Maybe the commonwealth could take the Toscanini's approach and pass the hat to cover our deficit? Anyone have a hat big enough for 1.3 billion dollars? The battle for our scarce fiscal year 2009 resources begins tomorrow when Governor Deval Patrick releases his budget. This could get interesting--well, relatively interesting--as two notable critics of Patrick's agenda have already been identified, and they happen to be the first two steps on the flowchart that is......

Oprah and Obama Sunday, December 9 Verizon Wireless Arena, Manchester, NH Doors at 6:00 pm, rally at 7:30 pm You can knock, but you might not get in. Waiting List As the presidential race heats up, Barack Obama isn't messing around. He's already been to Boston several times and paid extra-special attention to New Hampshire, but now he's uncorking his secret weapon--Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey will be with Obama in South Carolina Sunday morning, and then......

The Globe published a long piece about the mystery still surrounding Army specialist Ciara Durkin's death in Afghanistan in late September. Durkin, who was from Quincy, was shot in the head, although the Army called it a "non-combat-related incident." Her family is not satisfied with that explanation, and the Globe report provides evidence that someone on the base may have had it out for Durkin. In one event, Durkin wrote an e-mail saying, "Ok. so......

A Bentley student has died of bacterial meningitis. 18-year-old Erin Ortiz was hospitalized while visiting family in New Hampton, New York, and she died yesterday. The Herald spoke to Bentley's VP of student affairs, Kathleen Yorkis: She went out to dinner with her family Saturday night and went to bed early, Yorkis said. Sometime after midnight, she woke up her sister and said her “head felt so painful.” “We lost our daughter in 36 hours,”......

A Quincy resident was killed in action in Afghanistan on Thursday. Specialist Ciara Durkin was in the National Guard and part of a finance unit. She was 30. Via the Patriot-Ledger, RTE of Ireland is reporting that she was shot in the head inside Bagram Air Base. Her sister told the Globe, "She was in a secure area of the compound, which, even though the investigation is not complete, leads the family to believe it......

Yesterday Massachusetts and Texas were recipient of a whole heap of grant money to test new wind turbines. This isn't part of Cape Wind at all, the grant provides funding for massive wind power blades to be tested in East Boston in Charlestown, not in Nantucket Sound. The Cape Wind project has created a bunch of flap from aristocrats griping about the potential for an oceanic wind farm to obstruct their view, this $2 million......

--Forbes announced that former Massachusetts governor and presidential aspirant Mitt Romney placed fourth in their "creepiest candidate" poll. We can understand why – and it has nothing to do with Mormonism or big sticks. It's simply the fact that the man has not aged for several decades. Of course he's creepy – he's hiding a portrait in the attic! --Romney's new "crazy eyes" ad certainly won't help him get off the creepy list. Earlier in......

The big news in this mornings papers and airwaves was that a report from the Transportation Finance Commission has released a report that pretty much every state transit authority (including the MBTA, DCR, Turnpike Authority, and Highway Department) is in deficit spending and working to just keep up what they've got going. The deficit spending will result in a projected $19 billion deficit over the next 20 years according to the report. That's just for......

Rumors have been blowing around in the windy Back Bay streets by their corporate headquarters for weeks. In 2002 the company was purchased for about $1.7 by three private equity firms, two of Boston, Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital, and the Blackstone Group of London and New York from the then French owners, Vivendi Universal. The publisher came back to the Boston roots they put down in the mid-eighteen hundreds. Today a deal......

The fashionable and underpaid women of Boston (of whom Bostonist knows quite a few) were dealt a cruel blow yesterday, as a trio of Chelsea sisters (along with the boyfriend of one of them) was indicted in federal court for selling counterfeit designer handbags. In the pantheon of local criminal schemes, this is hardly the most newsworthy, but Bostonist is so amused by the grave warning issued to the public about counterfeit purses, we feel......

It seems lately all the corporate heavyweights that have traditionally been associated with our city have been abandoning us: FleetBoston, Gillette, and Filene's to name a few. Luckily, most of these departures/foldings have centered around bastions of corporate finance and excessive consumerism (c'mon, who really needs a Mach3Turbo?), while Boston's traditional cultural icons have remained steadfast...until now. The publishers of the Atlantic Monthly have announced that the 148 year-old Boston-born journal of cultural and political......

While staggering home last week after one too many Mai Tais and delicious wasabi peas served at the bar at Peking Tom's, Bostonist walked past the brightly-lit Paramount Theater sign and wondered why it was all lit up when there was nothing actually inside of it. Located next door to the newly renovated Opera House on Washington Street, the Paramount was last open in 1976 as a porno house, before closing its doors. Since then,......