Ann Coulter must have been hit on the head by a soccer ball, and it was no planned header. Her recent column , a screed against the sport and America's growing interest in it, seems unhinged. She asserts that this is a sign of our nation's moral decay, that the only reason we are interested …
Month: June 2014
Snake eyes for Coakley on casino referendum
Question for gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley: if you knew that the legitimacy of the casino repeal referendum would end up at the Supreme Judicial Court regardless of how you decided on its constitutionality and you're supposedly fine with its being on the November ballot, why did you come down on the side of corporate interests rather than …
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Ryan resonates on IRS emails
I rarely agree with (Wisconsin GOP Congressman) Paul Ryan, but in this recent kerfuffle over "lost" IRS emails, he struck a responsive chord. Speaking to Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen at a House Oversight Committee hearing, Ryan said "you can reach into the lives of hardworking American taxpayers and, with a letter, an phone call …
Warnings for seniors and horses
Yes, yes, it's important to see the big picture. But sometimes viewing life from 30,000 feet is not actually better. Two stories in today's Boston Globe show how grand urban plans or budget metrics can sacrifice a touch of humanity. First, in the interest of saving money, the Social Security Administration has been closing field offices, …
Iraq: Hell no, we shouldn’t go
President Obama said Friday the United States will not be sending American troops back into Iraq. That was firmer than his earlier comment that every possible response to the sectarian war was on the table. The difference is a important. Insanity, we are told, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Earlier that day, Fourth …
Eric Cantor’s House of Cards falls
I always thought that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was the brat, the youngish sharp-elbowed, supercilious, conservative Congressman assumed to be John Boehner's heir apparent as Speaker of the House. Bookish. Dogmatic. So determined was he to be the ideological antidote to a liberal Obama administration, he was a driving force behind the Republican congressional strategy to …
Smart People, smart play
Smart People, Lydia Diamond's new play at the Huntington Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts, is a smart, funny, profound and highly polished play that I don't hesitate to recommend. Diamond, whose award-winning play Stick Fly played at the Huntington four years ago before going on to Broadway, writes a lot about race and …
Senator Whoever: a candidate for The Daily Show!
I haven't written much about Citizens United and the lethal impact that infamous Supreme Court decision has had on our already tainted political process. Nothing I could have written would have driven the point home as colorfully as this music video by Los Angeles-based music writer, singer and producer Eric Schwartz. Please take a few minutes …
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Gun deaths: how many more before common sense kicks in?
Driving past Newtown, Connecticut this past weekend was a reminder of how virtually nothing has been accomplished since the slaughter of little children at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut a year and a half ago. The Stop Handgun Violence billboard along the Mass. Pike puts at more than 32,000 the number of gun deaths since …
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Marjorie Arons-Barron 