Who's comin' over?
Over a dozen Nazi kills and
ALERT HERE ***Both suspects, Williams and Alexander Burns, a 19-year-old Brighton resident, were apprehended and arrested on charges of Unlawful Possession of a Firearm...
The first suspect, a 16-year-old Dorchester resident, had a firearm in his pocket that the officer seized. ... was taken into custody for charges Delinquency to wit: Unlawful Possession of a Firearm and Ammunition.
The suspects, Cory Robinson, 19, of Roxbury, Jonathan Carter, 18, of Dorchester and Tyrone Shepherd, 21, of Dorchester were booked on charges of Assault and Battery by means of a Dangerous Weapon and Unlawful Possession of a Firearm.
The driver of the vehicle had a firearm in his front pocket that was seized and kept as evidence. ... The vehicle was towed and the suspect was arrested for Unlawful Possession of a Firearm...
Police arrested Harry Williams, 35, of Mattapan and charged him with Unlawful Possession of a Firearm and Possession with Intent to Distribute Class D within 1000’ of a school zone.
While conducting Operation Home Safe last night on Hancock Street, officers observed two males fighting on the sidewalk. They observed one of the individuals lunge at the other with a knife, causing a stab wound.
One driver rammed his car into the other, causing minor damage. The drivers then pulled into a Burger King parking lot. One driver got out of his car with a baseball bat and approached the other driver, who then pulled a gun. Police arrived and arrested the driver with the bat. Police say the man with the gun had a legal permit to carry the weapon.
[Gubernatorial candidate Deval] Patrick said Romney and Reilly chose to enforce the 1913 law to appease gay-marriage opponents, and called it "a glaring example of their bad leadership."
"Every prosecutor has discretion about what laws to enforce and what laws not to," Patrick told the Herald yesterday.
So, it looks like a governor and attorney general with courage and a sense of honor could order it not enforced and ask the General Court to get this abomination off the books.
Reilly campaign spokesman Corey Welford dismissed Patrick'’s claims, saying the job of constitutional officers is to "follow and respect the law" not just the ones they like or agree with.
"To suggest it's alright to pick and choose which laws to enforce is either irresponsible, or shows a complete lack of experience in dealing with issues like these," Welford said.
The law, right or wrong, exists. And it should be followed until it is changed. We have numerous means to change the law available to us, and we should use them, or simply live with the laws as they are. This principle stands regardless of the particulars -- whether the laws cover marriage, immigration, or lying under oath about oral sex.
Otherwise, we are not a nation of law, but one of the anarchy of convenience and license. And history has seen far too many of those -- they're the societies that are always referred to in the past tense.
Personally, I'd be delighted to live in a country where happily married gay couples had closets full of assault weapons.
~ Glenn Reynolds
Around 9 a.m., the mother of one of the boys and the owner of the home gave police permission to search. They found a Chinese-made .223-caliber AK assault rifle with a 30-round magazine.
"This was a high-capacity, semi-automatic weapon with a self-feeding device, capable of firing up to five miles," Ryder said. "It's an unusual weapon, the kind of thing a collector would pay a lot of money for."
"You could see these kids were pretty far gone," said Sgt. Warren Ryder of the Boxborough Police Department.
"There was vomit on the floor and one kid was passed out with Magic Marker all over his face."
Officers recovered the following items inside the apartment: ...a bag of white powder believed to be marijuana...
What would be interesting to know is if these young men and women are enjoying their educations on the back of the American taxpayer at a public school, while denigrating the country that provides these benefits to them, and so blatantly desecrating the flag that serves as a beacon to draw them to America in the first place.
BLACKSTONE, Mass. --Two 15-year-old boys faced felony charges Wednesday in connection with a break-in at a water storage facility in this central Massachusetts town, where residents stockpiled water and many businesses and schools were closed.
Officials have told the 9,000 residents of Blackstone and about four dozen homes in neighboring North Smithfield, R.I., not to drink the water, let it contact their skin or use it for washing clothes or dishes until tests show it is safe. Results were expected midday Wednesday.
[snip]
Two 15-year-old boys and a 15-year-old girl broke in Monday night at the facility which houses a 1.3 million-gallon tank supplying water to Blackstone and part of North Smithfield, police said. The two boys, whose names were not released because of their ages, were charged with malicious destruction of property, tampering with a public water supply and polluting the water supply, all felonies, and trespassing, Gilmore said. They became suspects after talking about the incident at school, he said.
