Police state

It seems that police in the Twin Cities are searching, detaining and arresting dozens of people who are in the St. Paul, Minnesota, area to peacefully protest the Republican National Convention, which is scheduled to start tomorrow (depending on the RNC's response to Hurricane Gustav).

The description of the SWAT-geared local, state and federal agents bursting into people's homes, refusing to show warrants, handcuffing everyone, and removing all journals, computers and political-themed publications are chilling and outrageous. Patriotism isn't wearing a flag pin or saying the pledge, but rather it is respecting the ideas and protections of the US Constitution, and these are the actions of a totalitarian government, not a government "of the people, by the people and for the people."

Are you serious?

It was an excellent political move for John McCain to announce his selection for vice president yesterday, bumping the other top political story -- Barack Obama's acceptance speech culminating a Democratic National Convention that seemed to unify and re-energize his candidacy -- from web sites and television. The choice of Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, was also a rather big surprise and a historic one, too. The conservative mother of five may give some evangelical Christians a reason to go to the polls on Nov. 4 to vote for McCain, a prospect that a number of them had not seemed thrilled about up to now.

However, when analyzing Palin's selection with regard to what it says about McCain's judgment, one cannot help but conclude that this was a terrible -- almost laughable -- decision. Is the GOP nominee really telling us that this is the best potential VP in the entire party? Does he actually believe that this former beauty queen and self-described "hockey mom" will be ready on Jan. 20 to assume the powers of the presidency should the need arise?

To those who say this is a sexist position, I say not true. Hillary Clinton would have been ready. Condoleezza Rice would have been ready. Even if McCain had picked, for example, Kay Baily Hutchison, a US Senator from Texas who I cannot stomach, my argument against her would not be that she is not prepared to be president. And to those who say that Obama is similarly unprepared, I also say not true. Whether one agrees with the positions of the Democratic nominee or not, there should be little debate -- despite McCain's foolish attacks of Obama being all flash and no substance -- that this is a man of gravitas. The Illinois senator is extremely bright, hard working and serious, and has spent much time involved in the substance of national and international issues, both as a US Senator and during his presidential campaign.

Newsweek today described Palin as "a cross between a Fox anchor and a character on Northern Exposure," the early '90s TV show about the residents of a quirky town in Alaska. While she has had some notable highlights in her career -- standing up to the Republican Party in her own state to blow the whistle on corruption -- the 44-year-old evangelical Protestant believes that global climate change is a hoax and that creationism should be taught in public schools. We've had enough of this backwards thinking in Washington for eight years with the Bush cult. Palin, whose husband works for oil giant BP, is in favor of drilling on public land and opposed to listing the polar bear as an endangered species. She's also under investigation in Alaska for abuse of power.

Palin's only chance in her October debate with Democratic VP nominee Joe Biden is that the expectations for her will be so low that should she exit the hall still able to speak it would be considered a victory. McCain, one can only surmise, is desperate to shake up the presidential race. Despite the big banner that said "Country First" at yesterday's rally in Ohio where Palin was introduced, it seems clear that he has put the interests of his own political campaign ahead of what would be best for the nation. Is this the judgment that America needs? If he wins in November, it'll be despite, not because of, this huge blunder.

Remembering where we've been and celebrating where we are

In the early hours of August 28, 1955, four people drove up to a small home in the rural Mississippi delta, and two of them pounded on the door and told the man who lived there to send out his nephew. Being that the visitor was a white man, Moses Wright -- a black 64-year-old sharecropper and preacher -- had no choice but to do what he was told and wake Emmett Till. The 14-year-old was taken away in a car with four white people, and his body -- which had been savagely beaten, shot and weighted down -- was found the next day in the nearby Tallahatchie River.

Those involved were acquitted by a jury of a dozen white men, which took all of an hour to deliberate. Later, the defendants admitted to friends that they had killed the boy. Till was from Chicago and, earlier in the day, had spoken to or whistled at a white woman at a local store. When the badly disfigured body arrived home, Till's mother made the fateful decision to open the casket for the funeral, and the photos and stories elicited widespread outrage across the country and in Europe. Thus, the American Civil Rights movement began.

Today, 53 years later, another Chicagoan is poised to accept his party's nomination for president of the United States. Maybe in the last half century America would have risen up and come to the point where we have the chance to vote for someone that is partly of African descent, but as Barack Obama hits the stage in Denver this evening he, and all of us, should remember Emmett Till.

LUC meeting Thursday

I've received an email announcing a meeting of the East Boston Land Use Council tomorrow, Thursday evening, at the East Boston Social Center starting at 7 p.m. Items on the agenda include the transfer of a beer and wine license from Caffe Italia on Huntington Ave. in Boston to Rosticeria Cancun, located at 145 Meridian Street.

Return of Mount Carmel?

The East Boston Times reports this week that the Archdiocese of Boston is moving toward reopening Mount Carmel Church, the East Boston parish that has been shut down since the fall of 2004. Apparently parishioners, who have been occupying the church since the closing, have been negotiating quietly with the cardinal's people for some time.

