Watergate created an interesting new cottage industry–the journalist polemic. I’ve never really been able to figure out why this happened exactly, although I blame it, in a large extent, to journalistic frustration with President Johnson over Vietnam. At some point, as Watergate began to break, and it became evident that the news media was on [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130524/BLOGS/305249999/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Fri, 24 May 2013 0:18:06 +0000 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130524/BLOGS/305249999/-1/blogs01 President Obama addressed many important issues in his speech Thursday (transcript here), some of which I’m writing about for Sunday’s column.  The speech also included some remarkable political theater involving Obama and a protester in the audience. If anyone finds the clip and can link to it, you should check it out.

For now, I just want to pass [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130523/BLOGS/305239970/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Thu, 23 May 2013 23:17:49 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130523/BLOGS/305239970/-1/blogs01 There are many parts of our criminal justice system that are cruel and counter-productive.  A couple of weeks ago, I inveighed against one small stupid injustice: treating 17-year-olds as adults in Massachusetts’ courts and throwing them into adult prisons.

Teens imprisoned with adults are far more likely to be raped, far [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130522/BLOGS/305229976/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Wed, 22 May 2013 22:17:06 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130522/BLOGS/305229976/-1/blogs01 On Rob’s recommendation, I’ve started reading Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield by Jeremy Scahill, which tells the story of how the U.S. created a largely secret, largely unaccountable force capable of executing targeted assassinations and projecting lethal force in any country around the world.

As it [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130521/BLOGS/305219994/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Tue, 21 May 2013 21:15:31 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130521/BLOGS/305219994/-1/blogs01 Gene Robinson has a strong piece today about the accelerating trend toward investigating and prosecuting journalists under the 1917 espionage act. That’s the law under which the AP phone records were subpoenaed and under which Fox News reporter James Rosen was secretly targeted.

The espionage act isn’t new, of [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130521/BLOGS/305219995/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Tue, 21 May 2013 21:11:16 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130521/BLOGS/305219995/-1/blogs01 Knowing our fearless leader, Obama will view the chance for the photo op of wallowing through the blood of more children in a public elementary school to be a great way to distract people from the corruption oozing out of his regime. Our thoughts and prayers are with you, he’ll thunder in Oklahoma, as he proceeds to blame Republicans for opposing tornado control.

Of course, the tragedy in Oklahoma has been both foreseeable and expected for nearly twenty years, ever since the [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130520/BLOGS/305209999/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Mon, 20 May 2013 20:00:43 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130520/BLOGS/305209999/-1/blogs01  

My column today has my thoughts about Obama’s alleged “scandal trifecta” as of Friday morning, when I wrote it.  My [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130518/BLOGS/305189971/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Sat, 18 May 2013 18:23:40 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130518/BLOGS/305189971/-1/blogs01 Climate change skeptics often shrug off the pesky facts scientists present by pointing to the big, over-simplified picture. Climate is always changing, they say. Nature goes through cycles.

True enough, but there’s nothing all-natural about [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130517/BLOGS/305179991/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Fri, 17 May 2013 17:14:10 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130517/BLOGS/305179991/-1/blogs01 I’ve been thinking about Rick’s response to the notion that our first black president has gleefully presided over the lynching of a criminal suspect. What is Rick’s response? 99% like this! As if Facebook overrides the Constitution. And then I point out that it was unlikely that the federal government could have convicted bin Laden in a fair trial, and Rick responds that this is ok, because bin Laden was a dirt bag.

So, here’s an idea as to how Obama can [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130517/BLOGS/305179999/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Fri, 17 May 2013 17:02:19 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130517/BLOGS/305179999/-1/blogs01 I’m pretty thick-skinned, but the book Dirty Wars bothered me a lot. Has kept me up nights. I decided to read it again to see if it shocked me a second time. In some ways, its worse the second time through, because I had expected that some of my reaction to the first pass at the book would mitigate the second reading. Not the case. I’m going to say this again–if you haven’t gone out to get the book and read it since I mentioned it a few weeks ago, you really need to [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130516/BLOGS/305169958/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Thu, 16 May 2013 18:14:59 +0000 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130516/BLOGS/305169958/-1/blogs01 In 20 years or so of editorial writing, I’ve rarely suggested Cabinet members resign. And as I contemplate calling for Attorney General Eric Holder to step down over the seizure of phone records from the Associated Press, I hesitate just a bit.

