Current Events

Tonight on WCVB-TV’s Chronicle: See the Real World of Lowell’s “The Fighter”

Tonight Chronicle – WCVB/Channel 5’s  iconic television magazine program – tells the tale of the real people and the real world behind the awarding-winning, made-in-Lowell movie –  “The Fighter.” From the Chronicle website: It’s taken in more than 70 million dollars at the box office, and took home seven Oscar…

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In the Merrimack Valley: Democratic Caucuses Scheduled for Saturday February 5th

The window for holding the caucuses to elect delegates to the 2011 Democratic Convention on June 4th in Lowell opens this Saturday February 5th and closes on Saturday February 19th. Here is a list of the first group of local  Greater Lowell/Merrimack Valley area caucuses: Saturday February 5th: Andover – Saturday,…

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Mandatory minimum drug sentences

Back in the late 1980s when I did a lot of criminal defense work, the “war on drugs” adopted minimum mandatory sentences as its tactic of choice. The most onerous and ill-considered was a mandatory minimum 5 year sentence for a second offense of distribution of heroin. In the abstract,…

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Egypt: The Revolution

  “…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers…

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Unrest in Egypt

The last time I remember rioting in the streets in the Middle East, it was 1979 and the people of Iran overthrew the Shah. Islamic fundamentalists seized control, the US Embassy was seized and its staff taken hostage, and the world became a much more dangerous place. Could the same…

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