Democract Barney Frank Won't Seek Re-Election In 2012

By Glen Johnson, Noah Bierman and Donovan Slack, Globe Staff - US Representative Barney Frank, the state’s highest-profile congressman and one of the nation’s leading liberal voices after being among its first openly gay elected officials, planned to announce today that he will not reelection next year.

Barney Frank

A top adviser told the Globe that the new district in which Frank would have had to run next year was a major factor in his decision. While it retained his Newton stronghold, it was revised to encompass more conservative towns like Walpole while losing New Bedford, a blue-collar city where the Democrat had invested a lot of time and become a leading figure in the region’s fisheries debate.
Frank’s campaign manager last year said his withering 2010 re-election effort spurred the congressman to think seriously about retirement, even saying a few days after the election that it would be his last one.
Frank wanted to announce that this would be his final term immediately afterward, but decided against it, said Kevin Sowyrda, the campaign manager.
“We looked him right in the face and said, ‘You can’t resign,” Sowyrda said. “In fairness to Barney, he was emotional about it. He said, ‘I know I’ve got to stay.’”
“I believe that Barney felt an obligation to come through for the (supporters) people that came through for him,” said Sowyrda.
But retirement has been on his mind ever since.
The congressman scheduled a 1 p.m. press conference at Newton City Hall “to formally announce and answer questions about his decision not to run for re-election in 2012,” according to a statement.
“After that election, he began the process of contemplating a different future with different challenges,” Sowyrda said.
John Walsh, chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, said in a statement: “In a state that has sent many great leaders to Washington, Barney Frank will take his place in history as a shining son of Massachusetts.”
Former party head Philip W. Johnston told the Globe: “He was brilliant, funny, acerbic, strategic, and unashamedly liberal. And they’re in short supply these days.”
Frank, 71, was raised in New Jersey but schooled at Harvard University and Harvard Law School, endowing him with a street-fighter’s mouth and an academic’s wit.
He was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1972 and the US House eight years later.
In 1987, he became the first member of the chamber to voluntarily acknowledge he was gay. Two years later, he was involved in a scandal in which a live-in boyfriend operated a gay prostitute service from his home. The House ended up reprimanding Frank for the incident.
More recently, he has been one of President Obama’s most important allies but also a target of Republicans. They accuse him of helping create the country’s housing collapse by pushing the government and banks into approving loans to unqualified buyers.
Frank faced a stern reelection challenge last year from Republican Sean Bielat, prevailing 53 percent to 43 percent but only after a blistering campaign.
He also shifted from chairman of the House Financial Services Committee to its top-ranking minority member when Republican regained control of the House of Representatives in last year’s midterm elections.
Frank, who co-authored the law overhauling financial regulation and spearheaded its passage as chair of the Financial Services Committee last year, acknowledged himself in February that he had contemplated retirement after last year’s race.
But he said after GOP lawmakers took over the House and began targeting the financial overhaul he authored, he decided he needed to try to keep his job.
“Some very important programs are at risk,’’ he said then.
The announcement comes a week after Governor Deval Patrick signed a law creating the new state congressional districts. Another Democrat in the delegation, US Representative John Olver, announced in October that he would not seek reelection next year amid the specter of being forced into a showdown with US Representative Richard E. Neal of Springfield.
Frank has depended on his hometown of Newton, as well as Brookline and the Democratic strongholds of Fall River and New Bedford to keep his seat the last three decades. But he lost New Bedford and picked up additional conservative voting towns west and south of Boston and in Bristol and Norfolk counties.
Sowyrda said Frank wanted to hold off on a decision until the redistricting process was finalized.
“When Barney saw the district changed, his exact words to me were ‘They didn’t do me any favors,’” said Sowyrda, who has remained an unofficial adviser.
“The redistricting plan was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” added Sowyrda. “I think if they left the district with New Bedford in it, you would see him running again.
“The texture of the district had changed.”
Sowyrda predicted Frank’s next chapter will include the classroom.
“This guy has talked to me about teaching for years,” he said.

