Free Republic

Healthcare, Fiscal, and Tax 10/22/2014 Jeanne Shaheen's Dishonest Claim That Obamacare Doesn't Cut Medicare Avik Roy In last night’s U.S. Senate debate in New Hampshire between incumbent Jeanne Shaheen (D.) and challenger Scott Brown (R.), Shaheen uttered a flat-out, bald-faced lie: that Obamacare doesn’t cut Medicare spending to pay for its expansion of coverage to the uninsured. It’s a talking point that a number of Democratic Senate candidates—and their enablers in the lefty blogosphere—have been clinging to. And it’s embarrassingly dishonest. “I want to go back to Scott Brown’s suggestion that we’ve taken three-quarters of a trillion dollars out of...

Federal regulators slapped a six-month ban on most cod fishing off New England this week and are threatening to cut next year’s catch by up to 75 percent, in a move some say will destroy the livelihoods of fishermen across the region. ... NOAA announced several measures, including the ban which expands no-fishing zones, on Monday. But fishermen whose livelihoods rely on catching cod, as well as the coastal communities that depend on money coming in from that industry, worry the new regulations will devastate them.

Post maine thoughts here

Maine Governor Paul LePage called Howie to celebrate his re-election to the corner office and what was in store for Maine.

Initiative 594 just passed in Washington State, bringing on residents mandatory gun background checks and making it a felony to privately purchase or even hand a gun to a friend without government permission. A story in the Seattle Times the morning after the mid-term elections, revealed the true motives of the I-594 campaign and its proponents. It didn’t take long for the other shoe to drop and the rest of their anti-rights agenda to be exposed. Other states they’re now targeting with initiatives include Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, and Maine. Our rights are and always have been their real target, not...

For years now, whenever someone would draw up a list of the most vulnerable incumbent governors in the country, Maine’s Paul LePage would be right near the top. Pugnacious, hot-headed, and occasionally vulgar, LePage was consistently underwater with his approval ratings, especially after he would make national headlines for telling the state chapter of the NAACP to kiss his butt or television viewers everywhere that a Democratic state senator always wanted to “give it to the people without Vaseline.” (SNIP) In the end, over 8 percent of voters cast ballots for Cutler, sealing Michaud’s fate. But a third-party spoiler only...

At a press conference held at his home in Brunswick, Maine, independent Senator Angus King announced that he plans to continue caucusing with the Democrats, after months of speculation that he might switch allegiances if the GOP took control of the Senate.

Angus King is holding a press conference. Apparently, officially it's merely to "discuss" what party he will caucus with; I don't know if National Review's Sahil Kapur is being presumptuous, but he tweeted that King will caucus with the Republican Party. King has been a lockstep liberal, but switching party may move him slightly to the right (as it did Colorado party-switcher Ben Nighthorse Campbell). More importantly, it would seem unlikely that he could politically switch back to the Democrats if the Republicans outnumbered them 50-49 after the 2016 elections. So this would give the Republicans a boost in holding...

Maine Republican Governor Paul LePage has won re-election, CBS projected on Tuesday, retaining his seat in a three-way race against six-term Democratic U.S. Representative Michael Michaud and independent Eliot Cutler. LePage, 66, a former millworker, is an outspoken Tea Party-backed conservative who was considered one of the most vulnerable governors....

Kaci Hickox didn't go to the polls. She instead opted to vote via absentee ballot on Monday, her lawyer told ABC News. Hickox's boyfriend, Ted Wilbur, told ABC News today, "We voted yesterday in absentia, and you can guess who we voted for. We encourage all the good people of Maine to join us in returning decency to Blaine house." Blaine House is where the Maine governor, now Paul LePage, has traditionally resided for nearly 100 years. The incumbent Republican who's in a competitive race for re-election had tried to force Hickox to take a blood test. LePage has polled...