Not that a newspaper editor has to follow some strict standards in making such a call.  We aren’t a body of government, sworn to follow legal procedures or base our opinions on statutory reasoning. But I like to think these [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130515/BLOGS/305159992/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Wed, 15 May 2013 15:14:45 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130515/BLOGS/305159992/-1/blogs01 You won’t hear much about it from the scandal-obsessed Washington press corps, but the federal deficit has been coming down dramatically.

How dramatically? In 2010, the deficit was 10 percent of GDP. The CBO reported this week it’s now down to 4 percent of GDP.  The economy is coming back, the bailout money is being paid back to the treasury, [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130514/BLOGS/305149955/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Tue, 14 May 2013 18:23:10 +0000 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130514/BLOGS/305149955/-1/blogs01 Reagan made a joke at one of the correspondents dinners that was too close to truth to be funny. He said that to some degree he envied Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, because with the threat of nuclear war, a mistake by the president would result in no one being around to point fingers. By 1982, the doomsday clock had been sufficiently set back that, for all of the discussion of nuclear freeze and the Day After, threat of imminent nuclear war and total destruction seemed to be in [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130514/BLOGS/305149956/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Tue, 14 May 2013 18:23:09 +0000 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130514/BLOGS/305149956/-1/blogs01 I suppose after 20 years of running my company, I’ve developed the notion that for most jobs in this country you really can learn “on the job.”  I’ve also realized that the one thing you should never learn “on the job” is whether you are going to like the job, or whether you ultimately will want to keep that job. I think back over the years to the recent law school graduates I’ve hired who, after three years of law school and $100,000 in debt [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130514/BLOGS/305149957/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Tue, 14 May 2013 18:23:09 +0000 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130514/BLOGS/305149957/-1/blogs01 As I explain in an editorial today (inspired in part by this http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130513/BLOGS/305139958/-1/blogs01 I thought the news was out as of last week, but it is now being reported that the Justice Department was obtaining phone records for the AP in what seems to be part of the attempts to intimidate the media as I described last week. Add the Justice Department to the IRS in terms of administrative organs who seem to be in full use of the administration in abuse of executive power. I did get a call last week from a congressional aid who is also looking into the use of the Commerce Department and [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130513/BLOGS/305139999/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Mon, 13 May 2013 13:02:10 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130513/BLOGS/305139999/-1/blogs01

I visited the memorial to the victims of the Marathon bombings in Copley Square last week, and was moved by the values expressed. As I say in http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130512/BLOGS/305129997/-1/blogs01 You know, it was only about four months ago that people were being accused of being paranoid and crazy for suggesting that the Obama Administration had an “enemies list,” and that the Administration was targeting journalists for harassment, using the IRS to abuse political opponents and employ powers under the various homeland security laws to track political opponents. Well, we now know that the first two happen to be true. As I noted last week, international media organizations [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130510/BLOGS/305109967/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Fri, 10 May 2013 18:22:49 +0000 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130510/BLOGS/305109967/-1/blogs01 Once again, I’m feeling out of step with the world because I’m not blind with outrage over Benghazi.

“I remember in school one time, I had a teacher who was [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130509/BLOGS/305099990/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Thu, 9 May 2013 12:15:51 +0000 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130509/BLOGS/305099990/-1/blogs01 Thank you, Rick, for running Reg Henry’s piece about the increasing idiocy of Americans, as reflected by the notion that people are resisting a place for burial to one of the alleged marathon bombers.

