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Finding love out west

By Adrian Walker, Globe Columnist | August 18, 2009

All the smart people in Massachusetts know that the true power in the state resides in the eastern half of the state, mostly within Route 128, and certainly within Interstate 495.

So you may have raised your eyebrows when Governor Deval Patrick, he of the Berkshires weekend palace, began talking about being governor of “all Massachusetts.’’ You may have snickered, as I did, when his Friday schedule seemed to begin ever farther west.

Supposedly, Western Massachusetts is where Patrick is loved, or at least liked, even as his popularity is in free-fall elsewhere.

Statistically, the governor’s popularity has officially hit rock bottom.

The candidate of hopes and dreams, whose favorability registered as high as 64 percent last December, probably never envisioned a scenario in which his fondest hope would be an approval rating that surpassed 50 percent. Patrick’s latest bad news came in the form of a survey by MassInsight, in which a mere 1 percent of those questioned thought Patrick was dong an excellent job. You read that correctly. Considering the margin of error, his popularity could actually be zero.

Bad poll numbers are not anything new for the governor, whose popularity seems to have fallen off a cliff since midwinter. His supporters and staff will tell you that the recession has made this a dark time for governors everywhere, which is true. His opponents will add that the combination of higher taxes and declining state services has justly made voters angry, which is also true.

There’s always the chance that MassInsight’s pollster corralled a particularly crabby group of voters. While Patrick’s numbers couldn’t be worse, he nonetheless runs neck-and-neck in a hypothetical election with probable opponents Tim Cahill and Charles Baker. The folks pollsters talked to don’t seem especially fond of anybody.

If Patrick needs to get away from his poll numbers, there’s his weekend home in the Berkshires town of Richmond.

In Western Mass

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politics

A health plan linchpin commands respect

By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff | August 18, 2009

BANGOR - For many Washington lawmakers, it’s been an angry August: returning home for the summer recess, they have faced put-downs, shout-downs, and worse at the hands of some constituents seething about the proposed health care overhauls before Congress.

But Senator Olympia Snowe, a pivotal player in the health care drama, has seen nothing of the kind since she came home to Maine last week.

Mainers are treating their popular senior senator with characteristic Yankee restraint. Public meetings are respectful, protesters virtually absent. Special-interest groups on the right and the left that have helped organize mass protests elsewhere are treating Snowe gingerly. Even President Obama mentioned how much he likes her at a town hall meeting he held in Portsmouth, N.H. - just close enough to Maine to get her attention without seeming too aggressive.

No one, it seems, wants to risk offending the slight, genial senator who is one of the most influential voices in the Senate in deciding whether a health overhaul bill passes.

Snowe is one of three Republicans on the powerful Senate Finance Committee trying to work out a bipartisan deal. And based on her voting record, she is the most likely of the trio to break from the GOP and vote with Senate Democrats - who may need at least one Republican to get a bill passed, especially if Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who is battling brain cancer, is unable to travel to Washington and cast a vote in the fall.

Snowe met with Obama twice the week before the August recess, and she has plans for several major conference calls on health care with the other Finance Committee negotiators. She also shares a state with Senator Susan Collins, another moderate Republican who could be a crucial vote on any compromise that emerges.

“Maine is ground zero for health care,’’ said Dennis Rivera, chairman of health care for one of country’s most powerful unions, the SEIU, who flew to Maine

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politics health

Fox News enjoys healthy ratings

By David Bauder, Associated Press | August 18, 2009

NEW YORK - Bob Inglis, a Republican congressman from South Carolina, frustrated by a restive crowd at a recent forum to discuss health care changes, suggested people turn off the TV when Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck came on.

Big mistake.

Judging by the escalating boos and catcalls, squirting lighter fluid on burning coals would have been wiser. Beck is a hero to many people who are not buying the Age of Obama, and so is Fox. The network was already on pace for its best ratings year even before the health care debate sent viewership jumping in a traditionally slow month for news.