Ed Coletta, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, said the trespassers cut barbed wire, cut the lines to an alarm, and then damaged an electrical panel and a vent at the top of the tank.
Left at the scene was an empty, 5-gallon container that had an odor. Officials were unsure whether the empty bucket they found belonged to the water supply company that uses the facility.
When Jack was going through the motions of interrogating Collette, he threatened her several times with the marshall's firearm. Finally, he gets serious and racks the slide (I guess because the marshall was standing around doing a protection detail with an empty chamber) and sticks it directly in her face. No, I was wrong, the marshall (whose name must be Barney) didn't have an empty chamber; he had an unloaded weapon, because there's Jack with no cartridge having popped out when the slide was racked, holding a gun with the slide locked back on an empty magazine.
WTF is going on this season? Have they picked up some new writers and editors who had been laid off by Sponge Bob? And don't even get me started on his reaction to Audrey's story.
An investigation revealed that Jackson saw Vigil trying to break into the front door with the butt end of a rifle. Jackson grabbed a .410 shotgun and shot the intruder in the chest as he entered the home, but the shot did not stop him, police said.
Jackson and his son ran into a back bedroom and locked the door. Jackson told his son to hide under a bed and then grabbed a 30-06 rifle and started loading it. Police said the intruder then fired two rounds from a 30.30 rifle through the closed bedroom door.
Jackson yelled at him to leave and fired one round from his weapon through the bedroom door into the hallway. The intruder fired two more rounds and then began busting open the bedroom door, police said.
At that point Jackson fired another round, which apparently struck the intruder in the right hip area. The door remained closed and Jackson and his son stayed in the bedroom until officers arrived.
Musings on How Democrats Will Make Massachusetts Change for the Better
A state senator and a former state representative vouched for an ex-con former police chief from Western Massachusetts who was seeking a pardon from Gov. Mitt Romney so he could carry a gun again.
State Sen. Andrea Nuciforo Jr. (D-Pittsfield) and former Dalton Rep. Shaun Kelly wrote letters supporting former Ashfield police Chief Warren Kirkpatrick, who served three months in jail for stealing a boat on Cape Cod.
The 1987 conviction stripped Kirkpatrick of his right to carry a gun, but he wants the pardon so he can have his sidearm back while working as Ashfield's animal control officer. The townÂs current chief, John Svoboda, also wrote a letter on Kirkpatrick's behalf, but Romney denied a pardon in 2004.
"What happened years ago wasn't a violent crime...
...It was a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time," Svoboda said yesterday.
Listless ticket sales forced Attorney General and aspiring governor Tom Reilly to send out complimentary invitations to his birthday party fund-raiser tonight, according to political sources and Reilly campaign documents.
The $500 VIP event at the posh State Room comes as Reilly has shown sluggish fund-raising numbers in 2006.
In the first two weeks of March, he reported receipts of $9,380 compared to Democratic rival Deval Patrick’s $57,787 and Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey’s $191,625, according to state campaign finance records.
Earlier this month, Reilly, whose birthday is in February, sent the free invite to the big-ticket event to his gubernatorial backers along with an alert about a new education intiative he announced Feb. 28.
"I have also included a complimentary invitation to my upcoming birthday party on March 28 from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m at the State Room, 60 State Street, in Boston. I hope to see you there," reads the last paragraph of the education alert.
LAWRENCE -- To counter what city leaders say are loopholes in state law that have stymied efforts to curb knife-related crimes, Lawrence has adopted a ban on long-bladed knives.
Anyone found in Lawrence carrying a knife with a blade longer than 2 1/2 inches is subject to arrest and a fine of $100 to $300.
Under the city ordinance, which was passed last week and will take affect next month, it is still legal to carry a knife to hunt, fish, or conduct work.
The ordinance seeks to get a whole range of knives off the streets. In Lawrence, officers say, people use knives with curved or double blades and spiked handles to commit crimes. They also use machetes, steak knives, and sharpened screwdrivers.
News of the ordinance was well received at a number of businesses that have been robbed at knifepoint.
Fred Whittington was behind the counter at a convenience store last summer when someone he thought wanted to buy a phone card was suddenly wearing a ski mask, brandishing a blade, and demanding that Whittington empty the register.
"I guess I wasn't moving fast enough, and he stuck me in the arm and in the side," Whittington said, adding that the cuts were superficial.
"I think this law is a good thing. Why should anyone carry that stuff around?" he said.
The store he works at has been robbed numerous times, and employees say most of the robberies involved knives.