I think Reg Henry wrote his piece about two days too early. Yesterday, after the latest bread and circus murder trial in Arizona resulted in the conviction of a woman for [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130509/BLOGS/305099991/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Thu, 9 May 2013 12:15:51 +0000 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130509/BLOGS/305099991/-1/blogs01 It’s ironic that Elizabeth Busch’s brother is a comedian, because she missed the fact that a funny thing happened on the way to the South Carolina congressional race–all of a sudden, it’s the Democrats that have become the screechy family values party, and it didn’t go over well with the voters. It’s hard to get a handle exactly on why Sanford’s marital problems didn’t seem to worry the voters. I think the answer is obvious–the voters [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130508/BLOGS/305089999/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Wed, 8 May 2013 8:01:48 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130508/BLOGS/305089999/-1/blogs01 For all the claims that Obama was riding on a crest of political popularity, and that the GOP was about to experience NRA blowback, and that the Tea Party had drifted away, and that a golden era of liberal socialism was sweeping away the Republican world, a philandering despicable Tea Party candidate, Mark Sanford, was able to handily defeat Elizabeth Busch. For those of us who haven’t lost any faith in the Tea Party, and who have proclaimed that the Democratic-based obituary on the [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130506/BLOGS/305069964/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Mon, 6 May 2013 18:26:35 +0000 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130506/BLOGS/305069964/-1/blogs01 About every year about this time, I attend a lunch meeting with civil liberties lawyers and interested organizations to discuss the position of the United States on the survey of press freedom globally. In the past we’ve met at a local college faculty club, although this year we met at a restaurant (undisclosed location), and we’ll get to that in a minute. The United States has fared egregiously in recent years on the global survey of press freedom, and we had heard that this [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130506/BLOGS/305069965/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Mon, 6 May 2013 18:26:35 +0000 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130506/BLOGS/305069965/-1/blogs01 Should the government be able to dictate where the dead are buried? Can a town, which regulates a cemetery, tell the cemetery owners that they will be persecuted by the government if someone accused of terrorism is buried in the town’s sacred soil? Does it make sense to be protesting a funeral home because someone is according dignity to the dead?  I’m finding the whole issue to be pretty bizarre–the idea of a funeral home driving around looking for a place to dump reminds [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130506/BLOGS/305069993/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Mon, 6 May 2013 12:20:06 +0000 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130506/BLOGS/305069993/-1/blogs01 America leads the world in incarceration, by miles. Our criminal justice policies are a thicket of human tragedies and unintended consequences. Crime [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130503/BLOGS/305039967/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Fri, 3 May 2013 18:18:21 +0000 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130503/BLOGS/305039967/-1/blogs01 President Obama has been taking hits from all sides (so what else is new) for his failure to get Congress to vote for things he supports. One of the more stinging blows came from Maureen Dowd’s column suggesting how he could have gotten the gun bill through: “Obama should have called Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota over to the Oval [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130502/BLOGS/305029964/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Thu, 2 May 2013 18:17:55 +0000 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130502/BLOGS/305029964/-1/blogs01 Food for thought from Newsweek’s Daniel Gross, who notes that Apple, with $145 billion on its books and its stock sliding, has decided to give a bunch of it back to its shareholders. “But returning capital to shareholders is like giving water to people who already have an unlimited supply of champagne, Perrier, and [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130501/BLOGS/305019957/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Wed, 1 May 2013 18:16:37 +0000 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130501/BLOGS/305019957/-1/blogs01 As I explain in greater detail in an editorial today, I’ve got a couple of problems with the inquiry launched by Rep. David Linsky’s House Post-Audit Committee into housing and food assistance received by the Tsarnaev family.  First, it looks like blatant headline-chasing. I don’t understand why intelligent people like Linsky take the Herald and the talk [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130501/BLOGS/305019958/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Wed, 1 May 2013 18:16:36 +0000 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130501/BLOGS/305019958/-1/blogs01 I try not to make many predictions, or take too seriously the prognostication business.  But I clearly got it wrong after Scott Brown was elected when I said, repeatedly, that we’d never see another election like that one.  The current campaign, like Yogi said, is deja vu all over again.

I said as much in my column Sunday: “the state now finds itself facing a [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130501/BLOGS/305019989/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Wed, 1 May 2013 12:20:36 +0000 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130501/BLOGS/305019989/-1/blogs01 In case you missed the news in the midst of the exciting political campaign yesterday, in which Bay Staters effectively decided to convert our most senior and effective congressman into a bench warming freshman senator, Barack Hussein Obama earned the distinction of the president in history most adverse to women’s reproductive rights. Notwithstanding court orders, Obama’s FDA announced that it expects 15 year old women to pull out a drivers license to get Plan B emergency [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130430/BLOGS/304309962/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:19:58 +0000 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130430/BLOGS/304309962/-1/blogs01 It was one of the more bizarre chapters in the Cold War, but at some point around 1977 the CIA, the DEA and the American military were backing different warring factions in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia, and apparently different American agencies were essentially fighting each other. The Cold War had a tendency to do that, and one of the gravest screw ups of American foreign policy was the odd ball decision by the Reagan Administration to climb into bed with Islamic terrorists in [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130430/BLOGS/304309988/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:19:32 +0000 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130430/BLOGS/304309988/-1/blogs01 There’s a lot to like about how Jason Collins came out of the closet. Collins, a 12-year NBA veteran, waited until the season was over and his contract with the Washington Wizards had run out, keeping his announcement from being [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130429/BLOGS/304299966/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Mon, 29 Apr 2013 18:19:18 +0000 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130429/BLOGS/304299966/-1/blogs01 I think one of the best observations I’ve seen in a long time was a comment Rick made in the paper version of our paper that Congress is filled with two kinds of people–those who write legislation and those who vote on it. Markey fits into the first category, and Lynch fits into the second. Kennedy was the first kind in the Senate, and Kerry was the second kind in the Senate. [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130429/BLOGS/304299999/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Mon, 29 Apr 2013 0:18:00 +0000 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130429/BLOGS/304299999/-1/blogs01 Its only late April, but I have a strong feeling that Dirty Wars; the World is a Battlefield, by Jeremy Scahill is going to be my book of the year. Scahill wrote Blackwater a number of years ago and, as with Blackwater, I spent a lot of time reading and studying his source materials and fact checking the book as much as possible, because its very, very ugly reading. The book focuses on the American military machine abroad, and the near state of permanent and unseen combat involving the [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130428/BLOGS/304289985/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Sun, 28 Apr 2013 18:24:33 +0000 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130428/BLOGS/304289985/-1/blogs01 So it turns out that the daughter of a good friend of someone in my family graduated from Rindge and Latin with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He was a really sweet guy, she says (or she told someone who told someone who told me), but “terrified” of his older brother. Public radio host Robin Young had a nephew in that class; the photo below was taken at a graduation party at her house.http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130427/BLOGS/304279999/-1/blogs01 I’m ending the week on a musical note, think of two singers we lost in the last few days.

