adolescents — ranging from 40 to 70 a month, Maine is facing an existential crisis of drug abuse, Robert “Bobby” Charles told a group of lawyers in Portland on Tuesday. Unless urgent, comprehensive action is taken soon, this trend threatens greater damage to the rising generation than the Vietnam War did to his own, Charles warned. A native of Wayne, Charles served as assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement under President George W. Bush and had previously worked in the White House as…

Rep. William Tuell (R-East Machias) introduced a disarmingly simple bill to Maine’s Legislature last month consisting of only one sentence. His measure seeks to “direct the attorney general to drop his lawsuit against big oil about climate change.” What’s left unsaid by Rep. Tuell’s bill is a broader sentiment that Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey may be on a quixotic quest to score political points that increasingly leaves ordinary Mainers left behind in the dust. Since last November’s election of President Donald Trump, Attorney General Frey seems to have gone into overdrive in an effort to be seen as the…

U.S. President Donald Trump delivered his fifth State of the Union address and the first of his current administration on Tuesday night, offering an expansive speech of about 100 minutes, breaking former president Bill Clinton’s 2000 record for the longest of its kind in recent history. President Trump began and ended his 2025 SOTU by recalling his inaugural pledge earlier this year to deliver a “golden era” for America that will be the country’s “greatest” yet. Within minutes of the speech’s opening, some Democrats in the joint session of Congress interrupted Trump with protests, causing House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana)…

In an extraordinarily contentious meeting that was supposed to set the stage for peace talks and a multi-billion dollar rare earth metals deal, U.S. President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky exchanged tense and at times heated words in an Oval Office meeting on Friday afternoon that was cut short and ended without advancing either goal. “You’re gambling with the the lives of millions of people … you’re gambling with World War Three, and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country.” President Trump told President Zelensky. The two argued in front of media and a room…

The United States and Ukraine may be on the verge of deal that could alter America’s national interest in helping the embattled Eastern European country defend itself from Russian aggression, Ukrainian and U.S. sources said on Tuesday. Such a deal would allow the U.S. long-term access to Ukraine’s untapped supply of rare earth metals. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent traveled to Kyiv earlier this month to propose a contract that would grant Washington ownership of half of Ukraine’s rare earth metals, with an estimated value of $500 billion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly balked at the terms of that deal,…

Given the high-level fireworks between Maine Governor Janet Mills (D) and U.S. President Donald Trump over the state’s refusal to comply with a White House executive order banning biological males from participating in female school sports, it may be difficult to Mainers to imagine any other political reality than the charged and arguably inflated present moment. Yet many are already measuring the drapes on the Blaine House. [RELATED: Gov. Mills Vows to Resist Federal Ban on Boys in Girls Sports After Trump Singled out Maine and Threatened to Pull Funding] At a far less visible level, and still more the…

President Donald Trump and Maine Governor Janet Mills traded legal ultimatums on Friday afternoon in a dispute arising from the state’s refusal to implement a White House order banning males from female school sports. “Governors won’t be governors if they continue to allow men in women’s sports,” Trump said, before looking to Governor Mills and asking her what she’s going to do. “You better do it, because you’re not going to get federal funding,” Trump said directly to Mills during a meeting with bipartisan governors in Washington. According to the Daily Wire’s White House correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan, Mills said…

As Armenian-Americans in Maine voice their outrage with past anti-Armenian advocacy by Gov. Janet Mills’ (D) newly appointed Director of the Office of New Americans Tarlan Ahmadov, The Maine Wire is taking a deeper look at the controversial state employee’s associations with foreign governments and movements. Last May, Ahmadov escorted two Maine state lawmakers on a trip to the city of Shusha in Nagorno-Karabakh — the subject of a longstanding conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia which Azeri forces occupied several years ago. “Our visit to Shusha was unforgettable for me. I especially want to talk about the restoration and reconstruction…

When Heather Sanborn served in the Maine State Legislature not so long ago, she voted in support of granting credits to solar companies as part of Governor Janet Mills’ (D) green energy agenda, but now that she’s the state’s Public Advocate representing the ratepayers before the Public Utilities Commission, is she ready to fight against the complex, controversial and burdensome net energy billing (NEB) program that is leaving more and more Mainer’s with sticker shock when they open their electric bills? “We haven’t saved any money since we started (the community solar program),” Daryl Sawyer told FOX23 News on Tuesday,…

