Well, ain't this intriguing. According to Nathan Gonzales of the Rothenberg Political Report, Connecticut Democrats are weighing the possibility of running former NHL superstar Mike Richter against the last Republican House member left standing in New England: the battle-hardened Chris Shays.
Johnson, who died suddenly Thursday of a heart attack at 52, had a basketball intelligence that seemed destined for a head coaching job. By most accounts, he took himself off the fast track by being arrested for grabbing his wife’s throat, threatening her with a knife and threatening one of his sons in their Orlando home in 1997.
Johnson was also much talked about as a candidate for the Basketball Hall of Fame. ‘‘If someone is a convicted felon,’’ Hall of Fame president Joe O’Brien said at the time, ‘‘we would eliminate them from consideration.’’
We never heard much about this from his wife, Donna. She did not file charges. But one must figure she was strong in the face of Johnson’s fury. The police report said she told him, ‘‘What are you going to do, kill me? Go ahead.’’
Johnson apparently tried to kill the beast within himself. In the following years, he pleaded to anyone who would listen that he went to counseling and repeatedly apologized to his wife and family. He told the Los Angeles Times that he ‘‘needed to correct myself.’’ He understood how to correct the cost to himself professionally. He got on basketball’s version of the warehouse forklift. He died a minor-league coach.
Johnson told the Globe’s Bob Ryan in 2000, ‘‘People say, ‘Why didn’t she leave you?’ It wasn’t that simple. You’ve got to look at it this way: 22 years invested in a marriage vs. 10 very bad minutes. I knew the next year was going to be bad, and I knew it would be at least that long before I worked again, but I decided I’d have to face the music. I did my counseling. And I never hid ... I tried my best to repair the damage I did.’’
That still leaves Johnson — like most human beings — short of sainthood. But it sounds better than politicians who say they take responsibility without showing how they did. It’s a lot better than O.J. Simpson, who tried to peddle the book ‘‘If I Did It’’ about the murder of his ex-wife, for which he was acquitted, and has paid only a fraction of a $33.5 million civil judgment to his ex-wife’s family.
In a nation where nearly a quarter of women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, experience violence from an intimate partner sometime in their lives, it is important if Johnson really did turn his 10 bad minutes into nearly 10 more years of a healthier marriage before his death. He hasn’t made the Hall of Fame. But NBA commissioner David Stern on Thursday hailed Johnson as ‘‘a man of extraordinary character.’’
Only Donna Johnson knows for sure. If she agrees with Stern, it is because her husband kept coming to the game.
A crudely fashioned lodge perched along the snow-covered banks of the Bronx River — no more than a mound of twigs and mud strewn together in the shadow of the Bronx Zoo — sits steps away from an empty parking lot and a busy intersection.
Scientists say that the discovery of this cone-shaped dwelling signifies something remarkable: For the first time in two centuries, the North American beaver, forced out of town by agricultural development and overeager fur traders, has returned to New York City.
The discovery of a beaver setting up camp in the Bronx is a testament to both the animal’s versatility and to an increasingly healthy Bronx River.
A few years ago the river was a dumping ground for abandoned cars and rubber tires, but it has been brought back to life recently through a big cleanup effort.
Beginning this afternoon in New York, the British performance artist Mark McGowan will crawl on his hands and knees for 72 hours dressed as George W Bush. He’ll be wearing a sign on his bottom that says: KICK MY ASS.
It’s obviously an extremely important cultural moment and I’m sure that museums and galleries will be lining up to install McGowan permanently somewhere in New York.
The artist will be on all-fours for 72 hours and will circumnavigate Manhattan covering 36 miles. He’ll wear knee pads and a cushion inside his trousers for protection.
Members of the public are encouraged to take part in the performance by actually kicking his posterior.
McGowan has said that he’s “offering the people of America, New York and visitors a service…a kind of therapeutic engagement. Hopefully people will be able to come and kick me (the President, George Bush) as hard as they like, and gain some comfort in the fact that they can say I kicked George in the ass. On a more serious note this is a protest against George Bush and his policies and I am expecting injuries, I just hope not too severe.”
