Results tagged “governorromney”

Is it even an argument at this point? Boston's Mayor Menino caused the Patriots' loss by planning the city's victory party a little too early and much too transparently. Last Wednesday, well before the unthinkable happened, the Herald was already proclaiming, "Tommy, you might as well have suited up for the hated Giants."

This morning on NPR's Morning Edition the money race was quantified in numbers. Since it was NPR they needed something other than visual aids to make the point. What better way to make that point than to use music? The brothers Gibb classic “Staying Alive” was used, for every one second played the candidate indicated had raised $2 million dollars. For some of the candidates, like Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, and Bill Richardson the clips...

Governor Romney, only weeks away from being a lame duck, announced that the MBTA would resume random bag searches of transit system passengers. We thought at first they'd be riffling through our bags trying to find any tokens we still have in our possession, though really they are indeed looking for bombs. The announced plan will deploy portable machines outside of stations that will test baggage for bomb residue, and, with probable cause, police can...

First, the Globe gave us the stunning revelation that Big Dig contractors got early warning that those ceiling panels might fall and kill someone, in the form of a memo from an engineer employed by sub-contractor John Keaveney. Then last week, we found out that actually, that 1999 memo was probably a self-aggrandizing hoax from the guy who claimed to have written it. Naturally, that was the cue for the Herald to go into full...

Just about a week ago, Bostonist garnered more comments than we'd ever before received on a single post when we talked about the Massachusetts Catholic archbishops' plan to stop placing children for adoption with same-sex couples, in violation of state anti-discrimination law. At first, the Church seemed confident it would get around the problem hiring a white-shoe law firm to seek an exemption, and although the Governor initially said the matter was out of his...

Governor Romney announced a plan yesterday to hype the business and research assets of Massachusetts to the world, an effort meant to draw more companies, jobs, etc. to our fair Commonwealth. Bostonist can't argue with this, but we think a crucial element is missing: a slogan for Massachusetts.

Boy oh boy, Mitt is really pulling out all the stops these days. After announcing he wouldn't seek reelection because he'd accomplished everything he set out to do, the governor tells the Globe today that the liberal Massachusetts media unfairly characterize him as conservative, and tells the Herald he wishes he'd never run for office in this dumb Commonwealth anyway. Um, thanks, Guv. That really gives us a lot of faith that your heart will be in the job for the next year.

After U.S. Rep. William Delahunt negotiated a deal with the Venezuelan government last week to provide discounted heating oil to needy families in the Commonwealth, all hell seemed to break loose. We were reminded that Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, is a really bad guy, or, as the Globe delicately put it, citing unnamed critics, "a democratically elected leader who governs in an undemocratic manner." Today, the furor seems to have died down - even Governor Romney, while not mentioning Chavez directly, said the deal was a good thing. So what gives? The Bush administration had previously been pretty disciplined about staying on message in making Chavez out to be a dictator, and now of all times, the President could probably stand to distract the heartland from bad news abroad by beating up on Massachusetts Democrats. Then again, maybe all this talk of a democratically elected leader who doesn't respect democratic principles hits a little too close to home on the same day the federal government finally bothers to indict a U.S. citizen it's held without charges for over three years.

For once, Governor Romney has a squabble with the legislature that appears not to be motivated by presidential posturing: Yesterday he proposed amendments to "Melanie's Law," the much-discussed legislation that might (or might not) impose stiffer sentences for repeat drunk drivers and for people who refuse to take a breathalyzer test. One central issue underlying what has become a major debate (not just between Mitt and lawmakers, but among the the lawmakers themselves) is a provision that would allow prosecutors to prove that a person is a repeat offender by introducing court records, instead of calling a police officer or records clerk to testify that the person was convicted before. Proponents say this is just a common-sense way to remove a needless, cumbersome procedural step that lets repeat offenders get off easy when their prior convictions are really old. Opponents (some of whom, the proponents hasten to point out, are lawyers who defend drunk drivers) say it might be unconstitutional. So what gives?

Bostonist has gotten in the habit of picking on Governor Romney these days, not just because we're a "Far Left Wing kook" (as one detractor would have you believe), but because Mitt just seems to set himself up for it. Case in point, the Guv's strong words yesterday in response to a traffic-snarling protest by Newton firefighters. Romney promised to order State Police to arrest the firefighters if they tried something like this again....

You know how when you've given notice at a job and you have the next thing lined up, you completely stop caring about the quality of your work, then tenor of your office relationships, and even the maintenance of meaningless, low-level flirtations? Apparently, that's where Governor Romney is right now, having successfully converted Massachusetts into the staging ground for his presidential campaign. Yesterday, as promised, he returned dramatically from his (conveniently close-by) vacation in (early-primary state) New Hampshire to veto a bill that was approved by both houses of the legislature with a veto-proof majority. Romney apparently feels so strongly about the dangers of the morning-after pill that even the restful leisure of his home on the shores of Lake Winipesaukee could not keep him from this important, meaningless veto. While this proves Bostonist wrong in our theory that the Governor's weirdest policy moves come when he is out of state, it makes things better and better for our imagined, stern-voiced campaign commercials: "He cut his vacation short to take a stand against easy access to abortion pills." (Never mind the fact that he said in 2002 that he was in favor of easier access to emergency contraception, nor the fact that there is nothing more presidential, in this day and age, than taking time off.)

Governor Romney was spotted this afternoon at the Park Street MBTA station. The Governor returned to Boston from a Washington DC fundraiser in order to show residents that things were perfectly safe. Bostonist usually rides on the Trolley with a couple of body guards too, perfectly safe Mitt. Channel 5 already has posted a report on Mitt’s return home just to ride the subway (similar to when he slept in his own bed in the...

Now that the secret that everybody already knew is out in the open, the smart money seems to be on Governor Romney's skipping a presidential bid in the long run. But why? After all, he is young(-ish), charismatic (kind of, we guess), and conservative-faking-it-as-a-centrist, all of which would make him a good Republican candidate. So what's the problem? Bostonist and many other folks think that Mitt's religion may prevent him from getting the Republican nod....