Massachusetts

Obviously, the political world is focused on the health of Ted Kennedy, and not the potential political implications of his diagnosis with a malignant brain tumor. And despite the grim prognosis, it’s worth noting that there is a precedent in the Senate for overcoming similar odds: In 1993, Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter was also diagnosed with a brain tumor and given weeks to live, but he’s still in office today.  read more »

The biggest news for Republicans at 8:00 is that Massachusetts has been won -- decisively -- by Mitt Romney. John McCain has campaigned in the Bay State, hoping to capitalize of disaffection with Romney from Republicans who feel he abandoned them as governor to pursue his national ambitions. McCain had the backing of two former Republican governors -- Paul Cellucci and Jane Swift (who was pushed out of the corner office by Romney in 2002) -- and hoped to benefit from residual goodwill from 2000, when he blasted George W.  read more »

BOSTON—Photographers are petting the bomb-sniffing dogs! Nuts! Next up, cats and dogs having sex. Seriously, usually they just take you to jail if you go near the dog.

Earlier, down on the seaport at the World Financial Center, the line to go see Barack Obama speak stretched, four and eight wide, for at least half a mile, curving along the shore and up and over a bridge to downtown. Fortunately there wasn't much of a breeze off the water, but the youngsters in line (and they are young!) were shouting and hopping to keep warm. Seriously.

Madness!

During a visit by Hillary Clinton with some volunteers at her Boston headquarters just now, I peeled away from the pack for a moment to talk to Keith Collins, who has been working the phone banks for Clinton since Saturday.

In an admirably blunt assessment of the situation, he told me he thinks Obama is surging, and that Clinton-fatigue may be a factor.

“He’s coming on strong,” said Collins, a 44-year-old resident of South Boston who works for the city’s department of transportation. “I think people are tired of the Bushes and the Clintons. They want something new.”  read more »

WORCESTER, Mass.—In a slightly altered stump speech delivered here this afternoon, Hillary Clinton challenged Barack Obama by arguing that it was more worthwhile to use unity to reach a goal rather than just espouse unity for unity’s sake.
 read more »

State lawmakers added $850 million to the budget ahead of the April 1 deadline.

Moving up the date of New York's Presidential primary may mean seeing less of Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani.

Democrat Matthew Titone and Republican Lou Tobacco won special elections yesterday for the state Assembly.

Hillary will be raising money privately in Massachusetts.

Barack Obama has a new way of campaigning in New Hampshire.

An online survey of potential voters -- the one pushed hard all day yesterday by Drudge -- showed that 50 percent of respondents would not vote for Hillary Clinton.

Rudy Giuliani said that setting a timetable for pulling out of Iraq "made no sense to me."

Mike Bloomberg defended the police surveillance leading up to the Republican National Convention in 2004.

The police will have to go "hat-in-hand" to bus and rail agencies to get federally authorized money to protect the mass transit system.

The MTA will stop giving health care to its board members, a practice AG Andrew Cuomo said shouldn't have been allowed.

-- Azi Paybarah

Judith Regan Nemesis Transcends Family Scandal    read more »

Judith Regan Nemesis Transcends Family Scandal    read more »

Yet another thing wherein New York dominates Boston, a city in Massachusetts on the Charles River--ownership of office buildings in Boston's financial district.

Fifty-three percent of financial-district buildings are now owned by New York-based landlords, The Wall Street Journal reports. These include One Federal Street, bought by Tishman Speyer last year, and the recent purchase of the State Street Financial Center by Fortis Property Group.

A decade ago, 55 percent of Boston's financial-district buildings were owned by local landlords.

- Tom Acitelli

To no one’s surprise, departing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist excused himself from the Preside  read more »

To no one’s surprise, departing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist excused himself from the Pre  read more »

The incident in which police fired 50 shots and killed a groom on his wedding day was "contagious shooting."

The mayor has better relations with minorities than during the police shooting of Amadou Diallo seven years ago.

The cops involved in the shooting had at least five years of experience on the job.

Two Council members have called on the police commissioner to resign.

Christine Quinn's citywide speaking tour is generating buzz about a possible mayoral run.

An advocacy group wants congestion pricing in the city.

The state Assembly will make public a detailed list of pork projects it funds.

Political parties can now spend money during primaries in New York.

The head of the Executive Director of the state's Lobbying Commission may be ousted.

Eliot Spitzer will get to fill at least two upcoming vacancies on the state's highest court.

2008 wouldn't be the first time Rudy Giuliani tested the presidential waters.

Al Gore told Time magazine that despite traveling by jet to promote his global warming lecture, he does live eco-friendly.

Newsweek looked at Mitt Romney's opposition to same-sex marriage in his last days as governor of Massachusetts, and wonders if he can ride that issue into the White House.

Time magazine simply asks whether a Mormon can be president.

Jonathan Chait, writing in The New Republic, argued that "psychotic mass murderer" Saddam Hussein should be restored to power [subscription]in Iraq.

