Blog for Boston

DFA for Deval Patrick!

Democracy for America has just added Deval Patrick to the DFA-List! Read Jim Dean's endorsement and contribute today to let the Patrick campaign know what it means to get the DFA stamp of approval.

Censure, Impeachment, Fun....

Last night's meeting was great, featuring John Bonifaz. Before he led a remakrable discussion on the president's trampling of the Consistution, we heard from Stephanie Noguera, who had been Howard Dean's organizer in Salem, NH, and is now one of the DNC hires for the Mass Dem Party working on Victory '06, the coordinated campaign effort to elect a Democratic governor after the primary -- now is when they're looking to find precinct captains. It's pretty exciting seeing this kind of crucial pre-planning done now. Sign up now....

Bonifaz was great -- we learned a lot about his remarkable lawsuit against the president's unconstitutional invasion of Iraq and about some of his other work. It was a wonderfully engaging night and I left both informed and motivated to keep fighting. It's always inspirational to see those who are willing to put themselves on the line as candidates for public office.

High Crimes and Misdemeanors

I'm really looking forward to our April meeting. We've got John Bonifaz coming to lead an open discussion about what Bush has done and what the response of the American people can be: from investigations to censure to impeachment.

I have to admit, I asked Mr. Bonifaz to speak because he's a candidate for Secretary of State and I knew he had opposed the Bush campaign hijinks and treachery in Ohio -- but I didn't know that he was the author of Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George Bush and the lawyer leading the constitutional fight against Bush's invasion of Iraq without a war declaration. So this will be pretty exciting.

City Council Smackdown

In a story that deserved much more coverage, the Boston City Council's practice of closed meetings was found to be in gross violation of the open-meetings law. Kevin McCrea, Shirley Kressel, and Kathleen Devine brought the lawsuit that resulted in the City Council being fined $11,000. A rare victory for common sense. Council President Michael Flaherty, of course, showed no contrition or shame.

As McCrea wrote in his DFA Boston City Council candidate questionnaire last year:

I am a party to a lawsuit alleging that the city council has engaged in a number of meetings that violate the Open Meeting Law. People from around the city have e-mailed, called or talked to me about it. I believe that any meeting which all city councilors are invited to should be open to the public; the District Attorney confirmed that in a letter to Council President Michael Flaherty. Councilors Arroyo, Hennigan, Yancey and Turner currently boycott these meetings which they believe are in violation of the law. This means that 4 of the 13 councilors are being disenfranchised. Certainly, the Open Meeting Law was never meant to keep elected officials from being informed about government business. I would like to see you ask the candidates if they would abide by the Open Meeting Law, and if all councilors are invited to a meeting, that the meeting should be open to the public.

From the Globe:

In a scathing 20-page ruling, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Nancy Staffier Holtz said the City Council had intentionally violated the law, which is designed to let the public view and participate in governmental decision-making. She said the council also had concocted flimsy excuses for the violations.
''Despite clear case law mandating that the public be provided access to all meetings, with limited statutorily defined exceptions not applicable here, the council has responded to the plaintiffs' complaint with little more than a foot-dragging refusal to comply with its legal obligations," the judge wrote.
''The actions of the council were not the result of mistaken reliance on one of the statutory exceptions or inadvertence," she went on. ''Rather, the meetings were conducted in a manner which was calculated to thwart the presumptive rights of the public, and . . . this practice has been and no doubt remains ongoing."

Censure Bush

"Congress must censure President Bush for breaking the law to wiretap American citizens without a warrant."

News roundup

Groundbreaking begins for biolab.

Deval on the pulpit.

First gubernatorial debate on Wednesday; also, Healey channels Mitt and pretends to be a moderate.

Don Young (R-AK) tries to kill the Cape wind farm project.

And from a little while ago,

Mass Dems rule that "elected" means "not elected".

Newsweek on Patrick

Newsweek has the interesting article A Real Racial Tipping Point about the blacks running for major offices this political cycle: Senate candidates Harold Ford Jr. (Tenn.), Michael Steele, Kweisi Mfume (Md.), and Keith Butler (Mich.); and gubernatorial candidates Ken Blackwell (Ohio), Lynn Swann (Penn.) and Deval Patrick right here in Massachusetts.

Now, Steele's campaign is likely dead in the water (for comparing stem-cell research to slavery and the Holocaust before a Jewish audience) and Ken Blackwell was the Katharine Harris of 2004 (speaking of Harris, her Senate campaign is pretty dead too), whereas Swann seems to be doing well with his Super Bowl ring campaign. Butler will have great trouble unseating Debbie Stabenow.

On the Democratic side, Ford is running neck and neck with the Republican candidates and Mfume has an uphill battle beating Ben Cardin in the primary -- though either should trounce Steele unless he pulls a remarkable turnaround.

From the article:

Ford's challenge, as he sees it, has less to do with race than with distancing himself from some prominent family members with legal problems and, most important, distinguishing himself as something other than a typical knee-jerk liberal politician. There was a time, he observes, when black politicians "had to be civil-rights advocates only." He is grateful that time has passed and that his platform can be broader and his ambitions grander than those of his dad.

Patrick, assistant attorney general for Civil Rights under President Bill Clinton, is also making his presence felt. A recent poll had him tied with Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly in the Democratic primary and doing well against Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, who is favored to win the GOP slot. To the extent race is a problem, said Patrick, "I don't view it as my problem."