Recently, a Philadelphia church official, Msgr. William Lynn, was sentenced to three to six years in prison on one felony child endangerment charge for covering up sexual abuse by the now laicized priest, Edward Avery, whom he supervised. Lynn was acquitted of conspiracy and a second endangerment count involving a second priest, on whom the jury …
Continue reading Supervisors finally paying the price of sexual abuse cover-ups
Shouting fire in a crowded theater is a terrible thing to do. Opening fire is a horror of a whole order of magnitude. Most of America is struggling to make sense out of 24-year-old neuroscience student James Holmes' rampage, which so far has resulted in the deaths of 12 people and injured 59 others, some of whom may …
Continue reading Colorado shooting scares, saddens and stymies us
I can't really understand, much less explain, the Higgs boson, or the Higgs field that excites the creation of the Higgs boson. Scientists tell us it is the last fundamental piece of standard model of particle physics to be discovered in an experiment, and it seems to have enough potential as an explanation for an irreducible something, …
Continue reading Tanglewood: the Higgs boson of classical music
What is Deval Patrick is thinking these days? Other than his campaigning for President Obama, of course. At issue are the Governor's support of loosening a ban on gifts to doctors from pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers and his move to veto legislative reforms of the use of welfare debit cards. Big pharma has long plied …
While tens of thousands of Boston concert-goers were being herded from the Esplanade to a tunnel under Storrow Drive under threat of storm, Ogunquit, Maine was celebrating July 4th as tradition would have it: simple and lovely. Standing on the Marginal Way, overlooking the water, the friendly, appreciative crowd could see the fireworks unfolding along the coast: …
Continue reading Ogunquit fireworks preserve charm of yesteryear
Thanks to CNN and Fox, Thursday's SCOTUS announcement was an emotional roller coaster. Like the Dewey-beats-Truman headlines, they both were so eager to be first that they were wrong. Shame on them. This time, print media at least made a stab at reading the Supreme Court decision before pronouncing the individual mandate dead. And, of course, it wasn't. …
Continue reading Health care – the end of the beginning and the beginning of hard work
That whoosh you hear is the sound of money, gobs of it, flying from wellheeled donors to political candidates and "independent" committees on behalf of candidates. The roar is increasingly deafening especially when the money is coming from corporations and superPAC's (and, to a lesser extent, labor unions. Corporations, Mitt Romney explains to us, are …
Mitt Romney says that President Obama's recent move not to deport illegal immigrants brought here as children was motivated by politics. Now there's a surprise! That's a little bit like Captain Renault in Casablanca saying "I'm shocked, shocked to find that there is gambling is going on in here." Of course it was political, shrewdly political. And it …
Continue reading Obama’s executive order: the Dream Act lives on
I first met Bea Barron when I was a political reporter and she was selling ads for The Newton Times in the 1970's. She was a longtime community activist who had worked for Newton Fair Housing, marched with Dr. King when he was in Boston, volunteered at the local NAACP headquarters and raised money for the …
Forget Romney and Obama for now. The greatest immediate impact on the U.S. economy, beyond the control of either nominee, could be what happens Sunday in the Greek run-off election. On that day, millions of Greek voters will choose from among a group of flawed and untrustworthy leaders a party (or coalition of parties) to lead …
