Are We Under Attack?

Last night, as I lay in my bed around midnight, I heard distant thumping noises coming from the direction of downtown Boston. It sounded like fireworks. Considering that last night was the first night of the Democratic National Convention, I figured it was either fireworks or a terrorist attack.

When at one point the thumping noises started coming frequently enough to merge into one long, continuous buzzing noise, I decided to get up and check the boston.com website, just to make sure that they weren't announcing some kind of disaster. The website was silent -- no news is good news. For good measure, I also checked the DNC website's events calender, but they didn't say there were any fireworks planned.

My point is this: if the politicians are going to keep scaring people over the risk of terrorist attack, and if they're going to specifically warn about attacks during the political conventions, and they're going to shut down major roads in order to avoid these risks, then they should have the decency and consideration not to set off fireworks in the middle of the night without mentioning it ahead of time.