NATO Attack Kills 20 Pakistani Soldiers

Islamabad (CNN) -- NATO helicopters opened fire on a Pakistani checkpoint, killing 20 soldiers, two senior Pakistani military officials said Saturday.
The officials said 12 soldiers were wounded in the attack late Friday in the Mohmand Agency area, one of seven districts of the volatile region bordering Afghanistan. The death toll could rise as many of the injuries are critical, they said.
The officials did not want to be named because they are not allowed to talk to the media.
In a statement, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said he "strongly condemned the NATO/ISAF attack on the Pakistani post."
The matter is being taken up by the Foreign Ministry "in the strongest possible terms" with NATO and the United States, he said.
NATO has said it is aware of "an incident," but has not released any details.
"We are still gathering information," said Jason Wagner, a spokesman for the NATO-led military mission.
Gen. Aminullah Amarkhil, commander of Afghanistan's eastern border police, said an operation was going on in the area bordering Mohmand Agency on Friday night.
"Last night, there was an operation there inside Afghanistan," he said. "Pakistani and Afghan Taliban have got a broad presence there as there are forests and difficult terrain. That's why there was an operation."
He said the military activity was in Afghanistan's Kunar province, but added he was unaware of NATO firing on Pakistani forces on the other side of the border. His latest information suggested 10 insurgents had been killed in the Afghanistan operation, he said.
Meanwhile, Pakistan has halted the flow of NATO supplies in Khyber Agency bordering Afghanistan in response to the attack, said Jamil Khan, a senior government official in the area.
About 50 containers and trucks carrying supplies for NATO were stopped at the town of Jamrud in Khyber Agency on Saturday morning, Khan said.
They were ordered to turn back toward Peshawar, the provincial capital of northwestern province Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he said.
A second route from Pakistan into Afghanistan, the Chaman border crossing in Balochistan province, is still open to NATO supply trucks.
Roughly 40% of nonlethal NATO supplies and fuel go through Pakistan, with hundreds of supply trucks using the two routes into Afghanistan.
About 130,000 troops are deployed in Afghanistan with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, 90,000 of them American, according to NATO figures.
If confirmed as a NATO attack, Friday's incident could be the deadliest for Pakistani soldiers involving NATO since a U.S. airstrike in June 2008, which Pakistan said killed 11 of its forces who were cooperating with the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.
That airstrike, also in Mohmand Agency, prompted the government in Islamabad to summon the U.S. ambassador and lodge an official protest.
NATO commander in Afghanistan, Marine Gen. John R. Allen, met with the Pakistani Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani on Thursday, the Pakistani military said.
"The visiting dignitary remained with him for some time and discussed measures concerning coordination, communication and procedures between Pakistan army, ISAF and Afghan army, aimed at enhancing border control on both sides," a Pakistani military statement said.
Pakistani officials who spoke with CNN expressed anger about Friday's attack.

Gingrich-Romney "Fight For The Nomination"

Jonah Golberg - Whether the matchup between Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney is the final bout on the GOP primary card is impossible to know. The whole season has been more like professional wrestling than boxing, with weird characters sporting implausible hair appearing out of nowhere to talk smack and explain why they are the greatest in the world. (I'm looking at you in particular, Mr. Trump.)
Still, let's assume for the moment that it's a Gingrich-Romney contest.
It's quite a matchup. Romney has been brutalized for having too little personality, Gingrich for having way, way too much. Romney looks like the picture that comes with the frame. Gingrich looks like he should be ensconced in royal velvet as he gestures at you with a half-eaten turkey leg in one hand and a sloshing goblet of wine in the other. Romney seems terrified of fully committing to any idea. Gingrich speaks as if he just text-messaged with God.
Gingrich would have everyone believe he is the winner of the anti-Romney mantle not merely by default but by hard-won effort and a well-deserved reputation for conservative steadfastness. Many in the media, meanwhile, think that since Gingrich is taking the slot once held by Palin, Bachmann, Cain and Perry, he is a conservative of similar stripe. And many liberals think that since they hate him so much, he must be really right-wing. (They made the same mistake with Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, both of whom were far less ideologically conservative than their press clippings indicated.)
The reality is more complicated. For starters, it's not altogether clear that Gingrich is that far to the right of Romney.
Gingrich's record -- political and rhetorical -- is so vast and diverse, there's plenty of evidence to build almost any narrative you want. He's said some of the most bombastic right-wing things of any mainstream Republican in our lifetimes, but he's also reached across the aisle more frequently than far-more-liberal Republicans would ever dare.
As House speaker, he cut a deal with President Clinton on the budget. He infamously joined forces with Nancy Pelosi on climate change, with the NAACP on prison reform and with Al Sharpton on education. He was one of the few movement conservatives to vocally back George W. Bush's expansion of Medicare, and he continues to support ethanol subsidies with a straight face. And, of course, last April he tore into Paul Ryan's budget proposal as "right-wing social engineering," immolating himself in the process.
Gingrich has since retracted and modified his stance on the Ryan plan. And he's called his pairing with Pelosi one of the stupidest things he's ever done.
Still, those who dismiss Gingrich as hopelessly unelectable in the general election should at least keep in mind that Gingrich's apostasies will make it harder to tar him as a cookie-cutter "right-wing extremist."
The crucial question for most Republicans will be: Who would govern more conservatively? The candidate who answers that question to the satisfaction of the GOP base will likely be the nominee. But that question begs another: What will Congress look like?
If the Republicans take back the Senate and hold the House, you could make the case that Romney is the better man for the job. Given his unpopularity with the base of his own party, he would be on a much shorter leash and be expected to fly Ryan's flag over the West Wing while making Republican proposals seem more reasonable to the public. He very well might be the technocrat in chief, implementing reforms not necessarily of his own choosing.
Gingrich, meanwhile, is much more of a wild card. It's no secret he sees himself as a world historical figure, the last of the great statesmen. And part of that self-conception is his idea that statesmen cut grand bargains with the opposition when history calls for it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, if you know for sure when history calls for it. If the GOP controlled Congress, conservatives would be on constant "Nixon to China" watch with a President Gingrich.
Given the craziness of the season, I've been humbled enough to say I have no idea how this will play out. But I will admit, I'm looking forward to the next steel cage match.