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2. Dennis Johnson (23 letters)
I hate the Celtics. I drove in Boston once and one rotary was enough to make me eternally despise all things New England. All things, that is, except Dennis Johnson. While Kevin McHale mugged people down low, Larry Bird practiced his career-long imitation of Rick Barry, and Danny Ainge played basketball as well as any other Blue Jay, Dennis Johnson played defense.
The Hall's lack of Dennis Johnson ranks as one more example of non-white Boston athletes screwed by their sports. Rather than whining about Phil Jackson, Red Auerbach should join Page 2 and recognize that Dennis Johnson belongs in the Hall.
Greg Allison
Las Cruces, N.M.
If I may quote Basketball Jesus, "The best player I ever played with was Dennis Johnson." -- Larry Bird. 'Nuff said.
Get DJ in the Hall.
Shane Papatolicas
San Francisco
"I will preserve and protect a woman's right to choose."
"I am not going to change our pro-choice laws in Massachusetts in any way."
"My position has been the same throughout my political career, and it goes back to the days of 1970. There was a woman who was running for political office, U.S. Senate, she took a very bold and courageous stand in 1970, and that was in a conservative state. That was that a woman should have the right to make her own choice as to whether or not to have an abortion. Her name was Lenore Romney. She was my mom. Even though she lost, she established a record of courage in that regard. She had very strong personal beliefs about what decision she would make for herself and her family if offered to make that choice, but she also made it clear that she thought a woman should have her own right to choose, and believed in the separation of church and state. I have held that view consistently."
"I do not take the position of a pro-life candidate."
From there, Romney proceeded to expound one of the odder positions I've heard in years of listening to politicians talk about a subject most would prefer to avoid: "I can tell you what my position is, and it's in a very narrowly defined sphere, as candidate for governor and as governor of Massachusetts," he said. "What I said to people was that I personally did not favor abortion, that I am personally pro-life. However, as governor I would not change the laws of the commonwealth relating to abortion.
"Now I don't try and put a bow around that and say what does that mean you are -- does that mean you're pro-life or pro-choice, because that whole package -- meaning I'm personally pro-life but I won't change the laws, you could describe that as -- well, I don't think you can describe it in one hyphenated word."
Got it? I didn't, and I asked, "Do you support making abortion illegal? I'm not talking about what you would do as governor of Massachusetts."
Romney: "But that's the furthest I'm going to take you right now. I'm governor of Massachusetts, and I'm telling you exactly what I will do as governor of Massachusetts, but I'm not going to tell you what I'd do as mayor of Boston or a congressman or any of those positions."
I reprint so much of Romney's answer (you can read or listen to the full exchange online) because its baroque circumlocutions seemed to say so much about him. It was hard to know what Romney actually thought about abortion rights other than that this was a political minefield it was best to avoid stepping into for as long as possible.
To the theme music from “The Sting,” members of the Cedar Rapids Sizzlers and the Robins Late Bloomers — two of the eight teams in the Granny Basketball League in Iowa, for women 50 and older — took the court. Dressed in white blouses, black bloomers and horizontally striped socks, the women lined up as they would have if their game had been played here in the 1920s.
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The games involve teams of six players. Two players from each side must remain in each of the three distinct sections of the court. Running and tight guarding are forbidden, and players can dribble only twice per possession.
Six-on-six basketball was an Iowa staple for girls for most of the 20th century, and it remained a source of pride long after the rest of the nation had adopted the five-on-five game.
Only the Granny Basketball League’s oldest participants saw or played the three-court game. Iowa switched to two courts in 1935, according to Troy Dannen, executive director of the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union. Six-on-six games were played exclusively from the late 1800s through 1984, when the style was challenged in court by three girls who argued that it damaged their chances for college scholarships.
To settle the suit, the state agreed to sanction five-on-five and six-on-six competition, with schools choosing which to play. The athletic union’s board voted in 1993 to end six-player teams. At the time, Dannen said, roughly 140 of the state’s 396 schools were still playing it.
