What are the characteristics of a good patriot? Professor Steve Nathanson of Northeastern University weighs in.

What I remember most about Charleston in 1963: the August heat that no courtroom fan could defeat and my NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) colleague Connie Motley, a woman I once described as ” solid as an oak tree…who suffered little nonsense” from segregationists. The Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional in 1954–one of the […]

The United States Supreme Court traditionally closes up shop for the summer at the end of June, releasing a spate of opinions and heralding a season that has become a Super Bowl for law nerds. To some court-watchers, this event pits two staunch rivals against one another.  There is the offensive-minded blue team (Justices Breyer, […]

WGBH Legal Analyst Daniel Medwed reviews with WGBH Morning Edition host Bob Seay the U.S. Supreme Court’s final decisions this session on lethal injection, EPA and mercury emitted from coal-fired power plants, and an aggressive panhandling ordinance in Worcester.

Today, most of the debt is held by government agencies and international institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, that should be able to weather a Greek default, said Alan Clayton-Matthews, an economist at Northeastern University. “This is a huge problem if you’re Greek,” he said. “Financial markets have taken precautions already to insulate themselves.” […]

“I think on Friday, Obama finally let his hair down. He became — as we’ve been joking all weekend — ‘Reverend President Obama,'” the Rev. Emmett G. Price III said Monday onBoston Public Radio. “His eulogy was masterfully crafted. I think it will go down in history as one of his most powerful moments.” “We hadn’t heard […]

“This very well could be someone who’s enjoying the impact they’re having by terrifying strangers,” James Alan Fox, an interim dean of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Boston, told NJ Advance Media. “It makes them feel powerful. They get a thrill from it.” No other neighbors have reported issues, […]

Much more than race, gender appears to have a direct correlation on whether or not someone becomes a killer. “Murder is a man’s crime,” said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University. Fox, who disagrees with the criteria Mother Jones used to report on mass shootings, offered various explanations: Men are often more likely […]

THOMAS STARR Boston The writer is a professor of graphic design at Northeastern University. Regarding “public art,” one must first define “art.” And who are the arbiters? Your “beauty” may very well be my “disgusting,” your “deep expression” my “what?” With such a wide variety of tastes, the display of anyone’s version of “art” should […]

“It seemed like the microbe is perfectly protected, and that we had hit a dead end,” Kim Lewis, Director of the Antimicrobial Discovery Center at Northeastern University, said in a statement. However he and his colleagues didn’t give up. “One clue that followed from analyzing [the dormant Lyme cells’] genome was that important genes responsible […]

Nurse practitioners are assuming a more prominent role in primary care. Maryland is the latest state to allow this group to practice independently, and the Veterans Health Administration may soon follow suit. The drivers for this trend are clear: the expansion of health insurance in the U.S. and our aging population, both producing heavy demand […]

Rants and Raves – Northeastern University’s Dan Kennedy (@dankennedy_nu), WGBH’s Callie Crossley(@CallieCrossley), The Boston Globe’s Farah Stockman(@fstockman), and WGBH’s Adam Reilly (@reillyadam) share their media hits and misses for the week.