If Katrina was the nadir for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, then Sandy is its brightest moment since New Orleans. Up and down the hurricane-battered Northeast corridor, local, state, and federal first responders have received praise for their efforts. But foremost among the cheerleaders is Chris Christie, the irrepressible Republican governor of New Jersey, who […]
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Posted inEnvironment, The Download
Sandy beaches
Sandy hit the state with force on Monday, and more than 300,000 Massachusetts customers were without power as of early this morning. However, state officials said there have been no reports of injuries. The MBTA, which suspended service at 2 pm yesterday for the remainder of the day, is back to full operation today, except […]
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Romney’s Etch A Sketch for the home stretch
It was way back in March, about a million Twitter news cycles ago, that Mitt Romney’s man behind the curtain, Eric Fehrnstrom, announced what nearly anyone who has followed Romney’s career could have known: That after securing the Republican nomination based on an awkwardly worded self-appraisal as a “severely conservative” governor of Massachusetts, Romney would […]
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Lawrence’s licensing board circus
Nothing is easy in Lawrence — even filling empty seats on the city’s Licensing Board, which regulates nightclubs and hands out liquor licenses. One of the board’s three members stepped down at the beginning of this year, but the other two formed a quorum and were able to carry on the board’s business. Work ground […]
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Scott Brown’s partisan problem
The second most bipartisan member of the Senate has a Republican problem. And his potential GOP colleagues are not helping him any. If there’s anyone in Massachusetts who has not heard Sen. Scott Brown touting his aisle-crossing voting record, it’s either a child just learning to talk or someone recently returned from a stint in […]
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Jill Stein and friends fight the good fight
Quick: Who is the only presidential candidate to be arrested this year? Answer: Lexington’s Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president, was arrested at the Hofstra University town hall presidential debate last week for disorderly conduct during a protest over her exclusion from the forum featuring Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Stein and the […]
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The Herald’s own case of Romnesia
There were two presidential debates last night: one viewed by huge swaths of the electorate, and whatever was streamed into the Boston Herald’s new offices on D Street. Most folks saw Mitt Romney sitting back, taking a good deal of abuse from President Barack Obama and nursing what Romney’s camp obviously believes to be a […]
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A heads-up for youth sports
Buried inside the Globe’s Sunday sports section was a story about a Pop Warner football game last month where five children between the ages of 10 and 12 suffered concussions. All of the injured children played for the Tantasqua Pee Wees, who lost the game to a team from Southbridge by a score of 52-0. […]
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Scott Brown’s unforced error
What in the world was Scott Brown thinking? In a campaign appearance in Taunton on Wednesday, Brown charged that paid actors were portraying relatives of victims of asbestos-related illnesses in television ads for his opponent, Elizabeth Warren. “A lot of them are paid,” Brown said, according to the Taunton Gazette, when asked by a Taunton […]
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Women — can’t win without ’em
Everyone seems to be going after the women’s vote. But nobody, it appears, knows exactly what the “women’s vote” is except that they want it and it’s key to being elected. Women, after all, have consistently turned out in larger numbers than men for the presidential election since 1980. Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are […]