But many in Iowa remain nostalgic for the old style and for the dynamic scorers it produced, like Denise Long and Molly Bolin. Long was the first woman drafted by an N.B.A. team; the San Francisco Warriors selected her in 1969, but the selection was disallowed because high school players could not be drafted. Bolin, who was nicknamed Machine Gun, starred in the Women’s Professional Basketball League, which existed from 1978 to 1981.
The state tournament at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines was the ultimate event for Iowa schoolgirls, and the championship game frequently sold out. Those memories play into the Granny Basketball League’s popularity.
“I’m 63,” said Linda Toerper, McPherson’s sister, who plays for the Sizzlers. “But I’m really 16.”
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The game also offers a second chance to women who never played in high school. Irene Reinking, a 69-year-old from Cedar Rapids who has 14 grandchildren, stopped playing after eighth grade. “My dad didn’t think practicing basketball was the most important thing in the world,” she said. “So I stayed on the farm.”
More than two months after suffering a brain hemorrhage, Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) has left a Washington hospital and entered a private rehabilitation facility, his office said yesterday.
If the Estate Tax were to be repealed completely, the estimated savings to just one family -- the Walton family, the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune -- would be about $32.7 billion dollars over the next ten years.
The proposed reductions to Medicaid over the same time frame? $28 billion.
Or how about this: if the Estate Tax goes, the heirs to the Mars candy corporation -- some of the world's evilest scumbags, incidentally, routinely ripped by human rights organizations for trafficking in child labor to work cocoa farms in places like Cote D'Ivoire -- if the estate tax goes, those assholes will receive about $11.7 billion in tax breaks. That's more than three times the amount Bush wants to cut from the VA budget ($3.4 billion) over the same time period.
Some other notable estimate estate tax breaks, versus corresponding cuts:
* Cox family (Cox cable TV) receives $9.7 billion tax break while education would get $1.5 billion in cuts
* Nordstrom family (Nordstrom dept. stores) receives $826.5 million tax break while Community Service Block Grants would be eliminated, a $630 million cut
* Ernest Gallo family (shitty wines) receives a $468.4 million cut while LIHEAP (heating oil to poor) would get a $420 million cut
And so on and so on. Sanders additionally pointed out that the family of former Exxon/Mobil CEO Lee Raymond, who received a $400 million retirement package, would receive about $164 million in tax breaks.
Compare that to the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which Bush proposes be completely eliminated, at a savings of $108 million over ten years. The program sent one bag of groceries per month to 480,000 seniors, mothers and newborn children.
Yesterday GOP lawmaker Eric Johnson wrote an op-ed criticizing the bill after he originally supported the bill:
Usually, society complains about sentences that are perceived as too soft. Granted, this sentence was harsh. But it was MANDATORY under the law. Life comes with accountability for our decisions. Genarlow Wilson could have selected different friends to hang with. He could have joined millions of law-abiding teens all over the country enjoying New Years' Eve without alcohol, drugs and sex. He could have left the hotel when "the fun" started. He didn't. He made a choice. Now his life has changed forever. That is sad. I hope other young men and girls will learn from this tragedy and avoid his errors.
Johnson admits the sentence his harsh and tragic, yet he remains willing to throw this young man's life away. As Johnson himself says, "life comes with accountability for our decisions". I say we hold Johnson accountable for his decision to continue this injustice. The Georgia legislature and its flip-flopping leader Johnson must be held accountable for this tragedy. The bill should be placed back on the agenda and Georgians should have the chance to correct this gross miscarriage of justice.
ATLANTA, Feb. 19 — The second piece of legislation introduced with the intent of helping Genarlow Wilson, a former honor student and star athlete who is serving a 10-year prison sentence for having oral sex with a 15-year-old classmate, may be in trouble in the Georgia General Assembly.
Senator Emanuel D. Jones, a Democrat, sponsored the legislation, which would make it possible for judges to reconsider the cases of hundreds of young adults, including Mr. Wilson, who are serving long mandatory minimum sentences in prison for having consensual sex with teenage minors. Mr. Jones said the bill was mysteriously left off the agenda of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.
