Editorials from around New England

Excerpts of recent editorials of statewide and national interest from New England newspapers:

The Norwich Bulletin (Conn.), May 19, 2015

On May 20- or, rather, in the wee hours of May 21, the time at which insomniacs and odd-shift workers are most accustomed to spending time with him -David Letterman signed off of “The Late Show” for the last time.

He will take with him cutting wit, his unmistakable laugh, his show’s absurdist hijinks and, presumably, his trademark Top 10 Lists. All- and more -will be missed.

But Letterman will endure in Americans’ memory for more than just his tongue-in-cheek brand of late-night comedy. Sure, The Late Show could be irreverent, campy and downright indecent- more often than not, all at once. But Letterman’s bald honesty pointed to a strength of character that often bubbled to the surface throughout his more than three decades in the late-night game.

Nothing better exemplified Letterman’s courage than his Sept. 17, 2001, production, just days after the 9/11 attacks shocked and horrified the nation. That Letterman was the first late-night host to return to the air after the attacks is incidental to the tenor of the show, which the New York Daily News later called “one of the purest, most honest and important moments in TV history.”

In his monologue, Letterman implored the grieving nation to stand strong in the face of senseless violence, saying, “There is only one requirement for any of us, and that is to be courageous, because courage, as you know, defines all other human behavior.”

Then he distilled the utter confusion felt by so many after the attacks: “We’re told they were zealots fueled by religious fervor. . And if you live to be 1,000 years old, will that make any sense to you?”

Then he did what he did best: ran his show and made us laugh at a moment when we most needed a dose of levity.

Smears on his legacy- namely, affairs with women on his staff, revealed when he was blackmailed in 2009 -were at least confronted head-on with public apologies rather than evasion.

After Letterman’s last broadcast tonight, late-night enthusiasts will have to wait until September to find out whether successor Stephen Colbert, who earned fame as a satirical caricature on Comedy Central, will host with the same directness, honesty and courage. Here’s to hoping he can.

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The Providence Journal (R.I.), May 21, 2015

While grilling the author of “Clinton Cash,” a book that suggests foreign interests attempted to influence Hillary Clinton’s actions as secretary of state by donating to her family’s foundation and paying her husband exorbitant sums for giving speeches, the television journalist was tough- as any good reporter should be. He said that some Democrats accuse the author, Peter Schweizer, of “partisan interest.”

“They say you used to work for President Bush as a speechwriter,” he said pointedly. “You are funded by the Koch brothers.”

All eminently sensible concerns to raise- with one caveat. For it turns out that the television journalist had partisan connections of his own -connections that he failed to disclose to Mr. Schweizer, let alone his audience.

We refer, of course, to George Stephanopoulos, the Fall River native who has risen (after working as a political operative in the Bill Clinton White House, trying to spin news coverage to the president’s advantage) to the pinnacle of television journalism. He’s chief anchor and political correspondent at ABC News, and he hosts both “Good Morning America” and “This Week.”

He also has an ethics problem. It emerged recently that Mr. Stephanopoulos donated some $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation over a three-year period. He never saw fit to disclose this to his audience, nor did he remind the public of his past with the Clintons, even as he discussed the foundation’s work on television.

ABC News had claimed he long ago shed his bent as a partisan Democrat. Needless to say, that idea has now taken a hit. If Mr. Stephanopoulos could ever be seen as objective, he certainly cannot when he’s quietly donating money to a controversial foundation that he is supposedly covering.

Mr. Stephanopoulos was apologetic for his slip-up, allowing that he should have disclosed his donations. He also explained that he had made the donations because of “the work they’re doing on global AIDS prevention and deforestation.”

That seems absurd. There are innumerable charities doing important work on AIDS and the environment that don’t come with the political baggage that the Clinton Foundation does. Rather, we lean more toward a theory earlier embraced by … George Stephanopoulos. In an April interview with Jon Stewart, Mr. Stephanopoulos suggested that people donate to the Clinton Foundation because “there’s a hope that that’s going to lead to something.”

What was that in Mr. Stephanopoulos’s case? Was he hoping to cultivate the Clinton circle or remain in good standing with it? Whatever his motivation, it’s incontrovertible that Mr. Stephanopoulos’s contributions have “led to” a serious loss of his journalistic credibility.

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Gloucester Times (Mass.), May 19, 2015

A jury of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s peers sentenced him to death for his role in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. When and if that sentence will be carried out is an open question. In many ways, it is beside the point.

The jury delivered justice in both the guilt and penalty phases of the trial, and in doing so set an example for the rest of the world. It is difficult to imagine a similar trial being held in Egypt, China or Russia. This was no show trial- it was the American legal system at its best.

It is important to remember the case could have been handled differently. In the days after the bombings, congressional Republicans, including U.S. John McCain, were pushing to have Tsarnaev declared an “enemy combatant.” Such a designation would have stripped Tsarnaev, an American citizen, of many of his basic constitutional protections.

