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Coakley: City Hall e-mail flap just a bunch of hooey
By adamg on Wed, 09/16/2009 - 1:00am
The Herald reports Attorney General Martha Coakley has dismissed a request from three Boston mayoral candidate to investigate how and why e-mail disappeared from Tom Menino's City Hall:
Particularly understanding this is the middle of a campaign, we get lots of complaints from folks who are adversaries who have a particular agenda.
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Comments
The Martha & Menino Machine
Martha in the tank already. What a disgrace she is - just like when she prosecuted that innocent British kid so she could run for DA. I will vote for Scott Browne before I give her a vote. And I've never voted for a Republican in my life. Shame on Coakley - a pol's pol.
Double standard, Ms. Coakley?
Let's see if I understand. Yoon, Flaherty, and McCrea want an investigation and the AG declares that it's all politics. They have an "agenda."
But Attorney General Coakley, who is in "the middle of a campaign" for an open US Senate seat, refuses to investigate a sitting mayor who, if re-elected (and, absent a scandal such as this is likely to win), will be able to send a lot of votes her way in a special election being held in the dead of winter.
I'm sure Coakley doesn't have "a particular agenda."
Typical politics
This is typical politics from Martha Coakley. She should do the job she was elected to do - AG. I can't believe that she is in bed with Mumbles. What a hack she is. I am never voting for her again.
Poor poor choice of words on
Poor poor choice of words on her behalf, what was she thinking?
It sounds like she is not only dismissing Yoon, Flaherty and McCrea but she is accusing them of being the only ones here with an agenda.
She better hope that Menino survives...
...and is still able to deliver her his machine's votes. This is just incredible stuff. She won't do her job - purely because she is protecting Menino whose support she needs. What other deals will she make to sell us down the river, if she becomes US Senator?
She just lost my support
I'll not vote for her in the primary now. To dismiss this out of hand is really bad.
No little people to attack
No adhesive companies from out of state who had very little to do with the misuse of their product, no nannies to frame for what could have been the work of the "bereaved parents" she wanted to cozy up to, no artists hired by major corporations to frame for terrorist charges, nobody named "tooky" ...
Law and truth don't have much standing with Coakley ... not when there is a soapbox to climb up on and say something stupid from!
At least she's been consistent
Coakley didn't investigate or indict DiMasi either, if I remember right- just his friend Vitale. Going after public corruption is something she generally defers to the feds.
In this case, however, such an attitude would seem to be inappropriate since we're talking about violations of state (not federal) law.
Not sure what she's thinking.
Herald nails the Coakley twist
It would be hilarious if we didn't actually live here: The Herald nailed the twist of Coakley's lightning fast dismissal of the e-mail issue on the same day she unveiled her new computer forensics lab to help root out cyber abuses.
I haven't followed Coakley closely enough to get a read on her. Maybe she just hadn't made an impression on me one way or the other. I viewed her as competent but perhaps not compelling. During the past year, however, the picture has been shaping up, and it's a troubling one.
For full disclosure I am not
For full disclosure I am not sure who my choice is but it is not Martha Coakley.
You have to remember that she has never had a serious fight for any of her seats and especially has not encountered other people with strong behind the scenes support. Now she is fighting for a Senate seat that up until recently had half the congressional delegation and two Kennedy's running for it and is still fielding strong candidates. This also involves a heavily contested race for Mayor. Fair or not I would expect a barrage of little negative bits to come flying out at her. Everything she has gotten a pass for in the past will come back and because she got a pass on it previously it will seem like a pile all at the same time.
I still think she is a good person overall but yeah she has been using her office to bolster herself for a while now. Take a look at her AG blog, seems like she wanders from her mission quite often.
I'm with shady
Martha who?
Hey - I tend to lean to the right anyway - but what was she thinking - her job is the one where politics needs to be avoided the most and she thinks this is a political game.
Hey - if there was no crime - fine - but I believe the penalties involve possible jail time. Maybe it is indeed much ado about nothing,but it's potentially a very serious issue. She needs to at least be engaged, not completely dismissive of this as a political hoax.
