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It's mid October, but all the talk in Washington has been of Snowe. The Snowe forecasts were all over the map Tuesday morning. ABC's George Stephanopolous put the probability of a Snowe vote in favor of the Senate Finance Committee's health-care legislation at 45 percent. Politico's Mike Allen put the likelihood of Snowe falling in favor of the legislation at 20 percent. The NBC News political department put the "chance of Snowe" much higher in its forecast. The source of all these predictions, Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, walked into the Hart Building hearing room a few minutes after 10:00...

Will Snowe fall again? Updated: Yes; 2:54pm Eastern Senate Finance Cmte vote is 14-9 By Michelle Malkin  •  October 13, 2009 09:27 AM Scroll down for updates…10:45am – Snowe wanted reassurance from CBO and Baucus that scoring “integrity” will be preserved as conceptual language becomes legislative language…1:04pm Eastern…Snowe will vote YES on government health care takeover…2:54pm Eastern Senate Finance Cmte vote is 14-9 Sen. Olympia Snowe was one of the three members of the Senate GOP Turncoat Caucus who voted for the trillion-dollar Generational Theft Act.This morning, the Senate Finance Committee votes on the tax-and-spend government health care takeover and “all eyes...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine said Tuesday that she'd support a sweeping Senate Finance Committee bill overhauling the U.S. health-care industry, giving Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., a sought-after Republican vote on President Barack Obama's top domestic priority. In highly anticipated comments on the $829 billion, 10-year bill, Snowe said the bill wasn't all she wanted. "Far from it," she told fellow senators during what is likely to be the committee's last work session on Baucus's bill. "But when history calls, history calls, and I happen to think that the consequences of inaction dictate the urgency of Congress...

See link. I can not excerpt one line.

Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe broke with her party Tuesday and said she will vote for a Democratic health care bill, handing President Barack Obama a much-sought boost in his quest to expand access to medical coverage to all Americans. Approval of the legislation by the Senate Finance Committee was a foregone conclusion going into Tuesday's vote, since Democrats outnumber Republicans 13-10 on the panel. But Snowe's decision gave the vote a significance that transcends partisan divisions. For months, congressional Republicans have been virtually unanimous in denouncing the Democratic bills as an unwarranted expansion of government influence. The Maine senator kept...

Sens: Snowe's Healthcare Vote Puts Her Top Commerce Perch At Risk By Alexander Bolton - 10/13/09 Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine) is risking a shot at becoming the top Republican on an influential Senate committee by backing Democratic healthcare legislation, according to senators on the panel. A Senate Democrat on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee said Republicans on the panel are threatening to vote against Snowe, who is in line for the senior GOP post that is about to come open. “Wake up,” the Democrat told a reporter last week when questioned if the Republicans would retaliate against Snowe for...

Per MSNBC's front page, Olympia Snowe will vote YES on the Baucus Bill. No surprise here....

No link, breaking on Boston.com

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe says she will vote for a Democratic health care bill, breaking with her party on President Barack Obama's top legislative priority. The Maine senator kept virtually all of Washington guessing how she would vote until she announced it late in the Senate Finance Committee debate Tuesday. Until then, she told reporters, she had not even let Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in on her secret. She told her colleagues: "When history calls, history calls," even though she had some criticism of the bill.

Congress: If the people of Maine want a dysfunctional health care system, that's their business. But why must their senator insist that the rest of us have the same? Now that Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee is gone and Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter has defected, Maine's senior senator, Olympia Snowe, may be the least reliable Republican in the U.S. Senate. She may have been all along. Which is why Democrats hope she'll vote against her party once again on health care reform. Snowe is the lone Republican on the Senate Finance Committee that's open to the Democrat-backed bill expected to move to...

