AMERICAN JOBS - Latest Jobs Report

"Why the latest jobs report was disappointing, and what it means for the economy" PBS NewsHour 5/7/2021

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SUMMARY:  With millions of people still out of work during the pandemic, Friday's mediocre jobs report puzzled many analysts who expected hundreds of thousands more new jobs.  Lisa Desjardins discusses its implications with Ellen Hughes Cromwick a former chief economist at the commerce department during the Obama administration, and Michael Strain an economist with the American Enterprise Institute.

 

 

"Warren: Latest jobs report shows the need for universal child care" PBS NewsHour 5/7/2021

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SUMMARY:  Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is working with President Biden on infrastructure, education and a number of other issues.  She also just released a new book, "Persist," about her own campaign experiences and plans.  It emphasizes her personal stories as a working mother.  She joins Judy Woodruff to discuss Biden's policies, and the experiences that inspired the book.

SHATTERED DREAMS - Boston’s High School Valedictorians

"Why so many of Boston’s high school valedictorians struggle to succeed" PBS NewsHour 1/23/2019

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SUMMARY:  High school valedictorians are the best in their class academically.  But a new report finds that the top graduates of Boston’s public high schools are encountering great obstacles to attaining educational and economic milestones.  John Yang talks to the Boston Globe's Malcolm Gay, one of the story's reporters, about how former stars are struggling and why success takes more than scholarship money.

CLIMATE CHANGE - Boston's Plans

"Boston plans for climate change's promise of more storms.  Will it be enough?" PBS NewsHour 1/10/2018

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SUMMARY:  An epic nor'easter, a full moon high tide and a rising sea all conspired to swallow up Boston with an icy cold winter flood.  What has been a somewhat rare event is believed in the coming years to become much more common due to the effects of climate change.  Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports on how Boston is preparing and whether it will be sufficient.

AMERICA ADDICTED - Dr. Jim Baker's Story

"For this doctor, a son’s recent death by overdose inspires his mission to rescue others" PBS NewsHour 11/29/2017

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SUMMARY:  Dr. Jim Baker dreaded getting that call for years, his son had fatally overdosed from opioids.  He had watched Max go through the downward spiral of addiction, then recover and get sober, but a hospitalization for a car crash made him relapse.  Now Baker does everything he can to educate others about the risks and devastation of opioid use.  Science correspondent Miles O’Brien reports.

SCIENCE - Genetic Lyme Uptick

"Could genetically engineered mice reduce Lyme disease?" PBS NewsHour 9/12/2017

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SUMMARY:  Lyme disease has become part of daily life for residents on the rural Massachusetts islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, where the tick population has exploded.  Now a scientist at MIT is turning to a different culprit -- infected white-footed mice -- in an attempt to engineer a long-term solution to the problem.  Special correspondent Cristina Quinn of WGBH reports.

TRUMP AGENDA - Side Effects of Immigration Policy

"Why your summer getaway is staffed by foreign workers" PBS NewsHour 7/27/2017

Humm.... Remember that tourist town in the 'shark' movie?

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SUMMARY:  At the tip of Cape Cod, the iconic summer getaway Provincetown has a small year-round population that swells when the weather gets nice, welcoming an estimated 4 to 5 million tourists every year.  Businesses there depend on foreign workers willing to work just a few months of the year.  But this year, the number of available visas is way down.  Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports.

ENDING HUNGER - Daniel's Table

"Meet the couple on a mission to end hunger in their town" PBS NewsHour 8/22/2016

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SUMMARY:  The idea started at David and Alicia Blais' dinner table: what if they could end hunger in their town?  Their traveling trailer delivers meals to 200-300 people a night, motivated by the memory of their son, Daniel.  Special correspondent Tina Martin of WGBH reports from Framingham, Massachusetts.

MARY JANE - Joins Research

"Medical marijuana research comes out of the shadows" PBS NewsHour 7/13/2016

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SUMMARY:  It was an unprecedented meeting of the minds and it happened at Harvard Medical School.  The subject of April's confab?  Medical cannabis.  Researchers suspect cannabis can do so many things, from fighting cancer to easing concussions and Crohn's disease.  There are still tight restrictions but weed is increasingly coming into the scientific mainstream.  Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports.

