DiMasi, first elected to the House in 1978 to represent Boston, has served as Speaker since 2004. He was instrumental in passing Massachusetts’ landmark healthcare legislation that provides coverage to nearly every resident. For his role in passing the state’s healthcare plan, Governing Magazine named DiMasi one of its Public Officials of the Year in 2006.

 

DiMasi previously crafted a reorganization of the Massachusetts courts, making them more user friendly and authored legislation that streamlined interstate banking. He is now a leading voice for energy reform, offering a detailed plan to promote cleaner, more renewable energy.

 

“We need more leaders like Speaker DiMasi, who brings everyone to the table to hammer out solutions to our toughest problems,” Clinton said. “I’m honored to have his support as we take our message of change across Massachusetts and the nation.”

If any Democrat is going to beat Tsongas, it is likely to be former Lowell mayor Donoghue, who neutralizes the gender issue and would seem to perfectly counter Tsongas’s perceived weaknesses: her lack of experience in elected office, and her cozy relationship with “insider” Washington politicos.

Today Jeff Jacoby pens his fifth colum in eight months on climate change. [December 24, 2006 (Climate Of Fear); February 7, 2007 (Chicken Little and Global Warming); April 15, 2007 (Doubting Doomsday); August 15, 2007 (Hot Tempers On Global Warming); August 19, 2007.] His disdain for warming theorists goes back much longer (here's an example from 2002). So it's telling that his material is so weak after all this effort.

Jacoby's evidence today against global warming consensus consists of:

--The Fred Singer petition, signed mostly by retired or non-practicing scientists, and some non-scientists, which merely questions whether the reality will be as horrific as the models currently predict;

--NASA administrator (since 2005) -- and non-climatologist -- Michael Griffin's one-time comment that we shouldn't worry about global warming, for which Griffin was denounced by NASA's top climate official;

--One survey, conducted in 2003, purporting to show skepticism among environmental scientists, which was rejected for publication and generally discredited because the web-based survey mechanism did not verify that the participants were actual scientists. (Interestingly, Jacoby cites the survey's finding that 34 percent responded that global warming might prove beneficial for some societies. This is actually a surprisingly low number, taken by some as evidence that non-experts took the survey: most serious climatologists agree that large sections of Russia, for example, are likely to benefit significantly from global warming, at least in the near-term.)

If Jacoby is going to keep at this topic, he needs to do so in a serious manner, not by citing the rare outlier. He needs to stop trying to find evidence that conflicting opinions exist -- of course they do -- and start presenting an argument for why we should listen to those arguments rather than those of the overwhelming majority of those who have studied the issue.

Surely, if nine oncologists tell Jacoby that he needs a growth removed, and one tells him that the evidence of malignancy was not as strong as the others suggest, he would demand a strong argument for listening to the one over the nine. And he would demand better than what he is offering for why we should ignore calls for action on climate change.

Romney's margin of victory in Ames is not overly impressive -- given that he's outspent all the other participating candidates combined by a four-to-one margin in the Presidential campaign to date -- but it's solid enough. The breakout moment is Huckabee's, as he pulled out a solid second place; he now needs to seize the moment to get some momentum, and money, and media attention. He has a chance now to become the Bill Richardson of the GOP side: certainly not top-tier, but legitimately part of the picture.

The rest are toast. Brownback's third-place finish might not be enough to keep him around much longer. Tancredo's fourth is a serious blow, although it's possible he could hang around for a while, raising money from the immigrant-bashers. Paul is a different story: fifth place is enough for him to keep getting attention and gaining spoiler status. Tommy Thompson is now officially done, and Duncan Hunter already was done -- I doubt either of them will even be in the scheduled post-Labor-Day debate.

You have to hand it to Romney. Entering the year, there was nothing that suggested him as a more viable candidate than Huckabee, Brownback, or T. Thompson. Today, he is clearly in a different league than them, and it's all because of his political skill at marketing himself.

I've watched the candidates give their speeches, and now must mentally re-enter America while we wait for the straw poll results.  I'm not foolish enough to try to predict the outcome of a vote as phony and rigged as this one, but here are a few thoughts.

