Rumors are swirling about Deval Patrick being named to the Supreme Court. His lawyerly background certainly qualifies him, and it'd be nice to get a non-conservative named to the court sometime soon. Patrick himself has said he's running for reelection and uninterested in the higher offices.......

The Supreme Court really oughta get to work--they have some big cases to decide, and soon. [Globe] The Massachusetts Department of Social Services is setting up new shelter beds to help children lured into prostitution. [Globe] Sex offenders can't live anywhere. Maybe they should stay in prison? [Fark] Hulk smash... es other box office contenders. [EW] Iowa is still all wet. [NYT] Potential veeps yawn at the opportunity. [Globe] Deval Patrick will sign a......

--When word got out that Mayor Menino wanted to bring in a petting zoo to revitalize Downtown Crossing, we thought it was a joke. But it turns out that the barnyard animals are at the crossing on weekends outside Filene's Basement. Animal activists are underwhelmed, and how can looking at sad, cold animals inspire people to shop? [Boston Herald] --Wondering what all the screaming was about early yesterday evening at Downtown Crossing? It didn't......

--The banner brawl continues. The Highway Department decided that the banners declaring support for the troops that hang over the roadways pose a potential road hazard. That decision poses a potential PR nightmare, and Governor Deval Patrick has put it on hold. [Boston Globe] --Corinne Stephen, 26, was sentenced to 8 to 12 years for the involuntary manslaughter of her foster child, 4-year-old Dontel Jeffers. [DA's Office, background] --A longshoreman fessed up to putting......

Who would have thought former Massachusetts governors Mitt Romney and Michael Dukakis would have anything in common beside the name of the state they once led? Unfortunately for Romney, he is now being dogged by accusations that a decision he made led to the murder of innocent people. In an incident that echoes when Dukakis approved a furlough for prisoner Willie Horton, who assaulted a couple in Maryland while he was out, Romney appointed Kathe......

In Los Angeles, LAist most definitely celebrated Thanksgiving like no other. After all, one has to keep up all the energy to keep on walking the line at the Writers Strike and fighting the unfortunate return of the wildfires in Malibu, which single handedly destroyed over fifty homes within the first 24 hours. National outlets may be covering the fires, but CNN also found it is easier to buy a gun than fruit and......

--Shooting broke out in the parking lot of Dorchester's Holy Tabernacle Church on Washington Street last night--during a packed worship session. An unidentified person was shot in the shoulder. --Emmanuel Greene, 22, of Dorchester, was not happy when he picked up his Chinese food at Chung Wah on Bowdoin Street last night. A Safe Street Team spotted him kicking a door because some kind of mixup happened with his order. Greene said that he didn't......

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too - two of them in -Ist cities. Sampaist was shocked when a passenger jet crashed into the center of Sao Paulo, killing at least 200 people. The airplane, an Airbus A320, skidded off the runway at the......

Last weekend, Deval Patrick marched in the Pride parade. And he has vociferously opposed adding a ban on same-sex marriage to the 2008 ballot. Supporters of gay rights have many reasons to feel good. But today is going to be nerve-wracking because the Legislature might vote again on the ballot measure at the constitutional convention. In the winter, the Legislature approved adding a ballot measure that would give voters the option to define marriage as......

In Rhode Island you can't get married as a same sex couple. You can't get divorced as a same sex couple either. Well, at least not yet. According to the Providence Journal, the Rhode Island State Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments and give an answer to the question: "May the Family Court properly recognize, for the purpose of entertaining a divorce petition, the marriage of two persons of the same sex who......

The state supreme court ruled against the Herald Monday, upholding a $2 million verdict saying that the paper is guilty of libel against a Superior Court judge. Reporter David Wedge accused Judge Ernest Murphy of saying a 14-year-old rape victim should "get over it" in 2002. Murphy declared that he said no such thing and said the statement destroyed his reputation, so he sued. A jury found Wedge guilty in 2005, and the Herald appealed.......

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......

The Bruins seem to have rolled over and played dead. Only a short time ago, they had a shot at the playoffs, and now it seems as if they just don't want to deal with the pressure. Or they couldn't take the pressure. Yesterday, they lost to the Philadelphia Flyers 4 to 1. And the Flyers are in the NHL basement, which says way too much about how the Bruins are playing. In baseball, spring......

Hot on the heels of his feature film debut in Jesus Camp (Bostonist's most enthusiastic movie pick in October), megapreacher Ted Haggard faces allegations of methamphetamine use and indiscretions with a male prostitute. Haggard was (until last night) president of the National Association of Evangelicals and senior pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where you can rent a "prayer closet" for $25 per night and apparently give new meaning to the phrase for......

Hey, have y'all been using our new "Recommend this" feature at the bottom of each post? This week we're bringing you the "Most Recommended" posts from across the -ist world, as well as recommending some of our own. Phillyist thinks that readers recommended this post the most because "most of our quieter readers (probably) agree with us that rude commenting sucks." Know what else sucks? Philly's not getting the Olympics, but they are getting thinner.......

(OK, not really.) If you live and work in Boston proper, or in Cambridge, or really anywhere other than Somerville, the ongoing saga of the development of Assembly Square feels like a distant local squabble. But for Somervillionaires, it's a big, exciting question: Will mayor (and assistant football coach at Somerville High) Joseph Curtatone be able to deliver on one of his major campaign promises and turn Assembly Square from a down-at-the-heels, semi-industrial wasteland to......

