--Bye-bye, Filene. The legendary store saw some "major destruction" today. [More photos at On Common Ground] --The Department of Social Services (DSS) is on the hot seat because they removed Acia Johnson and Sophia Johnson, the children who died in a fire in their South Boston home, from the home and their mother--Anna Reisopoulos, who had a record with DSS--a while ago. Yet the children still lived with their mother when the deadly fire......

--A former Marshfield High School student who was arrested in 2004 for planning a Columbine-like attack was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and could face 20 years in prison. He was, however, acquitted on a deadly weapons charge and on "promotion of anarchy." [Boston Globe] --It's not a good sign when police find someone else's Social Security Card in your pocket. A man was arrested yesterday in South Boston with that dubious credential......

--The State Supreme Judicial Court just overturned the conviction of a Methuen ex-police officer accused of raping a woman in 2000. The case hinged on whether or not lawyers could prove the woman was "too intoxicated to consent, not that she was merely high and drunk." However, the SJC felt that the trial judge didn't give proper instructions to the jurors. The ex-officer will get a new trial. [Boston Globe] --In a similar case,......

South End residents who are bracing for the opening of the BU Biolab, where scary germs like ebola will be studied, have a reprieve. The "National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories" was supposed to open in the fall, but the National Institutes of Health has declared that its review won't be finished until "on or before" April 2009, the Globe reports. A panel had criticized the NIH in the past, saying its reviews of the Biolab......

Mark A. Flomenbaum, the former Chief Medical Examiner who was dismissed after the office of the Chief Medical Examiner was revealed to be an unsanitary hellhole, is suing because he feels "Governor Deval Patrick lacked grounds to dismiss him." Okay, okay, all charges alleged. But a body went missing. The Herald reported blood on the floor and a "constant stench of decomposition." If that's not grounds for dismissal, then what is? In terms of sheer......

--Fires ran rampant yesterday. A mother and her son were injured last night in a fire in Somerville. One firefighter was treated and released at the hospital. [Boston Globe] --Another fire broke out in Haverhill last night, and people were injured jumping out of the windows. No one died in the blaze, but 24 people have lost their homes. [Boston Globe, Boston Herald] --The state Supreme Judicial Court is letting Heidi Erickson, who kept......

Neither Sophie Currier nor the National Board of Medical Examiners are going to back down. Even though Currier won an appeal to get extra time to take a medical exam so she could pump breast milk, the Board appealed the appeal. In reaction to the appeal of the appeal, the Massachusetts appeals court "temporarily voided" the pro-breast-feeding ruling handed down by Judge Gary Katzmann. They've done all the mulling they need to do, and they've......

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 Supreme Judicial Court gave Mitt Romney and his conservative cohorts a mild smacking today when the justices ruled that they cannot force legislators to vote on whether or not a proposal to ban gay marriage should be on the 2008 ballot. This ruling is the latest in a set of complex legal wranglings, which Bostonist has explained here and here, that started when the Legislature recessed before voting on the proposed ballot measure. Romney......

Living in the Bay State we remember when we had a brand-new ruling from the Supreme Judicial Court legalizing same-sex marriage. It seemed to be one of those high court rulings that didn't really make it legal (because, you know, it's the judicial branch, not the legislative) but rather defined was something was or wasn’t. Last week the Worcester Superior Court ruled on something not quite as groundbreaking and offered up a definition. A burrito......

Matthew Amorello tendered his resignation this morning. Just about an hour before a hearing scheduled to remove Amorello from his post as the MTA Chairman. After the Supreme Judicial Court ruled yesterday that the hearing could go ahead (a ruling against Amorello's assertion that Romney was inventing powers) the negotiations began regarding the terms of the resignation. Before what promises to be a day of press conferences and statements released to the press, we know......

(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......

Yesterday was supposed to be the big day for the proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. The Supreme Judicial Court had just ruled that the proposed amendment was legally kosher, the constitutional convention was slated to begin, and Senate President Travaglini had said he would make sure the amendment got a vote and wasn't postponed indefinitely by parliamentary maneuvers. (To get on the ballot, the amendment must be approved by two consecutive sittings......

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......

Why is South Boston's gangster past so captivating? Bostonist can't say. Sensible people should look upon Whitey Bulger and his ilk with nothing but scorn for all their killing and mayhem, but somehow, between Whitey's intriguing life on the lam and the awesome, wide-collared shirts that all those guys used to wear, the imagination is captured. Apparently, even the usually staid justices of the Supreme Judicial Court are not above this, as the first three......