"Under his rule, Iraqis were shot, tortured, and lived in constant fear. Bringing the dictator back would sound cruel if it weren't for the fact that all those things are also happening now, probably on a wider scale."

And Andrew Cuomo told Page Six that he asked Louis Freeh, a Clinton foe, to be on his transition team because of his legal expertise, not because of politics.

-- Azi Paybarah

Vito Fossella has 1,558 friends on his MySpace page, and some of them are, uh, not conservative.

Andrew Sullivan detects hypocrisy in the Republican contention that rebuking Mark Foley would have made them look homophobic. "They don't seem too worried about appearing homophobic when it comes to winning elections, do they?"

Ben says that the Empire State Pride Agenda dinner last night was a slap at Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and other electeds who aren't as progressive on gay marriage as the group would like. ESPA disagrees.

The reader who found Sheldon Silver's impersonation of Robert DeNiro on YouTube.com has found another online gem.

NARAL goes both ways in the state senate race in Westchester.

Daily Gotham is under attack from porn pushers and may require people to register with the site before being allowed to post comments.

John Liu gets ignored by the MTA.

Tom Kean, Jr. says Dennis Hastert should resign.

Massachusetts may make their elections more like the kind in New York.

Tom Hayden is in town to talk about the Chicago 8 and, I'm prepared to guess, the war in Iraq.

And pictured above is Queens Borough President Helen Marshall at a City Hall press conference.  read more »

-- Azi Paybarah

Bill Weld entered the New York Governor’s race as a red-haired, ruddy-cheeked savior for the s  read more »

Bill Weld entered the New York Governor’s race as a red-haired, ruddy-cheeked savior for the state  read more »

LAURIE: Our wedding guests will be driving or flying in to Central New York from New York City, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Germany, possibly Israel, possibly Indonesia, possibly England. I will need to put together a list of suggested amusements and attractions to occupy my guests' downtime between Friday's "rehearsal dinner" picnic, Saturday's ceremony and reception, and Sunday's bagel brunch. This means that I need to change my attitude about the place where I grew up. I need to stop saying, "It's pretty, but there's no culture, and nothing to do." I was bored senseless as a teenager, but I didn't have a car.

There are a lot of things I've never done and seen in the area. There's an art park, a historical society, a lake and a yacht club in fancy-pants Cazenovia. I've passed the Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, literally hundreds of times and never been inside. Sylvan Beach, on Oneida Lake, is the small-time, freshwater version of the Jersey Shore, complete with deathtrap carnival rides, scary bikers and fried everything.

Chittenango, the actual town in which I grew up and went to high school, is the birthplace of L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wizard of Oz. Downtown Chittenango, such as it is, has yellow brick sidewalks, several Oz-themed businesses, and a small Oz museum; every June there is an Oz Parade, at which a handful of surviving Munchkins make trembly appearances. The whole Oz thing was miles beneath my contempt as a teenager, before I knew the value (or, to be honest, the definition) of kitsch .

There are dozens of golf courses in the area, three separate Erie Canal museums, a salt museum, the museum of freaking distance running, places where you can pick your own berries, state parks for hiking and swimming, ice cream stands and family-run dairy farms.  read more »

Something for everyone, if I can just keep myself from apologizing for the lameness of it all.

This column is not about the HBO series Big Love.  read more »

This column is not about the HBO series Big Love.  read more »

No one ever lost an election by being too hard on sex offenders.  read more »

The Observer received many letters responding to Tish Durkin’s article, “Breast Is Best?  read more »

On Nantucket, the Christmas season begins in earnest on the day after Thanksgiving.  read more »

While we’re not in the business of coaching crooks on how to become smarter criminals, it would se  read more »

While we’re not in the business of coaching crooks on how to become smarter criminals, it woul  read more »

So where's Bill Weld on same-sex marriage again? Andrew Kirtzman tried very hard to find out in an interview that aired yesterday. The attempt was endless, kind of comic, and ultimately unsuccessful.

Bear with him here...:

KIRTZMAN: Well, what is your position on gay marriage? You supported it enthusiastically...

Mr. WELD: No, I...

KIRTZMAN: ...in Massachusetts...

Mr. WELD: No, I've always supported...

KIRTZMAN: ...and now you're not so sure.

Mr. WELD: I've always supported equal rights, full equal rights for gays and lesbians. I signed the first executive order in the country authorizing domestic partnerships for gays and lesbians. I had a number of openly gay and lesbian people in my Cabinet. But I never said that I was in favor of gay marriage and I'm not today.

KIRTZMAN: I'm sorry, didn't you support the Massachusetts court ruling that validated gay marriage in Massachusetts?

Mr. WELD: No. No. I said that you can't repeal it by a statute, which is quite true as a matter of law.

KIRTZMAN: I'm sorry, did you speak in favor of it or against it?

Mr. WELD: I was not on the court when the court decided the decision.

KIRTZMAN: OK. So you're...

