Free Republic

Sen. Susan Collins appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday morning from the WGME studios, explaining why she is not voting for her party’s presidential nominee. […] Collins said she can’t support Hillary Clinton either. She said she is considering the Libertarian ticket, but that’s not a sure thing either. “I may write in a candidate who I believe would be best qualified to lead our country,” Collins said. …

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Donald Trump's characterization of Somalis as dangerous and a drag on resources could undo years of work that they have done to establish themselves in the country's whitest state, Somali residents said Friday. Trump told a packed audience in Portland on Thursday that Maine is a "major destination" for Somali refugees and that they're coming from some of the "most dangerous" places. All told, about 10,000 Somalis lives in Portland and Lewiston, Maine's largest cities. [snip] On Friday afternoon, Somali organizers held a rally on the steps of City Hall to respond to Trump. One read...

Liberal Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who scored just 30 percent on The New American’s latest Freedom Index, wrote an op-ed piece for the Washington Post explaining why she will not support for Donald Trump for president.In her brief article, Collins, who has a record of being anti-Second Amendment, pro-abortion (despite identifying as a Catholic), and in favor of giving an Obama Supreme Court nominee a hearing, did not mention a single issue upon which she bases her opposition to a Trump presidency. He entire argument against her party’s nominee boils down to her dissatisfaction with comments that Trump...

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has become the second and most-senior Republican senator to say she will not vote for GOP nominee Donald Trump for president. In an op-ed published online Monday night in The Washington Post, Ms. Collins said it was “not a decision I make lightly, for I am a lifelong Republican.” The column outlined a series of common criticisms of Mr. Trump’s conduct and temperament — mocking a reporter with disabilities, feuding wioth a Muslim Gold Star family, suggesting a Mexican-American judge might not be impartial.

Standing in the growing line outside Merrill Auditorium this morning, one Trump supporter – a former 'Bernie Bro' – says the candidate 'is not graceful and he's not eloquent, but he's still my guy.' Hours before the doors opened Thursday at Portland’s Merrill Auditorium, supporters began showing up for a rally with Donald Trump, whose presidential campaign continues to attract grass-roots voter support even as the Republican candidate increasingly frustrates and alienates leaders of his own party. At the same time, a growing number of protesters thronged the plaza in front of Portland City Hall as the day progressed, chanting...

Thursday, August 4, 2016: LIVE Watch the LIVE STREAM of the event below beginning at 3:00 PM ET: PORTLAND, ME BEAUTIFUL MERRILL AUDITORIUM

After the deadly terror attack at a gay nightclub in Orlando, a restaurant owner in Portland (Maine not Oregon) wanted to do something “outside the box” in order to solve the problem of “gun violence” in America.So she wrote a post on Facebook.Anne Verrill, owner of two Portland-area restaurants, wrote on Facebook that anyone who owns—or even supports an individual’s right to own—an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, may “no longer enter either of my restaurants, because the only thing I want to teach my children is love.”The post was deleted after a bunch of people on the internet who like guns...

After a gunman killed 49 people in June at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., Anne Verrill, a prominent Maine restaurateur, swung through a range of familiar emotions: frustration, anger, helplessness. She reflected, too, on her typical response to the nation’s litany of gun massacres. “We write Facebook posts, we copy and paste, and we talk about it with people who basically agree with us,” Ms. Verrill, 38, said the other day. “We’ve never really done anything outside the box with regard to gun control.”

Names of 18 arrested in Portland protest released Most of those charged with obstructing a public way for blocking Commercial Street are in their 20s and from Portland. BY BETH QUIMBY STAFF WRITER The 18 people arrested in Friday night’s protest against police shootings of black men that blocked off a busy portion of Commercial Street in Portland for hours were mostly residents of the city in their 20s. Portland police released a list of the names of those arrested Saturday afternoon. A 16-year-old minor was not identified. All were charged with obstructing a public way. They Portland residents were...

