Backward reels the mind

From a story by Dave Wedge in today’s Boston Herald:

Governor’s Councilor Mary-Ellen Manning came down hard on Superior Court Judge Francis Fecteau during a confirmation hearing on his nomination to the appeals court, asking him if he’s made any controversial rulings in the past that could come back to haunt the board or Gov. Deval Patrick.

“Are there any cases where you’ve been publicly criticized for light sentences for criminals?” Manning asked Fecteau during a hearing yesterday, State House News reported. Manning also asked Fecteau if any of his decisions had been overturned by a higher court. He said that 16 of 117 civil and criminal decisions had been overturned.

“Are there any cases where you’ve been publicly criticized?” This reads like something out of the Onion. Madame Councilor, why haven’t you checked the clips? The judge isn’t going to do it for you. Neither am I. But surely someone would be willing to give you a hand.

Buenos días, Mitt!

The Boston Globe’s hit on Mitt Romney today for continuing to use a landscaping company that hires illegal immigrants is both unfair and fair.

It’s unfair because the story suggests that Romney should be held to a ridiculous standard. If you hire a private contractor to work at your home, you don’t take steps to make sure the contractor’s employees have legal status. Romney says he made it clear to the contractor a year ago that he’d have to clean up his act. And, frankly, that’s as far as any homeowner should have to go.

But it’s also fair, because Romney has been so flagrantly hypocritical on this issue, taking an interest only after his presidential campaign had begun. There is virtually no evidence out there that, prior to last year, Romney’s thought process on illegal immigration ever went much deeper than greeting the folks who mowed his lawn with a cheery “buenos días.”

“Not since Gary Hart told reporters to ‘follow me around’ has a presidential candidate displayed such an amazing degree of arrogance, indifference and abject stupidity,” writes the Outraged Liberal today.

Well, I’m not sure I’d go that far, but Mr. O.L.’s entire outraged post is worth reading.

There’s no doubt that Romney is going to take a pounding in the days and weeks ahead. It’s unfair. But given his nasty rhetoric about illegal immigrants — rhetoric that I’m not even sure he believes — he deserves what’s coming to him.

Yes, McPhee is leaving the Herald

Boston magazine’s Joe Keohane confirms rumors that crime reporter Michele McPhee is leaving the Boston Herald, and reports that she’s taken a full-time job at WTKK Radio (96.9 FM).

Given that McPhee just lost her 10 a.m.-to-noon slot in the Imus shuffle, it would seem like a good bet that she’s moving to evenings. Intriguing, given that talk stations generally fill the post-drive-time evening hours with cheap syndicated programming.

Wednesday morning update: The Herald’s Jessica Heslam confirms that McPhee will be on WTKK from 7 to 10 p.m. each weekday. We’ll see how that works out. As a talk-radio talent, McPhee is still pretty raw. And she’s chosen to thumb her nose at Howie Carr’s First Rule of Talk Radio: Never, ever give up the newspaper gig, because you just don’t know what will happen.

Plugged in, tuned out

I’ll be taking part in a panel discussion tomorrow evening on young people and the news. Titled “Plugged In, Tuned Out,” the program — sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth (MassINC) — will take place from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Back Bay Events Center, in the Dorothy Quincy Suite at 180 Berkeley St. in Boston.

Other panelists will be Adam Gaffin, the impresario of Universal Hub; Bianca Vazquez Toness, a reporter for WBUR Radio (90.9 FM); and Dante Ramos (scroll down a bit), deputy editorial-page editor of the Boston Globe. The moderator will be Adam Reilly of the Boston Phoenix.

The panel is an outgrowth of an article I wrote for MassINC’s quarterly magazine, CommonWealth, which you can read here. For more information and to RSVP, click here.

Is McPhee parting ways with the Herald?

On a day when publisher Pat Purcell is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the birth of the modern Boston Herald comes word that one of the paper’s more recognizable bylines may soon be departing. The Phoenix’s Adam Reilly writes that crime reporter Michele McPhee is rumored to be leaving.

