Boston Herald - Boston Herald

Carr: State House gateway to bad behavior

Howie Carr — Fri, 24 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

If the State House had a liquor license, it would have long since been padlocked as a public nuisance.

None of the city’s traditional buckets of blood — Triple O’s, the Waltham Tavern, the Nite Lite, the Celtic Tavern, the Marconi Club, etc. — has turned out anywhere near the vast number of ne’er-do-wells and criminals that have been spawned by the State House.

Nucci: Signature drive a numbers game

John Nucci — Fri, 24 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The mayoral signature drive that just ended wasn’t only about getting on the ballot. There was a game within that game.

Mayoral candidates need 3,000 certified signatures to qualify. That means they should submit at least 600 extra signatures just to be safe.

So why do the major candidates submit thousands more signatures than necessary?

It’s about flexing muscle. It’s about ground game. Candidates want to show the breadth and depth of their support. One way to do that is to field the biggest army of volunteers and gather the most signatures.

Eagan: Justice not entirely restored to victim

Margery Eagan — Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

It’s 34 years too late. But today in Norfolk Superior Court, an escaped serial rapist’s victim — just 16 when she was attacked at knifepoint — hopes justice, at long last, will be served.

Today, Gary Allen Irving finally will be sentenced for kidnapping and raping that 16-year-old and two other teenage girls. “I want him never to see the outside again,” said the then 16-year-old victim’s older sister, who will read her younger sister’s victim impact statement today.

Battenfeld: Tim Murray, we hardly needed ye

Joe Battenfeld — Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

When Tim Murray flees the lieutenant governor’s office, he will leave behind a historic legacy: that we don’t need a lieutenant governor.

The biggest impact of Murray’s resignation is that Secretary of State William Galvin, now next in line behind the governor, may have to fulfill Murray’s main job: chairing Governor’s Council meetings and signing mundane orders while Deval Patrick is away.

As usual, FBI a decade or two late

Peter Gelzinis — Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Better Late Than Never: Those are the words the FBI needs to inscribe on its crest.

Nearly a quarter century after the FBI should have put Eddie MacKenzie in jail, they hauled him into federal court yesterday and charged him with being the swindler, con man, predator and thug he was when they gave him a pass for being one of Whitey Bulger’s drug merchants in 1991.

Carr: ‘Crash’ is no test dummy

Howie Carr — Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The Worcester Chamber of Commerce? Nobody’s all that surprised to see Tim “Crash” Murray take the golden...

Fitzgerald: Pain is deep for those who trusted him

Joe Fitzgerald — Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

It has to be one of the worst feelings of all, when someone you trusted, someone you thought you knew, turns out to be someone who breaks your heart, someone who lets you down.

It can make you feel so duped.

It can also make you determined never to trust anyone again, which is of course the greatest damage of all, robbing you of the willingness to believe that most people are worthy of trust.

Gelzinis: For families, administrator priceless advocate

Peter Gelzinis — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Yesterday was too soon for Ken Feinberg to think about  going to Oklahoma. After all, his work in Boston is a little more than a month away from being over.

Nevertheless, when I asked if he thought he might spend part of this summer in the heartland, assuming the singular role of Solomon he’s played after the 9/11 attacks, the Virginia Tech and Aurora, Colo., shootings and the BP oil disaster, Feinberg shook his head ... but with a certain inevitability.

Now we’re paying for lab blunder in blood

Howie Carr — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Annie Dookhan finally has blood on her hands, a murder victim in Brockton killed last week, allegedly by a drug dealer cut loose because of Dookhan’s criminally slipshod work as a chemist at the state crime lab.

More than 1,000 drug dealers have already been cut loose, and as one district attorney put it, the only thing that’s surprising is that it’s taken this long to chalk up the first homicide.

“How many more will there be?” Brockton Mayor Linda Balzotti was quoted as saying.

The answer is, a lot.

Eagan: There’s just no more road to share

Margery Eagan — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Boston’s streets aren’t wide enough for bikes and cars. It’s as simple as that.

To me, it’s not a debate about reckless drivers or reckless bicyclists. It’s about inches.

Inches is how close my ’07 Toyota — 21⁄2 tons of steel and iron and chrome — comes to the unprotected bicyclists I pass every day.

Atkins: Scandals revive Tea Party, threaten Obamacare

Kimberly Atkins — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

WASHINGTON — A few weeks back, the Tea Party was little more than a relic of political history, and its former superstars such as Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann were lost in a sea of irrelevance. Now the Obama administration has gotten the Tea Party started again.

