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Hassan said the new support network is called the Women and Children's Advocacy Group. Hassan said plans are in the works to create a full-time office where pressing issues can be discussed women to women.

A fulltime office at taxpayer expense ?

''We cannot talk to a man for some of the things we need,'' said Roda Abdi, one of the group's leaders. ''Women need to talk to women in our culture.''

Are these lesbian feminists ?

Abdi, who has lived in New England since the late 1980s and is a U.S. citizen, said other Somali women call her a dozen times a day. She hears the same questions again and again, and tells them about city services and hospitals and where jobs might be had.

The taxpayer could be saved a bundle on a "fulltime office" by someone simply printing a bunch of flyers, with phone numbers and addresses of these services, in the Somali (Urdu ?) language and passing them arond the Somali community. But no. The taxpayer will likely have to fund a "fulltime office" so someone, paid by the taxpayers, will be available 24 hours per day, no doubt, for this "fulltime" occupation of telling people over the telephone, the phone number and address of these Somali services.

The cost of one solution is many thousands of taxpayer dollars, year after year to provide a service for a people claiming they want to get off welfare. Why should they have to look up things in their local phone book like the rest of us ? The cost of the other solution is a at most a hundred bux every couple of years by the Somali community itself.

Which one do you think these moslem wefare recipients who don't speak Englsh, will choose ?

pyx, this state is losing it!

Tax us to high heaven. Even my husband's retirement from the military is being taxed in this state.

For what? To pay for thousands of immigrants? I am very upset. Maine can't even afford a 4 lane highway from Houlton on up, and yet Maine is bringing in thousands of refugees. This is mind blowing.

"Which one do you think these moslem wefare recipients who don't speak Englsh, will choose ?"

The U.S. accepted them as refugees from the never-ending Somali civil war, which would make them mostly if not 100% Christian. You shouldn't fault them for failing to learn English before coming here -- they had more immediate concerns like dodging bullets. Now that they are here, they need help -- not blind, self-righteous, knee-jerk condemnation. One would ordinarily expect "pyx" to connote some modicum of Christian charity and good will.

By the way, you might want to get a map and figure out where Somalia is -- Urdu is certainly not a commonly heard language there.