Author Archive

Happy Mother’s Day from John MacDonald

When they come six days before an election, robocalls are annoying; when they come six months prior, they’re entertaining. Such was the case today when I pressed the “play” button on my home answering machine and heard city council candidate John MacDonald wishing all the mothers in hearing distance a…

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May 5, 1861: Butler takes Relay House

By May 6, 1861, Washington DC was safe from immediate capture by Confederate forces. When Fort Sumter was fired upon, Washington was without any organized and reliable military force while Confederate forces began gathering across the Potomac in Alexandria and Arlington. The Sixth Massachusetts Infantry, the unit from Lowell that…

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The media and bin Laden

I’m curious to know how folks first learned of the death of Osama bin Laden. I saw it on Twitter at 10:31 pm in the midst of multiple tweets announcing the President’s speech. That sent me scurrying to the TV. In the following hour (the President didn’t go on until…

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Suing bloggers for fun and profit

The New York Times yesterday reported that a company from Nevada, Righthaven LLC, has entered into an arrangement with Media News Group (the owner of the Lowell Sun and many other newspapers) whereby Righthaven scours the internet for people using copyrighted articles and photographs from Media News Group papers and,…

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From Desert One to Abbottabad

On April 24, 1980, the world awoke to news that the a rescue mission launched by the United States to retrieve its Iranian Embassy personnel who were being held hostage in Tehran had ended in a deadly failure. While at an intermediate position known as Desert One, a series of…

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