MILES O'BRIEN, Science Correspondent:  It's a landmark place, and time, on the long road to bring medicinal marijuana into the scientific mainstream.

The New England Treatment Access, or NETA, dispensary in Brookline, Massachusetts, is housed in a Beaux-Arts bank building built in the 1920s, a cathedral of cannabis.

Paul Breeden has been coming here to treat chronic pain since the dispensary opened in February.

PAUL BREEDEN (NETA client):  I have been praying for this day all my life.  I have been fighting for this day all my life.  I'm a son of a minister.  I believe God created marijuana.  Humans don't know how God works.

MILES O'BRIEN:  Look at that thing.

NETA is a nonprofit, serving about 7,000 medical marijuana customers now.  The goal is to supply 10,000 on an ongoing basis.  Besides dried flowers and buds that can be smoked, they offer pills, vapor cartridges, creams, tinctures, brownies, chocolates and lozenges.

PAUL BREEDEN:  It's really part of sort of the normalization of medical cannabis.  The days of Ziploc baggies are over.

MILES O'BRIEN:  Norton Arbelaez is a NETA consultant who turned to medical marijuana after he contracted a staph infection 10 years ago.

NORTON ARBELAEZ, New England Treatment Access:  I had quite a bit of pain.  I was prescribed opiate painkillers.  And I made a decision, a very conscious decision to not take them.  So, I had to find a way to medicate otherwise.  I did some research, and cannabis seemed like a good choice for me.

JUSTICE IN AMERICA - Juvenile Offenders

"Should a juvenile sex offender be locked up indefinitely?" PBS NewsHour 6/28/2016

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SUMMARY:  Even when they serve their time, sex crime offenders in some states are being held years beyond their release date.  The civil commitment laws that let jailers deem convicts too dangerous to walk free are facing increased scrutiny, especially in Minnesota, where even juvenile sex offenders grow old behind bars.  William Brangham reports.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  This facility in the rural town of Moose Lake is where Minnesota puts the sex offenders it says are too dangerous to live on the outside.

Twenty-nine-year-old Craig Bolte is one of them.  He’s been locked up for nearly half his life.  It started when he was 15, when he pled guilty to sexually assaulting a younger member of his family, and also admitted to sexual contact with another minor.  He says these were very troubling years for him.

CRAIG BOLTE, Juvenile Sex Offender:  I was sexually abused on numerous occasions as a child when I was a young child, and that is by no means an excuse.  I’m responsible for my actions.  I still hurt people.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  Bolte was originally sentenced to three years, but he’s now been behind bars here in Minnesota for 14, locked up with hundreds of rapists, child abusers, and other sex offenders.

They’re all being kept by what’s known as 'civil commitment law,' which allows a state to deem someone an ongoing threat and even after their sentences are served keep them locked up indefinitely.

CRAIG BOLTE:  I have been in for about 10 years now.  All in all, I have been locked up for 14 years, 10 years of it here.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  The “PBS NewsHour” was granted rare access to Minnesota’s sex offender program.  We could film interviews inside this one room, but, almost everywhere else, we could only take still photos.  Most everyone agrees that there are people locked up in Minnesota’s program who are very likely to reoffend.  These are people who say they simply cannot control their behavior.

And that concern is why legislatures in 20 states have set up programs like this to hold these people.  But others say these programs also end up snaring juvenile offenders who they argue have no business being held for years past their sentences.

ERIC JANUS, Mitchell Hamline School of Law:  It’s outrageous.  That’s one of the more outrageous features of this program.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  Eric Janus is a law professor and longtime critic of Minnesota’s sex offender policies.  He says juvenile sex offenders are almost never the kind of lifetime sexual predator that society needs to worry about.

ERIC JANUS:  Probably a fairly high percentage of adolescent sexual offending is basically due to immaturity and experimentation, and so it’s not deviant sexuality.  It’s not that they are attracted to violent sex or involuntary sex.  It’s that they are immature, and that’s the kind of thing that they will grow out of.

