Although the U.S. and its allies agreed recently to put Ukraine on an “irreversible path” to NATO membership, there’s no avoiding the obvious: A Trump presidency could well render such pledges meaningless. Former President Donald Trump has threatened to hollow out U.S. support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — even if Congress puts up […]
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: The Olympics promise to be socially responsible. How’s that working out?
Olympic host cities make promises that are all but impossible to keep, and in recent years, the organizers’ wishful thinking about housing and neighborhood redevelopment has been one of the cruelest Olympic disappointments. With the 2024 Paris Games, we are seeing it all over again — displacement, gentrification and the unhoused “voluntarily” lured elsewhere with […]
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Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
Commentary: Global heating is no longer a tomorrow problem. It’s today’s
For decades, global warming was widely seen as a tomorrow problem, something for our hapless grandchildren to worry about. But with heat records tumbling relentlessly, it’s becoming clear that tomorrow has basically arrived. We are the hapless grandchildren. And it’s also becoming clear that we’re not ready for the heat. Monday was the hottest day […]
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
Commentary: A messaging mess for Democrats — 3 dumb arguments so far about Trump, Harris, Biden
Two days into the reshaped presidential race, we have a sense of Democrats’ initial attempts to define the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. The messaging is not impressive. Three prominent arguments so far are a stretch at best and downright fantasy at worst. Let’s take a look. Biden is a great president and […]
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
Healthy Lakes: Green lake? Maine has a blueprint for that
Hundreds of lakes in Maine are connected to each other. This is the story of two connected lakes. Lake A is the upstream lake, Lake B the downstream one. No need to name them as the problem addressed is statewide. The two lakes are in one of the four counties I tow my boat to […]
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
Commentary: Can Kamala Harris change a presidential race barely affected by a series of seismic events?
Donald Trump famously said in 2016 that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters.” What sounded like an extraordinary exaggeration at the time has essentially been proven correct: Despite a cascade of disasters, defeats, impeachments, indictments and other events that would have derailed other politicians’ […]
Posted inColumns, Dana Wilde, Kennebec Journal, Morning Sentinel
Backyard Naturalist: The spiders in the mailbox
This is the season in Maine when spiders are most active, and when you’re most likely to see one, writes Dana Wilde.
Posted inEditorials, Opinion
View from Away: Vance seals the arrival of big-government conservatism
Americans had reason to fear for the future even before the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. One hopes this enormity, together with respect for its innocent victims, will urge elected leaders to keep the risk of instability and political violence front of mind. In particular, campaigns need to talk less about the evil of their […]
Posted inEditorials, Opinion
View from Away: The GOP still wants to ban abortion
It’s not surprising that the Republican Party took out of its platform, after decades, support of a national abortion ban. Not that Donald Trump and his new vice presidential running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, have had some epiphany and renounced their longstanding opposition to reproductive rights. It’s more likely that party leaders realized […]
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
Commentary: All too often, police shootings show the perils of ‘de-escalation’
Recent reporting has highlighted the prevalence of shootings by police of people wielding knives and other edged weapons. These cases, often involving individuals in crisis, show two deadly problems: There are limits to what “de-escalation” can accomplish. And officers too often hesitate to use nonlethal force, allowing standoffs to spiral out of control. Across the […]