Governor Charlie Baker has been criticized for appointing a largely white male economic development council. He needs to add some diversity, especially with an important driver of our brainy economy – immigrants.

Donald Trump may have written The Art of the Deal, but he's an amateur at the Art of the Political Insult. He could learn a lot from the master, Boston's own James Michael Curley.

There are constitutional reasons for the lack of opposition politics on Beacon Hill, for sure. But there are also political reasons for the lack of partisan combat.

Has anybody in the Bay State noticed anything familiar about Candidate Clinton?

It is tempting to blame certain Democrats for not acting like an opposition party vis-à-vis Republican Governor Charlie Baker. 

We should temper ourselves.  There are constitutionally ordained reasons for the lack of a true opposition party in Massachusetts. 

Last week I wrote about how Father Quigley, a priest at UMass, had taught me about Catholic compassion and the possibility that Pope Francis’ demonstration of Catholic compassion would present an opportunity for liberals to broaden their appeal to Catholic voters. This week we learned that the Pope met with Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis, which has been taken by many as evidence that my political hypothesis was naïve at best. While I admit that upon hearing the news of this meeting I was genuinely disappointed, I quickly realized it was far from a “disaster” and that holding the Pope to conventional public relations standards is absurd. By visiting with Kim Davis Francis was indeed obeying Father Quigley’s moral directive.

The resignation of Speaker John Boehner highlights the limits of party leadership in the House of Representatives.

America’s first language is that of the market, reflected in poll driven language mouthed by political figures. Our second language, the language of spiritual morality, was evident in Pope Francis’s call for us to welcome immigrants. Congressional applause for the pontiff’s speech had barely died down when we returned to our first language.

Liberals want to claim Pope Francis for their issues and conservatives want to claim him as well. Some conservatives who are frustrated with the pope's positions on economics and the climate even call him a communist. Is Pope Francis a liberal, a conservative, or even a communist?