Doyle said Romney was “very consistent at working both sides of the street on the same issue,” but his record on this has been “one of cynical and tactical manipulation.”

He agreed that Romney’s old pro-choice agenda has been somewhat overlooked by his conservative religious brethren. Romney can only pray that they hold off, and they may do so just as long as he continues to kowtow to them. Coming out in favor of the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to pull the funding plug on Planned Parenthood covered his right flank this week, though evidently not well enough for conservative voters. Romney said, unequivocally, that the government should follow suit, but yesterday’s election results could complicate his well-documented problems motivating conservative voters.

It all seemed to reach a crisis point in the campaign as voters spent yesterday coalescing around Santorum, the staunchest social conservative in the race. Santorum won first in the Missouri primary, then in Minnesota’s caucuses and, finally and most impressively, in Colorado, which Romney had dominated with 65 percent of the vote four years ago.

None of these contests award delegates, but the results are gloomy for a candidate looking to consolidate his lead. Newt Gingrich’s best showing for the day was a third in Colorado but, with Santorum, he’s giving Romney a fright.

Romney is suddenly now so opposed to contraception that he vowed this week to eliminate all funding for federal family planning and make women pay out of pocket for birth control. That’s a long way from what’s on offer in the Bay State thanks to our former governor.

Going way back to 1994, when he backed abortion rights as a Senate candidate, Romney’s wife, Anne, made a $150 gift to Planned Parenthood on their joint checking account. The Boston Globe published this photo, which shows Romney at the fundraising event for Planned Parenthood in Cohasset, Mass. By 2002 he was back on the campaign trail again, this time as a gubernatorial candidate promising to maintain the family-planning status quo in Massachusetts.

Caught back-footed, Romney just issued a petition attacking the president for “using Obamacare to impose a secular vision on Americans.” He said that “this kind of assault on religion will end if I’m president of the United States.”

His strategy has been working, sort of, because leading conservatives have largely laid off. James Dobson, a leader of the religious right,  declined a request for comment on Romney’s reversal of the emergency contraception exemption or, going back further, his run for the Senate as a pro-abortion candidate. So did his former group, Focus on the Family.

Romney’s campaign had no comment.

The brainchild of Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren, the darling of the left—yet prompted by Senator Scott Brown, the Tea Party centerfold who took Ted Kennedy’s seat—the key enforcement mechanism is remarkably simple in its conception: the candidate favored in a third-party ad on TV, radio or online must make a contribution worth half of the ad’s costs to the opposing candidate’s charity of choice within three days of broadcast.

The negative air war that was predicted two years ago as a consequence of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling could very well be thwarted in this one key race. It’s the little engine that could, nationally, but if the Massachusetts experiment in self-punishment proves enforceable here, it could catch on elsewhere, sort of like the Pledge of Allegiance against dirty politics, a yardstick that blunts the worst consequences of the high court’s decision.

Or it may prove to be a campaign game changer only in a blue state like Massachusetts where an incumbent Republican is covering his left flank with a clean-money pledge. In red states where there’s a Democratic incumbent, say, the People’s Pledge is much less likely to take root.

Warren, the less-well-known newcomer who needs to do more flesh-pressing to win over undecided voters, may benefit more from the pact than Brown, who took the late great lion of the Senate’s seat in a stunning upset runoff election in 2010. It was Brown’s camp that came up with the idea, and Warren, personally, who gave it teeth, essential enforcement mechanisms being a forte that would seem to separate this woman from the boys on Capitol Hill, should she take back Brown’s Senate seat for the Democrats.

The People’s Pledge is most likely to rise or fall with her political fortunes, which is to say its potential is every bit as promising as the smart money’s long-shot favorite to be our first female president. A regular on the Daily Show With Jon Stewart, where she re-appeared last night as her apple-cheeked, all-American self, looking professorial, but without the affected demeanor, Warren comes across as the down-to-earth daughter of, as she told Stuart, “a guy who sold fencing.” Warren went on to give a little history lesson about the 1940s, when she was born, when the government went to bat for the middle class, the same government  that today goes to bat almost exclusively for the 35,000 lobbyists that swarm the halls of power

The deal, signed by both candidates, will be watched  by none more closely than the shadowy, big-money SuperPacs that have hijacked the 2012 election season. Above all else that means Karl Rove and the Koch brothers who back his billionaire front group, the American Crossroads GPS think tank, which has already sunk more than $1 million into the Brown-Warren contest.