Should Obama send more soldiers to Afghanistan? YES NO

OCTOBER 3, 2009 Snowe Vote Looms in the Health Battle JANET ADAMY and GREG HITT WASHINGTON -- The final hours of the Senate Finance Committee's marathon health debate focused on making its bill affordable for the middle class. Now, the question is whether Democrats did enough to win over Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, and whether they stayed within the budget limits set by President Barack Obama. The committee wrapped up its debate just after 2 a.m. EDT Friday. Its vote, set for next week, could be a milestone in Mr. Obama's drive for a health-care bill this year that would...

The Maine Ethics Commission has overruled a staff recommendation, and okayed an investigation into fundraising groups that oppose Maine's gay marriage law. By a three-to-two vote the panel ruled there's sufficient evidence to warrant a close look at fundraising by the National Organization for Marriage, or NOM, which is a major contributor to the group Stand for Marriage Maine. Supporters of the same sex marriage law claim NOM is ignoring a Maine law that requires it to name its donors. But NOM says it asks for donations nationally without designating them for specific campaigns so it doesn't have to report...

Former president and World II naval aviator George H.W. Bush has been honored by some of his neighbors in Kennebunkport. The group unveiled a Navy anchor and a plaque acquired as a way to thank Bush for his service as president and for being a good neighbor.

WASHINGTON – They call her "President Snowe" in the blogosphere. Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe is the only Republican in Congress who might vote for President Barack Obama's effort to overhaul health care and extend coverage to those who lack it. And that gives the unassuming, 62-year-old lawmaker almost as much power over the bill's fate — and that of the millions of Americans it would affect — as the big guy himself. (snip) Snowe stands as the woman with the most clout in Washington, poised at the intersection of ambitious efforts to change the nation's system of medical care amid...

AUGUSTA, Maine (BP)--The issue of "gay marriage" in public schools is now front and center in Maine, thanks to a new television ad paid for by a group opposed to redefining marriage. Stand For Marriage Maine launched the ad Sept. 23, spotlighting a Massachusetts couple whose son's second-grade class was read a book, "King & King," about a prince who "marries" another prince. The couple objected and requested notification of similar books in the future, but the school refused. The couple then sued in federal court and lost. The ad is at the heart of an effort to pass Question...

Taking Health Care Courtship Up Another Notch By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG Published: September 26, 2009 WASHINGTON — With its swanky wine bar and jazz pianist, the 701 Restaurant is one of those downtown spots where lobbyists woo clients and couples pursue romance. But it was a political courtship — President Obama’s quest for a health care overhaul — that brought the White House budget director, Peter R. Orszag, and Senator Susan Collins of Maine together for a recent dinner there. Ms. Collins is one of a handful of moderate Republicans who might provide the president a pivotal vote, but she...

Quiz time: Which of the following provisions has been tucked into the most closely watched health-care bill on Capitol Hill thanks to Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine? Is it a) an annual checkup for every Medicare beneficiary, b) a special health-insurance marketplace in every state that would cater to the needs of small businesses or c) new tax credits to help modest-size firms buy coverage for their workers? The answer is all of the above. As the only Republican on the Finance Committee still in talks with Democrats on a final bill, Snowe now finds herself with extraordinary leverage as...

Politics: In yet another vote against transparency, the Senate killed an amendment imposing legislative oversight on unconfirmed White House officials. Shouldn't we know who they are and what they're doing? Green czar Van Jones is gone, forced to leave the administration after Fox News and the conservative blogosphere revealed his past as a self-avowed communist. Jones had issues that some argue should have been discussed in confirmation hearings that never occurred before he assumed his position. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, would have liked to have learned of Jones' communist links and more before this man, who believes that white America...

BANGOR, Maine — Members of the Muslim community came together Sunday morning to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan, a month of fasting. More than 100 men, women and children gathered at Spectacular Events on Griffin Road because their mosque in Orono is not large enough to accommodate such a large crowd. “Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar,” the congregation prayed in Arabic. “Laa ilaaha illa Allah. Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar. Walillaahil hamd.” “Allah is the most great, Allah is the most great,” is how the prayer translates into English, according to Ahmed Abdelmajeed of Bangor, who...

