Ronald Reagan

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Review: Inside Job

The feel-bad movie of the year.
Although Inside Job is destined for Academy acclaim, it seems unlikely that anyone will actually enjoy Charles Ferguson's new documentary.
By CHRIS FARAONE | October 13, 2010

Waiting for Repo Man

The man behind Inside Job shows us just how low Wall Street has sunk
Inside Job , Charles Ferguson's newly released documentary, details with painful precision just how royally Wall Street screwed the planet.
By CHRIS FARAONE | October 13, 2010

Cutting taxes (and throats)

The GOP only cares about winning; the rich get even richers; notes from the road
"If there was such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing . . . It is . . . unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell to insist that the nation's wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase."
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | August 04, 2010

Review: Farewell

The big winner in this fact-based KGB drama? Western pop culture.
Somewhere between the shenanigans of Angelina Jolie in Salt and the ineptitude of the Russian moles recently deported to Moscow lie the exploits of KGB colonel Sergei Grigoriev (Emir Kusturica), who's known to French intelligence as "Farewell."
By PETER KEOUGH | August 04, 2010

Afghanistan: The war that's killing us

Interview: Former Army colonel and current Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich explains why staying is a big mistake
For several years now, I've been reading Andrew Bacevich's articles and books that argue for a reimagination of how American government conceives of and executes foreign policy.
By PETER KADZIS | August 02, 2010

The FBI's spy problem

Freedom Watch
I've been following the latest Russian spy saga with great interest, partly because of the local color and partly because of my prior experience with the FBI.
By HARVEY SILVERGLATE | July 07, 2010

Rock the vote

Musicians with national interests
Musicians with national interests
By DANIEL BROCKMAN | May 25, 2010

Elena Kagan’s shaky record

What a Kagan appointment to the Supreme Court could mean for civil liberties
As a potential Obama nominee for Supreme Court justice, Elena Kagan has liberal bona fides and the likely support of the right. But if her record is any indication, she’s more likely to side with the conservative bloc on matters of executive power and war-time presidential authority.
By HARVEY SILVERGLATE AND KYLE SMEALLIE | April 16, 2010

Fess Elisha Parker, 1924–2010

In memoriam
The King of the Wild Frontier is dead.
By CLIF GARBODEN | March 24, 2010

Review: Formosa Betrayed

Newsflash: All was not rosy during the Reagan years
Had Adam Kane's Formosa Betrayed come out 25 years ago, it might have been an eye-opening exposé.
By PETER KEOUGH | March 01, 2010

Bouquets all around

P+J spread the love; haigiography; hate-mongers in the Biggest Little
While it is difficult to be very jolly during February, P+J are in a generous mood and are willing to salute a few people, rather than dissect them. Yes, we are just wonderful.
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | February 24, 2010

Texas Textbook Excerpts

Big Fat Whale
The square root of taxes = bad
By BRIAN MCFADDEN | February 24, 2010

Screams from solitary

‘By dehumanizing prisoners, we dehumanize ourselves.’
The 132-man supermax unit within the 925-man Maine State Prison is an expensive, taxpayer-funded torture chamber that for 18 years has sucked in mostly nonviolent, mostly mentally ill prisoners and ground them up by means of mind-destroying solitary confinement, officially sanctioned beatings, “restraint” devices resembling those in medieval dungeons, sexual humiliation, and psychiatric, medical, and legal neglect.
By LANCE TAPLEY | February 17, 2010

New and improved Romney

He's more fiscal, less social. And he's got millions. But will GOP voters give a Mitt?
Scott Brown's unexpected victory in last month's special US Senate election captured the attention of the country — and particularly of core Republican voters, who huddled eagerly before their TV screens to watch their hero du jour give his acceptance speech. But even in the midst of his moment in the sun, Brown made sure to thank the other handsome, well-coifed man on the stage, Mitt Romney.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | February 12, 2010

How to Celebrate Presidents' Day 2010

Big Fat Whale
Pin the mustache on Teddy Roosevelt, and more
By BRIAN MCFADDEN | February 10, 2010

The next Scott Brown?