--Mitt Romney was fine, but not at his best. He loves his family, loves Iowa, and uses strength against things. And you can tell that the straw poll is important because the guy from his Olympic flag story was there in person.

--Sam Brownback just might break out of the pack today, but looks can be deceiving, and many of his supporters in the hall may technically be Kansans.

--Ron Paul could be turning into a serious spoiler in the early part of the GOP contest. He'll do well enough today, and has enough money raised, to turn himself into a serious presence in New Hampshire -- and he could be very, very likeable in the Granite State. The question is who he would take votes from.

--Tom Tancredo really, really, doesn't like Muslims and Mexicans. But is that enough to get him a Top Three finish today?

--My prediction: any candidate today who finishes behind Giuliani (who is on the ballot but did not organize or show up) will be out before Thanksgivig. If not before Labor Day.

--And the name to watch: Alan Keyes, who has sent his supporters to organize a write-in campaign to "convince him" to enter the race.

Boy, you watch enough of these GOP Presidential nominee speeches, your brain starts to get a little addled. If I heard correctly, Mike Huckabee just wrapped up a story about her daughter asking why didn't somebody do something about the Holocaust, and used that story to urge the people in Ames Iowa to do something with their straw poll vote rather than just let the person with the most money to spend win.

In other words, he equated Mitt Romney with the Nazis. I think. But I did previously listen to Romney, Tom Tancredo, and Ron Paul, so I'm having trouble separating levels of nonsense at this point.

In tomorrow's issue of the Boston Phoenix, I take a look at the career of businessman Mitt Romney, which has provided him a huge network of financially hefty supporters, but also contains nuggets that could haunt him on the campaign trial -- perhaps that's why the business-loving GOP hasn't nominated a true born-and-bred businessman since Wendell Wilkie in 1940.

It's online now. Mitt's Equity Army: Romney’s war chest is overflowing with the contributions of his financial-world pals. But what is the price of their loyalty?

Also, Kerry and Kennedy are supporting the Enterprise Rent-A-Car strike, so why aren't our statehouse Democrats? That one's here: Rent-A-Scab?

Without fail, in the past three years, every time a prominent Boston Police Department official claims that violent crime is dropping, the city is quickly hit with a spate of violence. Never has the repudiation come so quickly and severely as it has following the August 1 Boston Globe article, "City's Crime Numbers Dive," in which we read the following:

Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis attributed the decline to an increased police presence in the neighborhoods, targeted investigations, and arrests of suspects police believed were responsible for shootings. He also cited resources added to the city's job, youth, and recreation programs.

"We believe that an increased visibility and a better connection to the community has resulted in a reduction of violent crime," he said in an interview yesterday. "I know that works, so I expect the downward trend to continue."

That story appeared Wednesday. That night, in the early-morning hours, a triple-shooting in Roxbury left two young men dead and a third in critical condition. Roughly 24 hours after that, early Friday morning, an alleged road-rage incident on Blue Hill Avenue killed an 18-year-old woman and left another passenger in a coma. Later Friday morning, another reported road-rage incident killed a bicyclist in the South End. Early Saturday morning, a 25-year-old woman was shot to death in Roxbury. Saturday afternoon, a man in his 30s was shot and killed, execution-style according to reports, in Roxbury. Saturday night, a man in his 40s was stabbed to death near the Dorchester/Mattapan line.

The unfortunate truth is that violence has not abated in Boston -- over the past three months, aggravated assaults are actually up four percent over the same period last year, according to the same BPD data used for the "numbers dive" claim.

The good news, and it is good news, is that the number of shooting victims is down significantly -- although only down to 2005 levels. The bad news, and it is very bad news, is that we are very much on pace for another 75-murder year. For the time being, nobody should be claiming success.

The NY Times today writes about this new report from the US Government Accountability Office that takes the Department of Education to task for its ongoing failure to make sure lenders and schools are playing by the rules with student loans. The report says that DoE has handed down exactly two penalties in the past 20 years, which is truly pathetic given the number of abuses and improprieties revealed since the scandal began making headlines earlier this year. The report finds that DoE had no standard protocol for oversight, and that when the office was made aware of "improper inducements or limitations on borrower choice," it would perhaps go so far as to send a letter to the college requesting that it change its behavior -- and of course would not follow up to see if it had.