How emboldened is Fox? After Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s press secretary, warned against “cable news’’ derailing health care plans, Bill O’Reilly assumed he was referring to Fox and seemed ready for a fight.

“Who’s that going to help?’’ O’Reilly said. “Us, that’s who. Our ratings are already soaring because we don’t denigrate the protesters, the way a lot of other TV news organizations do. They’re dying. We’re on fire.’’

Fox’s strong year hasn’t come without controversy. Some critics worry about overheated rhetoric - Beck has called Obama a racist and joked about poisoning Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi - and they suggest Fox has helped lead, instead of just following, the president’s opponents.

Fox’s viewership is up 11 percent over last year, according to Nielsen Media Research. CNN and MSNBC, which benefited from interest in the campaign last year, are down. O’Reilly (who already had cable news’s most popular show), Beck, and Sean Hannity lead the way.

“Fox is much more firmly established than it has ever been,’’ said Eric Burns, former host of Fox’s “News Watch’’ media criticism show. “It has been in existence for 13 years. It knows its base. And it knows its base is bigger than CNN or MSNBC.’’

Roughly three times as many Republicans said in a June survey that they regularly get news from Fox, as opposed to CNN or MSNBC, reported th

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media TV politics

Hope, caught up in a sea of obstruction

By Neal Gabler | July 21, 2009

HERE’S THE situation: President Obama maneuvered a stimulus package through Congress that, after being reduced to attract additional senators, has proven insufficient to stimulate the economy. Now, given the political calculus, it would be nearly impossible for him to introduce an additional boost. He also proposed a regulatory scheme for Wall Street that was so riddled with compromises and concessions that it was unlikely to prevent another economic meltdown. And he has pushed a national healthcare plan that is almost certain to be eviscerated, and that even in its disemboweled form may not pass Congress.

Obviously, we face daunting problems, but we nevertheless continue to operate with a kind of hopefulness that we will meet the challenges and triumph. Historically, we have reason to feel this way. In the last 70 years , this country faced down the Great Depression, Nazism, and Jim Crow. The system, however balky and tardy it may have been, has always worked.

But today, beneath the optimistic rhetoric, lurks another possibility that no politician and few pundits want to admit: that the system is no longer up to the task and that the factors that once brought relief are no longer operable. There is the real possibility that this time we will not win but rather founder the way Japan has done since its economic catastrophe. There is the possibility that this time it is hopeless.

How has it come to pass that the most powerful (and most self-confident) nation in the world now seems helpless? The short answer is that political action is a function of political will - the public’s more than the politicians’ - and that ours has been steadily sapped. Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, has said that crisis creates opportunity, but he is only partly right. Crisis creates pain. It is the pain that creates the opportunity.

The New Deal, that great spasm of political initiative, arose out of a national agony: 25 percent of Americans wer

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politics

Lobbies Adopt Tone of Accord With President
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and RON NIXON

WASHINGTON — Top lobbyists for the banking industry were gathered in a war council. The Obama administration had proposed big changes in financial industry oversight, including a consumer protection commission and regulation of some executives’ paychecks. The lobbyists listened to presentations from big Washington public affairs firms ready to deploy arsenals including television commercials and direct-mail campaigns.

But at the end of the meeting, the lobbyists publicly opted to emphasize, if with caveats, their industry’s backing of President Obama’s broader call for reform.

Steve Bartlett, president of the Financial Services Roundtable and a participant in the discussion, said in an interview, “This administration has reminded us of the lesson our mother taught us: If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”

And so it goes the length of K Street. Industry groups and lobbyists typically hostile to intrusive government programs have been professing solidarity with Mr. Obama and his agenda on matters like health care, energy and financial regulation. Industry has calculated that it stands a better chance of achieving its ends by negotiating with the White House than by fighting it — at least publicly, and at least until the various proposals get down to the final details.