Mr. WELD: There was a move in the Massachusetts Legislature to repeal the court ruling through a statute, and you can't do that because the court ruling was based on constitutional law.

KIRTZMAN: Hear, let me put it this way in ways that I guess are more relevant to what's going on in New York state. As you know, the New York state Court of Appeals may get our own gay marriage case and by next year there could possibly be a ruling in favor of gay marriage in New York state. If you were governor, would you support a Defense of Marriage Act law that would prevent that from happening in New York?

Mr. WELD: A statute?

KIRTZMAN: A law, legislation.

Mr. WELD: Well, if the court decides as a constitutional matter that you've got to allow gay marriage, you can't overturn that by a statute. And I do not think I'd be in favor of a constitutional amendment either. I thought that was- a little cumbersome at the federal level.

KIRTZMAN: OK. So you would--where are you in terms of this issue in New York State? Would you be happy if the court ruled in favor of it or against it?

Mr. WELD: It's not a question of happy or not happy. The question is are you going to support, as a legislative matter, or oppose the institution of gay marriage, and I think 70, 75 percent of the voters in this state are very uncomfortable with the notion of a statute supporting gay marriage. So I'm going to be on the other side of that issue.

KIRTZMAN: I'm sorry. Are you uncomfortable with the idea of gay marriage?

Mr. WELD: I think as governor of this state, you're entitled to take into consideration the views of the polity, and I would be against gay marriage.

KIRTZMAN: OK. I have a quote here. I was just looking--preparing for my interview before. You told the Log Cabin Republicans in 2004, `the recognition of gay marriage as the Massachusetts Supreme Court has done is a conservative point of view. It's making the same demands on gays and lesbians as are made on everyone else when they want to commit to each other for a lifetime. I'm surprised that that is not a more broadly held point of view.' It sounds to me like you liked it.

Mr. WELD: That's an argument you could be making in that court case, but that doesn't...

KIRTZMAN: It sounds like an argument you made.

Mr. WELD: ...mean that it's public policy for New York state.

KIRTZMAN: I'm sorry, was that not an argument you were making? Did that not represent your opinion?

Mr. WELD: The court made its own decision and I was saying that was the basis for the court's decision.  read more »

KIRTZMAN: OK. So you were just speaking, I guess, intellectually?

Mr. WELD: Yeah.

William F.  read more »

One branch of the electronic-music family tree—though a solid limb, more than a decade old&mda  read more »

One branch of the electronic-music family tree—though a solid limb, more than a decade old—has n  read more »

“Your class is a cult classic ….  read more »

New Yorkers might be forgiven for thinking that Catholicism long ago became a prerequisite for our s  read more »

Urban living presents many dilemmas, and one of them—perhaps not quite the most acute, but signifi  read more »

What, for other artists, might be considered excess—excess energy, excess emotion, excess ambi  read more »

What, for other artists, might be considered excess—excess energy, excess emotion, excess ambition  read more »

As Weld throws his hat into the governor's race, he's already doling out disappointments to gay marriage supporters. This just in from the Empire State Pride Agenda: "Governor William Weld has been one of the most ardent supporters in either political party of our community's freedom to marry. His track record of accomplishments is solid.

"His recent statements represent a complete and disappointing reversal of his original position.

"The freedom to marry is about equality and New Yorkers are passionate about equality. Governor Weld indicates that New Yorkers are not ready for same sex couples to have the right to marry but our polling tells us otherwise."

And this is how the NYT characterizes Mr. Weld's shifting stance: "Just yesterday, in fact, Mr. Weld came under attack from both the right and the left for his past support of gay marriage, which he says he now opposes beyond Massachusetts."  read more »

John Kerry's defeat in the Presidential election should not have come as a surprise.  read more »

So here we are, with less than a week to go before Election Day.  read more »

Whenyou celebrate an author, i.e., Ann Coulter, who asserts that anyone to the left  read more »

George W.  read more »

The picturesque town of Woodstock, N.Y., which for many people younger than I am evokes memories of  read more »

The rapid rise of John Kerry's Presidential campaign is causing grave concern in the Republican Part  read more »

Random acts of kindness are certainly to be encouraged.  read more »

N.Y.U.  read more »

Let's start with the good news first, even though it's a little stale.  read more »

If you've never made the midwinter drive north towards Boston on I-90-on your way to an assignation  read more »

Having missed out on the great opportunities to make money without working for it during the 1990's,  read more »

About six months ago, an Airborne Express guy sped into my office to make a delivery.  read more »

Lucky is the artist who is born to his vocation.  read more »

Uptown Doormen Suffer Wrath Of Animal Activists Gone WildThe average resourceful Park or Fifth Avenu  read more »

Night Operation Yields Lineup of Love's Losers Some might consider the price of sex as much a philos  read more »

No one ever thought ofGerard Manley Hopkins as being a with-it kind of guy.  read more »

At the Super Bowl party we attend every year, our charminghostess had arranged card tables in the li  read more »