Mount Carmel, at the corner of Gove and Frankfort streets, was one of the centers of the neighborhood's Italian American community for much of the 20th Century. Most of the people who I knew growing up were baptized there, as I was, even as families spread out to live in other parts of the neighborhood.

Whether an agreement is fully reached and to what degree the parish will return to its former self remain to be seen.

"A tradition unlike..." Huh?

I did a double take when I saw the headline on Page 2 of the Aug. 20 edition of The East Boston Times. Above a good story on Santarpio's, Eastie's venerable pizza shrine, it said, "A tradition unlike no other." I've heard the phrase "a tradition like no other" as well as "a tradition unlike any other," but the wording used by the Times makes no sense.

Unless...wait a second...if we cancel out the double negative, we're left with "A tradition like many others." Hey, that's an insult! Was that the real motive of the local weekly? It must be. Otherwise we're left with an embarrassingly sloppy rendering of a simple phrase.

Also, I must disagree with the newspaper's decision to put the photo of the 11-year-old East Boston girl who returned home after being missing for a few days last week on Page 1. Sure, I had her image up on this blog, but that was after receiving it in an email from Station 7 while the child's whereabouts were still unknown. Her picture was all over the local dailies and TV stations at that point in hopes that this would help in the search for her. Now she's back and while law enforcement follows up on the case I think we should get her face out of the spotlight as soon as we can.

Development in Maverick

I've heard that Melissa Tyler, owner of a small jewelry outfit called Tummy Toys, is purchasing the old public welfare building in Maverick Square, which has been vacant for many years.

Word is that Tyler hopes to transform the building into retail and office space, especially for the development of small, locally-owned ventures. Tyler lives and works on Marginal Street.

History through art

The large mural charting the history of immigrants in East Boston is 10 years old in October, and the Globe has a story today about artist Chris Tauson and how the painting came to be.

The mural, which covers more than 3,000 square feet, is on an East Boston Neighborhood Health Center building that faces a small parking lot on Gove Street. It tells the story of nine different immigrant groups that have lived in the community, starting with Native Americans.

Tauson, who has lived in Eastie for 22 years, has also painted some other murals in the community.

A window into Eastie's past

For all of my life I've seen the Bennington Street Cemetery and thought it'd be an interesting place to check out some day, and earlier this week I did. The gates of the grounds are usually locked, but one can arrange a visit by calling the city's cemetery division.

The Bennington Street Cemetery was founded in 1838, and most of the gravestones are from the mid-19th century, though a couple are from the 20th. The names are mostly German, Scandinavian, British and Irish -- the ethnicity of the shipyard workers who came to East Boston in the 1800s -- and some veterans of the Civil War and the First World War are buried there as well. Unfortunately, there are quite a few stones that are impossible to read, as time and weather have taken their toll.

The biggest tragedy in the cemetery, however, is the number of gravestones that are broken. Dozens are chipped, cracked or split, and though some have clearly been fixed, quite a few have not. In fact, toward the back fence there is a pile of stone pieces up against a tree (see photo). Maybe the city is in the process of making repairs, but it's more likely that the broken pieces have been sitting there for quite a while.

The Bennington Street Cemetery may be the last piece of land in this neighborhood that looks roughly as it did a century ago, and it's also possible -- depending on where the original islands that make up East Boston were -- that Native Americans tread on that ground. My visit was a morning well spent.

Doublethink

Check out Condoleezza Rice's comments to reporters today: "Russia is a state that is unfortunately using the one tool that it has always used whenever it wishes to deliver a message and that's its military power. That's not the way to deal in the 21st century."

It seems that the Bush Administration doesn't even bother to recognize reality these days. Didn't we use military power in Afghanistan and Iraq this century?

Then there's is this line from John McCain: "In the 21st century nations don't invade other nations." It'd be laughable if we weren't talking about WAR! These people are absurd.

Summer treats

There's a blurb on Boston.com today about paletas -- frozen fruit in a cup that is a popular summer treat among our Latin American friends. I will try one before the summer is over, but it'd have to be mighty good to replace my traditional summer favorite -- slush from the place we've always called "East Boston slush." I've been by there a number of times this summer and it is still fantastic.

First Amendment rights restored

The federal judge who gagged the MIT students for 10 days after a school project revealed flaws in the MBTA's fare system finally reached the correct decision and threw out the restraining order today.

US District Court Judge George O'Toole was wrong to have originally granted the T's request for such an order. The scope of reasons that a judge can censor citizens in America is, and should be, extremely narrow -- for example, troop movements during war time. A court order that prohibits publication or the release of information is known as "prior restraint," and it is decreed quite rarely. The usual route is that somebody can sue for damages after publication and, if their case is judged legitimate by a jury, can be awarded damages.

The fact that the T system has weaknesses is the agency's problem, not the students. They should move to fix it and not blame the messengers. On a positive note for the T, their lawyer in today's hearing is named Ieaun Mahoney, and I cannot think of another name or word that has four different vowels in a row. That is pretty cool.