While I do think this email
While I do think this email spat is more agenda politics then a real issue and might not even be tied to the mayor himself, I do support an investigation because the allegations warrant one.
Coakley just lost my vote. I don't want a senator that passes the buck when pressed on the fire.
E-mail probe: It's "political" AND relevant
Yes, the timing of all this makes the e-mail issue very political, and no doubt the challengers are making everything they can of it after months of being unable to dent Menino's armor.
But the regular, systematic deletion of e-mails by the mayor's chief of staff -- not a mere "adviser," as some news accounts have called him -- is potentially serious stuff if it implicates, for example, situations like the Wilkerson corruption probe.
Think about it: Why would someone want to do this? How many of us will take time each day to delete (probably) dozens of e-mails? The fact that the mayor's corporation counsel and others are referring to this as a system "glitch" when it was a purely human decision reveals the disingenuousness of the administration.
I get about a hundred emails
I get about a hundred emails a day. 50 are spam the other 50 are legit. Of those second 50 I would say I keep 5 for more then a week and 1 for more then a month. I do not work in Government or for a company that needs to retain emails so I do not. Even with my small scale retention though I have built up hundreds of emails I save in a years time and I am not all that important. How is this guy getting away with deleting these emails on a daily basis to begin with? It is a bit weird to me.
Like I've said in other
Like I've said in other threads, how city hall archives email and how their IT department got that info out also needs to be looked at.
At my place of work Outlook is directed through email servers first, and anything we physically do on our machines is moot when it comes to email retention. The servers pick it up and store it all by themselves. Ideally this is how it should work everywhere, especially in government.
People could have been misled unknowingly into thinking that this was how it was taken care of and that they needed not have any action. Not everyone is a tech buff.
After all, City Hall isn't exactly known for being on the up and up with technology.
Like I said, it deserves being actually looked into; but at the same time people need to cool off and take the noose down.
i get about the same amount...
and i *do* work in government. i save about a third of those, on average, and i have thousands of emails archived.
the rest, i delete them. i delete them from my inbox and i delete them from my trash.
and i do so because i have been told time and time again that it's the responsibility of the agency and the MIS department to make sure that my email is being backed up. my personal profile, where i routinely save and move and delete my email, can only hold so much. and allegedly it's only one copy of my email.
i am trusting my MIS department and my agency.
and i sure hope they are really backing up my stuff!
personally, i think it's weird to delete all your emails. but then again i am a pack rat by nature, so people who don't save every birthday card they have ever gotten are weird to me, too ;)
manual and intentional deletion of e-mail a "'Glitch" ?
DING DING DING. WE HAVE A WINNER.
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Serious?
So...she *isn't* running for Senate? Because I sure as hell am not going to vote for her now.
Capuano
Especially in light of what we're seeking from Coakley, Mike Capuano is looking pretty good right now. He is solidly progressive, identifies with regular folks, and knows how to slug it out in a legislative setting.
I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to say.
Indeed
Mike is my Rep, and I'd vote for him in whatever race he'd want to join. He's been my choice all along.
Get it straight from Martha's mouth
Watch her interview this morning to get the facts straight-
http://www.kennedyseat.com/2009/09/martha-coakley-...
You'll be proud to call her our Senator- how terrific that the best candidate for the job will also be the historic first woman from Massachusetts!
Go Martha!!
http://www.womenforcoakley.com/
Thanks for the Astroturf
We'll be sure to tell your boss what a good job you did anonymously pimping for her.
Martha Coakley will never get the nomination as long as the word "Mooninites" is the first thing people think of when they hear her name.
Oh come on, Mooninites? The
Oh come on, Mooninites? The average voter will not remember that, especially those outside of Boston.
Average voter?
The "average voter" rarely even votes in statewide primaries. What does it matter what they do or don't remember?
The choice is simple: vote for the congressman or vote for the camera-seeking party hack who has never held legislative office.
I think we support the same
I think we support the same person in this race, no need to get flustered lol
Keep in mind even among those that vote in every election they do not all keep track of all of these little issues and I have a feeling it will be difficult to remind people of the event in a meaningful way in short news clip.