Kaci Hickox, the nurse who was quarantined despite testing negative for the Ebola virus after returning home from Sierra Leone, said this morning on Meet the Press that she will stay away from public places in her Maine town, and apologized to residents for the media firestorm that has erupted. Upon landing in Newark, New Jersey, she was forced into quarantine under the new regulations put into place by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and has since defied those orders and returned to her hometown of Fort Kent, Maine. Even though a judge ruled that Maine Gov. Paul LePage can...

Nay-sayers are all too quick to decry scientific findings if they don’t agree with their own cracked views.Kaci Hickox embodies all the American values conservatives say they admire. She’s tough – you don’t volunteer to leave New England to stem the spread of Ebola in Sierra Leone unless you have courage. She’s a rugged individualist, filled with the pioneering spirit, who makes her own way, without waiting for the say-so of “big government”. No tax-dollar funded politician or bureaucrat is going to lock her up in the land of the free. She knows, as every doctor knows, that Ebola is...

There is no “stigma,” and comparisons to criminal imprisonment are absurd. The first responsibility of the president of the United States is national security. In the absence of presidential leadership as Ebola makes inroads in our country, state officials such as New Jersey governor Chris Christie have stepped into the security breach, taking commonsense steps to protect their citizens from the deadly virus. One of those measures is to quarantine those who have been exposed to Ebola, including health-care professionals who have risked their own lives to fight the disease. As a public-health precaution, it is entirely reasonable for states...

Maine Could Elect The Country's First Gay Governor – But LGBT Activists Are Split Democrat Mike Michaud is in a neck-and-neck race with incumbent Paul LePage but he persistently voted against gay rights legislation before coming out Jon Swaine 1 November 2014 The man who may soon be the first openly gay person elected as a governor in the US sat silently in Maine’s house of representatives as an older colleague embarked on a homophobic tirade against the anti-discrimination proposal that they were considering. “I don’t see them as gay because they never smile, they have got that withdrawn look,”...

Kaci Hickox was a “disease detective” for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to a widely overlooked part of her op-ed for the Dallas Morning News. While Hickox did not fail to disclose this information to readers — or rather, the Dallas Morning News didn’t — Conservative news sites have recently taken notice and commenced calling her out on the connection. Hickox has received much criticism from the Right and the Left for her defiance of a mandatory quarantine order. A Maine judge recently upheld that defiance, allowing her to come and go as she pleases for...

but said she had to maintain a 3-foot distance from people. And it forbade her from leaving the municipality of Fort Kent without consulting local health authorities.

Sheila Pinette of the Maine CDC has released information that the roommate of Kaci Hickox, while in West Africa has displayed signs of ebola. Pinette says “The respondents roommate in Africa became infected without knowing how she became infected with Ebola. (Any potential risk to respondent from that incident has passed).” This is one of 35 points Pinette made while filing a verified petition for public health order yesterday with the state. What did arrogant nurse Kaci Hickox know about her roommate’s Ebola, and when did she know it? Maine’s battle to keep her quarantined for another fortnight continues despite...

State of ME says it believes #KaciHickox roommate in Africa tested positive for Ebola but any risk to Kaci from that incident has passed

A judge issued a new ruling Friday that removes some of the restrictions placed on Kaci Hickox, the nurse who the state has been trying to quarantine since she returned to Maine earlier this week. David Soley, a partner in the Maine law firm Bernstein Shur, which is representing Hickox, said that the judge issued a moving oral decision that sets conditions for Hickox that she has intended to follow all along. The new restrictions call for direct active monitoring of her condition, coordination of travel with public officials and a requirement that the state be alerted as soon as...

Kaci Hickox, the Maine nurse who treated Ebola patients and is locked in a standoff with the governor over quarantine rules, has been temporarily ordered by a court to stay at least three feet away from other people and avoid public places. Hickox, who has tested negative for Ebola and has no symptoms, has maintained that authorities in Maine violated her rights by demanding that she stay at home for 21 days. She took a defiant bike ride on Thursday morning, and Gov. Paul LePage said that she was testing his patience. The court order, issued late Thursday, leaves room...