Oddly enough, the McPhee rumors come at exactly the same time that her 10 a.m.-to-noon program on WTKK (96.9 FM) has been displaced by Michael Graham, who was moved out of the morning drive-time slot to make way for the new Imus show. Perhaps McPhee will pop up elsewhere on the station. Stay tuned.

And speaking of Imus, the Herald’s Jessica Heslam reports that I-buddy Mike Barnicle will be doing local commentaries during the show on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Gee, the excitement just never ends, does it?

Just say no, Theo

Over at Boston.com, it’s running 82 percent to 17 percent against trading Jacoby Ellsbury as part of a package to land Johan Santana. And I didn’t even vote.

Yes, by any traditional baseball measure, the Red Sox should be willing to give up kids to get a great pitcher like Santana — even kids who thrived in the World Series spotlight, like Ellsbury and Jon Lester, or who have incredible promise, like Clay Buchholz.

But it shouldn’t be all about winning — sometimes it should be about winning a certain way. As a fan, I’m tired of seemingly every star player whose current team has decided it can’t afford ending up with either the Red Sox or the Yankees. Major League Baseball is not healthy right now. After the steroid scandal, the second-biggest problem is the economic dominance of Boston and New York.

Of course, I realize that if Santana doesn’t wind up with the Sox, the Yankees are likely to land him. Let them do it. It won’t be good for the Red Sox, and it won’t be good for baseball. But I’d rather see what the kids can do than land yet another proven star and pencil in a guaranteed (barring injury) 18 to 20 wins.

It’s supposed to be competition, not annihilation.

Judge Tuttman and the truth

The easy vilification of Superior Court Judge Kathe Tuttman, the Mitt Romney-appointed judge who freed Daniel Tavares, is looking more problematic by the day. Tavares, who’d been imprisoned for killing his mother, is now suspected of murdering a couple in Washington state.

Earlier this week, the Boston Herald reported that an oversight by Tuttman’s office several years ago, when she was an Essex County prosecutor, resulted in a child rapist’s being improperly released from prison rather than recommitted in civil court.

But, now, Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett tells Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly reporter Noah Schaffer that Tuttman was being “magnanimous” when she took the rap in a 2005 interview with the Daily Item of Lynn. And an anonymous source informs Schaffer that the paperwork had landed on the desk of an assistant court clerk and died there. As a prosecutor, Tuttman would have had no authority over a clerk, who was an employee of the judiciary.

Also, in an editorial, Lawyers Weekly presents a strong argument that the bail hearing leading to Tavares’ release was, from the point of view of any judge, absolutely routine, and that if there was any fault to be apportioned, it was a failure on the law-enforcement side to place all relevant facts before Judge Tuttman.

There’s also an especially nice description of a Herald column by WTKK (96.9 FM) talk-show host Michael Graham: “a lazy rant … that was bereft of any sort of research whatsoever,” leading up to “a caveman-level conclusion: that Tuttman had been appointed only because Romney wanted to add some ‘chicks’ to the bench.”

Finally, Jonathan Saltzman and Keith O’Brien report in the Boston Globe today that the Bristol County district attorney’s office had evidence that Tavares had killed a Fall River woman — Tavares actually led officials to her grave in 2000 — but that Tavares was never charged.

Add this earlier report that the Worcester County DA’s office had been lax in tracking down Tavares, and you begin to see that blaming Tuttman for what happened — or, at least, blaming Tuttman solely for what happened — is ridiculous.

Jay Severin, unreliable source

Here’s the kind of false propaganda Jay Severin pumps into the heads of his listeners, whom he likes to call “the best and the brightest.” Within the past 15 minutes, he went into a riff about how the mainstream media, out of “professional courtesy,” would not cover the fact that CNN had allowed Democratic ringers to take part in the YouTube debate. He specifically mentioned the New York Times as refusing to cover the story.

In fact, both the New York Times and the Washington Post ran prominent stories today, both of which were featured on Jim Romenesko’s heavily trafficked media-news site, along with Media Nation. Now, the Times and the Post are only the two most important newspapers in the country. But just for good measure, check out the results of this Google News search.

Severin either lied about today’s Times (and the rest of the media), or bloviated about what he imagined the Times had done without bothering to check. I’m not sure which is worse.