When Massachusetts voters choose a governor on November 5, they’re more likely to be thinking about, say, tolls on the Turnpike than the balance of power in Washington, DC. But they might want to pause a moment to consider the question of party labels and power politics on the national level. After all, if Mitt […]
Michael Crowley
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Salvati makes the FBI a federal case
When the appalling tale of Joe Salvati’s 30-year imprisonment for a murder he did not commit first became public more than a year ago, there was something strangely unsurprising about it. Shocking as it was to learn that the FBI may have effectively framed Salvati for the 1965 killing of a Chelsea man named Teddy […]
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Whats missing from the bioterror plan
By late December it was still hauntingly unclear who had dropped several anthrax letters into the US mail shortly after September 11. Terrorist followers of Osama bin Laden were, of course, prime suspects. And yet federal investigators seemed to believe that the finely milled anthrax required a technical sophistication not available to the Al Qaeda […]
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Making the deans list
Capitol Hill is generally considered a den of publicity hounds, free agents, and egomaniacs–folks who mean well, perhaps, but would get low marks in the “plays well with others” category of any grade-school report card. There are clear incentives for this sort of behavior, thanks to a celebrity-worshipping media, but it’s not always the best […]
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Kerrys lean and hungry look
Summer is here, and Democrats in Washington are smiling again. In the bleak days of late winter and early spring, many a dispirited Dem felt overwhelmed by an unexpectedly nimble Bush administration. Predictions that the quirky election that put him into office would make Bush an impotent leader fizzled fast. In his first 100 days, […]
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Kennedys Bush game
It was a few days before the November election, and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was determined to prevent the White House from falling into Republican hands. So he stormed onto the Senate floor to heap one last round of abuse on a Republican nominee whose ideology clearly appalled the liberal war horse. “The Bush record […]
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Playing their cards rightmdashAn unlikely return to the White House for Bay State Republicans
WASHINGTON–The ouster of the last Republican presidential administration in 1992 brought an end to the special influence a small group of Massachusetts Republicans enjoyed within the inner sanctums of the White House. That influence dated back to 1979, when a handful of ambitious young Bay State politicos placed their bets on a long-shot presidential candidate […]