On July 11, the Boston Globe featured a story on “facts” and how people just don’t seem to want to hear them when they intersect with closely held political opinions. The story has some interesting points to make, points that seem quite sensible, but there is no escaping the fact that the whole story is not only written from a left-wing perspective but is misleading in a central reality that is wholly ignored by the piece.

For the Globe, writer Joe Keohane laments that people with preconceived political opinions rarely have their minds changed when presented with facts contrary to what they imagine is true. “Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds,” says Koehane. He concludes that “this bodes ill for a democracy” because voters are making decisions based on willful misconceptions.

They already have beliefs, and a set of facts lodged in their minds. The problem is that sometimes the things they think they know are objectively, provably false. And in the presence of the correct information, such people react very, very differently than the merely uninformed. Instead of changing their minds to reflect the correct information, they can entrench themselves even deeper.

Koehane goes on to quote researchers that have found that people don’t like to be confronted with how wrong they are and when facts contrary to their beliefs come up they often dismiss them out of hand whether true or not. In this way people don’t have to face up to truth when they are wrong. (more…)

Today is election day in Massachusetts, for what could be the most important and ironic political race of the last 100 years: A country swerving out of control; helmed by a supermajority Democratic machine that might just be slammed back on the rails by a one-party Democratic state, that in any other time but this one, is of the bluest kind.

I am a friend, political addict, and a newcomer citizen journalist for Andrew Breitbart.  I looked at this race weeks ago, and I knew if Scott Brown won, it would make history and literally upend the political landscape of the US and the world.

I had stumbled into the citizen journalist role via an unintended run-in with ACORN in Los Angeles, and followed up with a piece on the interesting nepotistic habits of Senator Max Baucus.  But this was bigger, and I knew it. (more…)

Fifth in a series.  Find parts one, two, three and four here.  And don’t miss this important update.

There’s an old saying in New England, something one utters when another person grabs your chair or bar stool and plops himself into it before you were ready to leave:  “You wouldn’t jump into my grave so fast.”

Well, hold the phone.  As everyone in the State of Massachusetts and the country knows, Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in May 2008, and as the months went on into 2009, the prognosis was: terminal.

With the imminent vacancy of Kennedy’s seat a foregone conclusion, Martha Coakley began ramping up her campaign for his seat… as early as January 2009.

The Boston Herald first reported on this story on September 25, 2009:

Attorney General Martha Coakley has run a shadow Senate campaign for months, shelling out $126,000 from her state campaign account for expenses likely tied to her Capitol Hill bid, including $15,000 for Web site upgrades just days before Sen. Edward M. Kennedy died, records show.

The spending spree began in January but ramped up the last two weeks of August as Coakley funneled $31,000 to consultants, fund-raisers and a Web design company in preparation for her foray into the high-stakes Senate race.

(more…)

Third of a series.  Find parts one here and two here.

Martha Coakley is caught making false statements on financial disclosure form, does not report  $262,000 in assets.

Now this is a story that only Charles Rangel could love.  One of Coakley’s selling points among the plutocratic liberals of the greater Boston area is that she’s honest, since unlike a lot of other politicians, she doesn’t seem to have enriched herself unduly while “serving” at the public trough.  As proof, she’s offered her financial-disclosure statements.

Oops!  From the Boston Globe last November:

Coakley admits to federal filing error

Attorney General Martha Coakley, the state’s top lawyer, acknowledged yesterday that she improperly filled out a federal financial disclosure she submitted to the US Senate as part of her candidacy in the special election.

The Globe reported yesterday that Coakley was the only candidate, in disclosures due to the Senate by this week, to report that neither she nor her spouse had any reportable financial asset worth more than $1,000.

(more…)

Surging Massachusetts Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown has served more than thirty years in the Army National Guard, but to commentators like the Boston Globe’s Joan Vennochi, this is merely “pretty packaging” and part of how “Brown’s glossy veneer conceals [a] misleading campaign.”

It’s sad, but not surprising that the liberal media – and it is hard to find any newspaper more liberal than the Martha Coakley-endorsing Boston Globe – would want to minimize and denigrate Brown’s three decades of service to our country.  After all, when a liberal politician has actually served it’s so unusual that it becomes the centerpiece of his campaign.

But, of course, Coakley has served, too – not in the Army, but in a comfortable office with many minions to get her coffee and knock over pesky reporters who dare to ask hard questions.  She has “served” as the Bay State’s attorney general and, as Vennochi helpfully points out, she has prosecuted scam artists, child molesters and murderers (although even that claim is dubious).  Presumably, this distinguishes her from all those other attorney generals out there who strongly support the work of scam artists, child molesters and murderers. (more…)

Part one of a series.  Find parts two here and three here.

In researching the ever-intensifying Massachusetts Senate race between Democrat Martha Coakley and her Republican challenger Scott Brown, it only takes a few keystrokes to unearth her ongoing history of questionable judgment and puzzling prosecutorial decisions.  Even though the election has been effectively nationalized, with some polls showing the underdog Brown within two points or so of the colorless Coakley, she remains largely unknown outside New England.

So as a public service to the voters of the Bay State, during the run-up to the special election on Jan. 19, Big Journalism will be offering some of the Martha’s Greatest Hits, so that they can fully make up their minds whether she would make a suitable successor to the late Edward Moore Kennedy – who, as you recall, began his illustrious career by being expelled from Harvard for cheating, went on to drown Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick, and then turned to a life of drinking and debauchery, including the infamous “waitress sandwich” with soon-to-be-retired Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, before attempting to inflict “universal health care” on the country shortly before his death last year.

You can read all about Ted here in this classic profile of the last and worst of the Kennedy brothers by the late Michael Kelly.  Be sure to read the whole thing, just to get a flavor of the kind of candidate Massachusetts voters seem to like.

Homework done?  Good.  Because Martha Coakley, the current Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and thus its top law enforcement officer, is shaping up as a worthy heir to the Lion of the Senate. (more…)