Free Republic

online exclusive Fat Matt Amorello was a complete boob to the bitter end. Two weeks ago today, he had a deal on the table that would have paid him through the end of the 2007 fiscal year - $223,000. Here it is, exactly 14 days later. The bloated fool spent upwards of $1 million on white-shoed lawyers, and he ends up with a deal by which he leaves the payroll on Feb. 15, 4 1/2 months earlier than under the first deal. So Fat Matt is out $85,000 - and it cost him a million bucks to lose the money,...

BOSTON It will be at least "a couple of months" before problems in the entire Big Dig highway system are repaired and the roads reopened, Gov. Mitt Romney said on Sunday, the same day another ramp was closed to traffic because of what he called a "systemic failure." The work in the tunnel closed Sunday, a quarter-mile-long ramp, is expected to last at least several days and comes nearly a week after the collapse that crushed a car carrying Milena Del Valle, 38. The closure was ordered because of potential problems with 40 of the bolts that hold up the...

Fat Matt Amorello is a big fan of “The Simpsons.” That’s where he got his idea for a monorail to Springfield. And now we find that he lives by the “three little sentences” that Homer Simpson told Bart will get him through life. No. 1, Cover for me! No. 2, Oh, good idea, Boss! Those first two served him well in his initial 15-plus years in the hackerama. But now he falls back on the third of Homer Simpson’s maxims: “It was like that when I got here!” That’s his excuse. For $223,000 a year, he has no control over...