You'd think that Boston College would know to steer clear of controversy after the Condoleezza Rice Fiasco. But Boston College Law School invited Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who won't say that waterboarding is torture, to speak at their commencement, and not everyone is happy about it. As a compromise, Mukasey will get to speak, but he won't get a Founder's Medal from BC. Then again, it could have been worse. They could have invited Alberto......

--This week, Spatch revealed that he has been living with a celebrity and has been hiding it from the world all this time. [Derspatchel] --Joel Brown is puzzled over the Attorney General's decision that the Citi Center was "generally consistent" with other charities when it came to the money it gave to its CEO. [HubArts] --Men will soon have access to Manolos. And the leopard-print sandals are insane! [On Common Ground] --Carrying your own bag......

--A fire happened at Fenway Park this morning while construction workers were removing a temporary luxury suite. The fire was quickly put out, and no one was hurt. [WBZ] --A cousin of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley died Friday night in a fire in her Hyannis home. [Boston Globe] --The Air Force has found that Cape Wind wouldn't impact one of its radar stations. In an impressive NIMBY effort, Representative William Delahunt wanted to......

The state Cultural Facilities Fund was generous this year, giving $16.7 million to various arts-related groups. The Citi Performing Arts Center was not one of them, largely because they seem to have their priorities mixed up when it comes to handling their funds. The Citi Performing Arts Center was going to get $600,000, but that amount has been, in the words of the Globe, "tabled." The Citi Performing Arts Center had tried to improve its......

Former MIT professor and business whiz John Donovan Sr. has been found guilty for staging his own shooting in 2005, wasting a hell of a lot of Cambridge's time, and irritating state Attorney General Martha Coakley. Supposedly, his motive for such weird behavior was that he wanted to get revenge on his son by saying his son had hired Russian hit men to kill him. Donovan went on trial last week for filing a false......

Powers Fasteners, a New York based glue company, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of Milena Del Valle. Del Valle was killed in the Big Dig's I-90 Connector Tunnel's collapse last year. The bad news for us is that if under Massachusetts law, Power Fasteners, if found guilty, cannot be fined more than $1,000 (geez - we thought was a typo when we read the paper this morning). Though the tiny fine......

Boston.com reports that Attorney General Martha Coakley will soon announce the indictment of Powers Fastener, a New York based glue manufacturer. Powers Fastener allegedly supplied the low-creep resistant adhesive that the Big Dig used to "affix" ceiling panels to the I-90 Connector Tunnel's interior. The indictment will charge the glue company with criminal negligence in the death of Milena Del Valle, who was killed when the tunnel's ceiling fell onto her car last year.......

-- Some people just won't take no for an answer: after police ordered three people to leave an apartment in South Boston at about 3 a.m. Sunday morning, all three were back about an hour later. So were police. The suspects assured police that the leasee, "Rick," had given them permission to be there. Turns out that "Rick" doesn't live there - or, at least, isn't on the lease. David McCarthy, 40, and Pauline Zukowski,......

There was an Old Man of Nantucket Who often set sail in a bucket When faced with a Man Who had a grand plan Well, as for the Earth, he said __________. Cape Wind, the hotly debated proposal to build a wind-turbine farm in Nantucket Sound, looks like a brilliant idea. Building wind turbines that took advantage of Cape Cod winds would relieve pressure on the electrical grid, generate clean energy, and help wean the......

--Sean Stevens and Peter Berdvosky can breathe a sigh of relief now that they are officially off the blotter with a slap on the wrist. The artists who were hired by the Cartoon Network and Interference, Inc., to hang the Mooninites throughout Boston will do community service. Instead of offering the public another '70s hair comedy routine, the two had more substantial things to say this time around. The Herald quoted Stevens as saying, "I......

David Talbot will be reading from Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years at Brookline Booksmith tomorrow, May 8, at 7:00 pm. The Kennedy clan is well-trodden ground. Sometimes it seems as if there's a tome dedicated to every single Kennedy, no matter how insignificant. But Salon founder and former editor-in-chief David Talbot shines a light on the relationship between President John F. Kennedy and his brother, attorney general Bobby Kennedy. The excerpt of......

We're not quite sure why Attorney General Alberto Gonzales keeps trying to find love in Boston. He came up here once to try to distract people from the whole fired-prosecutors scandal with something about online predators, and then he showed up at his Harvard Law reunion. Only Harvard hecklers were ready for him, and they were already warmed up. They had FBI director Robert Mueller as an appetizer, and Gonzales was the main course. The......

The Globe reported today that Deval Patrick was reversing an order by former Governor Mitt Romey and would allow 26 couples to have their marriages to be recorded in Massachusetts. A 1913 law which stated that those couples whose marriage was specifically outlawed in their state of residence could not marry in Massachusetts was used by the Romney administration – and withheld by a State Supreme Court decision – precluded the couples marriages from being......

We recently received e-mails proudly announcing the impending arrival of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters on April 13. Even if you didn't notice the - ahem - little problem promotions for the ATHF movie caused in Boston, and even if you've never heard of ATHF, the movie sounds like fun, and the full-length cartoon features the voices of Bruce Campbell and Neil Peart of Rush. But, in our rush to......

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has a lot to worry about. His former chief of staff testified that Gonzales played a part in firing federal prosecutors because they leaned too hard on Republicans and weren't sufficiently supportive of President George W. Bush. We thought we lived in a democracy, not a kingdom where you have to lick the boots of the emperor to keep your job. But that's another matter entirely. While all this scandal was......