More power to them if it is possible to make a big fuss out of it. That would affect Menino and Coakley in one swoop.
Gee Whiz!
That Martha shore is swell!
Why enforce state law when you are running for Senate? Why go after menino and all of the other "mayor for life" losers like McGlynn or the mayors of Woburn or Waltham who hide their record-destroying ways under the guise of "we don't do e-mail because we like to talk person to person blah blah don't leave a paper trail blah blah hide" when you know they will just make sure that all of the elderly people in their rest home cities will get extra special rides to the polls to vote for ya!
How could we possibly expect the Attorney General to act when she can't vilify some file clerk or recently employed IT guy?
Here's what I think.
I am a registered Democrat who has voted for Martha in every election (including primaries) she has had for DA & AG. I also have contributed money to her campaign in the past.
After this, there is no way I am voting for her ever again - for US Senate, AG or even dog-catcher.
Her people can spin this all they like. The facts are that she is blowing off this investigation because she needs Menino's help to get elected.
I am really disappointed in her - I thought that she was better than this.
NO LEGISLATIVE EXPERIENCE NEEDED
When I review the job description of a US Senator, I don't see a line item near the top of the qualifications that says "NO LEGISLATIVE EXPERIENCE NEEDED." Of course legislative experience is needed! Knowing how to get things done in the senate is the difference between a great senator and an average or substandard one. I don't want an average or substandard senator. I want a great one.
While Martha has a long record as a career prosecutor. She has no record as a legislator, zero, zip, nada, none. Martha would have to be a pretty strong candidate in other ways for her to overcome that bar.
Her stated positions on the issues are considerably liberal. I have no reason to doubt them but of course, we haven't seen her act on them except in a law enforcement context. Her matter area expertise is law enforcement. Will she pass laws that protect citizens in police custody or will she favor law enforcement at the expense of individual rights? As a career prosecutor and judging from some of her decisions, I would say, regretfully, the later: favor law enforcement at the expense of individual rights.
We have only her actions as a public person and as a prosecutor to judge her fitness for Kennedy's seat as US Senator.
Mooninite
I found it offensive that she would drop the baseless (domestic terror) charges on two harmless and enterprising mid-20s year old men and then require they apologize and perform community service. The prosecutor dropped the charges becuase the charges were without merit. So why the penalty? This is NOT how the authority of the state is supposed to be exercised.
Shanley
Shanley's conviction was based on uncorroborated eyewitness testimony from an alleged victim with "traumatic amnesia" - a dubious condition without credibility grounded in scientific research. But look at the way the jury pool was poisoned:
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I never really thought of it
I never really thought of it like that. I have always been a people should jump in type person. Your viewpoint does make sense though because I am sure you would agree we can draw a line between Senate and House in this case. In the House there is quite a bit of hand holding for new members and a hierachy so even someone with zero experience can make their way around without too big of a mess. The Senate is more of a lone horseman situation where while people do help you, there is an expectation that you can handle yourself in there. I would venture to say that guy who started City Year would have more of that legislative experience then the AG due to his legislative wrangling and his work on policy campaigns.
I think she would make a better Governor.
Sorry, but no
I want the historic first woman from Massachusetts to have ethics.
Obama already has the Feds
Obama already has the Feds figuring out how to archive the Social Network interactions of all of his departments.
http://mashable.com/2009/09/16/white-house-records/
Horse's mouth
In the Ch 25 interview, Coakley says the Herald omitted some crucial context:
I too was ready to be shocked by Coakley's disinterest, but what she says sounds reasonable.
Maybe
Or maybe she hasn't found a not responsible, not connected person to violently prosecute yet. Some hapless IT guy, the only one hired for his qualifications and not his pedigree, will do time for this, I'm sure.
See also: go after the glue manufacturer for the misdeeds of your donors. Go after the nanny when there is no good scientific evidence that exonerates the parents. Etc.
Better.
We make a good team, the MSM and us. We can make politicians say whatever we need them to say during a campaign. Once they get elected, however, they pretty much stop listening. (see: Barack Obama)
i don't like capuano or
i don't like capuano or coakley.... i am looking for something else.... i see both of them as hacks...and i work in politics