For partisans who are more ideological, the parade of industry lobbyists trooping to the White House is unnerving. Conservatives fret that to avoid a messy fight, their business allies are selling out too cheaply, while liberals voice the same worry about the White House and its Congressional supporters. Some lobbyists argue that all the “kumbaya,” as several called it, may be reaching its final chorus, for instance with banks’ efforts to redirect the regulatory overhaul.

“We have sort of a dual goal,” Mr. Bartlett said. “One is to support comprehensive reform, and the other is to kill the consumer financial protection commission.”

In any cas

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politics

In Reagan’s Steps

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By NICK GILLESPIE
Published: July 10, 2009

Given how the last eight or so years have worked out for them in far-flung battlefields and domestic ballot boxes, you’d think that conservatives in general and Republicans in particular would be pretty gun-shy about the war rhetoric. But here’s Joe Scarborough, a former Republican Florida congressman, letting it rip in “The Last Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America’s Promise”: “Congressional leaders will . . . need to take a more prudent path on the environment by declaring war on foreign oil.”
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THE LAST BEST HOPE

Restoring Conservatism and America’s Promise

By Joe Scarborough

271 pp. Crown Forum Publishers. $26
Related
Questions for Joe Scarborough: Morning in America (June 7, 2009)
Excerpt From ‘The Last Best Hope’ (msnbc.msn.com)
The ‘Morning Joe’ Web Site

And in case you’re wondering, just saying no to such a glorious future is not an option. “Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, a Libertarian or a Marxist, understand that it is historically inevitable that the ‘Age of Conservatism’ is coming soon,” Scarborough, the Hegelian author of “Rome Wasn’t Burnt in a Day” (2004), writes. “The winds of history provide us no other choice.”

If this book is indeed the last best hope of conservatism and America’s promise, well, it was nice knowing you. Ultimately, Scarborough offers what Barry Goldwater might have called an echo, not a choice, of a Bush-Obama status quo regarding everything from bailouts to stimulus spending to rendition policy. He unwittingly tells us that conservatives can at best stand athwart history yelling “Slow down,” but they can’t fundamentally change its direction.

To be sure, Scarborough is the host of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC,

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books politics

Although known for his escapist tales of the tropics, Jimmy Buffett hasn’t shied away from slamming the economic downturn we’re in. On his new single, “Summerzcool,’’ he sings, “What’s up with this recession?/ I refuse to participate.’’ And in a song he’s debuting on tour, “A Lot to Drink About,’’ he takes some shots at supreme culprit Bernie Madoff: “Now Madoff made off with all the money/ Now his clients are down to skunk weed.’’ Another lyric talks about “getting angry in subprime city.’’
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JIMMY BUFFETT & THE CORAL REEFER BAND

At Comcast Center tonight and Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $36-$136 at 877-598-8689 or www.livenation.com.

We caught up with him by phone and grilled him on this very un-Buffett-like sharing of political opinions.

Q. You haven’t been afraid to let loose lately about the state of the country. What’s up with that?

A. There’s a lot of stupidity going around on all sides. The country bought it all, and I thought people needed to be reminded about how stupid they were. And it’s an ongoing saga. I can certainly put more verses in “A Lot to Drink About’’ as we go along. For instance, I noticed that the schools are closing in Los Angeles, but the Lakers were just given a parade. There’s no end to the crazy things going on.

Q. Did you get swept up in the Madoff scandal yourself?

A. No, it all smelled like a rat in the beginning. I guess I’ve worked with so many crooked promoters that I can smell ’em. Money made on moving money around never interested me.

Q. How has the recession affected your tour? Is this the year the bubble bursts and some people will not come to see you?

