Remember when the Mass. GOP bought up a couple of possible "Reilly for Governor" internet domain names and threatened to put anti-Reilly propaganda on the sites? (So far, there’s nothing on those sites, but maybe there will be when the campaign heats up.) Well, it appears that some Democratic-leaning activists have taken a page out of the GOP’s playbook. As you know, Pat Jehlen, having won the primary for the Second Middlesex Senate seat, faces Republican Bill White in a special election on September 27. White, like any good 21st-century candidate, has got a website, BillWhiteForSenate.com, on which you can find out a bit more about him, make a donation to his campaign, etc. The one thing you can’t find out on White’s website is what party he belongs to. His entire site is remarkably devoid of any reference to the fact that he’s a Republican. This is no accident – to the contrary, it appears to be White’s considered strategy to finesse his party membership (thanks sco). Now to the internet angle: some enterprising folks – we don’t know who because they have purchased a private domain name registration – have put up a competing site, WhiteForSenate.com, the point [...]
WaPo backs Roberts; NYT doesn’t
The Washington Post’s editorial board has come out in favor of John Roberts’ confirmation, and the New York Times has come out against. Some would argue that this is all just as relevant as Michael Bloomberg’s view. In any event, the key passage of the Post’s editorial is this: Judge Roberts represents the best nominee liberals can reasonably expect from a conservative president who promised to appoint judges who shared his philosophy. Before his nomination, we suggested several criteria that Mr. Bush should adopt to garner broad bipartisan support: professional qualifications of the highest caliber, a modest conception of the judicial function, a strong belief in the stability of precedent, adherence to judicial philosophy, even where the results are not politically comfortable, and an appreciation that fidelity to the text of the Constitution need not mean cramped interpretations of language that was written for a changing society. Judge Roberts possesses the personal qualities we hoped for and testified impressively as to his belief in the judicial values. While he almost certainly won’t surprise America with generally liberal rulings, he appears almost as unlikely to willfully use the law to advance his conservative politics. Since Roberts’ confirmation is all but certain, [...]
“Throwing a bomb on the table”
A post in which I take the side of the Romney administration…? Would-be gubernatorial candidate and Swampscott selectman Charlie Baker threw down with some Romney aides the other day at a business roundtable, taking them to task for their supposed ignorance on the limits of what towns can do to accomodate the non-super-rich: Eric Kriss, the governor’s wonkish secretary of administration,argued that the state’s cities and towns need to find a way toaccommodate more growth or look harder at costs. Kriss’s point:Building multifamily and affordable single-family homes makes economicsense for communities. Places like Cambridge are succeeding at growingrevenues and building housing. Why not others? That’s when Harvard Pilgrim chief executive Charlie Baker spoke up — and things got heated, say those who were there. Baker,who had Kriss’s job in the Weld administration and is now a Swampscottselectman, said municipal officials he knows don’t believe buildingmodestly priced housing makes fiscal sense, because of the addedpressure on schools and other services. He pointed directly at Romneyand Kriss, calling them two ”very smart guys," but said the”mythology" of what is good for communities is very different thanwhat they were describing. And he differed with Kriss’s numbers. ”The governor was not too happy about [...]
