Vice President Kamala Harris ticked off her presidential campaign checklist with a visit to the southern border last week. She talked with members of the Border Patrol and made boilerplate promises of getting tough on immigration. Sorry, Kamala, you don’t get points for promising to close the barn door after the horses have escaped. Harris, […]
Ben Bragdon
Staff Writer
Ben Bragdon is managing editor of the Sun Journal. Prior to that, he was deputy managing editor for news at the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel. Ben was previously editorial page editor for those newspapers and Central Maine Sunday for more than 10 years. Before that, he was managing editor for weekly newspapers at Current Publishing in Westbrook. He began his career as a reporter at the Piscataquis Observer in Dover-Foxcroft and editor at the Moosehead Messenger in Greenville. He has a bachelor’s degree in history from Boston University.
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
Commentary: Instagram teen accounts — Just one front in the fight for mental health
It’s good news that Instagram has launched stricter controls for teen accounts, strengthening privacy settings for those under 18. Underage users’ accounts are now automatically set to private mode. The platform is also implementing tighter restrictions on the type of content teens can browse and blocking material deemed sensitive, such as posts related to cosmetic […]
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Posted inEditorials, Opinion
View from Away: Helene’s 500 miles of wreckage and devastation should bring howls of fury at leaders’ folly
The storms speak and their voices are growing more violent, more vehement. This storm — Helene — may be the most furious yet. It raked glancing blows through the Caribbean and along Mexico’s coast before slamming into Florida’s Big Bend at Category 4, with 140 mph sustained winds that tore buildings into scraps of wood […]
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
Roger Katz: Why this longtime Republican is voting for Kamala Harris
Stopping Donald Trump and the risk he poses to our country is more important than party politics, writes the former four-term Republican state senator from Augusta.
Posted inUncategorized
Don’t know your state legislative district? Click here
On Tuesday, Nov. 5, Maine voters will elect a new Legislature. We sent a questionnaire to each candidate who is running for Senate and House of Representatives in our readership area. Their responses will be available at centralmaine.com as they are received. Don’t know your district? Find your House District and Senate District. Are you […]
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
Commentary: Who’s really keeping Ozempic and Wegovy prices so high?
On Tuesday, congressional leaders spent two hours taking to task Novo Nordisk Chief Executive Officer Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen over the high price of the company’s diabetes and obesity drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy. Now the question is whether those prices will change. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, chair of the Senate health committee, focused his sights not […]
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
Commentary: Oregon had a bold plan to help drug addicts. Then fentanyl showed up
This month, a brief, ambitious and many would say calamitous experiment came to an end: Oregon rolled back Measure 110, its policy decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. Rather than handing out small fines with a nudge towards treatment, the police are once again giving misdemeanors to people who are found with […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment, Local & State
Maine preservation group lists Fayette’s Starling Hall among most endangered places
Starling Hall is the oldest building in Maine to have been built as a Grange Hall.
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
Commentary: Social media age limits are too little too late
Australia’s government wants to ban children up to age 16 from social media, and is spending millions of dollars to figure out how. I’m willing to wager it won’t take long for tech-savvy teens who grew up on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube to figure out how to log back on. The promised regulation, currently sparse […]