John J. Loughlin’s suddenly high-profile campaign to oust Patrick Kennedy
Republican Scott Brown's victory last month in the race for the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat has every two-bit GOP hopeful in the Northeast claiming the mantle of the pick-up truck populist.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | February 10, 2010

A wake-up call

Ranting about money and media; musical musings; and notes from the road
Some months back, Judge Richard Posner, a prolific author and longtime leading figure in the laissez-faire-oriented Chicago school of economics published his latest tome, a little bit of conservative heresy titled A Failure of Capitalism .
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | January 27, 2010

Tea-bagger Brown triumphs

Obama must rally independents
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley may be a good person and a dedicated public servant, but thanks to her gut-wrenching loss to tea-bagging Republican Scott Brown in the race for the US Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy, Coakley is now — quite rightly — a figure of local scorn and national derision.
By EDITORIAL | January 20, 2010

Instead of cuts: guts

Raise taxes on the rich? Only one candidate says ‘yes’?
Let’s assume, reader, that you’re concerned about economic and social justice. For those in real need — people who are poor, sick, old, mentally ill, addicted, disabled — you want decent care. You’re concerned, too, about proper funding of schools, community colleges, and university campuses.
By LANCE TAPLEY | January 06, 2010

Over the coals

Letters to the Boston editor, December 4, 2009
Not so fast, Mike!
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | December 02, 2009

Mutant rats invade Allston

Letters to the Boston editor, November 27, 2009
How could you write this article, a cover story no less, with no mention of the Allston squrat? Obviously, you have not done your homework.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | November 25, 2009

Easy Ed strikes again

More propaganda from Achorn. Plus, legislative musings and more.
It’s always easy for Ed. That’s “Easy Ed” Achorn, the Other Paper’s deputy editorial pages editor who is the equivalent of a right-wing P&J.
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | November 11, 2009

Has Obama peaked? No, he hasn't

Obama’s days of greatest power and popularity lie before him. But be warned: he might not do what you want with it.
Barack Obama's popularity should not be judged by the day-to-day, media-driven vagaries of politics — nor by the wishful thinking of his opponents.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | November 12, 2009

Letter Rip

The Phoenix discovers secret messages in Hollywood-connected political correspondence
Hollywood celebrities who fancy themselves pols and pundits don’t just bring impassioned everyman views to the legislative banquet.
By CHRIS FARAONE | November 12, 2009

Has Obama peaked? Yes, he has

Yes, he made history. Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from there.
To listen to some pundits, Barack Obama's public image began taking a serious beating when the off-year election returns came in a week ago. Or maybe it was the undeserved Nobel Prize, his approach to the war in Afghanistan, or when he revved up his pursuit of national health-care reform.
By STEVEN STARK | November 12, 2009

Casting spells

Tomb 10A at the MFA; ACT UP at Harvard
In 1915, Harvard University and Museum of Fine Arts archæologists digging in a rocky cliff at Deir el-Bersha unearthed the 4000-year-old tomb of the Djehutynakhts, an ancient Egyptian governor and his wife.
By GREG COOK | October 21, 2009

Burn, baby, burn

The Olympics, zipper-gate, stimulus money, and why Coakley must investigate City Hall
The Phoenix opposed President Barack Obama's efforts to help Chicago win the 2016 Summer Olympics on the grounds that doing business with the International Olympic Committee is always bad news for the host community.
By EDITORIAL | October 07, 2009

Review: Earth Days

Did you know Nixon once signed progressive eco-legislation?
Those who worry that the eco-movement seems incapable of getting beyond its white upper-middle-class base will be disturbed anew by Robert Stone’s Earth Days , where every talking head is a well-bred Caucasian.
By GERALD PEARY | October 07, 2009

You're all guilty!

In his new book, Three Felonies A Day , Harvey Silverglate dissects the corrupt justice practiced by federal prosecutors
Silverglate's thesis is as provocative as it is simple: justice has become sufficiently perverted in this nation that federal prosecutors, if they put their minds to it, could find a way to indict almost any one of us for almost anything. It is a truly radical notion.
By PETER KADZIS | September 28, 2009

$@&! the word police

Letters to the Boston editor, September 18, 2009
I like to think of myself as a progressive and far from a prude.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | September 16, 2009

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