"Breaking the school-to-prison pipeline for young offenders one class at a time" PBS NewsHour 6/29/2016

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SUMMARY:  In most states across America, education for teen offenders pales in comparison to what they'd receive on the outside.  Just one third mandate that these kids meet the same standards as their public school counterparts.  Massachusetts is one of them, and there the goal is to save these young offenders with vocational classes and good old reading, writing and arithmetic.  Hari Sreenivasan reports.

UBER - Hits Major 'Speed Bumps'

"Uber shuts down in Austin; hits major speed bumps in New York and California" PBS NewsHour 5/11/2016

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SUMMARY:  The meteoric rise of ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft is hitting speed bumps across the country:  Legal settlements with drivers in California and Massachusetts; a decision to suspend services in Austin, Tex.; and now, a union in New York City.  Hari Sreenivasan talks to Mike Isaac of the New York Times for more.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  Now we turn to Uber.  The ride-sharing giant's rise has spurred a number of fights across the country.

The latest move, an agreement to create a drivers association representing about 35,000 drivers in New York City.  That follows a recent settlement with drivers in California and Massachusetts, and a decision to suspend service in Austin, Texas.

Mike Isaac covers this landscape for The New York Times, joins us now from San Francisco.

How significant was this agreement that Uber made in New York?

MIKE ISAAC, The New York Times:  So, it's probably the largest to date that Uber has had in a sort of positive agreement with any sort of recognized labor unions.

It's the first time that Uber is actually recognizing a group of drivers.  They're not calling it a union because they lack some really fundamental issues that — issues and abilities that unions have, which includes the ability to collectively bargain with Uber on pay.

But, as far as overall significance, it's the first time Uber is actually willing on agree to talk to one of these groups.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  So, is this a step to try to prevent unionization or to have to call drivers employees?

MIKE ISAAC:  You know, it's — Uber has never really had good lines of communication with any of the drivers that work for them.

One of the biggest complaints has always been, you know, for drivers, that they can't get in touch with Uber.  If they have been deactivated driving for Uber, they don't know why often.  It's sort of this first olive branch from the company saying, OK, we're going to start listening to you and essentially give you a voice.

Now, that also serves another purpose, to, you know, sort of give a quasi-union-style thing to drivers without actually making them employees, which would cost Uber, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars more in overhead.

So, it's kind of a — it's serving more than one purpose at the same time.

NEWSHOUR BOOKSHELF - "The Witches"

"Why Salem bought in to witchcraft hysteria" PBS NewsHour 12/8/2015

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SUMMARY:  In 1692, the colonial town of Salem, Massachusetts, became caught up in a fervor over alleged witchcraft.  In her new book “The Witches,” Stacy Schiff explores what led a group of Puritans to execute 19 people.  She sits down with Jeffrey Brown to discuss why the events still captivate us centuries later.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  An exceptionally severe winter in Massachusetts, a minister’s daughter began to scream and went into convulsions.  Less than a year later, 19 men and women had been hanged and one man crushed to death.

It was all part of the Salem witch trails, and they are the focus of the latest add to the NewsHour Bookshelf.

Biographer Stacy Schiff turns her gaze to “The Witches:  Salem, 1692.”

She recently talked with Jeffrey Brown.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  The first thing that hits me here is nine months.  All of this unfolded in nine months, in one year.

STACY SCHIFF, “The Witches: Salem, 1692?:  Frightening speed, right?

JEFFREY BROWN:  Frightening speed.

STACY SCHIFF:  Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Yes.

STACY SCHIFF:  It’s exponential.  It begins with two little girls, presumably bewitched, and names begin to fly about.  And before you know it, you have this explosive number of accusations.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Before you know it, that’s what — and then it comes to an end.

STACY SCHIFF:  Right.

JEFFREY BROWN:  And yet it has lived on.

STACY SCHIFF:  Right.

And that’s interesting that it’s a stuttering start.  Just, it flames to life, and then it dies out very quickly as well, and, yes, lives on partly because we think of this as something very unlikely to have happened in enlightened America.