Rove may be pleased to know that not one Boston radio or television outlet has agreed to comply—it’s business after all and, as Ronald Reagan said, the politics of America is business—though they will feel nearly irresistible pressure to do so over the next few days as both campaigns mail a co-letter asking media outlets to forgo what amounts to a nice chunk of change for the local market.

The liberal League of Conservation Voters, which just bought a $2 million ad buy against Brown, said it would honor the deal Still there was a muted response in the  blogosphere, a place normally divided over the wisdom of grotesque sums being spent on vulgar attack ads. The truce was noted widely if dispassionately. Daily Kos merely observed that the campaigns had swapped letters about the sums being spent already. The site noted that Brown had called on Warren to condemn the ads, and the Warren had responded last Friday with her idea to stand together beyond mere words. Brown accepted, the Daily Kos noted generously, even though the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had said it would become “significantly involved” in defeating his opponent.

Similarly, Talking Points Memo ran with a straight-up “we intend to comply” story quoting a Massachusetts Democratic Party official.
The muted response may be a consequence of the hardened skepticism about plugging the flow of SuperPac money. Sending letters to TV stations and advocacy groups asking them to curb the ads amounts to “an interesting and commendable effort,” said Paul Ryan, a lawyer for the Campaign Legal Center, which works on behalf of tighter campaign funding laws.  “But I’m not entirely convinced it will be effective.”

Ryan said that issue ads, traditionally used to dodge limits on direct candidate advocacy, may blur the lines, complicating compliance.
Though no other group has come out against the pledge, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee have not yet said if they’ll try to call off the dogs in their own parties.

All that can be said for sure is that populist politics appears ready to trump the billion-dollar campaign industry in at least one race in the cradle of liberty. But if the People’s Pledge really takes off in Massachusetts, putting your money where your SuperPac mouth is may be the only way to avoid wearing the dirty-money badge of shame. Best case scenario: In the era of Citizens United, the People’s Pledge could yet become an unavoidable rite of American politics.

Why should we buy it? Where does the fair-haired kid get off thinking he is the best person who’s to hold the seat held consecutively by such towering political figures as the President John F. Kennedy and House Speaker Tip O’Neill.

Because he can’t dodge his roots, the assistant district attorney (which is pretty much an entry-level job right out of law school) is sticking to the selfless-service narrative, like some great patrician politician from the era of his maternal great grandfather, Honey Fitzgerald, the mayor of Boston.

“My decision to look seriously at elected office is grounded in a deep commitment to public service and my experience — both my own and that of my family — in finding just, practical, and bipartisan solutions to difficult challenges,” he said yesterday in announcing his exploration committee, which allows him to begin raising money. All righty, then.

It’s a calculated campaign gamble, as “Kennedy fatigue” is now a chronic condition in Massachusetts. Even Boston’s south shore, long known as the Irish-Catholic Riviera, is souring on the clan. So basking in the faded glow of Camelot may not be the best way to get yourself elected here. Even if his resume is covered in ivy (Stanford undergrad, Harvard Law), and he spent two years in the Peace Corps (the Dominican Republic is not exactly a hardship post), there are no guarantees in American politics, even for a Kennedy running for the old Kennedy seat in the bluest of blue states. Noblesse oblige is one thing. If it’s claimed on the pedigree coattails of fading dynasty, it won’t wash.

Joe III may find himself in an uphill struggle against more experienced candidates, including Boston City Councilor Michael Ross. So family consigiliere Paul Kirk was trotted out to sing the praises of the freckled redhead, even while anticipating questions about the possible arrogance of Kennedy power. “He’s a very mature but at the same time self-effacing man, well grounded, and he’s in it for the right reasons,” Kirk said repeatedly to Massachusetts media outlets.

Kirk made the point that the assistant DA could be doing things with his life other than stooping to hold office with congresssional pond scum. Of course he could. He’s a Kennedy. But why bother? No American will ever forget that his grandfather and grand-uncle gave their lives for this country. But, equally, who can deny that the bloodstream has thinned through the downstream generations? From Caroline’s flubbed attempt to fill Hillary Clinton’s seat to Uncle Patrick’s visits to rehab clinics to Daddy Joe II’s clumsy efforts at marriage annulment, the clan has coughed up one selfless career after the next.

