The way Congressman Michael Capuano has entered the Senate race is disconcerting. Attacking his opponent for being “timid” when she was the first person to enter the Senate race — really? Capuano waited until Joe Kennedy declined before he entered the race, as many other people were also exploring whether they would run if he didn’t.

Attorney General Martha Coakley is a lawyer, a professional, and I hardly think that she would have gotten as far as she has if she were timid.

Well, it is good to know the facts are winning out this time. Maybe “gender-tinged labeling” isn’t the way to go when running for office.

To the writer of this letter, Aquila Rivers: Right there with ya’!

Go Martha!

Former U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy II’s announcement that he won’t seek to succeed his uncle in the U.S. Senate is good news. Not because he wouldn’t make a good senator. But because he’s more of the same…

This would be a symbolic step into quicksand, as opposed to the step forward that our country needs to move on and put our mixed feelings about Teddy at ease.

There’s no questioning the need for progress. Women are shockingly underrepresented in American government—making up more than half the population, but holding only 17 percent of the seats in the U.S. House and Senate. In a recent study done by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, which measured percentage of women in national parliaments, the U.S. ranked an embarrassing 71st in the world.

Even seemingly progressive states like Massachusetts have been stymied by patriarchal bloodlines. That makes the land of the Kennedys a crucial place to start fixing the problem. Massachusetts should take the lead in starting a gender-equality movement in the name of Senator Ted Kennedy…

Martha Coakley, Massachusetts’ first female attorney general, was the first candidate to throw her hat in the ring. She’s the “real deal”—with more than two decades of public service and an impeccable list of accomplishments and honors to her name…

And with this one election, the legacy of Ted Kennedy could be put to rest and remembered, as with his brothers before him, as a turning point in our great country’s march of progress.