This is the kind of thing that we — that happened in the medieval world in Europe.  It didn’t happen here on our shores.

JEFFREY BROWN:  There are so many vivid characters here.  Is there one that you could — that you remember kind of hitting you in the gut, that made you think — yes?

STACY SCHIFF:  I guess in terms of what is most beguiling, there’s a minister at the center of this crisis who is accused of witchcraft.

And he’s partly a very compelling and many-sided character, and he’s partly unexpected, because you assume that the accused witches were all women.  And here you have a Harvard-educated minister who has been accused of witchcraft, and who is said to be, moreover, not just a wizard, but a conjurer.  He’s a rank above a wizard, so he is invested with these particularly terrific powers.

And all fingers seem to point to him.  He’s the one who begins to minister diabolical sabbaths, or say the confessors, in the parsonage field in Salem village.

MASSACHUSETTS - Town's First TOTAL Tobacco Ban?

QUESTION:  We should believe the tobacco industry that denied for decades that tobacco caused cancer?  Sure, fruit and candy flavored tobacco products are not to attract the young....

"Massachusetts town mulls nation’s first total tobacco ban" PBS NewsHour 11/16/2014

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WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  The town of Westminster, Massachusetts — population 7,300 — is a small, quiet community about an hour west of Boston.

When the local health board holds meetings, it usually happens here in this room, where you can get advice about things like septic tanks and mosquito control.  But not on this day.  This meeting Wednesday night had to be moved to the local elementary school because the town is up in arms.

MAN:  You people make me sick!

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  Why so mad?  That Board of Health is proposing to make Westminster the first town in the entire country to completely ban the sale of tobacco.

ANDREA CRETE, WESTMINSTER BOARD OF HEALTH:  It can be argued that the Board of Health permitting these establishments to sell these dangerous products that, when used as directed, kills 50 percent of its users, ethically goes against our public health mission.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  The town’s proposal would make it illegal to sell any product containing nicotine within city limits.  So no cigarettes, chewing tobacco, cigars, vaporizers.  You’d still be able to smoke or use tobacco in town, just not buy it.

ANDREA CRETE:  If we can prevent children from having access and exposure to tobacco and nicotine products and reduce the chances of them smoking or using them, then we’ve essentially saved lives.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  While it’s already illegal for kids to buy tobacco, the health board says the tobacco industry makes products like these — shiny, fruit flavored cigars and tobacco products — in order to lure kids into a lifetime habit.  The industry denies targeting kids.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  The effort began when one of the three health board members suggested the tobacco ban, following the lead of other health boards in other Massachusetts towns that had limited where residents could smoke or what kind of tobacco products they could buy.  Westminster’s volunteer board then consulted a specialist to examine the pros and cons of a total ban.

BOSTON - Memoriam, Longest Serving Mayor (20yrs) Thomas M. Menino

"Former staff serves as Menino’s honor guard" by Mark Arsenault, Boston Globe 11/3/2014

The former staff of Thomas M. Menino answered the call to serve him one last time on Sunday, as an honor guard to accompany the city’s longest-serving mayor as he lay in state in Faneuil Hall, while city residents by the thousands filed through the historic hall to say their personal goodbyes.

Staff members representing the two-decade Menino administration — from former low-level aides to one-time department heads and Cabinet chiefs — took half-hour or one-hour shifts, sitting stoically at the foot of the casket to ensure that the body would never be alone.

“It was without a doubt one of the most amazing hours of my life,” said former city councilor Michael Ross, after his stint in the honor guard.  “You felt like you were in the presence of something — in the glow of something profound, and all the while feeling the cold coming off the people as they came into the room.

“I just felt I really had no business being there and yet the mayor even in his death was reaching out to people that he had a connection to.  I was just truly honored to be part of that.”

Ross, a former Menino aide who ran for the mayor’s office last year, took a shift as honor guard with four other former staffers who were later elected to the Boston City Council:  Sal LaMattina, Bill Linehan, Timothy McCarthy, and Michelle Wu.

Menino, who did not run for reelection in 2013, died last Thursday at age 71 after a battle with cancer.