BOXBOUROUGH -- A late night party is broken up by police after neighbors report gunshots early Sunday morning.
After receiving 911 calls reporting shots fired, police responded to 30 Chester Road and found eight teens between 16-18-years-old allegedly intoxicated.
Authorities then found a loaded semi-automatic assault rifle that was allegedly shown to guests during the party. The officers seized the rifle along with a handgun, two other rifles, alcohol and a beer funnel.
18-year-old Brian Whittier of 205 Great Road in Acton allegedly fired two shots from the rifle from outside the back of the house. Whittier was charged with possessing liquor under 21-years of age, carrying a large capacity firearm, discharging a firearm within 500 feet of an occupied dwelling, and disturbing the peace.
The resident of the home, a 17-year-old, was charged with possessing liquor under 21-years of age, resisting arrest, carrying a firearm without a license, possessing a firearm without a FID card, possessing a large capacity feeding device and possessing ammunition without a FID card.
Two other minors were charged with possessing liquor under 21-years of age and one was charged with carrying a large capacity firearm.
Before joining CTU, he was a member of the Boston Police Department's SWAT unit and had previously served in the United States Army's 2nd Infantry Brigade.
Manning has B.A. degree in Sociology from the University of Massachusetts.
"If you don't tap that second keg, I will draw my weapon!"
Gunplay on Geneva Avenue yesterday afternoon sent horrified residents scrambling for cover and a 19-year-old Dorchester man hopping for help as fast he could with a bullet in his foot.
One 50-year-old woman, who did not want to give her name but who was visibly startled from her close call, said she had just come home from church and was walking up her front steps, arms laden with boxes of pizza, when she heard shots ring out in the street behind her.
"I just ran inside," she said, looking back at her Acura, which took a bullet to a passenger-side window and was enveloped in yellow police crime-scene tape in the aftermath of the shooting.
"Oh my Lord," she said. "I have to pray harder."
Before there was Hyannis Port, there was the Honey Fitz mansion in Hull.
If they look hard enough, house hunters can imagine the beginnings of an American political dynasty in the Hull mansion: perhaps a young Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy coming to summer at the house in 1917 with her newborn baby in her arms.
Born in Brookline, John F. Kennedy spent the first summer of his life in Hull, much of it at the sprawling multigabled house that his maternal grandfather bought.
A Colorado mortgage company is hoping that history will be an ally when an auctioneer puts the historic Honey Fitz mansion in Hull out to bid Tuesday. The company is also hoping that one of those buyers will have a check for at least $2.3 million in his pocket, but that is by no means certain, given the soft market for luxury houses, said real estate analysts familiar with the property.
[snip]
Boston historian Thomas H. O'Connor said yesterday that the house has a legitimate place in the historic legacy of the Kennedys, who are so often associated with images of the seashore, like President Kennedy sailing or his brother, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, running on Oregon Beach with his dog Freckles.
While the transportation board debates the two-hour parking rule, I remain bewildered by the larger question of why we Brookline residents have to endure an overnight parking ban on all streets all year round.
When we have overnight guests we have to trek to the police headquarters to get a $10 Guest Overnight parking permit, drive in a two-car caravan to the designated lot where such spaces are hopefully available to drop off the guest car, and then race back to the lot by 10 a.m., the next morning so as to not get a meter fine.
Two Downtown Donut Shops Robbed
At 9:19pm last night an unknown male walked into the Dunkin Donuts on Causeway Street, demanded money from the register and said he had a gun. The suspect fled the store without any money. Within minutes, officers received a second call for a robbery at the Dunkin Donuts at 235 Washington Street, Downtown. Officers were told that a white male entered the shop, displayed a handgun and demanded money from the register. The suspect was handed an undetermined amount of money and fled the scene on foot. Officers searched the area to no avail. Both incidents are under investigation and it is unclear if the two are connected.
TOPEKA, Kan. -- The state House on Thursday overrode Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' veto of a concealed weapons bill, allowing it to become law this summer.
The vote was 91-33, giving supporters seven votes more than the required two-thirds majority. The Senate voted 30-10 for the override Wednesday night, three votes more than needed.
The new law, taking effect July 1, will permit Kansans who are U.S. citizens to apply for concealed-carry permits at their local sheriffs' offices. Applicants must be 21 and take firearms training, and hidden weapons still will be banned in some places, including schools, churches, libraries and courthouses.
Sen. Phil Journey, a sponsor of the bill, said it was "about making Kansans safer. ... It's about trusting law abiding citizens to make this choice."