A. No, we’re doing great. Thank God there are people out there who like what we’re doing. They haven’t put us on a list of things they’re not going to do because of the economy. This is their vacation and they’re not going to give it up. They may not go to Florida or buy a new car, but they won’t miss our show. I wanted to find out right away, so we went on sale early with a Detroit show - they’

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a — Sitting in front of his house, mending a fishing net with hands gnarled by years of pulling a living from the sea, Kim Sang-jin recalled the last time North and South Korea clashed militarily in the nearby Yellow Sea.
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Woohae Cho for The New York Times

Fisherman worked on Yeonpyeong Island. South Korea has sent a ship to provide reinforcement in case of a close-range naval skirmish.
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Hawaiians Shrug Off Missile Threat (June 23, 2009)
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South Korea has 1,000 marines on heightened alert on Yeonpyeong Island.
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Yeonpyeong Island is eight miles from North Korea.
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It was seven years ago, and the gunfire from the warships in the two-hour naval skirmish was close enough to rattle his windows, sending him and his wife ducking for cover. Now, with tensions escalating since the North’s nuclear test last month and the subsequent United Nations sanctions, he said he and other residents feared a new battle could erupt at any moment near this small South Korean-controlled island, which sits precariously off the coast of a hostile North Korea.

“We are always afraid, every day,” said Mr. Kim, 66, who lives two doors down from a neighborhood bomb shelter. “But you get used to living with the fear.”

As a North Korean freighter suspected of carrying banned weapons heads toward Myanmar with an American Navy destroyer on its tail, the chances of a confrontation with the North — which has said it would consider interception an act of war — are rising. And South Korean military experts say that this lonely island, which is also claimed by the North, is the most likely place for that clash to occur, with the North possibly provoking a limited battle as part of its risky brinkmanship with the United States and other countries.

Yeonpyeong Island sits just two miles from the so-called northern limit line, a watery extension of the demilitarized zone

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politics

People have been crowing about online communities for decades, but creating a space where people feel comfortable talking to one another is actually a difficult task. Successful online sites have found a way to welcome newcomers, make regulars feel at home and manage the provocations of “trolls,” spammers and misanthropes of all sorts.

The Obama administration is running into some eccentric characters of it own as it tries to build Web sites to get citizens talking about public policy. I wrote in Tuesday’s Times about how an brainstorming session about open government on the White House Web site attracted vocal comments from people calling for exposure of records on U.F.O’s, legalization of marijuana and an investigation into alleged defects in the president’s birth certificate.

The White House is hardly naïve in its foray into the scrum of the Web. Beth Simone Noveck, the New York Law School professor appointed by President Obama as deputy chief technology officer for open government, has studied these systems as much as anyone. She built Peer to Patent, a system that lets experts assist patent examiners with technical information.

Ms. Noveck has some strong views about how to create sites that get the best out of people. She was too diplomatic to disparage anyone participating in the forums she is setting up. But she was clear that over time, with the right structures, the wonks will in fact triumph over the trolls, and policy discussions will thrive.

The most important lesson she draws from previous experiments with online public participation is that sites need to be designed carefully to keep people on topic.

“If you don’t frame the debate, if you don’t ask a good question, you don’t get a good answer to the question,” she said.

Similarly, having a given discussion running for a short period of time also improves the quality of the conversation, she said, and it also doesn’t overwhelm government officials with far to much to read.

“If people are going to be asked to spend the time on contributing, you

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Book: Teddy Jr.’s ‘exploiting’ name
By Dave Wedge | Tuesday, June 23, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Coverage
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Photo by Nancy Lane

U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s son, Teddy Jr., is a Washington, D.C., “rainmaker” who “has been boldly exploiting” his family name to rake in fees from health care corporations and government pension investors, a new book by pundit Dick Morris claims.

“At the very least Ted Kennedy Jr.’s . . . business created an appearance of impropriety,” Morris and his wife, Eileen McGann, write in their new book “Catastrophe.” “On an even more basic level, it just doesn’t look good for the family of an elected official to benefit financially because of his ability to set up meetings in the Senate.”

The tome, an insider’s look at Washington that hits bookstores today, includes a chapter on Ted Kennedy Jr. that claims he took advantage of lax lobbying rules in the early 2000s when his company, Marwood Associates, worked to help pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb keep a monopoly on a diabetes drug.