Now comes this young man in a hurry at what was assumed to be the tail end of the family’s political life span, with last year marking the first time in 63 years that a Kennedy has not held office in Washington. He is the next generation, the first of the so-called fourth generation to run, selflessly, for public office. Kennedy dynasty 4.0.

It’s a ritual we saw played out 25 years ago when 3.0 came to power. I clearly remember how diminished the brand name felt when Joe Kennedy II took his seat in the 8thCongressional District of Massachusetts. It was a gorgeous Washington day and I found myself side by side with the congressman, waiting for a “Don’t Walk” light to change at a Capitol Hill intersection. “Hey, Joe,” I ventured. “I’m one of your back-home constituents.”

“Oh yeah,” he said, coming back at me with that square-jawed, all-American Kennedy aplomb, a touch of friendly overtone to his voice. “And what were you doing up there?”

“Not  much,” I said. “Just hacking it out as a cabbie after college in Boston.”

“That’s funny,” he said, “I’ve always wanted to be a cabbie.”

“That’s funny,” I returned, “I’ve always wanted to be a Kennedy.”

My badda-bing punch line explains the ambivalence we Massachusetts voters feel about the patronizing arrogance of power that comes with the Kennedy brain. What irks all but the mushiest of Massachusetts liberals is the sense of entitlement that gets wrapped in do-gooder claptrap. That line was wearing thin decades ago when the patrician era of American politics coasted to a close. In this economy, amid the Democratic backlash against the monstrously rich, it’ll be harder than ever to make that claim fly. Americans have lost faith in the rich, because even the best of them let us down. Even the Kennedy name, a name synonymous with wealth, may feel the whip end of populist resentment.

Just ask Democratic senatorial candidate Martha Coakley.  Pre-ordained as Sen. Ted Kennedy’s rightful successor, Coakley took the electorate for granted, campaigning hardly at all, and for her hubris was bested by Scott Brown, a professional pretty boy who ran as a Tea Party clone in an Everyman’s cherry red pickup truck. The late-great lion of the Senate wasn’t just rolling in his grave, he was clawing through the casket.

His Boston legal team haloed him as a kind and loving man, if an angry and opinionated intellectual type. They argued he was being persecuted for his disapproval of  U.S. foreign policy. The government countered with the belief that Mehanna was just the sort of hater who’d take glee in seeing Americans getting gunned down in bloody shopping malls.

The implications are profound and simple.

“They both came out the same week, but they are part of a pattern of putting to one side the fundamental freedoms we’ve taken for granted. We’re into a whole new legal terrain,” said Nancy Murray of the Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. ”As the Senate gutted the Bill of Rights, just as it gutted the right to due process and the right to trial by jury, the whole notion of presumption of innocence goes out the window. And the scary thing is that it could be applied to all U.S. citizens.”

When not watching Lowe’s ads on the popular reality show, Muslim parents are sure to hit the pause button for a quiet word with their children about expressing strident opinions online. And they won’t mean maybe, either, because sentencing for Mehanna is set for as soon as April 12, and he may never see the light of day again — he could be sentenced to life in prison.  The message is unequivocal: You’d better watch your Muslim mouth. 

Mehanna made no bones about watching jihadi videos and translating them for friends; no bones about lending CDs to people in the Boston area in order, as the prosecution asserted, to create like­-minded youth; no bones about  discussing with friends his views of suicide bombings, the killing of civilians, and dying on the battlefield in the name of Allah. He translated texts that were freely available online and looked for information there about the 19 9/11 hijackers too. He even inquired into how to transfer files from one computer to another, and how to keep those files from being hacked.

However unpopular those acts may be, civil libertarians say they fall well within the margins of First Amendment protection. They are bracing themselves for repeal, but their immediate concern is the ending of posse comitatus, a far more serious matter. If the president, a constitutional scholar, signs the Senate-passed defense bill as is, then in the stroke of a pen he’ll have re-answered the age-old joke: “Is this a free country, or what?” The answer will be a resounding “or what,” but it’s no joke. Coming on the same week that the Bill of Rights had its 220th anniversary, you have to ask what’s more depleted these days: America’s outrage or its unkeen sense of irony?

