Former football star Brian Banks of Long Beach, California got a really raw deal. What happened to him is shocking and outrageous. A stupid, unthinking woman accused him of rape. Except in 2003, Wanetta Gibson,15, was a stupid, unthinking girl. Back then, Banks, a young black man, was a high school senior and star football player, hoping to play pro …
Month: May 2012
Judges still look the other way in drunk driving fatalities
I still remember writing about the deaths in the early eighties of a Hyde Park family of four killed in a car crash caused by a drunk driver. The shock of that tragedy seemed to jolt people into taking drunk driving more seriously. And well it should have. Back in the '70's and '8o's, drunk driving was the …
Continue reading Judges still look the other way in drunk driving fatalities
U.S. and allies should stand strong in this week’s Bagdhad meeting
Six nations are heading to Baghdad this week to meet with Iran about its relentless drive for nuclear weapons. This was teed up by their meeting this spring in Istanbul. The idea is to get Iran, at a minimum, to stop enriching uranium to a level necessary for bombs, four times more potent than what is needed for peaceful …
Continue reading U.S. and allies should stand strong in this week’s Bagdhad meeting
Let’s chuck the Cherokee fixation and deal with today’s challenges
The Boston Herald drumbeating investigation of Elizabeth Warren’s claim to having Cherokee blood keeps on. In yesterday’s installment, the paper published excerpts from a 1984 cookbook called Pow Wow Chow, edited by Warren’s cousin, who compiled recipes from “Five Tribes families.” The story has gone viral on right wing websites. But so what? The Five …
Continue reading Let’s chuck the Cherokee fixation and deal with today’s challenges
The torch has passed: Joe Kearns Goodwin launches bid for state senate
Disclaimer: proceed at your own risk. The following observation of an emerging political figure is through the eyes of one who has known him affectionately since he was a little boy. Notwithstanding the personal connection, I really do see him as a potentially great voice of the next generation. Joey Goodwin, oops, he is now …
Continue reading The torch has passed: Joe Kearns Goodwin launches bid for state senate
Obama and the politics of gay marriage
It would have been easier for Barack Obama to wait until after the election to announce that he thinks gays should have the right to marry. He could have let people assume that V.P. Joe Biden’s and Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s comments to that effect were a hint that such was the thinking inside the …
A Mother’s Day Remembrance
Every day at around 4:30 in the afternoon, my hand reaches for the phone to call my mother. Traditionally, it was my way of heading off a call from her that would inevitably interrupt either my work or our family dinner. Though there was often nothing new to report, it was a way of checking …
Warren’s ancestry fumble sidetracks her campaign
Apparently, virtually everyone born in Oklahoma is part Native American. According to Oklahoman Sarah Burns, a writer for Politico, “Most families that are at least three generations Okie are related to one tribe or another.” In fact, adds Burns, “the current chief of the Cherokee Tribe matches [Senate candidate Elizabeth] Warren — he also is …
Continue reading Warren’s ancestry fumble sidetracks her campaign
Update: Column spurs community compassion
The power of a columnist is incontrovertible. Not long ago, Boston Globe columnist Brian McGrory wrote a moving piece decrying the plight of Shirley Simmons, mother of the late Darryl Williams. Back in 1979, he was the innocent victim of senseless violence in Boston, violence that made him a quadriplegic and confined him to a …
Women’s rights are human rights, but will “backward” nations see them as keys to success?
High-level State Department work requires intelligence, sensitivity, and a healthy dose of optimism. This is what I took away from last week’s State Department briefings of 22 members of the Association of Opinion Journalists, formerly the National Conference of Editorial Writers. Diplomats whose portfolios cover everything from Western Hemisphere Affairs to the Middle East, from …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 