We don't need a Rockwell painting to remind us that Thanksgiving is all about those who came to this nation as immigrants. Everyone, of course, except the Native Americans. The Pilgrims came to escape religious persecution. My great grandparents did it in the 1800's. At some point, your forebears did it as well. Wave after …
Continue reading On immigration, who’s the turkey this Thanksgiving?
Will it take a Baltimore Orioles/Washington Nationals World Series to bring members of Congress back to Washington soon? If so, it only highlights Congress' cowardly unwillingness to exercise its Constitutional responsibility and vote on the ISIS war. This least productive, shortest session of Congress ended with no debate on President Obama's new response to the terrorist threat roiling …
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 …
The Red Sox move on to the ALCS, Gronkowski may play for the Patriots on Sunday, a Newton-based foundation is poised to save Boston's First Night Festival, the school buses are rolling in Boston after an illegal one-day strike, so all's right with the world. Not so fast. Even these positive headlines can't compensate for …
Last night's outcome was clearcut and gratifying, but the future is as complicated as ever. President Obama performed beyond many expectations in the electoral votes, garnering nearly 100 more than Romney before final numbers are in from Florida. Obama carried all the swing states but North Carolina. He won among women, minorities and young people - everyone but whites, …
Continue reading Election outcome clearcut; the future, not so much
Last Tuesday, Congressman John Tierney did what he should have done many months ago. He held a press conference and faced questions about what he knew and when he knew it regarding his brother-in-laws' illegal activities. For Tierney, there were no new revelations. Too bad he waited until he was backed against a wall by the two …
Continue reading Tierney v. Tisei: Time to focus on the issues
At times, the debt ceiling debate has resembled a schoolyard brawl. We’ve heard everything but “so’s your mother!” But this squabble, now a bloody slugfest, has gotten very dangerous and, even if resolved, will have serious consequences for our nation. Many experts now believe that Standard &Poor’s (or some other agency) will have no choice …
Continue reading Surviving the debt ceiling crisis unscathed: highly unlikely
Former Senator Alan Simspon, a Wyoming Republican, just about summed up my reaction to the debt ceiling impasse. He said that the extent to which pettiness has overcome patriotism is nothing short of disgusting. Despite Republican longstanding charges about Obama’s failure to embrace “American exceptionalism,” it is not he who is prepared to risk the …
Continue reading Partisan debt ceiling politics exasperating and dangerous
What better day than Independence Day to contemplate the meaning of the U. S. Constitution? What better issue to use as context than the current debate about raising the debt ceiling? Three groups of politicians, Republicans, Democrats and 59 Tea Party Congressmen, are at loggerheads. Sensible people among Republicans and Democrats know the debt ceiling …
Continue reading The 14th Amendment: a solution to the debt ceiling impasse?
When I was eight years old, I knew my family, my neighbors and some of my elementary school classmates. I knew we lived in Boston, scarcely understood Massachusetts and had no sense of nations or nation-states. If my parents had decided to move, we would have moved, no questions asked. As told in the New …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 