Richie Havens was never a superstar, but he had a way of making any song his own.  He was the first artist to make it to the stage at Woodstock in 1969, and the only one for a long time.  He played for hours to fill the gap, a performance that lives on film and in rock history.

Click here for one of my faves. [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130426/BLOGS/304269935/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Fri, 26 Apr 2013 0:18:11 Nancy Lindsay http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130426/BLOGS/304269935/-1/blogs01 From the Nation magazine: “Randolph Paul, Wall Street tax lawyer and FDR’s point man on taxes during WWll said in 1947 “If the nation’s wealth flows into the hands of too few rather than into the hands of the many, the resulting amount of saving will be greater than can be absorbed. Our economy can take only so much of this sort of thing before it has a violent conclusion.” In 1947 the long and bloody labor movement could be seen as a “violent conclusion”. “… President [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130425/BLOGS/304259968/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:18:51 +0000 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130425/BLOGS/304259968/-1/blogs01 Now that Concord Town Meeting has upheld the deeply unpopular ban on water bottles, the matter is almost certainly heading to court.

One of the interesting questions we’ve had in the past few months on this blog has been the role of the majority in public life–the filibuster in the Senate, the question of whether a majority of voters can deny a minority the right to marry, and now the question of whether Town Meeting in Massachusetts can ban a legal product from sale [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130425/BLOGS/304259999/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Thu, 25 Apr 2013 0:17:50 +0000 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130425/BLOGS/304259999/-1/blogs01 Rob and I have been talking, online and off, about the decision to try Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in federal versus state court, a question that is gaining traction.  Prosecutors could get a murder conviction in state court — and Dzhokhar presumably will face state murder charges for the killing of the MIT cop. But the feds are intent on getting a terrorism conviction under a post-9/11 law.

http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130423/BLOGS/304239964/-1/blogs01 The two hot new revelations about the terrorists are certainly damning. Turns out that that they were reading Jihadi web pages, spent hours per day studying religious texts and at least one of them had traveled to a country with a lot of extremists. I guess that makes you dangerous. Course, I’ve also traveled to a country with a lot of extremists, I spend hours per day studying religious texts and I, also, read Jihadi web pages. So I guess I’m wondering where the crime is.  This [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130423/BLOGS/304239993/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Tue, 23 Apr 2013 23:14:30 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130423/BLOGS/304239993/-1/blogs01 On March 22, 1765, King George III gave his royal assent to the stamp act, which was a tax on legal documents. Word of the new tax reached Boston on April 23, 1765. This morning at 8:59, April 23, 2013, the federal court sent out an email informing the bar that fees in the federal court were being raised $50 for “administration.”  I’ve objected repeatedly about the federalization of our court system- in which people who were ordinarily able to seek legal remedies in the [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130423/BLOGS/304239999/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Tue, 23 Apr 2013 23:01:31 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130423/BLOGS/304239999/-1/blogs01 As I’ve mentioned, I was out-of-state last week, so before I weigh in on how federal, state and local officials responded to the Marathon bombings, I could use some suggestions.

Most agree the response was successful. The suspects were identified, killed or captured within four days. Granted, there was luck involved, and the narrative is laden with ironies (like Dzhokhar running over his brother, and being discovered in the boat not because of the lockdown, but because [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130422/BLOGS/304229970/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:20:51 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130422/BLOGS/304229970/-1/blogs01 This got kind of lost in the shuffle, but we really do need to discuss it. You see, there is a growing group of people who think that Ann Coulter should be ostracized, tarred and feather and what not because she had the audacity to call the president “the r-word.”