A former adviser to President Clinton, Morris writes that BMS made $3 billion off the drug in 2000 and hired the younger Kennedy solely to land a meeting with his powerful father, who sits on the Senate health care committee, according to book excerpts provided exclusively to the Herald.

“(Marwood) was hired for a simple, raw political reason: to pay the son of a senator to arrange for a private meeting of great importance to a company with a matter of great economic concern,” the book states.

Ted Kennedy Jr. did not return a call yesterday. A spokeswoman for the Bay State senior senator did not respond to several messages.

New lobbying laws ban lawmakers’ spouses and immediate family members from working for companies with business before legislators. But Morris argues that Marwood remains a behind-the-scenes player in the high-stakes world of health care.

“(Ted Kennedy Jr.) has unique access to the only person besides President Obama who will decide which provisions

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politics

In Albany, Separate Senate Sessions for Each Party
By DANNY HAKIM and JEREMY W. PETERS

ALBANY —Republicans and Democrats attempted to hold separate Senate sessions at the same time on Tuesday, leaving the Capitol in confusion and bickering as members of both parties shouted over each other on the Senate floor, and each party claimed it was in control.

Though Democrats had entered the Senate chamber through a back hallway just before 12:30 p.m. and locked the doors — much to the surprise of Republicans — Republicans moved ahead with plans for their own session and began calling for votes on bills as Democrats sat silent in protest.

Exactly who was in control of the Senate — or whether any of the procedural action the Republicans had taken was legally valid — was unclear. Democrats were successful in blocking Republicans from taking control of the Senate gavel, which remained firmly in the hands of Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins of Westchester County, who was guarded by sergeants-at-arms on both sides.

By late in the afternoon, Democrats were considering action on a number of bills that dealt with subjects as varied as a low-cost electrical power for businesses and authorizing bonds for New York City. But one hotly contested issue was notably absent from the list: legislation that would extend the mayor’s authority to control New York City schools.

The governor called a second Senate session for Wednesday. Among the bills he asked be considered is one that would legalize same-sex marriage. It is unclear if the bill has enough support to pass, however. And with the legal validity of any action the Senate takes now in question, it is also unknown whether a vote on that bill — or any bill — would even be meaningful.

Shortly after Republicans walked onto the Senate floor on Tuesday afternoon, their leader, Dean G. Skelos, called the chamber to order and asked one of the Senate Republicans’ deputy leaders, George H. Winner Jr., to “take the podium.” Mr. Winner, who was standing at the front of the chamber, attempt

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politics

A Bubble of Diplomats and Officials Is Set to Pop
Gael Turine for The New York Times

The European Union headquarters in Brussels has spawned similar buildings that have gobbled up swaths of residential areas.

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By JOHN TAGLIABUE
Published: June 22, 2009

BRUSSELS — The European Union has rarely been a welcome neighbor since it arrived here four decades ago.

Its headquarters, 10 minutes west of downtown, is officially known as the Berlaymont building. But for many natives who do not much care for its fortresslike looks, it is the Berlaymonster, a cross-shaped hulk covered with glass panels to let in the little sunlight that brightens the city’s gloomy skies.

Worse yet, the Berlaymonster has spawned a family of like-minded buildings in the city’s old Leopold Quarter. These glass and steel offices and apartments — for bureaucrats, diplomats, lawyers, lobbyists and other European hangers-on — have gobbled up swaths of pleasant old residential areas once teeming with neighborhood stores, churches, schools and parks.

But now the European Union has proposed a new development scheme, which it says will purge some of the urban sins it has committed over the years. At the same time, officials hope to simplify its bureaucracy, now spread among 55 buildings scattered throughout the city, and provide the space it needs to grow.

So it has chosen a French architect and urban planner, Christian de Portzamparc, 65, from a field that included the Netherlands’ Rem Koolhaas and Belgium’s own Xaveer De Geyter, to devise a comprehensive, 15-year plan that would not only create new office space but also provide an architectural framework symbolizing the European Union — all while making Brussels a more livable city.