The ACLU of Massachusetts submitted a brief in the Mehanna case, but it was refused by Judge O’Toole, who felt it was not suitable for this trial. The amicus curiae urged the court to proceed with the utmost care to prevent protected speech from constituting the sole basis for charges of conspiring to provide material support to terrorist groups. The brief said Mehanna had “engaged in discussions and watched and translated readily available media on the topics of global politics, wars, and religion, all of which are topics of public concern. That his views may be offensive or disagreeable, or that they may ‘create like-minded youth,’ is of no consequence to the heightened protection to which his expression is entitled as a result of the First Amendment.”

Through such acts Mehanna was convicted yesterday of conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaida. If such speech is not protected as a free expression under the First Amendment, “then the government’s implicit view that such speech could alone support conviction threatens to render the material support statute a vehicle for the suppression of unpopular ideas, contrary to the dictates of the First Amendment and fundamental American values.”

Civil liberties advocates make the “slippery slope” argument. In the 2010 case Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, which decided whether providing nonviolent aid like legal advice to terrorist groups constitutes material support for terrorism, the Supreme Court ruled that you can advocate as an individual, but if your advocacy is coordinated with an outfit on a terrorist list, then it’s criminal conspiracy and you can be convicted of giving terrorist support.

The ACLU believes that Mehanna’s activities were not shown to meet that test, “so the real reason for convicting him seems to be missing,” Murray said. “The trial featured all sorts of allegations of traveling but there was no hard proof that his advocacy was coordinated with a group.”

Grounds for appeal appear to be more than ample. “For one thing,” said Murray, “the courts should be very worried that it criminalizes unpopular speech. The First Amendment should’ve protected his translating material that he read on the internet. Unless they could’ve said he was doing that at the behest of a terrorist group, they’ve never actually made that direct connection.”

More than three dozen who remained were arrested this morning, according to Boston Police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll.

Both internally and in the face it shows to the world, the occupation movement has now reached an inflection point. In the frozen mud of the Dewey Square camp, just outside of the gleaming tower of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the protesters had been hugging and congratulating themselves for hanging in there as the hardcore, even while sorely disappointed that others had decamped so obediently after asking Boston Superior Court Judge Frances MacIntyre what was to be done in the event of mass arrests. Her restraining order  was lifted 25 hours before the police swooped in. Essentially, the judge agreed that America is not like England, where squatters’ rights are enshrined in law. America is a country where the SWAT teams swoop in on peaceful protesters in public parks.

A squad of paddy wagons rolled down along Boston’s Waterfront just before 5 a.m., and riot police using plastic handcuffs took several dozen sleepy campers alighting from their tents for their rudest awakening since 141 were arrested in early October in Boston.  “If you don’t leave the park, you will be subject to arrest. You are trespassing,” a police officer said through a megaphone.

“Tell me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like,” demonstrators chanted back. About two dozen linked arms as hundreds of tents were tossed into rubbish trucks.

“They wanted to get arrested. It went very well, and we’re very happy with this operation,” said Superintendent William Evans, an official even protesters admired for his gentle hand in carrying out Mayor Thomas Menino’s orders.

The camp was clearly divided between those who were happy about going into  court to seek a restraining order against eviction and those who questioned the wisdom of seeking change through established channels. Dressed in a tartan green kilt, 48-year-old Phil O’Connell nearly came to blows with several of his fellow occupiers, complaining about “the whole fascist attitude of the general assembly where anyone who shows any passion here is seen as violent,” before cooler heads prevailed.

Another activist calling himself Duncan nearly taunted the police, vowing to “defend this camp to the final moment.” He spoke passionately about what was clearly the beginning of the end, some 19 hours after the Boston Police had distributed fliers putting them on notice that they were in violation of public trespass laws. “Our camp is the best opportunity for us to be the change we want to see in the world. That’s why I was dismayed to see part of our camp voluntarily dismantled last night.”

“Look around,” said Brian Kwoba, a 24-year-old occupier from Cambridge.  “It looks like a raid happened, but there was no raid. The mayor flinched at us and we punched ourselves in the face. Do we have a movement where the mayor says jump and we ask, ‘How high?’

No. We have a movement now divided about the wisdom of holding public space in the face of police action.