Frenchville resident and Voice of the People radio host Dan Smeriglio calls himself “an activist first,” so he was ready to record when Maine State Republican Party Chairman Jim Deyermond called him for a friendly chat about primary challenge to U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R). On Friday, Smeriglio, 42, filed with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) as a GOP candidate to challenge long-time incumbent. Smeriglio, who moved to the Aroostook County town in 2023, posted a partial recording of their conversation on X: https://twitter.com/vopusaradio/status/1891931509034004766?s=42 In the conversation, Deyermond says he is “not trying to talk you out of doing anything,…

Before Vice President JD Vance took the stage at the Munich Security Conference, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was taking a beating by the commentariat for his own remarks in Europe before the Ukraine Contact Group. “We must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is simply unrealistic,” Secretary Hegseth told the shocked assembly of mostly Europeans. Worse yet, he said, Ukraine would not be joining NATO. No matter the messenger, these were unpopular policy statements from the new Trump administration — even if both end up being true. The frothy reception to what he had to say even…

The push for boilerplate ‘Red Flag’ laws that would give authorities the ability to remove firearms and deny Second Amendment rights to targeted individuals endangers the progress Maine policymakers have made, experts, lawyers and legislators from both sides of the aisle argued on Friday at the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine (SAM) Institute for Legislative Action conference in Augusta. “The problem with red flag laws is they’re harder to get (against potentially dangerous individuals) when you need them,” former Aroostook County state senator and Probate Judge Michael Carpenter said. In other words, they don’t work. 21 states have ‘Red Flag’ laws,…

Elon Musk’s visit to the Oval Office on Tuesday was no simple courtesy call, a new executive order setting strict guidelines on how federal agencies may hire new staff suggests. The far-reaching mandate puts a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) “team lead” at the apex of every federal agency and sets a cap on hiring only one new government worker for every four who depart in what policy analysts are calling a substantial expansion of DOGE’s powers. “By eliminating waste, bloat, and insularity, my Administration will empower American families, workers, taxpayers, and our system of Government itself,” President Donald Trump…

As promised while when route to the Super Bowl on Sunday afternoon, U.S. President Donald Trump announced increased tariffs on imported steel and aluminum late Monday and said America would hike its current 10 percent penalty to 25 percent by mid-March. Tuesday morning, the White House issued a fact sheet elaborating on President Trump’s planned action aimed at shoring up the country’s national security and “restoring fairness to steel and aluminum markets.” America imported about 23 percent of its steel production last year, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute. The three biggest exporters were Canada, Brazil and Mexico,…

On Thursday morning, the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions is scheduled to hear from U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary, Linda MacMahon. Given the Trump administration’s stated goal of shutting down the U.S. Department of Education, this hearing offers a logical forum on how best to do that in a way that actually helps America’s failing education system. Nationwide, test scores released last month showed a discouraging decline in how fourth and eighth graders performed in math, reading, and science. These results highlight serious concerns that America’s schools have not yet re-bounded from the…

The Kennebec County Democratic Committee pulled its support from a planned protest outside the State Capitol in Augusta on Wednesday that was held as part of a “50 Protests, 50 States, 1 Day” movement nation-wide because of concerns about “infiltrators,” a county party leader said. “I am deeply saddened to report that The Kennebec County Dems have pulled their permit for the event tomorrow and are canceling,” a Facebook post by the Knox Maine Democrats announced, adding “They agreed only yesterday and get a permit to legitimize what had been a poorly defined and, some people believe suspect movement.” That…

By choosing the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as its first target for demolition, Elon Musk’s DOGE made a savvy political decision. While the federal government’s gravy train of spending largesse usually has a beneficiary somewhere in America, USAID doesn’t — the foreign aid bureaus clients are mainly a group of “Beltway bandits,” or contracting companies expert mainly in winning grants. Who (other than maybe their own employees) would stand up for them? Moreover, it’s not hard to make a case against USAID simply by highlighting its goofier or more outlandish projects, like street theater in Afghanistan and Djibouti…

Standing next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Donald Trump suggested on Tuesday evening that America take over the war-torn Gaza Strip and reconstruct the ravaged territory on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” “We’ll own it,” President Trump said during the news conference, “Level it out and create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.” Intense fighting over the past fifteen month between the Israeli military and the terrorist group Hamas has left Gaza, a Palestinian territory, in…

U.S. President Donald Trump and Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke on Monday morning and forged a temporary agreement to delay threatened tariffs between the countries one month, both leaders said. President Trump also posted on Truth Social on Monday that he has spoken with Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and will do so again later today. According to Mexican President Sheinbaum, she agreed to post an additional 10,000 national guard on her country’s side of the U.S.-Mexican border to help combat the flow of migrants and drugs. The status of when substantial tariffs might be levied against Canada remains unclear.…