Mr. Portzamparc was also chosen recent

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politics

White House Changes the Terms of a Campaign Pledge About Posting Bills Online
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that once a bill was passed by Congress, the White House would post it online for five days before he signed it.

“When there’s a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government’s doing,” Mr. Obama said as a candidate, telling voters he would make government more transparent and accountable.

When he took office in January, his team added that in posting nonemergency bills, it would “allow the public to review and comment” before Mr. Obama signed them.

Five months into his administration, Mr. Obama has signed two dozen bills, but he has almost never waited five days. On the recent credit card legislation, which included a controversial measure to allow guns in national parks, he waited just two.

Various watchdog groups have slapped Mr. Obama’s wrist for repeatedly failing to live up to the pledge. Politifact.com, the fact-checking arm of The St. Petersburg Times, has branded it a “promise broken.”At the same time, many have questioned the value of the promise, saying it was too late in the process for anything to change in a bill.

“There isn’t anybody in this town who doesn’t know that commenting after a bill has been passed is meaningless,” said Ellen S. Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group dedicated to making government more transparent.

Now, in a tacit acknowledgment that the campaign pledge was easier to make than to fulfill, the White House is changing its terms. Instead of starting the five-day clock when Congress passes a bill, administration officials say they intend to start it earlier and post the bills sooner.

“In order to continue providing the American people more transparency in government, once it is clear that a bill will be coming to the president’s desk, the White House wil

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THE FIND
If Barack's Berry could talk

June 14, 2009

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The fine new parody "Obama's BlackBerry" (Little, Brown, $13.99) targets the rivalries and foibles of politicians and celebrities alike. Apart from a few missives purported to be from Abe Lincoln, the San Francisco-based Kasper Hauser comedy team has written a pitch-perfect set of high-level text messages and e-mails. Bill Clinton asks Barack Obama to send Hillary out of the country ("shez driving me nutz - I have 2 party"). And Arnold Schwarzenegger wants Obama to let him go after Osama Bin Laden. With "a parachute, some Red Bulls and a crossbow," he promises to finish the job in 24 hours.

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Warning recalled on Cognos bid
Two say Patrick aides knew to expect pressure

By Andrea Estes, Globe Staff | June 5, 2009

A high-ranking administration official warned Governor Deval Patrick's office about possible political pressure in the multimillion-dollar Cognos software contract, months before the state sealed the deal that set in motion a major corruption scandal, according to two former state officials.

Henry Dormitzer, who served at the time as undersecretary for administration and finance, alerted Patrick's deputy chief of staff, David Morales, in late May or early June 2007 that employees in the state Information Technology Division feared that the contract was being rammed through for Cognos ULC without sufficient scrutiny, the former officials said.

Dormitzer also told Morales that there were rumors in the department that the contract was being pushed by the House speaker at the time, Salvatore F. DiMasi, say the former officials, who spoke on the condition they would not be named. DiMasi was indicted this week, accused of receiving $57,000 in payments from Cognos while steering contract awards to the company.

The conversation between Dormitzer and Morales in 2007 is the first known example of a direct warning delivered to Patrick's office that something was amiss. Patrick's administration awarded the contract in August 2007, but rescinded it seven months later, and the $13 million was eventually returned.

The political fallout over the indictments Tuesday continued yesterday, as Patrick and his aides acknowledged for the first time that the governor himself was interviewed by FBI agents as part of the criminal investigation into the Cognos deal, although he was not subpoenaed before the grand jury.

"We've been through all this with the FBI," Patrick said in an interview yesterday on WTKK-FM. Later, a senior Patrick aide confirmed that an interview between Patrick and the FBI had taken place, but declined to say when and where.