And on Monday, the Senate’s leader, Eric Johnson, publicly denounced the bill and said that although Mr. Wilson, now 20, was serving a harsh sentence, he deserved no leniency.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — When Kirsten Gillibrand was elected to Congress this past November in a tide of Democratic victories, she soon learned that her campaigning was not over.
This political novice found herself in a precarious position: a Democrat trying to represent an overwhelmingly Republican district extending into the state’s North Country, a onetime Manhattan lawyer in a place of factory and mill workers, dairy farmers and retired military veterans.
Now, even as the congratulatory letters continue to trickle in, she often looks like a candidate who is still on the run. Ms. Gillibrand, 40, spends virtually every free moment scurrying back from Washington to her district to attend town hall gatherings, meet-and-greets at local malls and — yes, already — a fund-raiser.
That frenetic pace reflects her uncomfortable reality: that her victory last fall, like the success of Democrats nationwide, may have been an aberration that could be undone with a swing in the mood of the electorate or by formidable opposition.
Politically, the first term is typically when House incumbents are most at risk of defeat. And Kirsten Gillibrand is among the most vulnerable of this group. Even her closest advisers acknowledged during last year’s campaign that her odds of winning were slim, given that she was facing a four-term Republican incumbent in a district where Republicans outnumbered Democrats by roughly 80,000.
The passion the war arouses in her district was illustrated at that meeting. A constituent rushed up to her and loudly warned her not to support any of the resolutions that Democrats were considering to express disapproval of Mr. Bush’s proposed troop buildup in Iraq.
Pointing directly at Ms. Gillibrand, the man, Dave Browner, told her that many lives were at stake. “You’re in the big leagues now,” he said, his voice rising. “Any resolution will put our troops in danger.”
Then, as he turned and began storming off, Ms. Gillibrand did something that seemed to disarm him: she gently held him by the arm and thanked him for his thoughts. But ultimately, she did not commit to a position.
(As it turned out, on Feb. 16 she voted for a nonbinding resolution denouncing the president’s plan but including two simple clauses expressing support for the troops.)
Roots in the District
Such passions typify the 20th Congressional District, a bedrock Republican area that encompasses dairy farms, stretches of Adirondack State Park and the northern counties of exurban New York City, including Columbia and upper Dutchess, areas that have increasingly drawn New York commuters and second-home buyers.
The Freshman
Settling In
This is the first article in a series that will chronicle Kirsten Gillibrand’s first year in Congress.
The TSA's website was hacked by identity thieves who used the "Click here if you're on a no-fly list" to harvest personal information. Lots of sites get pwned by hackers. Most of those sites aren't run by entities who claim that they're keeping the skies safe by taking away our toothpaste. Is it any wonder that an organization that thinks flip-flops are made safer by passing through the X-ray machine is incapable of managing to secure its own servers?
Perks and stardom do not come to every amputee. Sgt. David Thomas, a gunner with the Tennessee National Guard, spent his first three months at Walter Reed with no decent clothes; medics in Samarra had cut off his uniform. Heavily drugged, missing one leg and suffering from traumatic brain injury, David, 42, was finally told by a physical therapist to go to the Red Cross office, where he was given a T-shirt and sweat pants. He was awarded a Purple Heart but had no underwear.
David tangled with Walter Reed's image machine when he wanted to attend a ceremony for a fellow amputee, a Mexican national who was being granted U.S. citizenship by President Bush. A case worker quizzed him about what he would wear. It was summer, so David said shorts. The case manager said the media would be there and shorts were not advisable because the amputees would be seated in the front row.
" 'Are you telling me that I can't go to the ceremony 'cause I'm an amputee?' " David recalled asking. "She said, 'No, I'm saying you need to wear pants.' "
David told the case worker, "I'm not ashamed of what I did, and y'all shouldn't be neither." When the guest list came out for the ceremony, his name was not on it.
Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.
This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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While the hospital is a place of scrubbed-down order and daily miracles, with medical advances saving more soldiers than ever, the outpatients in the Other Walter Reed encounter a messy bureaucratic battlefield nearly as chaotic as the real battlefields they faced overseas.
On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of "Catch-22." The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide.
Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment.
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