Jeb's "Walker's Point" Advantage

In this week's Maine Sunday Telegram, I write about one of Jeb Bush's many fundraising advantages: the existence of the family estate in Kennebunkport, Maine.

Walker's Point, a town park purchased by his great-great grandfather at the opening of the 20th century and developed into a summer retreat, has been the base camp of the Bush clan since Jeb's great-grandfather served in the U.S. Senate. Since then, the family has produced two presidents, and the compound has been used to host world leaders, national luminaries, and family weddings. Get an invitation to a party there, and you're probably going to say yes. As one campaign finance expert told me, Hillary Clinton has no Walker's Point.

And if Jeb had any reticence about publicly embracing his family's quasi-aristocratic legacy, he seems to have set it aside. He's just built himself a house on the compound and last Thursday co-hosted with his parents 300 major campaign donors for a reception and dinner.

Kennebunkport, it seems, is back on the political map.

Canada: Despite Wikileaked cable, Canadian TV Producers say they don't hate America

Reading the U.S. diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks, I've generally had the same reaction voiced by many commentators: they show U.S. diplomats to be capable, professional, well-informed and sometimes even witty.

So on a recent reporting trip to Canada, I followed up on one of them: a 2008 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa warning that the television dramas and sitcoms aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation were engaged in "anti-American melodrama" and "insidious negative popular stereotyping" of Washington officials. This, the diplomats warned, either reflected or perhaps cultivated anti-American feeling in the Canadian public, with potentially serious long-term consequences.

Heady stuff. But, as my story over at The Christian Science Monitor reveals, largely off-base. (Headline: "Canadian TV producers: We don't really hate America.")

A few items that didn't make it into the story. In initial reports on this cable, many journalists mistakenly attributed it to then-Ambassador David Wilkins, whose name appeared at the end of the cable. Wilkins subsequently denied it, and experts pointed out that the name at the end of each State Department cable doesn't denote authorship, but rather the highest level official on station at the time the cable was sent. The real authors, Wilkins told CBC's As It Happens, were staff with "too much time on their hands."

Also, in the course of reporting the story, I got a chance to watch some of the shows in question, and to interview their creators. For American viewers: Little Mosque on the Prairie evokes Northern Exposure in both tone and its "fish out of water" premise. Intelligence - now available instantly at Netflix -- is a complex crime-and-espionage drama that's been compared to The Wire, with the refreshing twist of being set in Vancouver, and written with a Canadian audience in mind.

A turnaround for North Atlantic Right Whales?

The North Atlantic Right Whale, one of the most critically endangered whale species on the planet, has been in the news of late on account of this New York Times story, which suggests things may finally be looking up for the 400 or so individuals still in existence. The right whale is regularly in the news here in Maine, on account of the controversial regulations imposed on lobster fishermen in an effort to reduce whale mortality.

I've written several pieces on the efforts to save the species, including this piece in the Christian Science Monitor, which described how President George W Bush's Office of Management and Budget was delaying rules aimed to reduce collisions between ships and right whales. (A watered-down rule change was subsequently enacted.) When whales become entangled in fishing gear -- another leading cause of death -- New Brunswick fisherman Mackie Greene is often called to rescue them, as described in another of my Monitor pieces.

In early 2008, I wrote an in-depth feature on the scientists who study the whales for The Chronicle of Higher Education, which shows the problems the whales face, the likely causes, and the unusual bond that's formed between researchers and the individual whales they study and document. (The piece is available online, but non-subscribers may be prompted for a $10 web pass.)

But if you really want to know all there is to know about the species, pick up a copy of The Urban Whale, the definitive resource on the animal.