Danny McDonald
A Former IRA Hunger Striker Talks About the Guantanamo Hunger Strikers
Gerard Hodgins knows firsthand about self-starvation as political protest. As a former member of the Provisional IRA, Hodgins was on the same hunger strike in Maze Prison that killed Bobby Sands in 1981. He went for 20 days without food in the Northern...
What's The Most Tasteless Thing You Would Buy if You Were Mega Rich?
"A flat with a kitchen and an oven."
James "Whitey" Bulger Isn't Very Popular in His Hometown
Whitey Bulger’s long-awaited trial started last week. Until his 2011 arrest, Bulger was one of America's most-wanted men (second only to Osama bin Laden after 9/11), living on the run for 16 years before authorities eventually caught up with him in...
Carlos Rafael and His Fish Are the American Dream
I'm sitting with Carlos Rafael in "Carlos Seafood," an unremarkable looking seafood supply warehouse in an industrial park near the waterfront of New Bedford, a fishing port in southern Massachusetts that for 12 consecutive years has reported the most...
Should Murderers Be Allowed State-Funded Sex Changes?
After dragging on for years, the request of Michelle Kosilek, a.k.a. Robert Kosilek, to have the state pay her medical costs for sex-reassignment surgery has finally reached the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
What Is the Future of British Heroin Addiction?
This year's bumper crop in Afghanistan might have something to do with it.
My Cousin Joe Was a Hit Man for the Boston Mob
My cousin killed people. At least, that’s what I’m told. I never met Joseph McDonald, but word is he preferred using a handgun. He liked to get in real close so that the soon-to-be deceased could figure out what was coming. His intense, bald visage...
Surveying the Chaos at the Boston Marathon Bombing
The aftermath of yesterday’s bombing at the Boston Marathon had resulted, in the words of President Obama, from “an act of terror.” According to a close friend of mine, a local Boston cop who was on the scene, it was “a complete shit show.”