Go read Jeff Inglis' piece on the condition of the Maine state email system, then despair.

CD2 Republican candidate Jason Levesque is on the air with the first TV ad of the race. According to his Facebook wall, the ad will be "running all week in some very key areas of the state," which likely means a short run, possibly just on cable.

Also, I think he's trying to hypnotize me with his eyes.

In case you're wondering, he didn't make up those headlines at the beginning of the ad. They're from Fox News and the Heritage Foundation blog.

Thanks to political scientist Jim Melcher for getting the "Crazy Train" formulation into print.

As Al Diamon noted in a post last week, Portland Press Herald columnist Leigh Donaldson recently parted ways with the paper due to his commission of plagiarism.

Despite Donaldson's claim that "this has never happened before. I’m usually very careful about attributing," Anneli Rufus, the author at AlterNet from whom Donaldson copied, says his intellectual dishonesty is part of a pattern.

In a follow-up piece at AlterNet, Rufus gives proof that Donaldson also plagiarized two other columns and says that "they’re not the only ones."

It's difficult to tell how many of Donaldson's columns are plagiarized as he seems to have slightly reworded each unattributed, stolen passage, making detection through an internet search more difficult. Donaldson finally got caught, according to Rufus, after he claimed to have interviewed a Florida detective who he never actually spoke to. The detective then contacted Rufus, who had actually conducted the interview, and the jig was up.

Colin Woodard's Down East piece on the moderates losing control of the Maine GOP.

The League of Young Voters has succeeded in placing a referendum on the ballot on whether to allow legal, non-citizen immigrants to vote in Portland's municipal elections.

This is a big accomplishment for The League, and the time and effort that went into gathering more than 4,500 verified signatures is impressive.

For the fall campaign, the main factors they'll be working against are general anti-immigrant sentiment, confusion over documented vs. undocumented immigrants (the law would only apply to those in the country legally) and some misconception about how our immigration system works.

Many will ask "Why don't they just become citizens if they want to vote?" But the way our immigration system is structured, that's not nearly as easy as it sounds.

Here's a flowchart from Reason Magazine that lays things out pretty well (click to enlarge):

Even if you're the spouse of a U.S. citizen and are living in this country, your best case scenario for gaining citizenship is a wait of six or seven years.

If you came to this country because you're a highly-educated specialist and have a U.S. employer willing to pay up to $10,000 in legal and other fees to gain entry for you (and everything else goes right), your time to immigrate and gain citizenship will be 11 to 16 years.

So, even if these people are taking the quickest routes possible towards citizenship, for most of these extended periods they are living in, paying taxes to, and sending their kids to school in municipalities where they don't have a voice in their government.

A final misconception is that this referendum would give new immigrants a vote in state or national elections. It won't. If the law passes, non-citizens aren't going to be voting on issues of war and peace, they'll be involved in local zoning regulations and school board elections, areas that are often cited as not garnering enough civic participation.

It will be interesting to see what kinds of messages come out of this campaign. The level of discourse will tell us a lot about the state of immigrant and racial politics in the city of Portland and the state of Maine.

Members of the Toxics Action Center gathered in Portland this morning to release a report on the scientific evidence supporting a statewide ban on the chemical Bisphenol A or BPA.

A ban is being considered by the Maine Board of Environmental Protection under the auspices of Maine's new toxic chemical control law, the Kids-Safe Products Act. The law gives the BEP the ability to identify and prioritize toxic chemicals based on their danger to human health and the environment and then phase out their use in consumer products. More at the Press Herald.

Thanks to Wonkette for this awesome sign:

The AP has now confirmed rumors that Rep. Sean Flaherty of Scarborough is being charged with driving under the influence after a rollover on I-295 on Sunday in which he sustained minor injuries.

Flaherty, a Democrat, is in his first term after unseating Republican Rep. John McDonough with 56% of the vote in 2008. He is slated to face Republican Amy Volk in November.

Flaherty was, coincidentally, the subject of an op-ed printed in the Press Herald just yesterday by Senator Joe Brannigan, who praised him for his legislative work and touted the "maturity and wisdom" of Maine's young legislators.