Oh, Bostonist does love cat-hoarding. OK, not really - we think it's cruel and repellent, but the fact that it is a pathology that actually exists amuses us in a sick way (as does the fact that people in New York are managing to take their pet dogs on airplanes by claiming they are "emotional support dogs" and the owners would bug out if they had to be dogless for even a few hours; but......

The weather is gorgeous. Great day to hit Fenway for an evening match-up. Too bad we don’t have tickets. As is standard this time of year, we’ve got baseball on the mind. Well, baseball and the next challenge to same-sex marriage here in the Bay State. To be perfectly accurate the case the Supreme Judicial Court will hear today is about banning a ballot question, a question which would move to ban same-sex marriage. There......

As Bostonist's non-lawyer friends stumble into work today and read the paper, they keep e-mailing us and asking, "Bostonist, you law-talking person, how is it that the Supreme Judicial Court can rule that a ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional generally, but OK when applied to out-of-state couples?" Allow us to explain. This case involves a challenge to an old law that says no one from out-of-state can get married here if they would be......

This morning we’re not really bringing you a specific video but an archive of videos so you can feel just like a real Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court. When we cracked open the print edition of the Boston Globe this morning, the story on Justice Sosman watching webcasts grabbed our interest. Why? Because we have a friend who runs around the halls of the SJC for a living, and it's nice to know......

Remember these guys? They were arrested last year after their story of finding antique coins and currency buried under a tree turned out to be a cover for stealing antique coins from some lady's attic. They're back in the news today, seeking dismissal of the charges against them, apparently on the theory that since the lady didn't know the stuff was on her property, it was "abandoned" for legal purposes and these guys could claim......

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......

Poor Mitt Romney, stymied at every turn. Last week, the Supreme Judicial Court refused to tell him whether he could legally demote Mass Pike chairman Matthew Amorello, and this morning we learn that there are even more leaks and defects in the Big Dig than previously thought (Bostonist can imagine Mitt inside the Statehouse, shaking his fist at one of the east-facing windows that looks down Ashburton Place toward the John Adams Courthouse). Worse still,......

When elected leaders make extra time to hear the concerns of well-heeled campaign contributors, Bostonist doesn't bat an eye. After all, politics is not a field from which we expect, um, ethical behavior. But when the amount of cash donated corresponds to the number of Red Sox tickets given to the donor, civic duty requires that we cry foul. Today's Globe reports that the Republican Governors Association will give four roof deck tickets for......

If you read the Herald (poor, poor you), you found out today what Bostonist told you weeks ago: Heidi "the Cat Lady" Erickson is (still) conducting a one-woman protest outside the Supreme Judicial Court (not the Superior Court, as the Herald claims; that court is next door but is not the focus of Erickson's demonstration). The delightful picture accompanying the Herald piece also lets you know that Ms. Erickson has, of late, taken to wearing......

The Cat Lady of Beacon Hill is back. Readers may recall Heidi Erickson, who was ousted from apartments on Charles Street and in Watertown in 2003 after city inspectors discovered several starved cats and many many more dead ones (over 100 in all), most of them frozen, in her humble, urine-stinking abodes. (Wait - did we mention the Great Dane? There was a Great Dane too.) Aside from periodic, highly amusing court appearances - in......

Another skirmish in the seemingly never-ending gay marriage war was fought today before the Supreme Judicial Court, although it contained little of the excitement of earlier developments. In fact, the oral arguments, which Bostonist attended for the benefit of our dear readers, were unimpressive at best and embarassing at worst. This time around, C.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League, is trying to get the SJC to stop any further gay marriages during......

Poor Connecticut, such a lonely state, unable to settle firmly into the orbit of either of its more influential neighbors. Yankees or Red Sox? Moderate Republican governor or not-so-moderate Republican governor? Death penalty (on the books, anyway) or no death penalty? Well, chalk one up for the Commonwealth: Connecticut has followed the path of Massachusetts and approved civil unions for gay couples (OK, so we call it marriage, but here's a little secret that Bostonist......

As House Majority Leader Tom DeLay continues his campaign against judges, it gives Bostonist some pride to recall that it was a decision from our own Supreme Judicial Court that really got it all started. But DeLay's latest comments have left us a little perplexed. He singled out Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy (who is not nearly the most liberal judge on that court) and criticized him for doing his own research ON THE INTERNET,......