All’s Weld That Ends Weld

December 6, 2012

Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld (R-Amber-Colored Liquid) made a house call at the Boston Herald yesterday, and the feisty local tabloid made him its coverboy today (via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages).

MA_BH

Inside was a two-page Weldian trifecta, starting with Big Red’s pooh-poohing the charges in the Tim Cahill rumpus over his use of Lottery ads during his boneheaded 2010 gubernatorial trot.

e36a1d_ltpwilliamw20121206Ex-gov: Cahill ads just politics

Former governor and ex-U.S. Attorney William F. Weld, in a surprising slap to law enforcement, criticized prosecutors for targeting state lawmakers and ex-Treasurer Tim Cahill in corruption cases that he called just the “business” of politics.

“It seems to me that the theory of the case in both instances is a difficult one for the government,” Weld said in an exclusive interview with the Herald.

Weld, who just moved back to Boston, defended Cahill, who is now awaiting a jury verdict on charges of scheming to use Lottery ads to help his gubernatorial campaign. Asked whether as U.S. attorney he would have brought charges against Cahill, Weld responded: “I don’t think so.”

 

Weld also doesn’t think he’ll be running for the US Senate or governor, deferring to Scott Brown (R-Empty Barn Coat) and Gone-Time Charlie Baker –  for now, anyway.

Margery Eagan rounds out the coverage with some reflections on the Charmin’ Brahmin.

5a8481_010406weldRegular-guy routine refreshing with Bill

Bill Weld has never done what so many politicians now feel they must: pretend to be a regular guy.

At the Boston Herald yesterday, the Brahmin out of Harvard, where buildings are named for his family, talked about the rules of squash and a “dish of tea.”

Oh, how very “Downton Abbey.”

 

Yeah, but who gets to play the Dowager Countess?

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Hey, Howie – Where You At? (Barack Obama’s Uncle Omar Edition)

December 5, 2012

From yesterday’s Boston Globe front page:

04042012_04uncle_photo1-8233637Obama’s uncle gets expulsion rehearing

Immigration lawyers surprised

President Obama’s uncle has won a new deportation hearing in Boston immigration court, more than a year after a drunken- driving arrest in Framingham revealed that he had violated a longstanding order to return to Kenya.

Last week, the Board of Immigration Appeals granted Onyango Obama’s request to reopen his immigration case based in part on his contention that his prior lawyer was ineffective, according to a government official with direct knowledge of the case. Obama’s new lawyers have also argued that the 68-year-old Obama has lived in the United States for nearly half a century and deserves a chance to make his case.

Brian P. Hale — spokesman for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is prosecuting the deportation — confirmed that the board has reopened the case but declined to elaborate.

The board’s decision raised eyebrows among immigration lawyers who say it is difficult to persuade the immigration courts to reconsider a case that involves an arrest and a flagrant violation of a deportation order, last issued in 1992.

What’s really surprising is that Boston Herald drive-by columnist Howie Carr was a day late and a dollar short on the story.

Carr’s catch-up column today:

One lucky uncle? He’ll drink to that!

There are three chances that Barack Obama’s illegal-alien Uncle Omar will be deported by his nephew’s government.

Slim, fat and none.

He’s 68, he will take a drink under extreme social pressure, and he has to wait until March before this OUI in Middlesex is erased from his record. Oh yeah, and when he was lugged in Framingham in August 2011, he said to the cops, “I think I will call the White House.”

In other words, do you know who I am?

Hey, Howie – do you know who you are?

A hack (sorry, that was rude) guy who mails it in so often, you should have your own US Post Office stamp.

And a guy who just got beat by the Boring Broadsheet.

UPDATE: Michael Graham plays caboose in this piece from the op-ed page.

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Brain Freeze at Boston Herald

December 4, 2012

Monday’s Boston Globe featured major coverage of a major brain injury study from Boston University.

Via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages:

MA_BG

(Full disclosure: The hardreading staff moonlights as a mass communication professor at BU.)

Monday’s Boston Herald, on the other hand, featured . . . nothing.

But the feisty local tabloid did post this AP story to its website Monday morning:

BU study links head injuries to brain damage

BOSTON — An extensive study of the brains of dead athletes and others shows that most had signs of brain damage after suffering repeated head injuries.

The study published Monday by the Boston University School of Medicine reports on the autopsies of 85 brain donors.

The autopsies revealed extensive evidence of protein tangles clogging brain tissue and causing the destruction of brain cells in football players, wrestlers, hockey players, boxers, and military combat veterans.

 

The AP report even credited the Globe piece, which had to hurt over at Wingo Square.

Just like a brain freeze, eh?

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Twinkie Winkie

December 3, 2012

Junk-food journalism in Sunday’s local dailies.

From the Boston Herald:

Chew on Twinkie poll

Now that the election is over, pollsters have a lot more time on their hands to measure America’s barometer for other important topics. Such as the Twinkie.

Rasmussen Reports released a poll last week showing that 57 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Hostess Twinkies.

The endangered cream-filled cake actually polled higher than the brain trust in Washington, D.C.

A Rasmussen Reports poll taken just two days earlier showed 34 percent have a favorable opinion of the federal government.

From the Boston Globe:

ad63d379c1a747e89d862a985edd034b-30a09f3f4dc41320210f6a7067005d73The Twinkie defense

Wait, are you really telling me it’s over?

Seriously, it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

I’m a golden white cake in the snack-addicted United States.

I lifted America through the Great Depression.

I built bakeries and factories. I created jobs.

I joined Facebook, darn it.

Polls had me pulling ahead.

They said there was no way a perfectly groomed treat like me could lose.

It’s not my fault that 47 percent of America wants some wheaty lefty cholesterol-freebie.

I earned my success. I did the 100-calorie thing, shed my transfats.

Of course, there were places I could not compromise: high fructose corn syrup.

Did this anger Ohio?

I know how to run a business, to run a country.

And it’s not handing out gifts.

Not even to the workers who make me.

You know who says, “Better days are ahead.”

We’ll see about that.

Yes we will.

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Safe-T First?

December 2, 2012

Saturday’s local dailies duly reported on Thursday’s MBTA trolley-car crash, the latest in a series of T-bonehead incidents over the past several years.

The Boston Herald, as usual, has the basics:

193715_T_11302012Driver in T trolley crash cited for speeding in 2009

The operator of a Green Line trolley that rear-ended another train parked at a downtown station Thursday had been cited by the MBTA for a speeding violation in 2009, according to the T.

The citation, for running a C branch trolley 13 mph over the speed limit along Beacon Street in Brookline, was the only prior issue concerning train operation in the man’s six-year career at the T, said MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo.

“He has traveled through hundreds of speed checks since then, with no violations,” he said.

Pesaturo said the operator was disciplined and retrained after the citation.

The T hasn’t identified the 46-year-old operator, who was to receive a safety recognition pin yesterday for three years of accident-free driving but skipped the ceremony because he is on unpaid leave, MBTA acting General Manager Jonathan Davis said.

 

Crosstown rival Boston Globe added this ironic detail:

The accident occurred a day before that operator was scheduled to receive a “safety pin” along with other Green Line drivers, including the one whose trolley he hit, for three straight years of driving without an accident or moving violation. Instead, he remained on paid leave and did not collect his pin, officials said.

 

But, as the Globe noted elsewhere in Saturday’s edition, this operator did:

Picture 2

 

Safety First?

That’s just how the T rolls, yeah?

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