Songwriting with soldiers? Earlier this week I was looking over Amazon’s digital album deals. It’s a habit of mine. Results are generally feast or famine. Either Amazon has little or no album deals of interest or Amazon has many album deals of interest. September started as a famine month. Nothing much in my three preferred album categories: jazz, country, classical.

It seems in a moment, a second, our nation has been turned upside down. What was once called right is now called wrong. What was once freedoms to be cherished and defended are now archaic abuses better regulated by the government.

Congratulations! You have been told to be outraged about the nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and you've now taken the logical next step: you wish to lobby a U.S. senator to get them to also be outraged, and vote against him.

Gov. Paul LePage, limping toward the sunset as Maine’s chief executive, disguises his policy prerogatives with a veil of fiscal discipline. But peak behind the mask and it’s clear he’s animated by meanness and vindictiveness.

After driving up and over a few hills, around a few turns, the young forest opens ahead and the white steepled Washburn-Norlands Living History Center Meeting House appears. The closer we get we see how badly the Meeting House needs painting. From steeple top to skirtboard, window frames, doors, exterior decorations — the last applied coat of white paint is cracking, peeling, or missing. Patches of gray sun-bleached clapboard are everywhere.

Everywhere you look, they're dropping like flies. Incumbent Democrats are being defeated left and right in primaries, typically losing to young, often diverse, hard-core liberal progressives.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan may play the part of the earnest Boy Scout on TV, but when it comes to real life he falls far short, particularly when it comes to telling the truth.

Summer is waning quickly and people are returning from vacations, something many look forward to each year. Did your ancestors do the same? Packing up and leaving home for weeks was a luxury most of our ancestors couldn’t afford, though many would try to do something relaxing if they could.

“It is a little bit of a dog whistle to call something a scam. But this truly is a scam,” said Stop The Scam campaign manager Ben Gilman. We were talking about Question 1, which voters will see on Maine’s November 2018 general election ballot.

When I was a freshman in college, I got very involved, and very invested in the upcoming presidential race in 2000. Being a young, politically minded student, forming opinions and wishing to express them, I decided to try out column writing for The Maine Campus, the University of Maine's student newspaper.

Locked away. Out of sight. Out of mind. Out of luck. Kids are left in prison because there’s no place else for them to go. Men with autism are living in hospital emergency rooms, no other bed to be had. A child is locked up, gets sick and never gets better.

If your ancestor was naturalized how do you find the records? It’s important to determine where your ancestor was living at the time he was naturalized. Prior to 1906 any court could perform a naturalization ceremony. Your ancestor could have been naturalized in a municipal, county, state, or federal court, so having an idea where he lived at the time is of great importance.

Some teens are raised to know the value of a dollar, some aren’t, radio talk show host Laura Ingraham said this morning. I agree.

White hot rage. That's what I, a fairly devoted Catholic, felt when I read the grand jury report last Tuesday that detailed horrific abuse in six Pennsylvania dioceses -- Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton.

Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument will celebrate its second birthday with a hootenanny this weekend. And there is plenty to celebrate.

Were your ancestors naturalized American citizens? Naturalization isn’t something new on our national horizon. Even in the 17th century, the English colonies required an oath of allegiance to the English crown or confirmation from a Protestant minister that the alien was in good standing with the church before he could become a citizen of a colony.

At age 35 I first developed a serious interest in politics, government, public policy, and how those three interests actually worked together in the real world. I was tired of being ignorant, more confused than informed by daily news stories.

It is a brave new world out there, ladies and gentlemen, and I don't think it is a better one. Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former contestant on Donald Trump's old show, "The Apprentice," who later became a campaign aide and staffer in the West Wing, has dominated the news cycle this week for taping conversations in the White House, and now making them public. Several of those conversations portray the White House in an unflattering light, and the Trump administration is having a difficult time fighting back.