John Christie is the co-founder, former publisher and former senior reporter of the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting. He has covered local, state and national politics as a reporter, editor and publisher at newspapers in Maine, Massachusetts and Florida and holds a BA in political science from the University of New Hampshire.
It’s election season, and the hyperbole machine is redlining. Endorsements, especially, are the time to lay it on thick and attempt to counter the candidate’s greatest weakness.
Just as World War II ended, the writer George Orwell was working on a novel that was to become so well-read and so prescient that its title and key phrases are still powerful expressions of the dangers of government control.
Lawmaker tried to get special legislation passed to help a single constituent by undoing part of a legal agreement with the state designed to protect a lake in Aroostook County.