Tag Archives: Doug Flutie

Assessing Martha Coakley’s fitness for the MA Senate seat

Consider this disturbing article from CNN. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Democrat Martha Coakley dodged a pointed question Tuesday about her claim during a Massachusetts Senate debate the night before that terrorists are no longer in Afghanistan.

During Monday’s debate with Republican Scott Brown, Coakley questioned why the United States still has troops in Afghanistan. She claimed that the al Qaeda terrorists who were originally targeted by American military action have migrated elsewhere, rendering the mission moot. “They’re gone,” she said. “They’re not there anymore. They’re in, apparently Yemen, they’re in Pakistan.”

A reporter asked Coakley about that claim after a Capitol Hill fundraiser on Tuesday. “Do you stand by that remark?” he asked.

Coakely, standing before a small cluster of reporters and cameras, listened to the question, then quickly looked in a different direction.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Did anybody else have a question?”

This is not the way that you deal with criticism and honest questions from reporters. It’s very dismissive of opposing views on a matter of tremendous importance to our national security. The right thing to do is apologize and admit you made a mistake, then move on to the next question.

Now consider another story from Politico.

Excerpt:

Last year, Coakley chose to personally argue her state’s case before the Supreme Court in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts. Despite the recent headlines detailing forensic mishaps, fraudulent testimony and crime lab incompetence, Coakley argued that requiring crime lab technicians to be present at trial for questioning by defense attorneys would place too large a burden on prosecutors.

Coakley has made her reputation as a law-and-order prosecutor. More troubling, she’s shown a tendency to aggressively push the limits of the law in high-profile cases and an unwillingness to cop to mistakes — be they her own or those of other prosecutors.

[…]In the 1980s, Violet Amirault and her children, Gerald Amirault and Cheryl Amirault LeFave, were convicted of sexually abusing several children at their day care facility. The cases came at the height of the 1980s sex abuse panic, leading to false convictions across the country based on improper questioning of children, mass hysteria about sex abuse and Satan worship, and bogus “recovered-memory” psychotherapy. Coakley didn’t prosecute the Amiraults; her former boss Scott Harshbarger did. But the case against the family began to come apart during her tenure as district attorney. Despite a parole board’s 5-0 recommendation to grant Gerald Amirault clemency and mounting doubts about the evidence against him, Coakley publicly and aggressively lobbied then-Gov. Jane Swift to deny Amirault relief. Amirault remained in prison.

She seems to be incapable of admitting to anything that might put her in a bad light. She is so desperate to push an image, that she thinks that it is a waste of her time to listen to people who question her. This denial of reality and lack of humility seems to me to make her a bad choice for the Senate seat.

Doug Flutie endorses Scott Brown

In other news:

Interesting. I’m sure my Canadian readers will all recognize the greatest player to ever play in the Canadian Football League.