Some big-game registration stations, upset over a $4 fee increase to tag bears, have stopped providing the service in Maine. For many years, store owners charged hunters $1 to register animals, pocketing the money. The Legislature added $4 to be sent to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife... Hunters cannot keep an unregistered bear, deer, moose or wild turkey at home or any place of storage for more than 18 hours...

Senate Republicans issued a blunt warning to their Democratic colleagues today: Don’t even think about using reconciliation to ram through a health care bill. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters that Democrats suffer a severe backlash if they used the procedural tactic, which would allow them to pass reform legislation with a bare 51 votes. This warning is not new – GOP leaders have gone so far as to call the use of this procedural maneuver a “nuclear” option – but McConnell renewed his warning amid reports that the Senate could still use reconciliation of they can’t win bipartisan support...

Bangor Police Chief Ron Gastia ... “It nonetheless remains necessary to increase the parking revenue and address the limited enforcement of on-street parking.” In that memo, which was leaked to the Bangor Daily News earlier this week, he announced the enactment of a new quota system demanding that patrol officers write a minimum of 10 parking tickets per month. He has since reduced the quota to five tickets a month. Gastia had not intended that internal memo to get into the hands of the public or the media, and when I spoke with him Friday he was clearly not happy...

President Obama intends to keep wooing the public to support for his health care goals in a scheduled Monday night appearance on the “Late Show with David Letterman.” Polls suggest he has had mixed results so far. Most critical, however, is his private effort to persuade one person: Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine. And that effort appears to be going very well. Ms. Snowe has not endorsed either Democratic health care bill in the Senate. No Republican has. But in an interview, she offered a surprisingly robust endorsement of Mr. Obama’s skepticism about expanding government too much, his...

It would be understandable for those who closely follow politics to have missed Republican Senator Olympia Snowe’s comments on health care a couple of days ago. The second week of September was an unusually big week for partisan politics (and that’s saying something in this day and age). Commentators on both sides of the divide sparred bitterly over the crowd estimates for the massive 9/12 Taxpayer March on the National Mall. In addition, the drip, drip, drip of scandalous revelations surrounding the ACORN “prostitution sting” further strained the lengths of recent political polarization. And as the weekend neared, allegations of...

Give President Obama credit for persistence. And stubbornness. And lack of imagination. He declared again last week that his health care plan "will slow the growth of health care costs for our families and our businesses and our government." And this historic achievement will be accompanied by a dazzling array of new medical benefits that everyone will receive--guaranteed by law. Okay, you've heard this before. But that's the president's story, and he's sticking to it. The question is, why? Does he think we're stupid? His argument has failed to persuade a sizeable majority of the American people precisely because they're...

Sen. Olympia Snow (R-Maine): "I've always been a Republican for the traditional principles associated with the Republican Party."

Senate Democrats are going to have to move forward on healthcare without a single Republican supporter after Sen. Olympia Snowe said Tuesday she could not back the Finance Committee’s bill. Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) failed to win any Republican backer despite weeks of intense negotiations behind closed doors to strike a deal.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) is the chief proponent of a public option "trigger," but she said Monday that she does not expect one in the Finance Committee bill. In fact, the trigger has barely come up in the Gang of Six talks. "It probably will be a straight co-op at this point," Snowe said. "We did not discuss the trigger to be part of the co-op, at least in the framework we have before us." She said she wasn't abandoning the idea, which Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) panned on the Sunday talk shows. "It may be something down the road,"...

Moderate Republican Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) said a public option in the health care bill is "universally opposed by all Republicans in the Senate" and called it "a roadblock to building the kind of consensus that we need to move forward," on "Face the Nation" Sunday. "[T]herefore, there's no way to pass a plan that includes the public option," she told moderator Bob Schieffer. She said that the president "should be more specific" on where he stands on the public option and called David Axelrod's assertion that

A key swing vote on healthcare reform said Sunday she would not support a public option "trigger" -- a series of benchmarks that, if not met by a certain time, would authorize the creation of a government insurance program.

