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On Thursday Vermont became the first state to enact a single payer healthcare system for its citizens. It’s not exactly surprising that one of the country’s most liberal states has become the first state to legislate a fundamental right to healthcare for all of its citizens. And, should the federal…
Read More »Today MassMoments reminds us that on May 27, 1863 the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry – gathered on the Boston Common then paraded in review by the State House as they began their way South. This first black regiment from the North had orders to to proceed to Beaufort, South Carolina…
Read More »Early settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were both inhospitable and intolerant of those who didn’t share their religious beliefs. These Puritans were particularly hostile to the “devilish” Roman Catholic Frenchmen of Quebec and especially to the Jesuit missionary priests they brought with them. Jesuit conversions of the natives along…
Read More »I was born in 1958. That makes me 52 years old. So when the budget passed by the House Republicans preserved Medicare for everyone 55 or older but turned it into a privatized voucher system for me and everyone younger than me, I was concerned. Fortunately the Senate defeated that…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. It was vintage Barney Frank at last Friday’s meeting of the New England Council. He was savagely funny, insightful, acerbic and provocative. This was particularly true when he discussed the federal deficit and lifting the debt ceiling, the…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. Mark Twain knew it to be true. The underlying message is no less true today, despite how communications technology has changed the nature of the media.…
Read More »I, too, wondered at the dearth of commentary about Speaker Boehner’s commencement speech given at Catholic University and especially the letter written by a group of Catholic academics, including some leading members of the Catholic University faculty. I find Washington Post columist E. J. Dionne’s recent column interesting as he…
Read More »On this day – May 23, 1900 – Sergeant William Harvey Carney was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery on July 18, 1863. He fought for the Union cause as a member of the fabled 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry. Recruited from freed slaves – it was the…
Read More »MassMoments reminds us that on this day May 22, 1856, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was viciously attacked on the floor of the United States – beaten with a cane by Preston Brooks, a Congressman from South Carolina. The issue – the language used by Sumner in a passionate anti-slavery…
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