Let’s call political debate winners by tallying the vote at ringside

By James W. Dolan
November 2, 2012
James W. Dolan

Saturday Night Live should come up with a new formula that combines debating and prizefighting as a way to give viewers a definite winner and loser instead of the endless “spinning” that occurs under the traditional debate formula. Both sides now claim to be victorious.

This process would at least provide some finality to the annoying speculation that now surrounds political debates. Something like what follows would make future contests more amusing:

As the wide world watches us, the Irish say, ‘Obama’s the one’

By Joe Leary
November 2, 2012
Joe Leary

BY JOE LEARY
SPECIAL TO THE BIR

The United States is the most powerful, resourceful nation in the world, so what goes on here is of intense interest to all other countries. especially Ireland.

In fact, there is so much attention paid to American elections in English-speaking Ireland that two organizations conducted polls of its citizens to determine who they would choose (if they could) between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

The results are quite interesting.

Curiouser & Curiouser: Mitt Romney as our Shanachie-in-Chief?

By BY PETER F. STEVENS
November 2, 2012
BY PETER F. STEVENS

by Peter F. Stevens
Bear with me here, but I’m wondering if somewhere, somehow on the Romney family tree, an Irish branch stretches out. Why is that? Whether or not Mitt Romney wins the Oval Office this month, a question will remain. Who is Willard Mitt Romney? Boston Globe contributor Tom Keane chides the Obama camp for deriding Mitt as a fool. Keane is right – Mitt is no fool. Renee Loth, once the Globe’s editorial page editor, views Mitt as a coreless delegator who will allow running-mate Paul Ryan to shred the nation’s safety net.

Boston Irish Reporter Endorsement: Forward with Obama

Ed Forry
By Ed Forry
November 2, 2012


If only every decision in life were this easy.

President Barack Obama has earned re-election with an impressive first term that will come to be viewed as one of the most productive, progressive, and — ultimately— successful periods in the history of the modern US presidency. Obama has done so in spite of an inherited economic crisis that would have upended lesser leaders and in the face of a Republican Congress whose sole reason for existence over the last two years has been to undermine the president and his initiatives at every turn. The GOP has failed, the president has prevailed, and we enthusiastically endorse his re-election next Tuesday.

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Lehane takes on the Roaring Twenties in new novel

By Bill Forry, Managing Editor
November 2, 2012
Bill Forry, Managing Editor

“South Boston punk becomes a Florida crime boss.” That’s how one newspaper boiled down Dennis Lehane’s latest novel. Sure, that’s one way of summarizing “Live by Night,” the Roaring Twenties gangster page-turner that will also be a big-studio film some day soon, but any sting that Lehane might suffer from the blunt summary is soothed by the source: The New York Times Book Review noting that his latest novel has debuted at No. 8 on the paper’s bestseller list.

Remembering Larry Reynolds, fiddler: ‘He never, ever got tired of the music’

By Sean Smith
November 2, 2012
Sean Smith

Larry Reynolds: Photo by Bill BrettLarry Reynolds: Photo by Bill BrettHe was the big, amiable fellow from Galway who worked with wood in his profession and in his music, and who seemed to know, personally, just about anybody who’d ever so much as touched a fiddle, accordion or flute, or sang an Irish song.
In fact, Larry Reynolds knew, and touched the lives of, so many people that there was literally no room for all of them to come and say goodbye to him.
Reynolds died on Oct. 3, leaving behind an extraordinary six-decade legacy as musician, organizer, and pioneer in the Boston Irish music scene. The Waltham resident, a carpenter by trade and fiddler by inclination, was 80 years old.

From his prison cell, Bobby Sands made the world take notice

By BIR News Room
October 4, 2012

by Stephen M. Pingel
Special to the BIR

Following is the eighth in a series of articles on individuals who had a substantial impact on civic life in Ireland in the 20th century.

Bobby Sands
1954-1981

Beginning in the late 1960s, many of the most dramatic events in Ireland over the following two decades or so took place in the North, most of them tied to The Troubles.

North End’s St. Stephen Church celebrates sesquicentennial

By BIR News Room
October 4, 2012

By Patrick E. O’Connor

St. Stephen Church, circa 1960St. Stephen Church, circa 1960
The 150th anniversary of the establishment of St. Stephen Church on Hanover Street in the North End was remembered with a Mass of Thanksgiving on Sunday, September 23 with Auxiliary Bishop Robert F. Hennessey presiding.

St. Stephen Church was originally the New North Congregational Church. Boston born Charles Bulfinch, the nation’s premier architect of the time, received the commission to design a church to replace a previous church at Hanover and Clark Streets in 1802. The church was completed in 1804 and by 1814, renamed the Second Unitarian Church.

During the Civil War era, the Unitarian congregation declined as the immigrant population of the North End swelled. A previously established St. John the Baptist Church on Moon Street had outgrown its use. Father John J. Williams, administrator at the time and later Archbishop of Boston, purchased the church on September 26, 1862 for $35,000. He dedicated the church to St. Stephen, the first Christian Martyr on December 2, 1862.

Assessing the prospects for an emerging Ireland: Irish American Partnership takes to road to check on opportunities and difficulties

By Joe Leary
October 4, 2012
Joe Leary

Above, one of many sessions involving members of the Irish American Partnership and Irish officials that took place during the Partnership's mission to Ireland in August.Above, one of many sessions involving members of the Irish American Partnership and Irish officials that took place during the Partnership's mission to Ireland in August.
A group of 14 Irish American Partnership members, including several Bostonians, traveled to Ireland recently to learn for themselves about the difficulties and opportunities facing the Irish people in these difficult economic times. In an extraordinary tour, the visitors made 21 stops and talked with some 60 Irish leaders, North and South, over four and one half days. 
Sunny, ideal Irish weather was the order of the day throughout the trip; transportation was by a luxurious bus; and Irish hospitality was in evidence everywhere.

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