Boston Herald letter, February 22, 2016 Justice Antonin Scalia, the Originalist, would have been horrified by U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s assertion that “the American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice” (“Battle is on for Scalia’s replacement,” Feb. 17). The Constitution provides that a president, elected by electors, shall…
Category: Politics
After South Carolina and Nevada
February 21, 2016 Following the South Carolina primary, Jeb Bush, the once prohibitive favorite, is gone from the Republican Presidential contest. He is a decent, capable man. (One must struggle to avoid referring to him in the past tense, as if he were dead.) What went wrong with a conservative and very successful two-term governor…
Agenda lurking in junket complaint?
Cape Cod Times letter, February 5, 2016 L. Michael Hager of Eastham writes complaining of a legislative junket to Israel paid for by the Jewish Community Relation Council of Greater Boston (“Ethics panel complicit in senators’ junket,” My View, Jan. 30). The trip apparently was filled with visits to cultural sites and meetings with Israeli…
Why on earth Donald Trump?
Cape Cod Times column, January 22, 2016 By Brian R. Merrick In any normal campaign season the lead story might have been a former Secretary of State, U.S. Senator and First Lady poised to become the first woman presidential nominee of a major party. It could have been a successful former governor of a major…
Apology in order-but not to House Speaker
Boston Globe letter, January 19, 2016 HOUSE SPEAKER Robert DeLeo has demanded that the Globe apologize for comparing the House of Representatives in Massachusetts to a plantation (“On Beacon Hill, a challenging year ahead,” Capital, Jan. 8). The Globe should apologize — to plantation owners. Brian R. Merrick West Barnstable
Diversity in the Boardroom
Boston Globe letter, December 24, 2015 “Diversity in the board room” (Editorial, Dec. 22) seems a good thing, but State Treasurer Deborah Goldberg should not be using “the Commonwealth’s $61 billion pension fund to make a stand on corporate diversity. She has a fiduciary duty to protect the value and security of the pension fund…
Churchill’s Team of Rivals
A new take on an unexamined but important aspect of the career of Winston Churchill
Photoshopping History
Cape Cod Times column, December 18, 2015 By Brian R. Merrick During the Cold War Americans mocked the Soviet Union’s creation of “non-persons”- prominent political or military persons who disappeared, not just from the Kremlin wall at the May Day Parade, but also from the newspapers and even the next edition of the history books….
Defeat alway looms, whatever the game
Cape Cod Times letter, Nov. 26, 2014 Perhaps sensitized by Charlie Baker’s Election Night comment (“This is going to end very badly for one of us”), I felt worse than usual for the supporters of the losers in this year’s general election. And for the players, coaches, families and fans of the high school football…
Remaking our world, if only by degrees
Boston Globe letters, December 6, 2015 LETTERS | HARVARD RETHINKS ITS SYMBOLS DECEMBER 06, 2015 HARVARD IS dropping the title “house master” for student residence supervisors. So what will replace its master’s degree? Brian R. Merrick, West Barnstable
Gants’ response to Speaker’s request a misstep
Mass. Lawyers Weekly, November 19, 2015 To the editor: When The Boston Globe Spotlight team published a series of articles revealing, to no one’s surprise, that there was political patronage hiring in the Probation Department, the Supreme Judicial Court hired attorney Paul F. Ware Jr. and armed him with subpoena power to conduct an investigation….
Attacks on DA not helpful to sentencing debate
Mass. Lawyers Weekly letter, April 9, 2015 To the editor: Having recently retired after 25 years on the District Court bench, I approach the current controversy over minimum mandatory sentences in drug cases with a natural bias against limitation of a judge’s discretion. I can understand, however, why a prosecutor finds them to be useful…
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