Robichaud: Deval as Holder’s fill-in? That just wouldn’t be just

Holly Robichaud — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Just when you think the news surrounding Obamagate cannot get any worse, it does.

Some say U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s days on the job are numbered and that it’s just a matter of when he’ll be forced to resign. While I’ll not shed a tear over Holder’s departure, one of the replacement names being floated has me reaching for tissues: Gov. Deval Patrick.

Despite illness, he’s still best dad

Joe Fitzgerald — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

This will be the hardest day yet, because today she and Mom are going to be told by doctors that it’s time to think about hospice for Dad.

It’s reached that point and she knows it.

Though she’s closing in on 30 and has two little kids of her own, in her mind she always will be her dad’s little girl.

“I was his only child and I was spoiled rotten,” she said.

“I have so many memories of us going to the Cape, going camping; he was an awesome father.”

Civilian court only fix for military sex crimes

Margery Eagan — Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The U.S. military cannot fix its sexual assault epidemic any more than the Catholic Church could fix its own.

Yet, “We’ll fix this” were the words of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel this week. “I have no tolerance for this,” said President Obama. Both referred to a Pentagon report estimating that 26,000 women and some men — up dramatically — were sexually attacked in the military last year. But only 3,374 cases were reported and 238 offenders were convicted. Meanwhile, outraged congressmen filed a flurry of bills.

Gelzinis: A race to divide and conquer

Peter Gelzinis — Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

After Tuesday, my guess is that the Gareth Saunders for Mayor idea will vanish, in much the same way the 2009 Gareth Saunders for Mayor idea did.

He won’t make the required signature cut of 3,000 registered Boston voters. I could be wrong. But I don’t think so, because he’s hedged his bets by also pulling papers for city council.

After all, he was a city councilor once. My only memory of Gareth Saunders in that position was when he pulled up outside the Parkman House on Beacon Street one frigid afternoon.

It's not Obama's fault... It's Bush's!

Howie Carr — Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

It must be George W. Bush’s fault. Everything else is.

The moonbats’ verdict is in. Barack Obama couldn’t possibly have done all those terrible things the vast right-wing conspiracy is accusing him of. And they’re not scandals, either. Obama’s troubles are merely “controversies” or, to use Dear Leader’s own phrase, a sideshow. Scandals only happen to Republicans, just like Deval Patrick didn’t go on a junket to Ireland. It was a “trade mission.”

Fitzgerald: President’s supporters change tune

Joe Fitzgerald — Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

You can feel their pain as disillusioned devotees begin peeling Obama stickers from their bumpers, no longer anxious to share an identity with him as he slips further and further into a festering pool of scandal.

For years these True Believers rationalized every faux pas and reckless word emanating from the White House, because to them none of it mattered in the greater light of his glorious incumbency.

If he joked with Jay Leno about his inept bowling, saying “it was like the Special Olympics,” so what?

A lesson for BFD chief

Peter Gelzinis — Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

“A bunch of dinosaurs” is how Boston Fire Commissioner Rod Frasier described 13 deputy chiefs who recently conveyed their loathing of their boss, Fire Chief Steve Abraira, to the man who  imported him from Dallas, Mayor Tom Menino.

Frasier isn’t exactly wrong. But as a pilgrim from Maine who was picked to run the BFD after 20 years in the Navy, he displays the typical greenhorn’s lack of appreciation for Boston’s love of dinosaurs.

Dems nameless in harsh report

Joe Battenfeld — Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Democratic State Auditor Suzanne Bump rebuked a local development agency for hiring unnecessary high-priced consultants, but omitted the names of the consultants who just happen to be top Democratic power brokers and fundraisers.

Bump’s scathing audit released this week castigated the board overseeing the redevelopment of the former U.S. Navy base in Weymouth, Abington and Rockland for lacking documentation to spend more than $1 million on nine contractors for public relations, lobbying and other services.

Note praising Allah  didn’t float PC boat

Howie Carr — Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Finally, we get the note in the boat — a month late.

Do you how much media  effort has been devoted to  unearthing what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev apparently thought was his last will and testament? But somehow, the cops held it tight until yesterday.

Unconfirmed stories have circulated that in Dave Henneberry’s backyard in Watertown that Friday evening, the feds went so far as to check out the cellphones of the local cops, to make sure no one had snapped a photo of the note in the boat.