Our Twitter book club has read so many books in so many varieties, it’s hard to believe we’ve neglected one of the most vibrant, creative categories of all: children’s lit. As any parent knows, the best representatives of the genre are hardly just for kids. My wife and I, for instance, battle ceaselessly over who […]

Gov. Deval Patrick is offering more specifics on his sweeping plan to raise income taxes and cut the sales tax, which he first outlined last week. This afternoon, the governor presented a $34.8 billion spending plan for the next fiscal year. There’d be more money for transportation and education and more aid to cities and […]

According to FBI statistics analyzed by James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University, the number of reported killings of children younger than a year old by a baby sitter hasn’t changed significantly since 1976, when there were 20.  

President Barack Obama pledged in his inaugural address on Monday to respond to the threat of climate change, saying: “The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But Americans cannot resist this transition. We must lead it.” So, why is addressing climate change so ‘difficult’?

Wednesday morning’s Green Line fire wasn’t just an inconvenience for MBTA riders – it was also an opportunity for Mass. Governor Deval Patrick to make a point about his new budget. The budget includes more than $1 billion in new transportation spending, some of which would be used to upgrade the antiquated MBTA system. The […]

MOST OF us know that we have a criminal justice system that rewards confession with leniency. Many are less aware of the coin’s other side — that the few who contemplate asking a judge and jury to decide whether they are guilty are threatened with far greater punishment solely for exercising their right to a […]

n the aftermath of the Newtown school massacre, one of the few reforms advocated by both the president and the NRA involves increasing the presence of resource officers in the schools. This also happens to be one of the few recommendations that has a realistic chance of improving the safety of our children — and […]

It’s Massachusetts’ version of the federal tax debate that bitterly divided Congress: Will tax increases of the kind recently proposed by Governor Deval Patrick help or hurt the local economy? And much like the federal debate, economists disagree. Some support the governor’s plan, lauding it for creating jobs and making the state more attractive to […]

The price of college has been skyrocketing for years – many private schools are closing in on $60,000 a year once you factor in books, mandatory fees, and housing. And, online courses are now proliferating: we’re facing obvious questions: what will happen to the traditional university? The quad? The professors? And, perhaps most importantly, the […]

President Barack Obama’s choice of Myrlie Evers-Williams to deliver the invocation at his second inauguration shifts the nation’s gaze on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, ever so gently from the euphoric post-racialism of a black presidency to a legacy of racial violence that has not yet been put to bed, as it also signals, […]

Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison (right) joined Northeastern University School of Law Professor Margaret Burnham (left) for a discussion about civil rights and writing on Friday night. The event was called “No Welcome Home: Remembering Harms and Restoring Justice,” and was hosted by the Northeastern School of Law’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project and […]

SERIAL NUMBERS Northeastern University researcher Glenn Pierce is a co-author of a RAND Corporation study (link.reuters.com/byb45t) of Los Angeles ammunition purchase logs from April and May 2004 that found 2.8 percent of purchases were by prohibited possessors. He sees regulating sales as the first step in ammunition control. The second is to put serial numbers […]