Image from John Kerry's head by varmazis from photos tagged "Bostonist" on Flickr. John Kerry finally gave a good speech -- about 4 years too late. [NY Times] Wellesley College loses a $3 million painting and says, "Maybe we threw it out..." [Boston Globe] "Lookout Rock" can be construed in different ways. [The Boston Channel] Let's not forget the many good deeds of firefighters. Two off-duty jakes tried to save a stabbing victim. [Boston......

--Logan Airport is going greener by buying renewable energy credits, right in time for Earth Day. [Boston Globe] --When newsmakers become news: Local news stations are aiming their schadenfreude squarely at WHDH, whose GM, Randi Goldklank, got arrested for disorderly conduct at Logan Airport over the weekend. The police report indicates that Goldklank was, for lack of a better term, allegedly shitfaced. [WCVB, WBZ, Boston Herald] --Here's why you smelled a lot of pot......

Most of the time, we think of Barney Frank as 'Ol Stodgy or Mr. Party Pooper. He certainly doesn't like Stephen Colbert's brand of comedy, and he gets wicked testy if you ask him why his arm is in a sling.* But perhaps Representative Frank loosened up a bit. He declared on "Real Time With Bill Maher" that he'd like to legalize small quantities of pot. He said, according to the AP, "I’m going to......

-- Breaking: Police have arrested a suspect in the March 6 double stabbing at the Roxbury Crossing Orange Line station. MBTA police apprehended an 18 year-old Roxbury man on the platform of the Jackson Square station this afternoon. Authorities say the arrest follows five days of close cooperation between Transit, Boston, and State Police. -- It was a painful case for two alleged South Boston drug runners. Last night, a Boston Neighborhood Drug Unit raided......

Bostonist is looking back on the year in weird, silly, or just plain creative crimes. Yesterday, you met some pugnacious bowlers, but you haven't seen anything until you meet a certain postal employee, overeager college students, and an exceptionally creative gravedigger. 7. Going Postal. A postal worker didn’t honor her profession when she nearly hit a detail officer. Police realized why. She was driving while on the cell phone and "with a cigarette in one......

-- Police shot and killed a corrections officer last night. Marquis Barker, 38, an officer at Nashua Street Jail, was gunned down after stealing a police cruiser and leading officers on a chase through Dorchester and Mattapan. Police responding to calls found Barker out of control outside his Dorchester home, wielding what appeared to be a handgun. Barker begged police to shoot and kill him before escaping in the police cruiser. After crashing the cruiser......

--Yarelis Cruz, 26, of Lawrence, is a mom who allegedly grew pot in her house, and she got caught when the teacher of her 11-year-old son found pot pictures on the boy's cell phone. The teacher confiscated the cell phone when Cruz' son was taking pictures in the school when he wasn't supposed to, and she spotted pot plants on the screen. The teacher did the math, the police investigated, and they found a plant......

School's just started, and already two freshmen at Northeastern University were busted for selling weed out of their dorm room on Sunday. As a matter of fact, one of the sellers must have been stoned out of his mind because he leaned out his window and shouted in public that his roommate was selling pot if students needed any. Plainclothes BPD officers were right there. Matthew Ferrante is the alleged seller, and Michael Emery will......

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom......

Given the sports-crime incidents of the week, here's Bostonist's answer to Matt Taibbi's Sports Blotter - the Flagrant Foul column! Part two will appear in a few hours. Jose Offerman isn't the only sports figure cruising his way toward Matt Taibbi's Sports Blotter. A former Boston College linebacker has his eye on that Blotter. A former Boston College linebacker didn't make the NFL cut when he went to the Washington Redskins training camp, so he......

--Saturday night is supposed to be a time of fun and relaxation, but some people just don't get it. Last night, at a party on Bowdoin Street, someone fired a gun, and two people were injured. It could have been worse. One of the bullets entered another house, almost striking two boys inside. --Speaking of Monster Parties that at least didn't leave anyone shot, the BPD ran into not one, but two, mobile parties last......

--After a lengthy undercover operation called "Operation Roadkill," the feds took down 15 alleged members of the Outlaws, a biker gang based in Taunton. In the raid, they picked up large quantities of drugs and, as Boston NOW gleefully noted, a stripper pole. We're not sure how the feds took the stripper pole from the house without leaving significant damage behind, but, by golly, the feds were going to take that stripper pole as evidence!......

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a......

Happy Father's Day! For those of you who have dads, are dads, or know dads, this one's for you, from all of us at the Gothamist network. It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by......

--Pot has a distinctive odor. Some describe the scent as that of burning leaves, or socks aflame. Either way, the scent of marijuana is powerful, and very little can cover it up. However, two perps tried valiantly to hide the smell of their weed from the BPD by keeping "over 30 tree air fresheners" in their vehicle. It didn't help. K-9s and officers found a bag of pot in the guys' glove compartment after and......

