News

Navigating Portland's entertainment rules

City Council
No live music after 12:15? No outdoor entertainment after mid-September?

By DEIRDRE FULTON | September 16, 2009

Diversity times ten

Maine's changing mainstream
Long-time readers may recall I have an ex, and I'll tell you we have a shared-custody deal.

By SHAY STEWART-BOULEY | September 16, 2009

Snowe: A party of one

Party politics
US Senator Olympia Snowe has maneuvered herself into a position where she is the only hope Democrats have of getting a "bipartisan" agreement on healthcare reform.

By JEFF INGLIS | September 16, 2009

Letters to the Portland Editor, September 18, 2009
In a collaborative effort between human-rights activists and incarcerated Mainers, a bill to end the use and abuse of solitary confinement has been drafted and will be submitted to legislators soon.

By PORTLAND PHOENIX LETTERS | September 16, 2009

Prison ‘troublemaker’ confronts racism, medical abuse

Exiled
Vacillating between grit and despair — between aggressive lawsuits and suicide attempts — Deane Brown, the prisoner who in 2005 blew the whistle on the torture of mentally ill inmates at the Maine State Prison’s solitary-confinement “Supermax” unit, is struggling against prison conditions in Maryland, where he was exiled by the Baldacci administration.

By LANCE TAPLEY | September 09, 2009

Looking back to climb forward

Katrina's aftermath
It's been four years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. Its causes and ramifications, though, extend much farther into both the past and the future. So say Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman, Brooklyn-based spoken-word and multimedia artists known together as Climbing Poetree.

By DEIRDRE FULTON | September 09, 2009

Sins and promises

Keeping tabs on the tweets of gubernatorial twits
Let's suppose you wanted Maine's next governor to be somebody who'd create jobs.

By AL DIAMON | September 09, 2009

Prison activist: Board chairman wrong

Letters to the Portland Editor, September 11, 2009
I just finished reading the letter from Jon Wilson. Mr. Tapley was correct, the Board of Visitors is not living up to its mandate to represent the public's concerns about the Maine State Prison, nor is it minimally accountable in that it never filed an annual report until provoked by the scrutiny of Mr. Tapley's investigative journalism.

By PORTLAND PHOENIX LETTERS | September 09, 2009

Merchants of death

Wall Street's latest bad idea. Plus, where the health debate will likely go.
Wall Street has found a new way to make a buck: buy up the life-insurance policies of the sick and the aged at a fraction of their cost, bundle them into bonds that will be sold to investors, and profit from them when the policy holders die sooner rather than later.

By EDITORIAL | September 09, 2009

Remembering 9-11

Eight years later
Eight years ago, on a sunny Tuesday September morning in New York City and Washington, DC, a sickeningly well-orchestrated terrorist attack took flight, in part, from Boston’s Logan International Airport.

By BOSTON PHOENIX STAFF | September 15, 2009

Labor of Love

No rest for these union activists
Most of us will sleep in on Labor Day. Not the Southern Maine Labor Council, who will be working hard to remind us what the holiday's actually all about.

By JEFF INGLIS | September 02, 2009

Your Money

Here comes the FairPoint bailout
We thought the bailouts were over. They're not. FairPoint Communications, the nightmare that has become northern New England's landline provider, is seeking tax dollars that could help it fulfill the promises made to regulators in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont when the company spent $2.3 billion to buy Verizon's systems here.

By JEFF INGLIS | September 02, 2009

Article aided big oil

Letters to the Portland Editor, September 4, 2009
Nothing helps big oil, and big coal, more than a piece like "What's Wrong With Wind Power?" (by Deirdre Fulton, August 21).

By PORTLAND PHOENIX LETTERS | September 02, 2009

Building on green energy

Going green
This month, my landlord will install new energy-efficient windows in my apartment. This is great news: Better insulation will reduce both my energy use and my heating bills. I'm happy to be experiencing first-hand what many agree is the single most-important step in the fight against global warming: eco-friendly building upgrades and weatherization.

By DEIRDRE FULTON | September 02, 2009

Hey, hey, we're the Monkees

Politics and other mistakes
The law of averages says if you put 100 monkeys in a room with 100 computers, they'll eventually write a workable national health-care bill. Apparently, that rule doesn't apply to 100 US senators.

By AL DIAMON | September 02, 2009

Another Supermax hunger strike

Dungeon Watch
Protesting that nothing had been done by prison authorities to relieve the torture of prolonged solitary confinement, on August 17 inmates of the Maine State Prison’s 100-man Special Management Unit or “Supermax” reprised a hunger strike that had been abandoned last May.

By LANCE TAPLEY | September 02, 2009

Ted Kennedy, 1932 - 2009

In memoriam of the long-standing senator
Blog posts, Tweets, archived articles and photos of the late senator.

By BOSTON PHOENIX STAFF | August 27, 2009

Ted Kennedy's passing

Also, will Afghanistan be Obama’s Vietnam?
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who served Massachusetts for 46 years — sometimes surrounded by controversy, but always with distinction — was the only one of Joseph P. Kennedy’s four sons to die surrounded by family at home in his bed.

By EDITORIAL | August 26, 2009

The Granite State Gang

New Hampshire transplants live free — or die trying
Big bucks couldn't buy the viral awe and ire that the Free State Project (FSP) scored on August 11, when New Hampshire resident William Kostric arrived outside President Barack Obama's Portsmouth Town Hall meeting with a handgun on his right thigh — "open carrying" is quite legal in the Granite State — and a sign declaring IT IS TIME TO WATER THE TREE OF LIBERTY!

By CHRIS FARAONE | August 26, 2009

Give peace a chance

Yoko Ono on why John Lennon's art remains relevant
This year marks the 40th anniversary of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Bed-In, which found the newlywed couple pontificating about peace from their Amsterdam honeymoon bed for a week. Decades later, the couple is still working together to promote social justice, with Ono publicizing exhibits of Lennon's playful, sometimes colorful, often childlike, works of art.

By DEIRDRE FULTON | August 26, 2009