Thankfully, that did not happen. Even Americans accused of the worst crimes have rights, and Tsarnaev’s rights were honored, even as his role in killing four people and wounding more than 260 was readily apparent. The unity and joy at the finish line of the marathon these past two years were an expression of this region at its best. So too was the sober and deliberative approach to Tsarnaev’s trial, and the angst over the death penalty. Boston Strong, indeed.

“He had a fair day in court,” Swampscott resident Randy Chapman, a defense attorney and former Essex County prosecutor, told reporter Ethan Forman. “Life without parole is not a lesser punishment. It is another punishment.”

Gov. Charlie Baker praised both the jury and the justice system.

“At this point in time I hope this represents some kind of closure for all of those who were affected by this tragedy,” Baker said Friday. “We’re a nation of laws here and under our nation of laws juries make the call with respect to decisions like this based on the evidence and based on the law.”

Tsarnaev will likely spend the next several years in a federal penitentiary with a special unit for death row inmates, possibly in Terre Haute, Indiana, where Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed.

The appeals process will take years, possibly decades. The process itself reflects the deep ambivalence toward the death penalty; 74 people have been sentenced to die since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988. Only three of those sentences have been carried out.

Even the families at the heart of the trial- those who lost loved ones when Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan set off four bombs near the Boston Marathon finish line -were split on Dzhokhar’s fate.

Eight-year-old Martin Richard died near the finish line of the race. His then-7-year-old sister, Jane, lost a leg in the explosion. In a front-page letter to the Boston Globe this spring, the family asked the government to drop the death penalty, saying “continued pursuit of that punishment could bring years of appeals and prolong reliving the most painful day of our lives.”

Manchester police Sgt. Stephen Louf Jr, a friend of slain MIT officer Sean Collier, said he trusted the jury.

“As a law enforcement officer, I always try to have faith in our criminal justice system,” he said. “I would have accepted sentencing either way. On a personal level, I can say the punishment certainly fits the crime.”

Most residents of Massachusetts, however, are firmly against the death penalty. Baker, a supporter, said there is little appetite for bringing it back.

“That’s not a very high priority for me,” Baker said Friday “Even in criminal justice, this is not something that’s on our radar.”

A renewed debate on the death penalty in Massachusetts would do little but keep Tsarnaev’s name in the headlines. Better he fade into the background.

We prefer to remember those lost in the bombings and their aftermath: Martin Richard, Lu Lingzi, Krystle Campbell and Sean Collier.

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The Concord Monitor (N.H), May 19, 2015

There are some political games that are more disturbing than others. Take, for example, the Iraq War.

During an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Marco Rubio became the latest presidential contender to stumble his way toward perceived political safe ground on the toxic issue.

Fox host Chris Wallace played a pair of clips of Rubio talking about the Iraq War. In one from March 30, Rubio said he didn’t think the war was a mistake because “the world is a better place because Saddam Hussein doesn’t run Iraq.” Six weeks later, Rubio said in an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations that he wouldn’t have been in favor of war if he had known there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. On Sunday, Rubio defended the duality of his position by saying that he was answering two different questions. Wallace repeatedly asked Rubio to state clearly, then, whether he believes the war was a mistake. After a dizzying semantic scuffle, Rubio settled on this: “It was not a mistake for the president to go into Iraq based on the information he was provided as president.”

Here’s Paul Krugman stating in yesterday’s New York Times why the Iraq positions of Rubio, Jeb Bush and many other politicians are pure garbage: “The Iraq War wasn’t an innocent mistake, a venture undertaken on the basis of intelligence that turned out to be wrong. America invaded Iraq because the Bush administration wanted a war.”

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005, has spent much of the past decade saying the same thing.

“All of (the weapons of mass destruction intelligence) was essentially a fabrication,” Wilkerson told the Monitor during an editorial board interview last month.

The Iraq War, as Krugman says, isn’t a story about flawed intelligence; it’s a story about a pretext for war sold to the American people. Depending on your degree of cynicism, politicians who supported the war were either co-conspirators or innocent rubes. If you listen to most of the presidential contenders, they choose the latter: “Golly, if only we knew then what we know now.”

Voters should brace themselves to hear a variation of that line frequently over the next several months. As the Associated Press reported recently, “A dozen years later, American politics has reached a rough consensus on the Iraq War: It was a mistake.” There’s a good reason why there’s a “rough consensus” among hawkish politicians: Blaming flawed intelligence is a one-size-fits-all defense for bad wars. It’s safe, easy and pliable.

In the same Associated Press article, Army Col. Peter Monsoor, a professor of military history at Ohio State University and former assistant to Gen. David Petraeus, said: “There’s plenty of blame to go around. What we need is not so much blame as to figure out what happened and use that knowledge to make better decisions going forward.”

That’s more garbage- the American people don’t need a soothing lullaby. Over the weekend, the Iraqi city of Ramadi fell to the Islamic State as the U.S.-trained military retreated. The blood still flows. This is the continuing legacy of a war desired and designed by the Bush administration, a war packaged for consumption by an impotent Fourth Estate and a cowed Congress.

In her memoir, Hillary Clinton said of her Iraq war vote: “I got it wrong. Plain and simple.” Wrong and wrong. It’s neither plain nor simple and shouldn’t be sold as such. Contrition is cheap. What the nation needs are leaders who are adamantly opposed to deadly lies and stupid wars, past and future.

