Published December 4, 2010

With reports that the Red Sox have traded for slugging first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, excitement for Opening Day is ramping up throughout Red Sox Nation.

Generally considered one of baseball’s top talents, the move allows Boston to keep pace with the Yankees’ talent-filled (and expensive) roster and has many fans convinced that the Sox will once again challenge their pesky New York neighbors for baseball supremacy in the Northeast.

Red Sox fans hope to see first baseman Adrian Gonzalez smiling on a Fenway bench this year. (AP)

Though the deal has not yet been officially announced, the Globe is reporting that the Sox will give up prospects Casey Kelly, Anthony Rizzo, and Rey Fuentes. FoxSports.com is reporting that the Red Sox will also throw in a player to be named later.

This trade makes sense from all sides. As my Bubbie says, you’ve got to pay good to get good. The Sox gave up a lot to get a lot, but they didn’t mortgage the future for short term gain.

Kelly, a right-handed pitcher who was once a shortstop, is hyped as the Sox’ top prospect in their farm system. The Sox, however, did well to keep potential shortstop of the future Jose Iglesias and right fielder Ryan Kalish.

If the deal goes through, the Sox will gain one Adrian but lose another. Free agent third baseman Adrian Beltre, who was the Sox’ best player in an injury-riddled 2010 season, probably won’t be re-signed.

Assuming Gonzalez passes a physical, the Red Sox will try to sign the 28-year old Gonzalez to a multi-year mega-extension and will add him to the solid bedrock of young talent that general manager Theo Epstein is building on.

The team is chock-full of young stars like Jon Lester, Kevin Youkilis, Dustin Pedroia, and Clay Buccholz. If manager Terry Francona can coax bounce-back years out of pitchers Josh Beckett and John Lackey, the Red Sox will be the World Series favorites.

That’s right, I just wrote “World Series favorites.”

So, which Adrian is more impressive? The one that inspired Rocky to beat Apollo Creed in Rocky II, or the one that can make believers out of professional cynics in Boston?

Published December 3, 2010

The actor Jonathan Goldsmith, known popularly as The Most Interesting Man In The World (from those hilarious Dos Equis commercials), went to Boston University.

The Most Interesting Man In The World went to BU.

He said so in Rich Eisen’s NFL podcast on Wednesday. (The interview with Goldsmith starts about 26 minutes in.)

Apparently Goldsmith didn’t become an “overnight success” until after his 50-year career in film and television, where he starred in films opposite John Wayne and Burt Lancaster.

Goldsmith said he even worked with Leslie Nielsen, the “Airplane!” star who died Sunday at 84. He described Nielsen as a “charming, relaxed, no-diva, regular guy.”

Goldsmith said he is about to start shooting the fifth year(!) of the beer ads.

Published December 3, 2010

I’m trying to get answers to my question from yesterday: Could Chuck Turner could run for his old City Council seat? No one I talked to at the state or city knows for sure. I have reached my own back-of-the-envelope conclusions, though.

Chuck Turner, future City Council candidate? (WBUR)

Obviously, there is no precedent here. Before this week, the modern-day City Council had never ousted one of its own members. Councilors voted 11-1 on Wednesday to expel Turner, following his conviction on federal bribery charges.

I asked council President Mike Ross to explain what’s next. At next week’s council meeting, the clerk formally announces a vacancy in District 7. The week after that, Ross begins work with the Election Department to nail down a date and order a special election.

Ross wants this seat filled as soon as reasonably possible. The rough plan is for mid-February, he said. That would fall after Turner’s Jan. 25 sentencing.

If Turner is sentenced to probation, rather than jail time, my understanding of the law is that he could legally serve.

To run for office in Massachusetts, you must be registered to vote. And you lose that right only if you’re incarcerated for a felony. The city’s statement of candidacy (PDF, page 8) — which all candidates sign to get on the ballot — makes no restrictions for convicted felons. Finally, as far I can determine, there are no council rules (PDF) or city codes (PDF) that forbid a previously expelled member from taking back his own seat.

But would he run? I called and left a message for Turner, but I haven’t heard back yet.

If Turner ran — and won — the council could just expel him again. But if voters are willing to elect a convicted felon (Turner had only been indicted when he was re-elected in November), there may not be the political will to remove Turner again.

Ross didn’t want to get into this far-flung idea with me. We’ll cross that bridge if we get to it, he said.

Just some speculation on a Friday afternoon.

Published December 3, 2010

Sen. Scott Brown in November (Josh Reynolds/AP)

Update, 1:27 p.m. In a carefully worded statement, Brown says he will vote to repeal DADT:

I pledged to keep an open mind about the present policy on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Having reviewed the Pentagon report, having spoken to active and retired military service members, and having discussed the matter privately with Defense Secretary Gates and others. I accept the findings of the report and support repeal based on the Secretary’s recommendations that repeal will be implemented only when the battle effectiveness of the forces is assured and proper preparations have been completed.

Gates said he has been careful to avoid mentioning timeframes — the implementation could take four months or four years, he said. Brown supports Gates’ interest in repealing DADT on his own schedule.

____

12:48 p.m. His position on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is unclear, but Sen. Scott Brown has sent signals that he would vote to repeal the law.

The Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday peppered Defense Secretary Robert Gates with questions about a new survey that shows most service members are ambivalent. Gates wants to repeal the ban on openly gay service members before a court does.

Brown is a long-serving member of the Massachusetts National Guard.

“I’ve been to many funerals, unfortunately, in my home state, for those soldiers,” Brown said at the hearing. “And one thing I never asked was: Are they — are they gay or straight?”

Liz Halloran, reporting for NPR:

Brown … questioned the service members’ 28 percent response rate to surveys about repeal implementation, but focused more on what would happen after the policy is rolled back.