Say what? It took about an hour to get to the bottom of it, but apparently the latest word you can’t say is “retard.” It’s apparently joined the ranks of “nigger” and [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130422/BLOGS/304229994/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:11:41 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130422/BLOGS/304229994/-1/blogs01 As I’ve written, the fact that there was a Senate vote at all on gun control legislation this week  showed how much the wind has shifted on this issue.  Since 1994, Democrats have been as afraid of the NRA as the Republicans. This time they pushed for a vote, figuring NRA support can be turned against GOP candidates in at least a few states.

That progress is [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130421/BLOGS/304219991/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Sun, 21 Apr 2013 21:14:21 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130421/BLOGS/304219991/-1/blogs01 Another piece of evidence as to who won this round. When you get the opinion editor of a major liberal newspaper to take the position that the federal government can impose martial law, suspend civil liberties and torture suspects because the majority supports such conduct, then we are living in a totalitarian state. If you believe in the rule of law, and the constitutional process, then you must view the bright lines as inviolate and Carmen Ortizism as a gross affront to liberty. If we [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130421/BLOGS/304219993/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Sun, 21 Apr 2013 21:12:37 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130421/BLOGS/304219993/-1/blogs01

I got home from Tennessee just in time to watch the group hug at Fenway Park yesterday. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house, or in my house.

I don’t claim to understand all the theories of [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130421/BLOGS/304219992/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Sun, 21 Apr 2013 21:10:48 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130421/BLOGS/304219992/-1/blogs01 It was a beautiful morning in Concord on Monday, as a park ranger stepped up to the microphone at the Old North Bridge for the Patriot’s Day festivities. In the presence of Democratic state and federal officials, the ranger narrated the events that led to the events of April 19, 1775–that the government had levied heavy and unfair taxes to pay for unpopular social programs and wars, that the King had demonstrated contempt for the legislature of the people, denied them their civil [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130421/BLOGS/304219999/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Sun, 21 Apr 2013 21:01:31 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130421/BLOGS/304219999/-1/blogs01 So, now we know the suspected killer is an American citizen.

The AP reports that the feds intend to torture him without reading his Miranda warnings. The ACLU was quick to point out that the exemption to Miranda only kicks in when there is an imminent threat of immediate and confirmed harm. The feds can’t claim on one hand that the threat is over while, on the other, drooling over the opportunity to deny the suspect due process of law.

We saw a similar phenomenon [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130419/BLOGS/304199994/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Fri, 19 Apr 2013 19:14:37 Rick Holmes http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130419/BLOGS/304199994/-1/blogs01 As I’ve said, I’m on vacation in Tennessee this week, watching the incredible events unfolding back home from a considerable distance.  I’m on my way home today, flying into an unprecedented counter-terrorism operation, expecting delays.

One of the things we should have learned over the last few decades is not to jump to conclusions in the wake of a terrorist attack, not that that stops anybody. Everyone’s awaiting more information on the alleged [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130418/BLOGS/304189949/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:21:22 +0000 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130418/BLOGS/304189949/-1/blogs01 What a glorious day in the history of terrorism! for the cost of a pressure cooker, some nails and a bag, someone got the president to fly all the way to Boston to wallow in self-pity. No wonder terrorism is so popular amongst control freaks. If he is so desperate for a photo op, how about showing him at his desk attending to his constitutionally appointed duties? Does anyone know who the token Jew was who loaned himself to the Catholic Church for a few pieces of silver to make that fiasco [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130418/BLOGS/304189991/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:12:10 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130418/BLOGS/304189991/-1/blogs01 Since the president’s visit to another blood soaked venue was so sudden, there hasn’t been much time for comment on it, but I did want to note a few responses from people who are furious about Obama’s trip. I liked a comment from the Boston Catholic Insider. “We absolutely need to pray for the victims….It also makes sense to promote a message of hope in response to the tragedy…” But, the article goes on, is this a good time to divert police resources [...]]]> http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130417/BLOGS/304179940/-1/blogs01?rssfeed=true Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:22:59 Rob Meltzer http://www.wayneindependent.com/article/20130417/BLOGS/304179940/-1/blogs01 What did Obama expect? Americans love their guns and love their freedom, and they don’t like it when a president panders by trying to use dead kids as lobbying tools. What has Obama accomplished? More guns are now on the street than ever before, and I, like many other Americans, am on an endless waiting list for 10 mm ammo. As a lawyer for many firearms manufacturers, I say, thank you Mr. President.