And the few things different about Thomas Menino and Whitey Bulger are?

The Big Dig ditch digger.

Whitey Bulger Fast Facts

Chicken Supremo: Thomas Menino, 1942-2014 :: SteynOnline

by Mark Steyn
Ave atque vale
November 1, 2014

Boston's mayor these last twenty years, and the longest-serving in the city's history, died on Thursday. From 1994 until he stepped down for health reasons earlier this year, Menino was the public face of Beantown. With his passing, the Boston media are in sentimental mood:

A traditional Democrat in one of the nation's bluest states, Menino adhered to the New Deal philosophy that government's purpose is to serve the people...

That's one way of putting it. He was an old-fashioned gladhander and wardheeler and crony pol, but up-to-the-minute in the constituencies he kissed up to: A devout Catholic who championed same-sex marriage. A gay-pride marcher who did deals with imams who'd gladly stone every homosexual to death. In between pandering to this new if somewhat incoherent rainbow coalition, he spruced up the town with the Big Dig and waterfront redevelopment:

Boston was named one of the greenest cities in the nation with its first-of-its-kind green building code and the hundreds of acres of new parks and miles of new bike paths created under his watch.

I'll come back to those bike paths and trails in a moment. I wrote last night about the parlous state of free speech in the west, which happens to be my great cause - if only because, without free speech, it's harder to fight for any other cause. Menino was a bust on that front - because, as for so many Democrat operators, it was about power and fashion. Once in a while, the thuggishness showed - as, for example, when an allegedly "homophobic" chicken chain was in the news. Two years ago, I wrote:

Mayor Tom Menino announced that Chick-fil-A would not be opening in his burg anytime soon. "If they need licenses in the city, it will be very difficult," said His Honor. If you've just wandered in in the middle of the column, this guy Menino isn't the mayor of Soviet Novosibirsk or Kampong Cham under the Khmer Rouge, but of Boston, Massachusetts. Nevertheless, he shares the commissars' view that in order to operate even a modest and politically inconsequential business it is necessary to demonstrate that one is in full ideological compliance with party orthodoxy. "There is no place for discrimination on Boston's Freedom Trail," Mayor Menino thundered in his letter to Mr. Cathy, "and no place for your company alongside it." No, sir. On Boston's Freedom Trail, you're free to march in ideological lockstep with the city authorities — or else. Hard as it is to believe, there was a time when Massachusetts was a beacon of liberty: the shot heard round the world, and all that. Now it fires Bureau of Compliance permit-rejection letters round the world.

Mayor Menino subsequently backed down and claimed the severed rooster's head left in Mr. Cathy's bed was all just a misunderstanding.

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