Free Republic

John “Zip” Connolly is apparently one of those hoodlums who cares what his obituary says about him after he’s dead and gone. At age 82, the infamous ex-FBI agent seems obsessed with clearing at least one indelible stain off his remarkably squalid (even by Boston G-man standards) underworld career. He’d prefer not to have “Mob hitman” in the first sentence of his death notice. There’s not much he can do about the racketeering conviction, or all his tawdry connections to the Bulger Crime Family. But “Mob hitman” is a bit much. Sadly, Zip has failed yet again to remove “assassin”...

Finally, after all these years, Billy Bulger and I are on the same side of an issue. We are both rooting for the Globe to fold. Stipulated, your Honor, that the Corrupt Midget continues to grab that $200,000-a-year state pension. He’s still got his spalpeens at the public trough, including at least one double dipper. Makes ya wanna throw up on TV, as Dapper O’Neil used to say. Yes, Bulger is the generalissimo of the Forgotten but Not Gone Brigade. He’s made disparaging remarks about this paper, too. How can we miss him when he won’t go away? Still, the...

Howie thread starting with his Sunday Herald column

University of Massachusetts President William M. Bulger asked FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr. more than 20 years ago to keep his gangster brother James J. ``Whitey'' Bulger ``out of trouble,'' a Winter Hill Gang hit man told a federal jury yesterday during shocking testimony also linking the retired agent to two mob murders. John Martorano, a remorseless killer of 20 men, claimed Whitey Bulger told him the Bulgers had a friend at the FBI after William helped Connolly escape poverty and the siren song of crime in their South Boston neighborhood. ``He said he was told that Connolly owed...