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The statewide push to hang onto the Bay State's 10 congressional seats after the 2010 census will be tested in the efforts to count illegal immigrants, officials said yesterday. With federal money distributed based on a number of factors, including the population, it is especially important that all residents - regardless of their immigration status - are included in the census, they said. In many countries, a census often isn't done at all or doesn't carry the same weight as it does in the United States. According to Kathleen Ludgate, regional director for the United States Census Bureau's Boston office,...

This week, Democrats broke out the cots and the S'mores, and held a big ol' Senate sleepover for surrender. By pushing an all-night Senate session purportedly designed to debate the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, Democrats hoped to show their sincerity and moral indignation. "How many sleepless nights have our soldiers and their families had?" asked oily Senator Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, who only two years ago compared U.S. soldiers at Guantanamo Bay to "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings." If politics is the...

IT'S TUESDAY -- THAT MEANS THE DOMED ONES ARE WORKING AGAIN, RIGHT? The House won't convene until 2 pm. That's when Tuesday starts for the Legislatured Ones. The Senate isn't doing much better -- the Senate convened on Monday at 2 pm and adjourned at 5:12 -- took no votes. It appears that the Most Powerful Woman in America can't quite get the troops to show up for work. Remember Pelosi? She was the one who promised to "clean house." Well, it doesn't matter which party is in power. The stench of slovenliness wafts all the way to us folks...

I think that it has been well established that "conservatives" or whatever it is they call themselves these days (e.g., storm troopers) in matters concerning politics value little more than the state's power in which they imagine themselves to participate and the supposed glory that war and domestic national securitism brings to them. Now strictly speaking this is a delusion, because their only access to power lies in the accidental agreement of their opinions with those of the managers of the state. This access will evaporate as soon as the state does something that displeases our conservatives. It is always...

As the Democratic primaries reach a critical stage, partisan spirit is running high, and the presidential campaign is already verging on blood sport. George Washington's birthday today serves as a reminder of how presidents can transcend politics and embody the national spirit. From the time he was recruited as commander in chief in 1775, Washington personified the often tenuous hope of unity among the 13 fractious colonies. With most of the early patriot blood spilled in Massachusetts, the second Continental Congress wanted a Southern general who could lend a national imprint to the struggle. Washington shed his Virginia identity and...

WASHINGTON - In an atmosphere of urgency, President Bush and his top foreign advisers sought new strategies Wednesday to speed the transfer of political power in Iraq as a top-secret intelligence report warned that Iraqis are losing faith in the U.S.-led occupation forces. The mood was darkened by a truck-bomb explosion in southern Iraq that killed at least 14 Italians. "We honor the sacrifice of the brave Italian soldiers who gave their lives to help the Iraqi people," presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney sat down with L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. administrator in...

Looking Back at Reagan October 2, 2003 Reading Ronald Reagan’s newly published letters reminds me how much I’ve always liked him, even after I stopped admiring him as a president. He was always a modest, decent, good-humored man, with more common sense and a keener sense of proportion than most politicians. And he loved a good laugh. But the very qualities that made him charming and convivial underscored the absurdity of entrusting him, or any man, with the awful power of the American presidency. The superlatives his adulators heap on him seem as wide of the mark as the exaggerations...