Thousands of the mayor’s former constituents stood in line in cold rain that turned to sleet and then wind-whipped snow Sunday morning for the chance to pay their respects to the “urban mechanic” who reigned in Boston City Hall for 20 years.

Wu, a sitting councilor who started out as a policy fellow in the Menino administration, said she was deeply grateful to participate in the honor guard.  She said she watched the citizens filing through the room and imagined that each of them had some story about Menino, some special recollection that had brought them out to pay their respects in the brutal wintry weather.

“I saw a Boy Scout troop; I saw people in City Year uniforms,” Wu said, referring to the program helping at-risk students.  “I saw folks come to sing a song as their last tribute to the mayor and give a salute.  . . . There were parents bringing their very young kids to say goodbye.  And seniors and people from all different age groups and backgrounds.

“It represented everything he had given his life to,” she said.

Former Menino chiefs of staff took hourlong shifts in the honor guard Sunday morning, including Alyce Lee, Jim Rooney, Merita Hopkins, Judith Kurland, and David Passafaro, according to service organizers.  They were on duty when Secretary of State John F. Kerry, the former US senator from Massachusetts, arrived to pay his respects.  Kerry lingered for long greetings with the former chiefs of staff.

Former Boston police commissioner Paul Evans took a shift with three others who served as police commissioner under Menino:  Al Goslin; William Evans; and Edward Davis, who was commissioner during perhaps the greatest crisis of Menino’s long mayoral tenure, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

“I watched the people,” said Paul Evans, who was commissioner for nearly a decade, until 2003.  “There were people holding ‘gracias’ signs from the Hispanic community.  There were Asians, Vietnamese.  It was the whole city coming together.  It was everybody.  He was a mayor for the entire city and that crowd [on Sunday] reflected the city.

“I just thought of how many lives he touched,” Evans said, recalling his hour on the honor guard.  “And how many lives he made better.  And I think that was reflected in the makeup of the crowd.  It was touching.  It was hard not to feel proud of what this man accomplished and all the good he did for the city.”

Evans said that seeing so many familiar faces from the administration reminded him of the “sense of purpose and teamwork that Tom Menino brought to us, the way we worked together.”

Former Menino press secretary Carole Brennan took her shift on the honor guard Sunday afternoon, enjoying a time of quiet reflection about her one-time boss.

“It’s such an incredibly special honor to be able to support my friend one more time,” she said.

Members of Menino’s Office of Neighborhood Services were scheduled to handle the overnight shift Sunday night, which was intended to be a symbolic nod to the office’s after-hours work responding to emergencies and the needs of Boston neighborhoods.

ACA HEALTH CARE - Stories, State of Massachusetts

Note that Massachusetts passed its own health care law (2006) BEFORE Obama care.  In fact much of the ACA is modeled after their state law.

"Facing rising health costs, Massachusetts seeks cost-cutting that improves care" PBS Newshour 11/19/2013

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SUMMARY:  With an outcome of near universal health coverage for residents of the Bay State, the 2006 reform of Massachusetts' health care system has also come with higher prices.  Paul Solman reports on the state's effort to slow rising costs by looking for ways to cut spending on care that doesn't add value or improve health.

GWEN IFILL (Newshour):  Much of the anger and debate surrounding the Affordable Care Act focuses on questions of coverage and individual costs for the consumer.  But another big question is whether it can hold down overall costs, as intended.

The state of Massachusetts is now grappling with that very question, something it didn't do when lawmakers first expanded coverage there.

BOSTON - Red Sox Win the MLB World Series

"Boston Red Sox World Series win symbolizes turnaround for team and town" PBS Newshour 10/31/2013

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SUMMARY:  Just six months after bombings at the 2013 Boston Marathon ravaged Beantown, a World Series win gave the city something to celebrate.  The Red Sox defeated the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 6 of the MLB championship Wednesday.  Jeffrey Brown talks to Leigh Montville of SportsonEarth.com on the team's turnaround from worst to first.

