Monthly Archives: April 2016

LIE IN A HIGH PLACE

What do we make of HBO’s “Confirmation”? Seen by millions, this movie strongly suggests that Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas perjured himself in 1991 in denying the accusations of Anita Hill of sexual harassment. The story is not just of the personal disgrace for Thomas but of the national scandal that he was ever confirmed. […]

April 29, 2016 – 2:04 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , | Comments (0)

What does and doesn’t make it to Town Meeting

Town Meeting time again in Wellfleet, that seasonal punctuation mark. Being of a naively, even romantically, democratic bent I’ve always thought, without thinking a whole lot, that anything of importance to this town would get voted on by Town Meeting. I mean, that’s the whole purpose of Town Meeting government, right? To give people—all the […]

April 26, 2016 – 10:50 am | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

PILGRIM AND EVERSOURCE: WHAT TO DO ABOUT COMPANIES IN CONTEMPT?

Laws are codified public sentiment. They are supposed to represent what’s right. They exist to protect us. But sometimes laws don’t feel like that. Case in point: the laws that allow two local companies to act like outlaws. I’m speaking of course of Entergy and Eversource, both widely perceived to be endangering the public health […]

April 19, 2016 – 7:02 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

SHARING SPIETH’S COLLAPSE

Once in a while, a story needs to be plucked from the sports section of the newspaper and put in the general news section. Jordan Spieth has become quite well known over the last couple of years as a precocious professional golfer, perhaps the next Tiger Woods. But since last Sunday, the final day of […]

April 14, 2016 – 1:30 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , | Comments (0)

TERRORISM AND INEQUALITY

Here’s an obvious question that doesn’t get asked enough: if there were not so much economic inequality in the world would we have to worry as much about terrorism? At the Nuclear Security Summit recently concluded, Obama warned again about nukes getting in the hands of terrorists. Pretty scary. It would, as he emphasized, make […]

April 5, 2016 – 12:54 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , | Comments (0)