News from Boston

Local Democrats are doing an excellent job tying Mitt Romney in knots over a stem cell research bill, which has passed the Massachusetts house and senate with veto-proof margins, and which Mitt has vowed to veto anyway. Eileen McNamara has his number in her column from the Sunday Boston Globe.

Governor Mitt Romney better hope he is a viable candidate for president, because he is fast becoming a long shot for reelection in Massachusetts.

In his bid to market himself nationally as an unyielding social conservative, Romney has forgotten that he sold himself to Massachusetts as a political moderate. I think it is Attorney General Thomas Reilly's office that fields bait-and-switch complaints in the Commonwealth.

John Kerry, who's been a very busy guy since November, has made removing Mitt from office a top local priority. Here, in a Boston Herald op-ed, he delicately twists the knife the Massachusetts legislature placed between Mitt's ribs.

People of good will and good sense can resolve the ethical issues without stopping lifesaving research. There's already bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate to ban human cloning and allow therapeutic cloning to advance. This issue transcends political labels. That's why Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Nancy Reagan refuse to tie the hands of doctors and oppose restrictions on lifesaving research.

It should be no different in our state. Massachusetts has long led the country in great discoveries, always upholding the highest standards, ensuring our breakthroughs and our beliefs go hand-in-hand. And when it comes to stem-cell research, policymakers have worked to find common ground and draw strict and appropriate ethical guidelines, and they've succeeded.

I hope that Romney signs this bill and makes it clear that in Massachusetts, we say yes to knowledge, yes to discovery and yes to leading a new era of hope for all.

McNamara:

Romney says the United States is in the midst of "a battle on the ideals and ethics that define our nation's culture." But his is a phony war, cooked up by religious zealots, served up by right-wing talking heads, and swallowed whole by a Republican Party that has sold its big tent to shack up with a pack of screamers.

This war is not sitting well in Mitt's home state.