Also yesterday, Patrick and his aides gave a series of evasive a

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politics

An Ivy-Covered Path to the Supreme Court
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

President Obama may have broken with history by nominating a Latina to the Supreme Court, but in another respect he followed the path of almost every president in modern times who has successfully placed a justice: he chose a nominee groomed in an Ivy League university.

If confirmed, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who attended Princeton University and Yale Law School, would sit alongside seven other Ivy League graduates on the court. Only Justice John Paul Stevens provides a measure of non-Ivy diversity, having graduated from the University of Chicago and the Northwestern University School of Law.

In the history of the court, half of the 110 justices were undergraduates, graduate students or law students in the Ivy League; since 1950, the percentage is 70. From the beginning of the 20th century, every president who has seated a justice has picked at least one Ivy graduate. Four of the six justices on President Obama’s short list studied at Ivy League institutions, either as undergraduates or law students.

Whatever a nominee’s origins might be, does attending the same institutions shape them and their views, even subtly? Critics suggest that elite universities shave off the differences in backgrounds and contribute to a kind of high-level groupthink.

“There is both a funneling and homogenizing effect from these schools,” said G. William Domhoff, a professor of psychology and sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of “Who Rules America?”

The effect, Professor Domhoff said, “plays out in terms of social networks, cultural/social capital, and a feeling of being part of the in-group.” It is one of subtle conditioning — what Sam Rayburn, the former House speaker, meant when he famously said, “If you want to get along, go along.”

Even those who might not agree with Professor Domhoff’s political critique would like to see more educational variety on the Supreme Court. Limiting the universe of nominees largely to Ivy League graduates “

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politics

Democrats Nearing Consensus on Health Plan
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — A broad consensus on the contours of legislation to remake the nation’s health care system appeared to be developing among Democratic leaders on Tuesday as three House committee chairmen outlined a bill generally similar to one being written in the Senate.

Democratic leaders in both houses said they would require individuals to carry insurance and employers to help pay for it. But they have yet to decide how to raise the necessary tax revenue.

Leaders in both chambers said they wanted to establish a new public health insurance program, which would compete with private insurers. But they have not settled on the details.

The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, affirmed his desire to begin taxing some employer-provided health benefits, as a way to help pay for coverage of the uninsured.

After slamming the door on that idea last month, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York, opened the door a crack on Tuesday.

Mr. Rangel said on May 6 that there was “no way” he would support taxing employer-provided health benefits. On Tuesday, he declined to rule out the idea.

Asked whether he would consider taxing employee health benefits, Mr. Rangel said, “There is nothing, no matter how stupid it sounds, that I am rejecting.”

The three House chairmen — Mr. Rangel and Representatives George Miller and Henry A. Waxman, both California Democrats — are drafting a single bill. They summarized the bill on Tuesday at a meeting of the House Democratic Caucus.

Mr. Waxman said the House bill would be named in honor of Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan. Since 1957, Mr. Dingell has regularly introduced bills providing for national health insurance.

Senate Democrats set forth an ambitious schedule. Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, said the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions would begin forging its versi

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Obama's aunt gives conflicting comments about Kenyan return
By Maria Sacchetti
Globe Staff / June 4, 2009

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Zeituni Onyango, the president's aunt who is facing deportation from the United States, said yesterday that she planned to return to her native Kenya as soon as last night.
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Then, she reversed herself, and said she was not going.

It was just the latest turn for the enigmatic Onyango, who catapulted from obscurity into the international spotlight last year just before the presidential election when news reports revealed that she was an illegal immigrant living in Boston public housing.

Onyango, who recently turned 57, said she has moved out of her public housing apartment and is in an undisclosed location nearby. Regardless of her travel plans, she said she plans to be in Boston for her next immigration hearing, on Feb. 4.

"I'll be there, God willing," she said yesterday in a phone interview. "I don't know, I'm not a soothsayer. I leave everything to God."

Earlier yesterdaya relative in Kenya told a group of visiting American journalists that Onyango is returning to that country soon. The relative did not elaborate, but the statements irked Onyango, who would not give a clear answer to the question.