--Looks like someone's parents aren't gonna be happy when they get home. Teenagers in Falmouth got busted last night for a party that was impressive in size and scope. WCVB reports, "Police said they found a keg of beer, empty liquor bottles and a marijuana bong at the house." (Is there any other kind of bong?) The law managed to take in 22 teenagers. --Other teenagers had a surprise of the more gruesome variety. Two......

--Did you see the Track Girls mention that Bono was in town for some reason and popping up in very public places? Turns out that, according to the rival Globe, "Bono" was actually a pretty good impostor named Pavel Sfera. St. Patrick's Day is coming up, and if he's in town and you want to play a great prank on your friend, you might want to see if he's available. His website is www.bonolookalike.com. We......

The BPD rounded up 21 perps for smuggling pot and Ecstasy in "Operation Polar Express." Actually, judging from how bags of Ecstasy looked in this picture available at the Globe, the law should have called it "Operation Popcorn." This drug bust involved Vietnamese drug rings tied to Canada. These people were busy bees: "Investigators seized 85,000 ecstasy pills, worth nearly $2.6 million on the street, 130 pounds of marijuana, five guns, and $25,000." The BPD......

New Hampshire has been feeling the rays of national media attention thanks to numerous announcements from aspiring presidential candidates. The state is already getting ready for the politicians, the journalists, and Wolf Blitzer. New Hampshire has announced upcoming debates at Saint Anselm College on April 4 and April 5. The eminent Mr. Blitzer will moderate the fray. Not to be overshadowed by CNN, Fox News is also planning a Republican debate. Newly declared candidate Senator......

The BPD must've smelled a lot of weed Wednesday night. One of their early reports describes what happened when they served a warrant: "Officers, on approaching suspect’s room, were immediately assaulted by the smell of burning marijuana." Can marijuana "assault" the senses? If so, it must have been some terrible weed. Upon further inspection, the officers found "a plastic sandwich bag containing green leafy vegetable matter believed to be marijuana." Bostonist wishes that the officer......

A real jawdropper hit the Boston College basketball program. Two players, center Sean Williams and forward Akida McLain have been kicked off the team. Thusfar, all involved have been tight-lipped about the reasons for the sudden booting. ESPN notes that both players have been in trouble before: "Williams was suspended once for marijuana possession, while McLain had been suspended for his involvement in a counterfeiting scam." Despite the murky circumstances, it's clear what this means......

It's rare when we dare to merge sports with the blotter because Matt Taibbi at the Phoenix has that department covered. But a high-school hockey game between Amesbury and Newburyport got ugly when Amesbury fans threw golf balls and squid onto the Newburyport ice. What were these teens thinking? And who found the squid? Real squid? The Globe writes that the Amesbury kids found enough stuff for a "deluge" that "lasted 5 to 10 minutes."......

It may only have been a funnier news item if it were actually featured in The Onion. Clever headlines like "No pans, just pot in this cabinet," "Home DePOT Vanities Hold Drugs," "Marijuana 'bricks' found in Home Depot vanities," and "Plumber finds a fix in the fixture" graced the headers of online and print media as the fifth reported stash of drugs was found inside a bathroom vanity purchased from a Home Depot in Massachusetts.......

Ah, dumb crime - we can never get enough of it. When Bostonist did a clinical program in law school where we worked as a public defender for juveniles, we decided that if we could teach one thing to high school students, it would be a quick course on constitutional rights, so they wouldn't always consent to police searches they could have refused. Apparently, though, that wouldn't be enough - we'd also need to teach......

Bostonist knows that crime doesn't pay, but sometimes it sure is funny. Over the last few weeks, it seems a humorous crime-spree has broken out north of the Charles. The crime wave began two weeks ago when a Somerville cop noticed a car pulling into the Foodmaster parking lot in West Somerville for an apparent drug deal. As the cop approached the car, its driver Dwayne Jones became "combative," tried to run down the officer.......

Among other interesting rulings this month, the Supreme Court held Monday that displays of the Ten Commandments on public property are unconstitutional . . . except when they're not. In two cases, the Court approved an big stone rendering of the Commandments in a park surrounding the Texas state capitol, but rejected the posting of the commandments in Kentucky courtrooms. The unlikely swing vote in this confusing mess was Massachusetts' own Justice Stephen Breyer, who......

When you think of liberal marijuana culture in the United States, what comes to mind? San Francisco and the rest of Northern California, undoubtedly. Maybe Seattle, Portland (Oregon), or in our region, hippy Vermont. But no. You may be surprised to learn that, according to a new study, our fine city (metro area, actually) has the highest rate of youth and adult marijuana use in the country. While nationally 5 percent of people smoke pot,......