While talking tough on drunken driving on Beacon Hill, gubernatorial hopeful Kerry Healey's running mate Reed Hillman went to bat for a political pal seeking a governor's pardon for three OUI busts, among other crimes, records show.
Hillman, an ex-state representative and state police colonel, wrote a letter recommending a pardon for former state Senate candidate James W. Mitchell, whose rap sheet includs three OUI arrests, an assault on a cop and another minor driving offense. Mitchell, now 72, was hoping to wipe his record clean but was denied a pardon by Gov. Mitt Romney on May 24, 2004, state records show.
Hillman, who is running for lieutenant governor on the GOP ticket with Healey, admitted last night that he knew about the drunken driving arrests but still supported Mitchell's pardon bid. He said he wrote the letter recommending Mitchell's pardon after checking with the Palmer police chief who gave Mitchell "two thumbs up."
Mitchell's OUI arrests were in 1972, 1977 and 1982. The 1972 charge was dismissed, the 1977 charge was continued for six months and later dismissed, and he was found guilty on the 1982 charge and fined $100.
"He had one conviction. If he had three convictions, I would have never done this," Hillman said. "One conviction, 20 years old. He was an elderly guy who essentially wanted to go to his grave with a clean record."
Mitchell sought the pardon after he was denied a gun license renewal because of the assault conviction but said he wanted all the charges erased from his record.
"It was a few minute things I wanted to get off my record," Mitchell said last night from his Palmer home.
Mitchell, who lost a 1976 bid for state Senate...
Wow, this is great. I am sure the women would rather have been allowed to protect themselves, but a report is just as good. Hooray for the helpless populace.
Within the past week, two women have been robbed and assaulted while walking in two different stairwells at the Boston Common Parking Garage. In both incidents, while waiting in the stairwell, the suspect grabbed the victims and pushed them against a wall. The suspect told the victim in the first incident that he is a junkie and needs money for a fix. The suspect appears to be getting more aggressive, utilizing a kitchen knife as a weapon in the latest incident.
An unidentified man is dead after apparently shooting a female acquaintance then turning the gun on himself early yesterday outside a South End rooming house.
Gunfire rattled residents of a South End street early yesterday when a man shot his estranged girlfriend in the head as she left her building and then turned the gun on himself, police and witnesses said.
According to actor and comedian Richard Belzer, American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are too uneducated to be expressing support for the U.S. military mission since they're just "19 and 20-year-old kids who couldn't get a job" and "they don't read twenty newspapers a day."
During the 2004 campaign, liberals contended that Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's experience in Vietnam as a ground soldier made him an expert on the Iraq war, but now, by Belzer's reasoning, soldiers and Marines actually on the ground in Iraq have no credibility.
A social misfit, was kicked out of every school he ever attended, due to his uncontrollable wit.
He unsuccessfully attended junior college...
Richard Belzer
Born: 4-Aug-1944
Birthplace: Bridgeport, CT
Gender: Male
Religion: Jewish
Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Comic, Actor
Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Munch on Homicide, Law & Order: SVU
Military service: US Army
Has only one testicle.
The underlying causes of gun violence in Boston are complex, and the solutions elusive. While authorities sort those out, it makes sense to attack the problem at the supply side.
[Translated: We got nothing! Guns are bad! More gun control!]
Boston police believe that a hard-core group of offenders who commit repeated gun and other crimes are driving much of the city's worrying surge in street violence.
In an extensive review of the records of 597 people arrested last year on charges of illegal possession of firearms, police officials found that nearly one-third had one or more prior arrests and that only 13 percent were in custody in mid-January as a result of their 2005 firearms charges.
"When people see that somebody commits a crime and the community knows that he commits the crime or believes that he did and that person's on the street and we're talking about very, very serious crimes ... the perception in the community is that the government, the police, the courts have not done their job," Police Superintendent Robert Dunford said in an interview yesterday.
The study, obtained by the Globe, shows:
- Thirty percent of the 597 people arrested last year on charges of illegal gun possession had had at least one other firearm possession charge.
- Nearly 20 percent of those arrested in 2005 had been rearrested by mid-January of this year for firearm, violent crime, and drug offenses.
- The 597 had amassed an average of 22 criminal charges, including an average of six firearm-related charges, in their lifetime. One person had 39 firearm-related charges.
One suspect profiled in the study has been arrested on gun charges five times. He had amassed 41 adult criminal charges and had been released on bail after his fourth gun arrest in August. Police say the suspect was arrested in January on charges of shooting someone in December.