"How would she know?" Onyango asked. "I don't want anybody to know whether I'm going to hell or heaven."

David Santos - a spokesman for the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which could grant Onyango permission to travel while her case is pending - declined to comment on the matter, citing privacy rules.

Onyango's lawyer, Margaret Wong, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer last month that Onyango was seeking permanent residency. Wong was unavailable for comment yesterday. Onyango had lived with relatives in Cleveland after he

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politics

Closed Clinic Leaves Abortion Protesters at a Loss
By MONICA DAVEY

WICHITA, Kan. — For the first time in years, only a Wichita police car has been waiting outside the abortion clinic of Dr. George R. Tiller, who was shot to death a week ago. Gone are the trucks bearing enormous images of bloody fetuses, the signs offering the home addresses of clinic workers, the crowd of protesters yelling to women as they enter.

Over almost 20 years, a vocal, diverse constellation of anti-abortion forces has grown up in this conservative city with an intensity rarely seen elsewhere, converging around Dr. Tiller’s practice. With his death, its future suddenly seems uncertain, too.

This city of 358,000 people, once the focal point of protests because of four abortion clinics — most significantly Dr. Tiller’s, which provided rare late-term abortions — last week had no abortion facility open for business, no target in chief, no immediate reason for this network of anti-abortion forces to be based here.

“I don’t know what the future holds,” said Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue, one of the most well-known anti-abortion organizations. Seven years ago, Mr. Newman moved his organization’s national headquarters, its leaders and his family from Southern California to Wichita to focus a national spotlight on Dr. Tiller, whom he described as “the flagship” of the country’s abortion business.

“I think it’s too early to say what comes next,” he said.

Although Operation Rescue worked for years to close down Dr. Tiller’s clinic, his death was never the outcome Mr. Newman wished for, he said. Of the man charged with killing Dr. Tiller, he tearfully said, “This idiot did more to damage the pro-life movement than you can imagine.”

Wichita has five separate operations aimed at discouraging women from having abortions. One of them, the Choices Medical Clinic, opened next door to Dr. Tiller’s now-closed offices in 1999 — after spending six years fighting city zoning rulings.

The Choices sign, facing into Dr. Tiller’s lot, promi

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politics

Closeted politicians stir filmmaker's 'Outrage'

By Wesley Morris, Globe Staff | June 5, 2009

Of the many insinuations in "Outrage," Kirby Dick's sad, devastating new documentary about closeted gay politicians - OK, alleged closeted gay politicians - the one that's most disturbing is the case made against a former Southern congressman.

As a young liberal, the politician used his fraternity house "as his gay bar," a former alleged hookup tells the filmmakers. Yet in pursuit of elected office, the politician got married, went to church, and voted Republican, never quite shaking his same-sex attraction but never doing much legislatively to acknowledge or advance the civil rights of gay people. On numerous occasions, in fact, he voted to suppress those rights.

Such alleged hypocrisy is the crux of "Outrage." Dick speculates on the homosexuality of several current and former public officials which hasn't been corroborated by the men themselves.

His charges aren't new; they've certainly surfaced in the alternative press and online. But in accordance with Globe ethics poilcy, I can't repeat those names here.

While dwelling on political contradiction, the movie unfolds at a unique juncture of psychological and moral character: the perverse place where a politician's relentless personal drive and a closeted gay man's shameful desire may meet.

In tying the purported secret gay sex lives of these putatively straight elected officials - the movie focuses almost exclusively on men - to their voting records, a caustic portrait emerges of self-deluded souls. Dick goes into scandals involving the married Idaho senator Larry Craig and the now openly gay former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey, who sits down and unburdens himself for the camera (he talks about "living your truth" with an abandon that suggests either lots of therapy or lots of disco). Former Arizona congressman Jim Kolbe talks about how much happier he was after he revealed he was gay (we never hear from his ex-wife, although Mrs. McGreevey does speak).

"

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