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Where Are the Snowmen of Yesteryear?

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Monday, January 7, 2008 — It is the eve of New Hampshire’s much-ballyhooed First in the Nation™ Presidential Primary. Forty-eight hours from now a second set of digits will be associated with the names of the leading candidates, and the hirelings of the media corporations will go thundering off to the next arena. National interest in our state will vanish as surely and as quickly as this cheerful fellow. For the record, it was 45 degrees Fahrenheit at noon today. Tomorrow the mercury is predicted to rise into the low 50’s. This morning’s indicators look ominous for the candidate of the Democratic party’s establishment. The …

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New Year, New Habit?

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Tuesday, January 1, 2008 — Wednesday, January 2, 2008 — Thursday, January 3, 2008 — Friday, January 4, 2008 — On this day some number of years ago, we resolved never again to make any resolutions on this day. Today, we break that resolution, and resolve to post every day. More regularly. A little more often. We must, however, caution the reader against expecting the sort of constant Bruckheimeresque commotion in which some websites traffic. We were stimulated to throw off our torpor by a metaphor, used in an article published Tuesday in the Boston Globe (see right) in which David Mehegan compares author Seth …

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All Right, All Ready

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Friday, December 14, 2007 — Yes. Well. It seems that three and a half weeks have passed since we got off our editorial duff and posted anything new here. Our anonymous friend on the Beemer has been sitting motionless at that stoplight long enough. And the clamor for a reconstituted Chickenhawk Database has been overwhelming. We had hoped we could (a) figure out how to put it together, (b) build the framework, (c) fill in the data, and (d) unveil it, all without too much delay. We had hoped that for months; we could continue in that same direction until spring. So we have jettisoned …

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What the … ?

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Tuesday, November 20, 2007 — A reasonable person might well wonder just what’s going on around here. And we’re not talking about the somewhat unusual motor vehicle depicted above, we’re talking about this operation: the online presence of the nation’s most venerable newspaper. Sorry to disappoint, but the answer is, nothing to get excited about. We’re just bumping along, putting out the paper, and occasionally dropping the ball. Which is why we haven’t posted anything new since 11/11. We did put the paper out last Friday. Skeptics are invited to scrutinize the number and date on our banner, above. There’s a fairly scandalous story on …

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Veterans Day, 2007

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Sunday, November 11, 2007 — On Veterans Day six years ago the remains of the World Trade Center were still smoking, and the war in Afghanistan had just begun. No one, outside the Bush administration, was thinking that much about Iraq. The idea of attacking Iran would have seemed even crazier than it does now. Lower Manhattan is more orderly today. Afghanistan is more of a wreck. Iraq makes Afghanistan look placid. And people who think attacking Iran would be crazy have only to look back a few years to realize that for some people, crazy is no obstacle. On Veterans Day six years ago, …

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Quitting, Croaking, Sinking, and Burning

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Saturday, November 10, 2007 — Well, now, we’re got ourselves a brand-new Attorney General. What do you know. Three years to the day since John Ashcroft punched out for the last time. 2004—John Ashcroft, having done enough damage, resigns as Attorney General. His replacement will make him look good. 1982—Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and all-around fun guy, kicks off from a bad ticker. 1975—The Edmund Fitzgerald sinks on Lake Superior, taking with her a crew of 29. 1973—In Drake, North Dakota the school board fires a teacher and burns the book he assigned, Slaughterhouse Five. 1964—In Australia, …

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