Not infrequently, when the Globe fails to satisfy Bostonist's need for up-to-date local reporting, good sports coverage, or unabashedly biased and inadvertently hilarious journalism, we turn to the Herald. Today was such a day, although what drove us from the Globe this time was actually too much detail in a local story: call Bostonist sqeamish, but we don't want to know that when two Rottweilers attacked a ten-year-old in Brockton, they "tore flesh from his......

Being an unabashed liberal from the unabashedly liberal Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Bostonist long ago stopped trying to figure out what motivated the President to do the things he does. (After he declined to nominate Mitt Romney to the Supreme Court, we pretty much decided there was no hope of understanding him.) But with the nomination of General Michael Hayden to head the CIA, we're absolutely certain that we see Bush's plan: As the diagram at......

Shanghaiist probably knows a little more about China than the Chicago Sun-Times. Giving them the benefit of the doubt on that one. The city does to have a music scene. Don't even front like they don't. They also have Dorito bananas and white guys shopping for wives. What they don't have is any more tolerance for jaywalkers. Bostonist sees Boston and Somerville each whip out their art and face off. A plagiarized novel is the......

One of Bostonist's least favorite law enforcement tools, the sex offender registry, jumped unpleasantly into the news this weekend, as some crazy Canadian picked two random people on Maine's list and killed them, then boarded a bus to Boston before eventually killing himself when confronted by police at South Station. Since one of the men killed was on the registry for the not-so-scandalous crime of having had sex with his almost-16-year-old girlfriend when he was......

The new and improved (?) Supreme Court dropped a decision yesterday that has a ton of relevance to the Boston area, ruling that it is constitutional for Congress to require law schools to give access to military recruiters, even if the schools have a general policy banning employers who, like the military, discriminate against homosexuals. The law schools' theory was that a rule requiring them to let bigots on campus forced them to endorse the......

The Globe reports today that Boston City Councilor Michael Ross is proposing an outright ban on picketing outside residences, a response to anti-abortion groups' custom of showing up at abortion clinic staffers' homes. The protesters, naturally, cry foul and claim that their freedom of speech is being curtailed. Joseph Scheidler, the director of the Pro-Life Action League promises in the article that if such a ban is enacted, his folks will violate it and......

Manny Being…Just Wishy-Washy: Manny Ramirez tops the news this morning as he claims that he’s going to continue playing with the Sox. “I’m staying in Boston, where I’m familiar with the system and where I have a lot of friends, especially David Ortiz.” In other Sox Nation news, Manny’s B.F.F., Big Papi, is expected to also stay with the team. State Dems Playing Hard Ball: Senator John Kerry is talking a tough game this morning......

Much as Bostonist loves running at the mouth, we realize that there are some matters, especially those concerning national politics, that are simply beyond the scope of our little endeavor. So when the President announces he has a new man for the Supreme Court job, Bostonist just says, "What's his man got to do with me?" And when when folks in the administration are exposed for the crooks we always suspected they were, we remember......

For once, Governor Romney has a squabble with the legislature that appears not to be motivated by presidential posturing: Yesterday he proposed amendments to "Melanie's Law," the much-discussed legislation that might (or might not) impose stiffer sentences for repeat drunk drivers and for people who refuse to take a breathalyzer test. One central issue underlying what has become a major debate (not just between Mitt and lawmakers, but among the the lawmakers themselves) is a......

Thank goodness! Another update in Bostonist's favorite ongoing story, the neverending battle over gay marriage: The Supreme Judicial Court yesterday heard oral arguments in a challenge to a 1913 law being used by state government to deny marriage licenses to out-of-state gay couples who do not intend to move to Massachusetts. Bostonist is enjoying this subset of the gay marriage debate because it makes clear just how similar today's opposition to same-sex nuptials is to......

Our dear old Supreme Judicial Court, whose decisions so frequently bring ire to Americans outside the Commonwealth borders (and, to a lesser degree, to those within it), won a little victory yesterday, much to the chagrin of journalists everywhere. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take an appeal from the SJC by the Boston Globe, after the paper lost a libel suit and had to pay $1.68 million to a doctor implicated in the death......

Harvard sends lots of people to lots of important places. Recently we’ve been watching John Roberts on his path to the Supreme Court (and how Romney may eye that prize). But there's a bigger Harvard-related human interest item catching the attention of the “House”-watching public. Dr. David Foster left his relationship with Harvard Medical School, after being trained and then practiced in the system at Beth Israel, to go to Hollywood. From Harvard to Hollywood?......

While Bostonist loves our fair city (and its accompanying metropolitan area), we must confess that racial segregation and low-level tension among races are a frustrating reality. Lately, that reality has lead to some interesting legal battles, especially in the Federal District Court, where bold steps may be taken to make juries in criminal trials more racially diverse. Or maybe these steps won't be taken. Read on. Last month, Judge Nancy Gertner ordered a change in......

Fear of commitment when it comes to marriage is not uncommon among men - just ask Tom Reilly. As Bostonist has noted before, the position of the Attorney General and Democratic frontrunner for the governorship on same-sex marriage has not toed the state party's pro-gay marriage line. His decision yesterday to certify an anti-gay marriage ballot question that could amend the state constitution is too legally complex to lend itself to the sort of snide,......