Behind the Revolving Door

In the fourth-floor press room at the State House, there’s no more popular sport than flack-bashing. If reporters harbor a natural mistrust of politicians, it’s nothing compared to their contempt […]

About two years ago, David M. Kennedy, a researcher at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, had an idea about the youth violence that was plaguing Boston. He reasoned that the […]

“The natural tendency of representative government, as of modern civilisation, is towards collective mediocrity.” – John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative GovernmentOr, as a lawmaker down in Texas used to […]

WEYMOUTH – It is the nature of government to respond to the crisis of the moment, and last fall the crisis on the minds of town officials had to do […]

At least 30 towns in Massachusetts are making a decision similar to Weymouth’s on replacing their punch-card systems. Secretary of State William Galvin is urging towns to update their voting […]

Thomas Birmingham, in the regal office of the Senate President, says he feels like the proverbial kid who shows up for dessert. He gets to enjoy the delicacies–in this case […]

Not far from a ragged basketball court squeezed between two sidestreets just off Dorchester Ave., you could sense the boredom, the chronic misjudgements, the drifting spirit of urban life as […]

Katherine Newman set out in the mid-’80s to explore a story that, since then, has only gotten bigger: the experience of downward mobility in America. Her book Falling From Grace, […]

Charles Baker is right that welfare needs fixing, and he’s right that states (on average) are better innovators than Washington. If that ended the story, block grants might indeed beat […]

Before heading off to Chicago for the Democratic Convention this summer, President Clinton had to decide whether to sign the welfare reform legislation sent to him by Congress. In the […]

Suppose state government–or a high-minded philanthropist–awarded a special grant to communities that demonstrate stellar records of high voter turnout. Which Massachusetts cities and towns would be in the running? Who […]

One of the facts of political life for Governor William Weld during the 1995-96 session of the legislature has been that, even if he had every fellow Republican in the […]

As any reporter, lobbyist, or campaign manager knows, trying to get a document by fax from a State House office or committee when the legislature is in session can be […]

Twenty years since public financing of presidential campaigns began, taxpayer contributions to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund are at their lowest level since the program’s first year. Taxpayers just aren’t […]

As of September, five senators and 19 members of the House had announced plans to retire from the Massachusetts legislature by the end of 1996. Some, like House Minority Leader […]

One of the first things you notice upon entering the offices of Joey Fournier Services is a wall of photographs to the right. They are the type parents proudly display […]

Lyon Street in Dorchester is a modest little thoroughfare. It’s nothing more than a one-block-long connector between Dorchester Avenue and Adams Street, but when the Commonwealth’s biggest law enforcers came […]

What would Massachusetts need to do to wage a war against crime that was less symbolic and more practical, less scattershot and more systematic, less simplistic and more serious–not just […]

Dinner is over at the Morgan household, but the woven placemats, flecked with crumbs of food, have not been cleared. It is hot and mom, Rebecca Morgan, fiddles with the […]

In late summer, as the Senate race seemed to be hopelessly mired in policy sludge, reporters and some of the voting public were showing signs of disappointment. Great things were […]

Our Brothers’ Keepers Search and Destroy: African-American Males in the Criminal Justice System By Jerome Miller Cambridge University Press, 1996, 304 pages, $24.95 Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and Its Causes […]

Occasionally, a work has a title that takes on a meaning that outruns the work’s actual content. Often, the added meaning is merely a plausible variation of the original. Sometimes […]

Seldom does one hear the argument that since the state legislature doesn’t work very well, we should do away with it. Seldom does a city saddled with a clownish city […]

PLYMOUTH–Laurence Pizer, town clerk, wears the look of a man who has just been interrupted from a good book and has noticed suddenly the glare of bright sunlight. Behind his […]