- A very interesting article by Scott Helman on the Arlington Group, a shadowy coalition of extreme right-wing organizations, including, of course, Focus on the Family (James Dobson) and the Family Research Council (Tony Perkins). If you were looking for proof that the VRWC exists, look no further. Helman reports that the Arlington Group is in the process of vetting the social conservative bona fides of the Republican presidential candidates. Some, like Mike Huckabee, are openly proclaiming their desire to be the group’s chosen candidate; others, like Mitt Romney, are more circumspect but are aggressively courting some of the group’s more powerful members, like James Dobson.
An interesting footnote to the article: Helman reports that the group’s website was taken offline after he started making inquiries. While it’s true that the front page no longer works, most of the content is still available if you poke around a bit. You can find, for example, the group’s guiding principles; the list of member organizations; the “marriage” page (that’s a big one with this crowd); the 2006 voter guide; press contacts for the group itself and for its member organizations; and so forth. You can find some other content with this Google search.
- Sally Jacobs’ long and fascinating profile of the Governor’s relationship with his father, Pat Patrick. It includes interviews with the Governor, other members of the Patrick family, and members of the Sun Ra Arkestra (with whom Pat played for many years). Also, the online article has a spiffy video that includes audio from the reporter’s interview with Deval, and some clips of Pat playing with Sun Ra.
Our Governor’s dad played with Sun Ra, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, and Thelonius Monk, among many others. Not sure residents of many other states can say that.
- Some blogger got a profile in the Magazine.
Please share widely!
I haven’t gotten to the Magazine yet. But will.
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Although I can’t figure out for the life of me, why Deval’s relationship with is father is front page news. Especially with Iran fanning the flames of war. The Iran story made page A18.
Sort of a deus ex laptop kind of image.
for the IBM product placement! đŸ˜‰
glossy finish! paging jordan’s furniture.
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props for your deft touch on the “What do you get that MSM doesn’t get?”
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You’re not going to defend the Caddy incident? You don’t think it was appropriate for the Governor to have a Cadillac? I saw it at Boston Latin yesterday… twasn’t a big deal… and he did pay the difference between that car and Romney’s.
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I’m a little tad surprised that you didn’t have anything else to say on that.
Is that the Crown Vic was paid off in full and did not cost the state anything per month. So to say that Deval covered the difference is not true. The difference is the full lease amount. If by covering the difference you mean the original lease price which was no longer being paid then yes he did cover the difference.
To pay for the company car. It’s the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’s responsibility. So, unless your point is he should have paid for all of it, your point is moot.
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PS: You need to provide a link as evidence for that kind of a claim. And I wouldn’t exactly trust Mitt Romney’s words.
From The Boston Globe
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Damn that Andrea Estes, letting facts get in the way again.
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80,000 miles is not a lot of mileage. Fixing the heat would have been much cheaper. Again, actions often times speak louder than words.
Is there a new Governor anywhere in the US whose state-supplied car has 80,000 miles on it and has had a broken heating system repaired? The really bad move, IMHO, was the state’s buying out the lease for $11K. Why not just dump the high-mileage broken-heater car and lease a new one?
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Yes, DP & Co. handled the Caddy thing badly. But to argue that getting some sort of new car wasn’t appropriate is an entirely different kettle of fish.
15 months before replacement. Having leased a car before, often your lump sum payment at the end of the lease is high due to excess milage. I would imagine it made economic sense to purchase the car outright. And Governor Romney did use it an no additional expense to the Commonwealth for 14 months thereafter.
I’m detecting a pattern. Every time you talk about a decision made by a Republican, you “imagine” that it was a sensible decision grounded in solid analysis. Every decision made by a Democrat, on the other hand, is out of some inflated sense of self-importance, or part of a nefarious plot (such as the ongoing one you’ve uncovered to cross-reference voter identities with their positions on specific issues).
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I’ve got a general suggestion for your posts. A little less “imagining” and “assuming,” and a little more fact. We do try to keep things “reality-based” around here.
My point is, he had a paid off car. He didn’t need a new one. It was very imperial of him.
I have a paid off car, too. It’s got over 140,000 miles on it and rattles when idling.
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Are you telling me that I can’t buy a new car because I already own one? What are you, some kind of Commie?
but if the governor has a perfectly good one, and he buys a new one at twice the old cost. Then I am buying one. He didn’t need the new car. The old one was perfectly fine.
But, obviously, the interview was edited. Occupational hazard.
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That said, I stand by my comment that “they made mistakes.” They did. Deval said as much.
It’s a shame they edited it. However, I don’t really think there were a whole ton of mistakes made in the Caddy incident, regardless of any apologizes Deval made. The reason he apologized, I assume, is just to help diffuse the situation. I have zero problems with any Governor in this country driving a Cadillac. I may have issues if it were a $100,000 dollar Cadillac or a Bently or something, but not with the car Deval Patrick selected.
Great article! I didn’t know you were an Opera Dude!
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I’ve probably heard you in concert at least a dozen times, between Emmanuel Music and the Cantata Singers.
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How do you find the time to do music, law and blogging? The first two together would be enough to put me in the hospital.
Nice piece, David, and a good picture, too!
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The last Q&A raised a good issue, i.e., did BMG influence the outcome of the election. Interesting that the Globe asked YOU: They are the ones who do all kinds of polling before and after elections. I do not recall that they ever included a question like that in a poll. You would think they would want to, if for no other reason than to better understand their readership.
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I think there is a disconnect between the print and electronic sides of the Globe. If they could ever figure out how to really integrate the two, there might be a business proposition that could save them from the financial deterioration they have been going through. I have made a suggestion along those lines on March 1 on Dan Kennedy’s Media Nation — http://medianation.b… — as to how they could compete with the new BostonNOW. I am not saying mine was the best idea in the world, but they do seem stuck in the mud on this issue.
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For example, while they have some blogs going on, they have been very timid about allowing comments, which would add vibrancy and interest to their blogs. In contrast, the Wall Street Journal blogs encourage comments and, I am guessing, thereby generate more loyal readership.
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(And many thanks again for putting my blog on your Mass o’ Politics Feed. I’ll try to keep things interesting enough to warrant people clicking over.)
I dunno. Seems to me like we bloggers did more reporting on Saturday’s event than anyone in the media did.