What do you get when you mix patriotism with the free market? A whole lot of outrage. Those heart-tugging moments when a soldier in fatigues stands on the Fenway dugout between innings and waves, or in Foxborough before a Patriots game when a Marine in full uniform is shown on the giant screen in Gillette Stadium […]
CommonWealth Staff
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Baker’s coattails and other Mass. election outcomes
Gov. Charlie Baker’s coattails aren’t long enough just yet. Even though the wildly popular Republican got out on the campaign trail for Rep. Geoff Diehl, he couldn’t match the star power fired up by Rep. Michael Brady, who emerged victorious in the state Senate special election in the Second Plymouth and Bristol District to fill the […]
Posted inEducation, The Download
Feds require transgender access to girls’ locker room
Federal education officials ruled on Monday that an Illinois school district violated antidiscrimination laws by requiring a transgender student who identifies as a girl to disrobe and shower behind privacy curtains in the girls’ locker room. The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights spent nearly two years investigating Illinois’ largest high school district […]
Posted inState House News Service, The Download, Uncategorized
Is Grand Prix of Boston about to hit the wall?
If it feels like we’ve seen this movie before. Mayor Marty Walsh gets out in front in support of the idea of a big sports event coming to Boston. Other government officials, whose buy-in is needed, seem cool to the idea. The blowback starts about the lack of any public vetting of the idea, with […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
GOP debate becomes a two-ring circus
When it comes to tagging a group with the circus label because of behavior that veers toward the clownish, it seems two can play the game. So it was that the big storyline from Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate became the table-turning focus on the CNBC media panel, with the candidates and various pundits charging the […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Globe should publish the DeLeo transcript
House Speaker Robert DeLeo accused the Boston Globe on Wednesday of deliberately distorting and misrepresenting comments he made in a 2010 deposition about Probation Department hiring, so I expected the Globe to settle the matter by publishing the entire transcript of his testimony today. Instead, Globe editor Brian McGrory issued a statement saying, we “are […]
Posted inEducation, The Download
Massachusetts gets demographic boost, but still scores at top
Amidst all the debate about which annual standardized test to use in Massachusetts — and whether we are testing too much or attaching too many consequences to its outcomes — new results are out from the one test that allows for direct comparisons among all states. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, is […]
Posted inHealth Care, The Download
Where’s the beef?
In the 1973 movie Sleeper, Woody Allen plays a health food store owner who is cryogenically frozen after a botched ulcer procedure and is awakened 200 years later, unwrapped like a TV dinner. He asks for “wheat germ, organic honey, and tiger’s milk” for his breakfast, which bemuses the two doctors overseeing his care. “Oh, yes,” […]
Posted inThe Download, Transportation
Baker is better barometer on MBTA fare increases
In 2013, state lawmakers gave the MBTA the go-ahead to raise fares at predictable intervals in order to boost its bottom line and put riders on notice about the timing and the size of fare increases they could expect. The move was seen as a way for the authority to tamp down the criticism from riders that […]
Posted inHealth Care, State House News Service, The Download
It’s not brain surgery. Well, yes it is.
With football starting at 9:30 a.m. from London Sunday followed by a full slate of afternoon games, it’s possible people will be weary of watching men beat each other’s brains out by the time the Sunday night game rolls around. So flip to the National Geographic channel at 9 p.m. and watch someone get his brain […]