American airstrikes targeted leaders of the Islamic State, or ISIS, in Somalia on Saturday and killed senior leaders of the organization without harming civilians, U.S. President Donald Trump said. “The message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is ‘WE WILL FIND YOU AND WE WILL KILL YOU!’ President Trump posted on social media. https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1885740103223648412?s=46 According to the U.S. military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM), American fighter jets struck multiple targets in the Golis mountains in coordination with the federal government of Somalia. “This action further degrades ISIS’s ability to plot and conduct terrorist attacks threatening U.S. citizens, our partners,…

A federal judge in Manhattan sentenced former U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) to 11 years in prison on Wednesday afternoon for multiple acts of corruption and serving as an agent of a foreign power while chairing the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “You were successful, powerful, you stood at the apex of our political system,’ U.S. District Court Judge Sidney Stein told Menendez as he handed down the sentence “but somewhere along the way, you lost your way and instead of working for the public good you started working for your own good.” Last summer, a jury convicted Menendez…

Lt. Col. Tulsi Gabbard, President Donald Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence, faces a series of challenges to her confirmation and the first major test will be her hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Thursday. [RELATED: Pete Hegseth Confirmed as Defense Secretary…] U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) is one of several who have been cited in recent media reports expressing skepticism about Gabbard’s past statements and positions. In an interview earlier this week, Sen. Collins expressed concern in particular with how Gabbard has explained her position on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows…

Matt Brackley had a sense of foreboding long before the FBI showed up at his home two days after he announced his intention to run for the Maine State Senate in 2022. He was already struck with what he calls a “heavy heart” a year earlier, on January 6, 2021, before leaving his Washington, DC, hotel room to go hear President Donald Trump address a rally on the Ellipse. Before leaving his hotel room, he dropped to his knees and — for the first time in five years — prayed to God for guidance. https://twitter.com/TheMaineWire/status/1882901168575115593 At two a.m. on Tuesday…

Editor’s Note: We’re aware of the moral hazard inherent in publishing a positive review of a documentary produced by the Maine Wire at TheMaineWire.com. To address any concerns, we’ve decided to double Mr. Patten’s usual fee. It doesn’t take a groundbreaking documentary to tell you we live in crazy times, but The Maine Wire’s Triad Weed movie is a can’t miss expose — not only for Mainers, but for any American who questions whether our country is truly going to pot. Starring Maine Wire editor-in-chief Steve Robinson, this eye-popping, 90 minute documentary tells a real story about foreign interference in…

In selecting Minnesota Governor Tim Walz – a man with even less foreign policy experience than herself if that is indeed imaginable – presumptive 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris seemed to be saying that foreign policy doesn’t really matter in this election. But if you look carefully for what’s not being said, the truth is even more alarming.American decline in world affairs has become such an accepted notion that ignoring national security credentials in a forming a leading party ticket is almost normal. Sixteen years ago, former Democratic President Barack Obama took Delaware Sen. Joe Biden onto his ticket…

As a fellow bearer of a politically motivated felony conviction, I have some unsolicited advice for Donald J. Trump on how he could flip the script on his recent status change. Now that he is part of “the club,” Trump may come to see some wisdom in talking about his status differently. After I had to eat a charge that came from an investigation into him (that ended up being based on vapors and disinformation) in 2018, I elected not to ask Trump for a pardon because, frankly, I didn’t see much point to it. Unlike those he did pardon…

Time to Address the “Vision Thing” on Ukraine Now that the Congress has signed off on what will be a running total of over $120 billion to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia, it’s past time to ask the Biden administration: “what’s the plan, man?” Absent a big picture speech from the president, the best we can do is piece together a prediction based on what we know about the Washington-Kyiv relationship to date because it is in the common interest of Americans and Ukrainians to better understand where this is going. Beginning with former President George H.W. Bush’s infamous…

“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war,” Mark Antony warns in Act of Three of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. But what if the dogs have already been loosed? In addressing the Russian public this weekend about a cowardly attack on concertgoers in Moscow on Friday, President Vladimir Putin pointed a crooked finger at Ukraine, the country he formally invaded just over two years ago, for “opening a window” through which the terrorists could escape. What Putin failed to note in his remarks is that the Islamic State had already claimed responsibility for the terrorist act in the Crocus City…

Back before it much mattered — ie. when he was just a senator from Delaware, just the chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees or just even vice president— it was probably a source of mild bemusement for his staff to guess what might come out of Joe Biden’s mouth the moment the microphones went hot. Would he accuse John Bolton of chasing a woman across Kazakhstan with a staple-gun, put the kibosh on Anita Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment, or would he tell U.S. troops serving in harm’s way in Afghanistan to “clap for that, you stupid…