I was in Maine on the day that marriage qualified for the ballot this November. I went to Maine as president and founder of the National Organization for Marriage, which helped local groups organize the signature drive in Maine, as we did in California for Proposition 8. Most of the people in Maine were enthusiastic, but one clergyman asked me, "Shouldn't we live with our neighbors in peace?" His question haunts me for its debased presumptions: Is using democracy to fight for shared values somehow an act of war against our neighbors? "Agree with me or you're a hater" is...

The email dings started around 10:00 pm, and continued throughout the night as folks throughout Maine sent me the latest report on CNN.com that quotes "sources" who claim, "President Obama and top aides have quietly stepped up talks with moderate Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine on a scaled-back health care bill, according to two sources familiar with the negotiations." I know that Washington, D.C. folks spend a great deal of time in an alternative world, but seriously - Senator Snowe engaged in behind the scenes talks with the President?  Forget for a moment that Senator Snowe has been working on...

http://www.freedomslighthouse.com/2009/09/man-calls-for-resignation-of-maine.html Here is video of a citizen of Maine calling for the resignations of Maine GOP Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, and Rep. Michaud because they voted for President Obama's Stimulus Bill. He made the statement at a Town Hall Meeting with a lot of people - but with no Senators or legislators present. Instead, participants had put chairs at the front with pictures of their legislators in the chairs! The man talked to the pictures in calling for their resignations! That's what it has come to. The people are so fed up with what is happening they will...

In a last effort to give the Senate a bipartisan health care bill, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee circulated a comprehensive proposal on Sunday to overhaul the health care system and proposed a new fee on insurance companies to help pay for coverage of the uninsured. ... The proposal by Mr. Baucus does not include a public option, or a government-run insurance plan, to compete with private insurers, as many Democrats want. ... It remains to be seen how Mr. Baucus’s plan might mesh with any proposals Mr. Obama lays out as he tries to pump up support...

Health Care: In the wake of a public outcry effectively killing the "public option," who comes along to try to revive socialistic health reform? The definitive Republican In Name Only — Sen. Olympia Snowe.The leftist supporters of radical health care reform are so crazed about its growing unpopularity that last week one of them bit the pinky off of a senior citizen for disagreeing with him at a MoveOn.org rally in Southern California. Republicans can rightly rejoice at seeing Americans practice assertive, effective citizenship. Angry crowds at this summer's town halls recognized the government-run "public option" that Democrats push is...

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is objecting “in the strongest terms” to an Associated Press decision to transmit a photograph showing a mortally wounded 21-year-old Marine in his final moments of life, calling the decision “appalling” and a breach of “common decency.” The AP reported that the Marine’s father had asked – in an interview and in a follow-up phone call — that the image, taken by an embedded photographer, not be published. The AP reported in a story that it decided to make the image public anyway, because it “conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men...

The Senate Finance Committee's bipartisan negotiating team is expected to continue talks Friday on a health care reform plan that the vice president predicted would eventually pass the Congress. "As bleak as it looks, you know, always darkest before the dawn," Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Thursday, after a speech at the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank. "The prospects of success are high. I think they are very high." The Finance Committee's "gang of six" -- three Republicans and three Democrats -- plans to hold its second teleconference call since the August break. The group was given...

Snowe Unlikely to Buck Gang to Cut White House Deal By Emily Pierce and David M. Drucker Roll Call Staff Sept. 3, 2009, 4:34 p.m. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) appears unlikely to walk away from bipartisan health care reform talks in the Senate Finance Committee to cut a side deal with the White House, but her spokeswoman said Thursday that she continues to keep an “open line of communication” with President Barack Obama. “The Senator’s foremost goal is to achieve a bipartisan consensus among the six members of the group on a path forward for meaningful health care reform,” Snowe...

President Obama and top aides have quietly stepped up talks with moderate Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine on a scaled-back health care bill, according to two sources familiar with the negotiations. The compromise plan would lack a government-run public health insurance option favored by Obama, but would leave the door open to adding that provision down the road under an idea proposed by Snowe, the sources said. One of the sources said White House officials are "deep in conversations" with Snowe on a much smaller health care bill than Obama originally envisioned. The modified proposal would include insurance reforms,...