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The Brattleboro Reformer (Vt.), May 19, 2015

We hear a lot these days about the growing problem of cyberbulling among the younger generation, but the truth is adults are no less guilty of this boorish behavior.

There is no shortage of attacks, criticisms, intolerance, name calling, vulgar language, and lack of civility on social media. We’ve all seen it- someone starts a thread about a weighty issue, a discussion ensues and before long it degenerates into insults and posters attacking the intelligence and integrity of people with whom they disagree. And then there are the trolls. These are people who feel unheard and make a continuous attempt to gain respect from people. They create enemies in an effort to gain friends and respect.

It begs the question: Why are people so anti-social on social media?

“Anonymity is a powerful force,” writes Elizabeth Bernstein for the Wall Street Journal. “Hiding behind a fake screen name makes us feel invincible, as well as invisible. Never mind that, on many websites, we’re not as anonymous as we think -and we’re not anonymous at all on Facebook. Even when we reveal our real identities, we still misbehave.”

Psychologist and MIT professor Sherry Turkle told Bernstein that we’re less inhibited online because we don’t have to see the reaction of the person we’re addressing. We’re looking into a computer screen and not the eyes of another human being. Because it’s harder to see and focus on what we have in common, we tend to dehumanize each other, she says.

Astoundingly, Dr. Turkle said, many people still forget that they’re speaking out loud when they communicate online. Especially when posting from a smartphone, “you are publishing but you don’t feel like you are,” she said. “So what if you say ’I hate you’ on this tiny little thing? It’s like a toy. It doesn’t feel consequential.”

As for Facebook, its very name is part of the problem. “It promises us a face and a place where we are going to have friends,” Turkle explained “If you get something hurtful there, you’re not prepared. You feel doubly affronted, so you strike back.”

Part of the problem is that sometimes it’s too easy to misinterpret the tone of one’s voice on social network. What the person intended to write may not be the same way you read it. As they say, most communications are nonverbal. Try speaking to the person and hear it in its intended tone. It may be completely different from the tone you imagined it first to be.

Another part of the problem is a general lack of civility in society, which can lead to “ethical relativism,” according to Steve Mintz, founder of the consulting firm Workplace Ethics Advice.

Ethical relativism is the belief that nothing is objectively right or wrong; it depends on the prevailing view of a particular individual, culture, or historical period, Mintz wrote on his website. Today it is largely caused by the overexposure to gratuitous media and content online, the ability to be anonymous, the lack of positive role models in society, the mixed messages that mass media and business give off constantly (including rewarding greed over whistleblowers); and the lack of commitment to education on ethics in the classroom, according to Mintz.

He said the feeling of anonymity on social media allows us to avoid both personal responsibility and public scrutiny for our actions. Basically, it makes us feel like we can get away with whatever we want.

“The dilemma is that just what is and is not civil behavior tends to be in the eyes of the beholder,” Mintz wrote.

Like Mintz, we think of civil behavior in four ways: Having good manners; not being rude to others; showing respect for others; and tolerating differences whether they are religion-based, nationality, sexual orientation, or political viewpoints.

While the First Amendment does give you the right to free speech, it does not entitle you to harass, intimidate or bully others. So before you post nasty comments about someone else, take a step back to consider how your post will be read and interpreted by others. Think before hitting the send button and try to imagine you’re talking directly to them instead of a computer screen.

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The Republican of Springfield (Mass.), May 22, 2015

Heard the one about President Barack Obama’s deal to provide China with all sorts of nuclear technology that could be used in both commercial ventures and military applications? No, this isn’t the setup for some kind of oddball joke. It’s a true story that was known by few, at least as it was developing.

Obama last month moved, completely without fanfare, to renew a nuclear agreement with China that will allow that nation to purchase more U.S.-designed nuclear reactors. Additionally, the deal would allow China to work toward establishing a facility to reprocess spent fuel into weapons-grade plutonium. Further, China would be able to purchase reactor-coolant technology that some fear could be used to create quieter submarines that would be more difficult to detect.

Are all of these potential red flags? Yes. Yes, absolutely. But that doesn’t mean that the deal is necessarily a bad one.

The pact, which has been submitted to Congress for review, will get a thorough going-over by lawmakers in the coming months. This is as it should be. While there are obviously reasons to be concerned about the arrangement, it is entirely possible that the deal, at least when compared with the alternatives, will come to be seen as the best of all possible options.

“We are just beginning what will be a robust review process,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., wrote in in an email to The New York Times. “These agreements can be valuable tools for furthering U.S. interests, but they must support, not undermine, our nation’s critical nonproliferation objectives.”

He’s got that right.

One question, of course, is what would happen in the absence of an agreement with China. Would our failure to come to terms with the Chinese government push them toward working with a nation whose interests might not be exactly aligned with ours?

That’s a distinct, if not even likely, possibility, leaving those who’d oppose the U.S.-China nuke pact on fairly shaky ground.

There are no easy answers to this complex question, but it is entirely possible that the Obama administration has found the right balance in its nuclear agreement with China.

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