The members of the joint session have a constitutional duty to vote, by the yeas and nays, on the merits of all pending initiative amendments before recessing on January 2, 2007.
Again the Globe editorial page remained completely silent.
Tomorrow the legislative session will convene for its final day. They will then have to decide once and for all whether to bring the citizen petition to a vote or adjourn finally without voting. Adjourning without a vote would be done in explicit defiance of the SJC and the constitution. Yet the likely outcome is that they will again adjourn without voting.
Then the Globe editors will probably emerge from their distraction by the Putin regime and express some form of sanctimonious regret about “the way this matter was handled” and opine that it is time for the Commonwealth to “move on past this divisive issue”.
Time to “move on”. Wouldn’t Putin say just that to Russian citizens and foreign investors who dared to protest the loss of their right to due process of law?
The Globe editorial board’s inexcusable silence on this question shows that they will discard their commitment to the rule of law when it makes them uncomfortable. The people who have the courage to speak out against Putin’s rule often end up dead. The Globe’s editors risk only losing the approval of their unprincipled Beacon Hill friends.
If the Globe editors wanted to take a serious stand in support democracy and the rule of law this week, they could have looked closer to home.
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