Dog days

It's mid-August, which should mean we're in the dog days of summer -- slow, languid afternoons and muggy nights -- but we've had a rather mild July and August. Today is actually the warmest it's been in a while, with the National Weather Service recording a high of 87 and the EBSB bank clock at Orient Heights reading 89 when I drove past about an hour ago. It's supposed to be in the 80s and sunny the rest of the week, but this may be the high point for heat.

My favorite summer insect, because I'm sure you're dying to know, is the dog-day cicada. First off, I like the name, and it's appropriate because the dog-day is only heard calling during the period of time it's named after and only then when the temperature reaches the 80s.

The other point of intrigue for me is that I've associated its call with the summer for years, but I never knew what exactly was making that sound. I tried describing the call to people (it builds up for a couple seconds, then holds and fades quickly, and it sounds like some type of electrical wire), but they looked at me strangely and had no idea what I was talking about. One day a couple years ago I decided to see what I could find out about it on the Internet and I found images (like the one above) and sound files of the call.

Now, on days like this, I listen for dog-days -- there is one that's been outside my window all day today -- and I know what I am hearing.

Daily dose of truth

Back when David Letterman was on NBC and his show was called Late Night, I remember that during one of his anniversary broadcasts the host rode out onto the stage -- it might have been Radio City Music Hall, taken over for this particular celebration -- atop a white horse. It was around 1990, and I felt that Letterman was, as the image indicated, somewhat of a hero for those of my generation: the purveyor of humor that was smart, funny, irreverent and that spoke to us.

Letterman is at CBS now, and I don't watch his show that often. When I do see it, there is less anticipation that each night is going to be a spectacle -- some new twist on the talk show format that will have everyone talking the next day. He can still be funny, but he is now 61 and his show can no longer be relied on to prod and poke fun at the establishment. It has been for a while now part of it.

A few years ago I began watching The Daily Show, which Jon Stewart took over hosting in 1999, and I've come to see that program as a nightly "must-see." For people like me -- progressives who attempt to be politically aware -- it is "the smartest, funniest show on television and a provocative and substantive source of news," as described in a recent story in The New York Times.

To those who don't watch The Daily Show, it may seem impossible for a self-proclaimed "fake news show" to be a source of what is happening in the world, but it's true. The program often takes apart political news and lays the pieces bare for all to see, while network news shows offer fluff and dance around the truth. There is, often, a little crass humor here and there, but there is some brutal honesty regarding our politicians and our political system. There's also a serious discussion with each evening's guest -- and Stewart always shows himself to be on top of every issue and able to spar with the most highly-regarded minds.

More and more the owners of those minds are showing up, liberal and conservative. They know that Stewart's audience is smart and reads books, so the show is a key stop for writers of political non-fiction. Also, politicians consider it a show worth visiting. John McCain has been on several times, as have the presidents of several countries and more than two dozen current or former US Senators.

Even when I need to wake up early the next day, I try to catch The Daily Show (11 p.m. on Comedy Central, channel 76 on Comcast Cable), and if Jon Stewart rides out one night on a white horse I will applaud.

There is a bear in the woods

In a preemptive strike against some who read this I respond: You care correct. There is virtually nothing happening in the world that I don't blame, at least in part, on George W. Bush and his administration of arrogant, foolish scoundrels.

To the matter at hand: Russia's aggression against Georgia. I think it was Jon Stewart who said the other day that international conflicts are the way Americans learn geography. Suddenly we've been forced to run to look up South Ossetia, as our former Cold War adversary looks to be intimidating neighbors and prodding the West with a flex of muscle that says, "The Big Bear still matters."

As far as I can tell the Russians are the aggressors here, but the Georgian president was playing a dangerous game of provocation with his giant neighbor. This leaves the US and its NATO allies walking a fine line of condemnation but restraint. We don't want to send American soldiers into an unstable place to square off against Russian soldiers on the other side of a murky border. If Georgia had been accepted into NATO as the US has been advocating, would we have been obligated to? Even short of that, the Georgians are one of the few countries that sent actual troops to help us in Iraq. Do we owe them?

And here, on the subject of Iraq, is where the bigger points are to be made. Our illegitimate, ill-advised invasion of that country has left American leaders looking a little disingenuous when they say, as Bush did, "It now appears that an effort may be under way to depose [Georgia's] duly elected government. Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century."

OK, so Iraq wasn't a democracy and isn't our neighbor, but that is parsing the statement a little too closely, no? The Bush doctrine of preemptive war has left the US with little moral authority on the world stage to say, "Hey, you can't do that," to aggressor nations. And further, the condition of our military after five years in Iraq has weakened our ability to do anything even if we wanted to. Of course, I'm not suggesting that we should, only that the Russians might have considered American moral and military, as well as economic, abilities when deciding to send soldiers and tanks into Georgian territory.

Did Bush see that when he famously looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes in 2001 and got "a sense of his soul"?