Climate change bigger threat to birds than windmills
By Jack Clarke
President Trump recently criticized “windmills” as a source of energy, claiming, “They kill so many birds. You look underneath some of those windmills, it’s like a killing field.” All this while he...
Why did she do it?
For most of the year, pundits pounded their view that the blue wave was so powerful among those in anti-Trump America that the Democrats could win both houses of Congress in the 2018 midterms....
Resolving conflicts
“I don't want anything for Mother's Day — it’s a silly holiday fabricated by Hallmark Cards to sell more of their products!” This was my mother’s response to my inquiry at age 7. Of course...
Columbus is no one to celebrate
The second Monday in October, Columbus Day, is coming up. Italians all over America are gearing up for parades and festivities in honor of the great Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. Grammar-school children are making...
Where is Congress?
So often these days, the news moves so fast it’s hard, if not impossible, to keep up, even for diligent readers of the papers or followers of cable news shows: political bickering as a...
A living legend
The following is reprinted with permission from Holly Nadler’s book “Vineyard Confidential.” “She approved every word before I used it in the book,” Nadler said. “I agreed because I just found her so fascinating.”...
Not reflected in the algorithm
The following hardly qualifies as a healthcare data point. I’m sure the wizards who carpenter the algorithms that model healthcare access and costs have not have included a weighted value for the news, appalling...
Meeting a Queen and a King
In 1959, Lenny and I ran away to Detroit to get married. My father drove us. He thought we were going to be interviewed for jobs in a summer stock company.
While we were there,...
Shun shines on the Vineyard
Earlier this summer, Harvard professor and noted defense attorney Alan Dershowitz set off a national debate when he wrote an op-ed in The Hill claiming that he was being shunned from social gatherings on...
How’s the climate treating you?
As summer winds down, the air on the Island will become increasingly cooler and the humidity will diminish, as the poison ivy and sumac leaves turn yellow and red, all signs of the coming...
Hold on, Professor Dershowitz
My Harvard colleague, Alan Dershowitz, has been doing a good job of late championing the imperiled civil liberties of one Donald Trump. In frequent appearances on cable news, in a new book, and here...
The president, civil liberties, and impeachment
James Madison long ago wrote that in establishing good government, he and his colleagues must find a way to allow reason, logical thinking, to overcome passion or emotions. “Ambition must be made to counteract...
Guns, smoking, and getting young voters involved
With another hectic Vineyard summer in full swing, I hope you can take a moment to relax and read about some of our work at the State House.
Massachusetts has the lowest gun death...
Gridlock in paradise
Our beach time, our restaurant, our retail therapy, our soon-departing ferry, or our job site is a mere mile ahead. But here we sit on the Island’s summer roadways, so often immobile, staring at...
With Kennedy out and Kavanaugh in, what might that mean?
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s retirement on July 31 has riled the left and thrilled the right. Despite his moderate conservative nature, for the past 12 years he has been the swing vote on the...
Tennis dominance served up by Gerry
The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School girls’ tennis team just won its fourth state championship in a row. That win, coupled with the two state championships won by the MVRHS boys’ team in recent...
The broad implications of the Pereira decision
The Supreme Court of the United States essentially engages in two kinds of interpretation. The most well-known is constitutional, when the justices decide whether a state or federal law or some action by an...
Court’s gambling decision may have other implications for Vineyard and beyond
When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the federal ban on sports gambling on May 14, it did more than allow states to provide for online and casino betting in Massachusetts on baseball, football, basketball,...
Did you watch the wedding?
I woke up just a tad before 5 am to watch the fairy tale wedding of people I don’t know, in a country my Irish husband was not too fond of. And, oh boy,...