…

Gates told Brown that his approach would be that “everything has to be done” before certification is signed — from training to making sure the service chiefs are “comfortable” that readiness and unit cohesion have been addressed to their satisfaction.

Brown asked whether Gates could guarantee that he wouldn’t certify the change until he’s comfortable that the process can move forward without affecting military readiness.

Gates: “Absolutely.”

Brown has said he will release a statement on repeal at the close of the hearings Friday.

Democratic Sen. John Kerry, also a vet, is on record as opposing DADT. Republican Susan Collins of Maine also suggested she is open to repealing the law.

Published December 3, 2010

What’s a DNS server? See my earlier post about the recent Comcast Internet outage.

The Associated Press reports:

EveryDNS, the Manchester, N.H.-based company that hosted the website wikileaks.org, stopped late Thursday after cyber attacks threatened the rest of its network. WikiLeaks responded by moving to a Swiss domain name, wikileaks.ch — and calling on activists for support.

Just to be clear — the AP story is misleading — EveryDNS did not host the files on the Wikileaks website. That means EveryDNS did not store the group’s trove of cables, war logs and HTML files. EveryDNS simply provided the service that routed “www.wikileaks.org” to the right place.

Anyway, EveryDNS is a free service and said it could no longer put up with massive denial-of-service attacks, which was interrupting its other customers. This statement appears on the company’s website:

First, let’s be clear, this is a difficult issue to deal with and there are opinions on all sides. Second, EveryDNS.net, the world’s largest free managed DNS provider, is not taking a position on the content hosted on the wikileaks.org or wikileaks.ch website, it is following established policies so as not to put any one EveryDNS.net user’s interests ahead of any others. Lastly, regardless of what people say about the actions of EveryDNS.net, we know this much is true – we believe in our New Hampshire state motto, Live Free or Die.

Wikileaks apparently will return to wikileaks.org when it can find a DNS provider that will let it stay awhile.

Published December 2, 2010

Roger Clap Elementary, the tiny school in Dorchester threatened with closure, has won a reprieve.  I’m told Clap will be converted to an “innovation school,” which would give the district authority to fire teachers and impose new academic standards.

Clap Elementary parent Kenny Jervis distributed pictures of heartbreaking posters like these.

I wrote about Clap back in October, after it was included on a list of six schools that Boston Public Schools Superintendent Carol Johnson said she planned to shut down. Parents there mounted an extraordinary defense.

One particularly savvy  parent was Kenny Jervis, a private chef, whose 7-year-old, Sophia, and 4-year-old, Nigel, attend Clap Elementary. He was working away from home — literally on an island — when he got the news.

“They put letters in our kids’ backpacks,” he said. “Having my four-year-old translate the school closing — without me being able to translate to him what that meant — was devastating.

Jervis started an e-mail and Twitter campaign from his cell phone, rallying parents to save the school. When I attended a meeting with Johnson on Oct. 14, turnout was nearly 100 percent. School officials assured parents that Johnson might revise her closure plan after hearing public feedback.

Today, Johnson expanded that plan — bringing to 12 the number of schools that would be closed or merged to help fill a $63 million budget gap next year. Parents at the affected schools received phone calls (instead of notes in their kids’ backpacks) but Johnson won’t reveal the list of schools until a meeting at 6 o’clock tonight.

Speaking to WBUR’s Morning Edition, Johnson called school closures a difficult but necessary decision.

Jervis said he received a call from City Councilor Bill Linehan and state Sen. Jack Hart that Clap would be the only school converted to an innovation school. Test scores at the 166-child school are among the lowest in the district.

The “innovation” concept is similar to a pilot school or an in-district charter school, but only existing schools can win that designation.

Jervis is skeptical of the concept and worried that Clap is just being put on life support. “There have been many cases across the country where they go in with these ideas that don’t work — and then pull the plug,” he said.

Matt Wilder, the BPS spokesman, said he would not comment before tonight’s meeting.

Update: BPS mistakenly revealed the full list of proposed school closures on its website for a few minutes after I wrote this story.

Published December 2, 2010

Twenty-three months before a re-election bid, Massachusetts’ lone Republican congressional delegate is in a strong position, according to a new poll.

A new poll has Sen. Scott Brown up on Gov. Deval Patrick in a hypothetical 2012 Senate match-up. (AP)

When matched up against five hypothetical Democratic opponents, Sen. Scott Brown has a clear lead against all five. The closest competitors are seven points behind.

The poll, released today (PDF) by Public Policy Polling, has Brown seven points up on Gov. Deval Patrick, 49-42, and Vicki Kennedy — the widow of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, whose seat Brown replaced — 48-41.

Brown also tops three well-tenured Greater Boston congressmen: Rep. Ed Markey, 49-39; Rep. Mike Capuano, 52-36; and Rep. Stephen Lynch, 49-30.

Though Massachusetts reaffirmed its “midnight blue” color on Nov. 2, the poll found the Republican Brown with the highest approval rating (53 percent, against just 29 percent disapproval) among the five incumbents. It also found him receiving support from approximately 25 percent of Democrats, “something usually only seen in Southern Democratic states like North Carolina,” PPP says.

With the exception of the governor, however, the four other potential challengers are “far less known” than Brown, indicating that margins could close if candidates indeed mount a Senate bid. None of the five hypothetical challengers has announced an intention to run.

The poll, conducted this week, surveyed 500 Massachusetts voters — 42 percent of whom were Democrats, followed by 38 percent independent and 20 percent Republican. The poll had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.

Earlier:

• Election Wrap: Brown, Baker And The Way Forward
• Is There A ‘Scott Brown Effect?’ (What You Said)

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