BOSTON - Mobster's Trial, Prosecution's Closing Arguments

"Prosecution Presents 'Mountain of Evidence' Against Bulger in Three-Hour Closing" PBS Newshour 8/5/2013

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SUMMARY:  The case against James "Whitey" Bulger drew to a close as both defense and prosecution gave their final statements.  Margaret Warner talks to Kevin Cullen, who has been following the trial for the Boston Globe and was in the courtroom for the more than three-hour summation by the prosecution of all of the evidence against Bulger.

BOSTON - Bombing Victim on Her Recovery

"Boston Marathon Victim on Her Road to Recovery" PBS Newshour 5/10/2013

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JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour):  And finally tonight, one victim's road to recovery after the Boston attacks.  Roseann Sdoia was waiting for a friend to cross the finish line when the second bomb exploded just a few feet away.  Her right leg was so badly damaged it had to be amputated above the knee.  She will soon be fitted for a prosthetic leg and is currently being treated at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Charlestown.

Emily Rooney of WGBH Boston sat down with her this week for an interview about her experience and road to recovery.  Here's an excerpt.

BOSTON - Tsarnaev Brothers Considered a 4th of July Attack

"Boston Plotters Said to Initially Target July 4 for Attack" by ERIC SCHMITT, MARK MAZZETTI, MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, and SCOTT SHANE; New York Times 5/2/2013

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The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings told F.B.I. interrogators that he and his brother considered suicide attacks and striking on the Fourth of July as they plotted their deadly assault, according to two law enforcement officials.

But the suspect,Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, told investigators that he and his brother,Tamerlan, 26, who was killed in a shootout with the police, ultimately decided to use pressure-cooker bombs and other homemade explosive devices, the officials said.

The brothers finished building the bombs in Tamerlan’s apartment in Cambridge, Mass., faster than they had anticipated, and so decided to accelerate their attack to the Boston Marathon on April 15, Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts, according to the account that Dzhokhar provided to authorities.  They picked the finish line of the marathon after driving around the Boston area looking for alternative sites, according to this account.

In addition, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told authorities that he and his brother viewed the Internet sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American cleric who moved to Yemen and was killed in September 2011 by an American drone strike.  There is no indication that the brothers communicated with Mr. Awlaki.

Mr. Tsarnaev made his admission on April 21 — two days after he was captured while hiding in a boat in a nearby backyard — to specially trained F.B.I. agents who had been waiting outside his hospital room for him to regain consciousness.

After he woke up, they questioned him, invoking what is known as the public safety exception to the Miranda Rule, a procedure authorized by a 1984 Supreme Court decision which in certain circumstances allows interrogation after an arrest without notifying a prisoner of the right to remain silent.

The new details of what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told authorities emerged as the F.B.I. moved forward on Thursday with trying to determine how the brothers were radicalized and the role that Tamerlan’s wife, Katherine Russell, may have played in the plot or in helping the brothers evade the authorities after the attacks.

BOSTON - Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's Friends Obstructed Investigation

"Three College Friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Arrested for Roles After the Bombing" PBS Newshour 5/1/2013

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GWEN IFILL (Newshour):  The Boston bombings investigation took another new turn today with federal charges filed against three college buddies of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.  They're accused of trying to get rid of evidence or lying to investigators after the attack.  Two of the three are from Kazakhstan.

Azamat Tazhayakov is on the left, and Dias Kadyrbayev is in the center in this undated photo with Tsarnaev taken in New York.  The third new suspect was identified as Robel Phillipos.

We get more now from Dina Temple-Raston of NPR.

BOSTON - Lessons to be Learned, What Went Wrong

"In Hindsight of Boston Marathon Bombing, Trying to Figure Out What Went Wrong" PBS Newshour 4/30/2013

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RAY SUAREZ (Newshour):  It's been just over two weeks since the attacks and investigators are pursuing several lines of inquiry both here and abroad.

Those include, according to several news organizations, widening the investigation to see if others may have helped the suspects before or after the bombings, and continuing to speak with the widow of the 26-year-old suspect who was killed, Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

And, as the president said at his news conference, the director of national intelligence will oversee a review of how 17 agencies handled earlier tips and questions about the older brother.

For the latest, we turn to Evan Perez, who is covering the case for The Wall Street Journal.