Massachusetts Politics

A mini-debate in the Massachusetts Senate yesterday afternoon over a resolution concerning the nomination of a U.S. Supreme Court justice revealed an intriguing difference of opinion on the requirements of bipartisanship.   Ken Donnelly, the Arlington Democrat who serves as Assistant Majority Whip, introduced a resolution calling upon the U.S. Senate to act swiftly on the nomination of a Supreme Court justice to replace Antonin Scalia, who died in his sleep Feb. 13 while on a trip to Texas. Donnelly described the measure as “a simple ask and an important resolution.” It states, in part: “Whereas there are several examples in history where a judge has been successfully nominated, confirmed and appointed to the Supreme Court in the year preceding a presidential election, including Justice Anthony Kennedy by President Reagan, Justice Benjamin Cardozo by President Hoover and Justice Louis Brandeis by President Wilson, and “Whereas, in the event of a vacancy on the Supreme Court, failin...

LET’S HEAR IT FOR POLITICS.   Justice Robert J. Cordy has received some serious praise since announcing earlier this month his intention to leave the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court this summer, three years before he would have had to retire at age 70.   Martin W. Healy, chief legal counsel to the Massachusetts Bar Association, hailed Cordy as “a leading voice on criminal justice issues and an intellectual powerhouse on constitutional law,” and said, “Justice Cordy has played a vital role in modernizing court operations, which will leave a lasting legacy on the administration of justice for years to come.”   Ralph Gants, chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, told a reporter for The (Springfield) Republican newspaper and MassLive web site that Cordy’s productivity on the court is “the stuff of legend,” adding, “He (Cordy) leaves an enduring legacy as a justice of this court, not only because of the over 360 carefully crafted and reasoned majority opinions ...

One of the proverbs lodged in my cranium is, “The judgment of the village is never wrong.” I buy that.   I also think that units within cities – social clubs, softball leagues, busy restaurants and bars, neighborhoods and even certain street corners -- take on the characteristics of villages in that vital information is exchanged and fresh insights emerge there. So when I heard in Everett last summer that Steve Wynn had his eye on a large number of Chinese customers for the casino he’s planning on the old Monsanto Chemical site, I paid attention.   L ater I wrote a blog post on it.   Repeating what a friend told me one Saturday afternoon in Everett Square, I wrote on September 14:   “You watch! Wynn will be doing charter flights from China every other weekend.   He’ll have yachts picking up his most loyal Chinese customers at the Logan Airport dock and whisking them to the casino (on a Mystic-River-front lot, deep inside Boston Harbor). ...

“His (Cianci’s) place in the history of American mayors is there for us to look at and conclude that there is no question he changed his city from a wrong turn on the way to Boston to a Destination City.”                -Tom Cochran, Executive Director, U.S. Conference of Mayors I never had any dealings with Vincent “Buddy” Cianci, but I’ve spoken through the years with many who did. To a person, they all say roughly the same thing: He was brilliant and driven, one of the smartest and best politicians they’d ever seen. He rightly deserved credit for the economic and cultural rebirth of Providence, Rhode Island. It was hard to work for him, or be accountable to him, but you always learned something when you were with him.   Unfortunately, you never knew when one of his inner demons would pop out to torment you and/or create a spectacle. We were once engaged in a project in Massachusetts with a man who’d run the Pr...