Until today, I would have agreed with him about Flaherty, whom I know professionally and personally. Fellow legislative candidate Alex Steed has written some words that seem to sum things up well.

According to A.J. Higgins, Flaherty said he will be making a statement sometime today.

At Down East this morning, I described the beginnings of the fascinating implosion of the Maine Tea Party. This afternoon the drama continues as we hear from the other side of last night's strange parking lot encounter.

In a long post on Maine Refounders, Tea Party member Jeff Cucci lists the reasons why he and a group on unnamed accomplices carried out their coup against Maine Patriots founder Amy Hale and seized control of her website.

For anyone with an interest in the practices and perils of leaderless-by-design organizations, his rambling rant is a must read.

Bonus: Here's a Press Herald photo of Cucci dressed in colonial garb.

Post title via GriffinClubMerv and alexsteed

Matt Gagnon, who seems to be plugged in pretty well with Maine Republicans, has some interesting comments on the Pine Tree Politics Facebook page about the damage Paul LePage has done within his own party:

I have been getting unsolicited emails from Maine House candidates talking about distancing themselves from LePage, because when they do door to doors at Independent (...and even some Republican) households, his name is becoming a liability and people are asking all the wrong questions (is he really hostile to seniors? is he as paranoid as he sounds?).

I have been talking to two separate former GOP rivals of his who are so disillusioned to his constant mistakes and gaffes that they are considering un-endorsing him because they don't want to be associated with this crap.

The buzz is all bad buzz, and it is hurting him significantly. His commitment to ignore the media has just pissed them off and GUARANTEED bad coverage for himself - something that didn't have to happen.

With a continuing string of strange comments, LePage has now managed to turn his Crazy Train mistakes into a solid week of negative press. Some of the hardest comes today, with a series of editorials and opinion pieces in most of Maine's major newspapers.

The Bangor Daily News:

Mr. LePage, the front-runner in the race, according to the most recent poll, would do better to focus on the issues and not imaginary insults.

The Lewiston Sun Journal:

Democratic candidate Libby Mitchell’s handling of Republican Paul LePage’s joking inference that she is old was the perfect response — dismiss it decisively and move on.

Surely, LePage and his staff quickly recognized he had pitched her a big fat softball right down the middle of the plate early on in this race.

He ends up looking boorish and crude and she, well, dignified and, some would even say, "governly."

Bill Nemitz at the Portland Press Herald:

But now that your recent whistle-stop tour of the midcoast region has turned into a full-blown train wreck, you've announced that henceforth you'd prefer your questions from the press in writing.

So, here goes:

Question 1: When are you going to stop making stuff up?

Paul LePage's interview on WGAN yesterday was a chance for him to do some damage control after his string of strange statements last weekend. Instead he just dug the hole deeper, displaying more of his now trademark stubborn, willful ignorance.

The whole interview is here. Here's a good summary by Kevin Miller in the BDN and here are hosts Ken and Mike discussing things afterward on the Fox23 morning show:

The Maine Today papers report that Eliot Cutler's former treasurer, Robert C.S. Monks (who also happens to have an ownership stake in Maine Today Media) may have given the campaign an illegal contribution through a PAC he oversees. The matter is under investigation by the Ethics Commission.

The Cutler campaign says this his nothing to do with the recent departure of Monks as treasurer.

Mike Lange, executive director of the Maine Press Association, responds to LePage's plan to only answer written questions from reporters following the Crazy Train campaign debacle:

In my personal opinion, Mayor LePage was probably frustrated when he made the statement, so I don't think he's serious. He's made other off-the-cuff remarks that he's regretted in his campaign. I doubt whether most news media would go through the trouble of preparing written statements for an interview. Most newspapers are short-staffed, anyhow, and covering a gubernatorial campaign is a difficult, time-consuming task. How is he going to handle debates this fall if he isn't given the questions in advance?

Lange is right about LePage not being serious. According to the Ken and Mike Show's twitter feed, he will be appearing on WGAN tomorrow morning for a live interview.