Today is “Officers’ Day,” otherwise known as “Men’s Day” among those who served in the Soviet military. My former business partner Kostya – a Russian-Ukrainian who once made his way onto the FBI’s most wanted list – had once served and used to joke that it was a day to put on your old uniform, get drunk thinking about the old days, and pass out with your face in the herring salad. Not anymore. Russian President Vladimir Putin chose the day after “Officer’s Day” to launch Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine twenty-four hours short of two years ago. In doing…

Tucker Carlson is neither Walter Duranty (the notorious New York Times correspondent in Moscow in the 1930s who helped Josef Stalin cover up his murder by starvation of millions of Ukrainians, earning a Pulitzer Prize in the process) nor David Frost (who famously interview Richard Nixon at San Clemente, Calif. after the late American president resigned), but he did conduct an ambitious interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin that aired on his website and the X platform on Thursday night. https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1754939251257475555?s=20 “Is this a talk show or a serious conversation?” Putin taunted Carlson at the interview’s outset, before launching into a thirty-minute…

I got the weirdest email the other night from Donald Trump. He said he loved me. It was very confusing, because the smart people in the media keep telling me how hateful a man he is. It was so confusing it got me thinking: where the hell did this guy sending me love notes come from anyway? The original plan was as deliriously simple as it was devilish: invent a creature so loathsome, voters would do ANYTHING to avoid letting it anywhere near our sacred power. Make the creature vainglorious, racist, sexist, make it a bull in a china shop,…

Official Washington is laying it on thick when it comes to U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s “secret” hospitalization for colon cancer surgery. The White House claims it was surprised not to have been informed of Secretary Austin’s hospitalization at the Walter Reed Medical Center, which is run by the federal government. Members of the Biden administration seem all too ready to level blame on the sick man, ie. the one who just underwent surgery with complications, not the one with a chair behind the Resolute Desk. DOOCY: "If the administration is gonna go to such great lengths to keep secrets…

Ten years ago, I wrote a column for the Bangor Daily News (back when it ran actual news) entitled “The Audacity of Shenna Bellows.” At the time, she was the Democratic Party’s sacrificial lamb running for Susan Collins’ seat in the U.S. Senate and had gone to some lengths to misrepresent the centrist Republican senator’s position on abortion rights. In her decision today, by fiat, to declare Donald Trump ineligible to be on Maine’s ballot in the coming year’s presidential election, Bellows has — in essence — said to herself, the state, and the nation: “hold my beer.” When Bellows…

Listening to Obama advisor David Axelrod compare the Hunter Biden probe to Benghazi, it suddenly becomes clear that among people for whom consequence is an abstract notion the truth can only be heard in Freudian slips like this. Do you remember Benghazi? During the blessedly “scandal-free” Obama Administration, the U.S. State Department declined urgent appeals for help from U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and his security detail because giving them the assistance they needed would have elevated a situation the administration was trying to keep on a low boil. Ambassador Stevens and three CIA officers were brutally killed because, the Obama administration wanted…

“Mister Kissinger, he dead.” (with apologies to Joseph Conrad) As a little boy from Maine, the prospect of spending Thanksgiving with the mythical Henry Kissinger was exciting beyond words – my mother took me down to Coffins in Rockland and bought me a grey, corduroy, three-piece suit. For the meal, my grandfather ordered a suckling pig with an apple in its mouth. When the honored guest arrived in the narrow corridor, the already elder statesman hunched over to pat me on the head. I don’t think I washed my hair for a week or two afterwards, but, in those days,…

While the Jewish state of Israel faces the threat of annihilation, it is cruelly ironic that anti-Semitism has gone mainstream in the US. Since the beginning of this October, it has quadrupled — and you wouldn’t know that from watching the news.Just after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February of last year, the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag could be seen just about anywhere you’d look in America, especially in Maine. But now less than a month into a different war — between Israel and Hamas or, to be blunt, Iran — precious few, if any, Stars…

Living downriver and across Merrymeeting Bay from accused mass murderer Robert Card II, the last couple days have been as filled with ill-winds for me as any Mainer. It was just Tuesday I was driving up and down Rt. 196, where Card ditched his Subaru Wednesday night. When I look at his face in photos, what terrifies me most is that he looks just like one of us. After a large explosion, the oxygen is sucked out of the air for a moment and things feel like the eerily warm, low-pressure days we’re had this week. As we’re experiencing now…