Donald Trump's political director, Jim Murphy, told House members that the campaign would focus on 17 states this fall, the Wall Street Journal reports. Included are 12 states Barack Obama won in both 2008 and 2012 (145 electoral votes) and five states Mitt Romney won in 2012. Not in the list are extreme longshots like California and New York, states Trump has previously indicated would be competitive for him.

The organization behind an effort to raise Maine’s minimum wage to $12 an hour has been advertising for new workers at a rate closer to $10 an hour. An online ad posted Tuesday by the Maine People’s Alliance indicates new phone canvassers/organizers would be paid $429 every two weeks for working 21.25 hours a week. That works out to $10.09 an hour, considerably less than the $12 minimum wage the alliance is seeking by 2020. The discrepancy was first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative news and commentary website. Mike Tipping, communications director for the people’s...

In a nine-word per curiam decision, eight justices of the United States Supreme Court have revealed they are deadlocked in a 4 to 4 divide on the new immigration procedures of the Obama administration, with its executive decision to not deport the immigrant parents of children born in the United States (thus citizens) and give them legal status but less than citizenship in the process. The State of Texas, joined by 25 others states, filed a lawsuit to block this executive action, which affects between 4 and 5 million immigrants in the United States. The case was before the Supreme...

A drug deal was going down in a WalMart parking lot.  Some of the participants were not happy with the deal.  They could not use the criminal justice system, so they used guns.  Shots were exchanged between occupants of two cars in the lot.  The WalMart parking lot was not in New York or New Jersey.  This WalMart was in Augusta, Maine, and in Maine, responsible and honest people can legally carry guns.  Two honest and responsible gun carriers stopped the shooting. The shooting in the Maine WalMart was between New York residents, and it involved Heroin.  The four...

Wednesday, June 29, 2016: Live streaming coverage of the Donald J. Trump rally in Bangor, ME at the Cross Insurance Center. Live coverage begins at 4:00 PM EDT. Bangor ME Watch the LIVE Stream of the event below beginning at 4:00 PM EDT The Cross Insurance Center Main Street Bangor, Maine

2016 presidential preferences among Maine voters: Clinton 42% Trump 35% Others 19%

On Sunday, a peaceful Maine afternoon turned into a scene like something from an action movie, when gunfire erupted in a Walmart parking lot. According to Augusta police, the occupants of two vehicles parked alongside one another were arguing over money when they suddenly began exchanging a barrage of bullets. However, it wasn’t long before — as WGME reports — a pair of bystanders stepped in, ending the chaotic situation before it could turn into something far more tragic.

The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram Poll was conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center on June 15-21, 2016. Results are based on landline and cellular telephone interviews with 609 randomly selected Maine adults and 475 randomly selected likely Maine voters. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points for all adults and plus or minus 4.5 percentage points for likely voters.

Maine Gov. Paul LePage may have considered a proposal to prohibit food stamp recipients from using their benefits to buy candy and sodas to be a sweet one, but the Obama administration disagrees. The friction between the Republican governor and the U.S. Department of Agriculture has reignited a debate after the Obama administration denied LePage’s request to put restrictions on what can be purchased with food stamps. In a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, LePage said: “It’s time for the federal government to wake up and smell the energy drinks.” In an interview with The Daily Signal, LePage’s health...

Maine Gov. Paul LePage is challenging the federal government over how to administer the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps. Under the guise of reforming SNAP, Maine’s Republican governor wants to monitor what poor people eat and drink. The governor wants to create a state-based “food-police” to control what Maine’s poorest citizens put in their grocery bags. In pushing for the food ban, the governor is picking a page right out of the Democratic playbook. LePage impugns the motives of the opposition by invoking the Left’s favorite bogeyman – American businesses. The governor said that he...

In 1862, a man named Lt. Charles H. Colley of Gray, ME was killed during the Battle of Cedar Mountain. When his grieving family opened up the casket that was supposed to contain their son, they were stunned to discover that a fully uniformed Confederate soldier had been shipped to them instead. Having no way to identify the soldier, and also lacking the means to ship him back to Virginia, Lt. Colley's family decided to bury him in Gray Village Cemetery alongside the Union soldiers who had been killed in the war. They figured that this unknown Confederate's family would...