Massachusetts and eight other states have reached a $171 million settlement with Zurich American Insurance Co. relating to bid-rigging and price-fixing in the commercial insurance market, the states' attorneys general announced Sunday.
[snip]
Added Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly: "Bid-rigging is a serious offense that will not be tolerated ... Insurance companies will not get away with deceiving their customers, inflating prices, or manipulating the insurance marketplace."
With so many ways to divert guns illegally, it is hard to know where to begin.
Good answers are offered by Robert Ricker, a former lobbyist and attorney for gun makers and gun rights groups who is now a major critic of extreme elements of the gun lobby.
Requiring background checks before any purchase at gun shows, says Ricker, would be the best route to disrupt the illicit trade. Massachusetts already requires checks for such sales, including those by private parties. But gun show rules are looser in New Hampshire and Maine, which explains why weapons from these states are cropping up in Boston.
Ricker also backs laws to outlaw the purchase of more than one handgun in any 30-day period.
Such laws would not affect sportsmen...
...but would greatly disrupt bulk purchases by straw buyers fronting for convicted criminals who are prohibited from buying from licensed dealers.
The underlying causes of gun violence in Boston are complex, and the solutions elusive. While authorities sort those out, it makes sense to attack the problem at the supply side.
“There’s some dangerous people out there,” [Manchester Alderman, and retired police officer, Armand] Forest said.
"I want to believe that this is maybe a fad for a little while ... I don’t think this is going to last forever."
He added: “We just got an influx of undesirable people here, and we have to do something to deal with it."
ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — A gunman opened fire early Friday at a Denny's restaurant, killing one man and seriously wounding another, police said. It was the third fatal shooting at the restaurant chain in Southern California this week.
A bill making it a crime to drive while using a cellphone without a hands-free device moved from committee to the full House yesterday.
Violations would be punished by a $250 fine for the first offense and a $500 fine for the second.
PISMO BEACH, California (AP) -- A gunman opened fire inside a crowded Denny's restaurant during lunch hour Wednesday, killing two people and wounding two before taking his own life, police said.
Attorney General Tom Reilly signed a secrecy pact that will conceal information about leaky Big Dig tunnels unless the same company whose work is being investigated grants him permission to disclose it.
The five-year confidentiality agreement among Reilly, the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority and Big Dig general contractor Bechtel Parsons Brinkerhoff [sic] states that data on the tunnel leaks cannot be divulged "without the written consent of all three parties."
"I've never heard of a state attorney general voluntarily gagging himself," said Eric Fehrnstrom, spokesman for Gov. Mitt Romney.
"What Tom Reilly has done is to delegate to Bechtel and the Turnpike Authority the power to determine what he can say, when he says it or even if he says anything at all. That is not in the public interest."
Former Pike board member Christy Mihos, a frequent Big Dig critic who is running for governor, said the confidentiality agreement "represents the dark side of government in the commonwealth."
Asked why Reilly would enter into a confidentiality agreement with Bechtel, [Reilly spokesman David] Guarino said: "Bechtel controls the project at this point. WeÂre doing monitoring in their project and of course they have to be a part of this. At the end of the day, we control this data."
News of the agreement comes as Reilly continues to mull whether to move forward with a lawsuit against Bechtel to recover taxpayer money allegedly misused on the project or seek a settlement. The AG has been criticized for dragging his feet on the probe while accepting donations from Big Dig contractors and their lobbyists. Reilly recently returned more than $5,000 in contributions from such firms but has kept money from Bechtel lobbyists.
A serial child molester recently put back on probation despite fleeing to Florida sued the state in 2004, claiming his civil rights were violated when officials banned him from living in a Roxbury mosque that housed a day-care center.
Glen Wheeler, who molested and made sex videos of several Winchendon children as young as 5, claimed in the suit that his First Amendment right to practice his religion was "being infringed upon by the terms of his probation, particularly the provisions which require him to stay away from children."
Wheeler, who converted to Islam and changed his name to Shareef Abdul Qadeer while in jail...
Opinion and commentary, garnished with a sprig of cynicism, served with a heaping side order of sarcasm, and washed down with a tall glass of common sense, by a gun-toting political refugee from the People's Progressive Republic of Massachusetts, currently residing in New Hampshire and doing what he can to keep the Granite State beautiful and free.
Available now! Click HERE
T-shirts, stickers, n' shit. Click HERE
massbackwards (AT)
comcast (DOT) net