Senior White House officials, in conversations with reporters today, are floating the idea that President Obama is secretly negotiating with Sen. Olympia Snowe over a health care compromise that would phase in a government-funded health care alternative if private insurance companies fail to meet quality and cost benchmarks over a certain period of the time. The public discussion of the Snowe "compromise" is meant to test the reaction of House Democrats, who will pass a bill that includes an immediate public option added to a new health insurance exchange. The White House hopes that, having voted for a public option,...

PORTLAND, Maine — A Maine man caught peering up at a girl from below an outhouse toilet seat four years ago stands accused of crawling into another pit toilet on White Mountain National Forest property in New Hampshire. A federal affidavit indicates a 49-year-old man confessed to repeating his previous act on Memorial Day. Federal agents sought the man out after a 9-year-old boy saw him climbing out of a toilet at the Hastings Campground. Two witnesses saw him walk away from the outhouse.

A revision to the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, the proposed Rockefeller-Snowe legislation in Congress, has drawn criticism because of concerns that it would give the president power to shut down the internet. The proposed law, introduced in April by Sen. John (Jay) Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, originally contained a controversial clause that said: “The president may declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of internet traffic to and from any compromised federal government or critical infrastructure information system or network.” The bill recently was revised, and the new language now reads: “The president...

A disgusting, un-American tactic is coming to Maine. As they did in California, homosexual activists are preparing to harass and intimidate people who donate money to support the pro-marriage ballot question, to be voted on in Maine this November. In California they posted the names, addresses, and dollar amounts of people who donated to the Proposition 8 pro-marriage cause. They even posted Google maps with locations of their houses. As a result people were viciously harassed. Business were boycotted and picketed. Some people even lost their jobs when their pro-gay employers found out. Now one of those California groups is...

STATEWIDE PINK SLIP PETITION RALLY! TODAY

STORM LAKE -- A 55-year-old Storm Lake man was arrested Thursday morning for allegedly making terrorist threats to Taco John's employees, according to a written statement from the Storm Lake Police Department today. Roger Crawford entered the Taco John's on East Milwaukee Avenue and threatened to...use mustard gas on the establishment, the statement said. Crawford remained angry when he left the fast food restaurant traveling westbound on Milwaukee Avenue on a bicycle.

As Congress prepares to hit the restart button on the health care debate, Senator Olympia J. Snowe does not relish the prospect of becoming a Group of One. “I certainly hope not,” exclaimed Ms. Snowe, about the possibility that she could end up as the sole Republican willing to join Senate Democrats in moving ahead on a broad change in health care. Ms. Snowe and two Republican colleagues, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, have been privately negotiating a health care plan with three Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee in what has...

BREWER, Maine — An estimated 450 people from throughout Maine’s 2nd Congressional District and beyond gathered in Brewer Tuesday night to give their elected representatives a piece of their minds. The problem was U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe and U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud were no shows. Instead the dozens of people who traveled from such places as Washington County, Casco, Saco, East Millinocket, Orrington, the St. John Valley, Bangor, and York County, had to make due by addressing blown up photographs of the three propped up against three empty chairs that had been reserved for them at the...

On Thursday, August 20, the homosexual movement formally began its massive multi-million dollar campaign to win - for the first time in America - a state-wide vote on homosexual "marriage". The Maine homosexual lobby, which is largely organized and funded (through GLAD and others) in Massachusetts, began broadcasting a slick, well-honed TV commercial statewide . Also on Thursday the homosexual lobby revealed their plans to bring in waves of "volunteers" from other states to campaign on the ground up until the November election.

As Hurricane Bill churns in the Atlantic today, Bay Staters are bracing for a coastal whack ... warning of 25-foot waves and 110 -mph winds pummeling Nantucket, and deadly riptides along the entire Massachusetts coastline.