Deval Patrick has something on other politicians. He admits mistakes. That's the good news lead in to the story. The bad news is that he makes mistakes. Stupid mistakes. And keeps making them. A couple of weeks ago, on the eve of the swelling of caddy-gate and the great drape fiasco, the Governor made a phone call on behalf of the company he'd resigned from during the campaign as to eliminate conflict of interest. He......

Bostonist is always on the lookout for funky beverages, alcoholic or otherwise. One nonalcoholic beverage, Enviga, is causing a stir in New England. Enviga claims to help people burn calories. The Attorney General of Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, isn't buying it. He has been questioning Coca-Cola and Nestle's claims that the green-tea beverage, in the words of a Coca-Cola spokesman, "invigorates your metabolism to gently burn calories." If you want to "gently burn calories," a walk......

Attorney General Martha Coakley announced today that the Boston area cut a deal with Turner Broadcasting and Interference, Inc., the brains behind the marketing campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres that made life in Boston a little nutty last week. Boston will receive $2 million dollars for its trouble. In return, Turner Broadcasting and Interference won't face charges. Here's the basic breakdown - $1 million goes to reimbursing state and......

As fall settles in and another calendar page gets turned, thoughts turn from bbqs and vacations to holidays and the realization that '06 is coming to an end. With all that going on, with change in the air, we wonder what is it that made that makes the -ists ponder? Phillyist is concerned that the war on Trans fats could affect it's beloved cheese steak sandwiches, something for which we should all be concerned.......

We had to minimize the myspace window for long enough to read about Attorney General Tom Reilly's latest effort to protect the kids. A couple of months ago he was hot on keeping predators away from children on myspace. This month the AG and gubernatorial candidate is taking issue with the terms and conditions of Xanga. To be honest, Friendster was the new hotness when we first got into the whole internet-as-social-network thing (well, alright,......

This has been a rough week for your -ist pals, though you wouldn't know it from the great posts all over the network. Plagued with server problems, our tech team (led by the great Neil Epstein) toiled around the clock to solve the glitches as they arose. Seriously, we've said, typed, and thought the phrase "server problems" more in the past week than we have for the last 35 years combined. Why not say it......

Two days after the I-90 connector tragedy, answers are starting to surface. Unfortunately, none of them are what you’d want to hear. Given the history of mismanagement surrounding the Big Dig project, it should come as no surprise that problems were discovered as early as 1999, when at least five bolts in the connector failed routine testing. It may be worth mentioning that these bolts, which anchored the tie rods holding 3-ton panels, were fastened......

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled yesterday that a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is not unconstitutional. The Globe described this as "a major victory" for bigots opponents of same-sex marriage, but honestly, any other outcome would have been something of a shock. The case turned on a provision of the state constitution that prevents amendments designed to reverse an earlier judicial decision. The argument against the current proposed amendment was that, since it......

So I have an apartment that I love with one problem: a faulty, f***ed up, awful refrigerator. It should be BURNED. I can't even have frozen vegetables because the freezer part is one giant block of ice. However, in the lease the owners have cunningly put "a refrigerator unit is a privilege, not a right. If it breaks, it's on you" (essentially). Doesn't that break tenant-landlord stuff? Don't we renters have a right to......

As Bostonist loves to remind our dear readers, there is a race for governor going on in this Commonwealth. We realize you'd rather focus on baseball and American Idol, but damn it, we're highbrow. As you may have heard, there was a gubernatorial debate last night, featuring democrats Chris Gabrieli, Tom Reilly, and Deval Patrick, and the independent Christy Mihos. Bostonist listened to the debate on the radio and our feeling was, "meh." But we're......

This being Boston, we can't hope (nor should we want, truth be told) to get the volume of celebrity sightings that Gawker does in New York. As such, we have to content ourselves with the usual cast of stodgy intellectuals and fresh-faced plagiarists who trudge through Cambridge from time to time. (And Michael Dukakis. Bostonist and Mrs. Bostonist saw the Duke standing on Arlington Street one morning last week, and we were more than a......

The funny thing about Massachusetts politics, Bostonist has found, is that even when we are distracted by exciting stuff like the repatriation of accused murderers/internet smut-peddlers/would-be patrons of escort services, the internecine squabbles keep cooking along. So as you spend the long weekend in reverent remembrance of Presidents Washington and Lincoln, don't forget that today is also the 385th anniversary of the election of the first military captain of Plymouth Colony. With that in mind,......

For whatever reason, nothing captures the national imagination like the trials of handsome young men who kill their families. So expect Massachusetts to be propelled into the national spotlight for a while now that Neil Entwistle, the British man whose wife and infant child were found shot to death in the family's Hopkinton home a few weeks ago, has finally been arrested and is being brought back to the United States from England. Entwistle turned......

Scanning the interweb this morning, Bostonist saw that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will testify today before a Congressional committee investigating the legality of the President's "I'm-above-the-law" theory of constitutional interpretation. While commentators have suggested that the hearings themselves are a testament to the shaky ground the President is on (since it was Republican Arlen Specter who called for the inquiry), we can't help but see the whole thing as a testament to the skill......

Just yesterday, Bostonist shared an interesting tract about world history, the mafia, the domestication of zebras, and the Simpsons, which was posted as a comment to our site. No sooner had we finished sharing that enlightening tidbit, than we received in our inbox what purports to be a letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (or Gomzales, as his name is written elsewhere in the letter), complaining about some complicated, fraudulent scheme involving body doubles......