West of 495

The Supreme Judicial Court today overturned a Hudson man's conviction for plying his underage daughter with spiked lemonade, but said he was guilty of contributing to the delinquency of a minor for serving the same booze to her even more underage friend, because state law gives parents the right to serve liquor to their children.

The state's highest court also ordered a new trial for John Parent on a charge of pawing his daughter's friend as all three lay together on a sofa bed - saying his trial judge erred in not letting his lawyer press a case that testimony by a police detective was not valid because he was the second person the girl allegedly told about getting felt up and that he should have been allowed to pursue alleged inconsistencies in her story.

June 9, 1953 was hot and humid. The weather bureau predicted thunderstorms, some possibly severe, for central Massachusetts. It got those storms - and an F4 tornado that touched down to the northwest of Worcester, creating a trail of death and destruction that ended only at the Framingham line, after the Fayville post office was flattened. In all, 96 people died that day.

Among the photographers who rushed to chronicle the damage was, of course, Leslie Jones:

On commuter rail to Worcester this morning.

Looking out the window.

Earlier:
Furor on the Red Line over Strollercat.

Anthony Weiner, meet John Fresolo.

So this guy out in the Berkshires gets his license taken away after his second OUI conviction, appeals 10 years later to get it reinstated, to which the state agrees on condition he install one of those in-dash breath-tester gizmos, which he installs, only then he takes it out and gets caught and has his license taken away.

And then, two years later, he's stopped again and charged with violating the "ignition interlock device" condition and is convicted on that charge.

The Massachusetts Appeals Court today threw out that conviction, agreeing with Sean Pettit that he should never have gone to trial for violating a license restriction when he no longer had a license. Yeah, that kind of violates the intent of Melanie's Law to try to reduce the number of drunks on the roads, but it's up to the legislature to fix the inconsistency if it wants to crack down on repeat drunk drivers this way, the court writes:

Join Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders at our annual Summer Party held outside in the heart of Provincetown, MA on Saturday, July 27 from 4:00-7:00PM. Enjoy the view of the harbor, mingle with other GLAD supporters and learn more about our ground-breaking cases.

Tickets are $75 online | $85 on site | $30 student
Purchase at www.glad.org/events.

Don't miss our amazing auction and celebrity auctioneer Kate Clinton. You don't have to be present to win. Travel packages, restaurants, massages, and much more - something for everyone!

Children are welcome to attend (at no charge) and will enjoy a range of fun activities.

Delicious summer fare and refreshing cocktails provided.

More information, tickets and sponsorships are available at www.glad.org/events.

Armando Sajous captured a trolley speeding down the turnpike near Springfield, on its way to a New York facility for an overhaul.

Earlier:
Bet you didn't know Green Line trolleys can do 65.

Via Boston Reddit.

WBZ provides the basics - this time the chemist is out in Amherst, not JP.

Michael Ratty:

Guessing Herald hed: "DEUX-KHAN"

Steve Annear:

That, or "ANOTHER LAB RAT"

In a lawsuit filed yesterday, AMD charged that a former vice president and three managers at its Boxborough plant left for jobs at rival NVidia only after copying more than 100,000 confidential documents to take with them to their new jobs.

The suit, filed in US District Court in Worcester against Robert Feldstein and three managers, seeks the return of the files and, naturally, large sums of money, under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and a Massachusetts trade-secrets law. AMD says the files cover everything from details of upcoming AMD technology to contracts with large customers.

Maureen Rogers reviews the dismal attendance at Gillette Stadium for UMass football games - and the $5 million the state school is paying in rent:

What's wrong with having a nice little local program? Play the other New England state universities, and schools like Holy Cross? Why not keep it on campus, where students can attend more easily? What's wrong with 13,000 people watching a football game on a nice Indian Summer day? Does it have to be 90,000 diehards screaming for blood?

Personally, I'd rather see that taxpayer money go for scholarships, or labs, or a few more professors.

Forget putting medical marijuana on the ballot. Can't we vote on this?

You know it's bad, Lee Ann Hooley tweets this morning, when the conductor announces "If you do need to get into town quickly, I suggest you drive."

Hooley and AsianKerr were among the hostages this morning on the Fitchburg Line, where yet another choo-choo went bye-bye, forcing commuters to wait for another train to come up and get hitched to their train for the long, even slower ride into Boston.

AsianKerr was onboard the 6:30 train when she tweeted at 6:50:

20 min later still waiting for my Fitchburg train to leave and a guy comes out of the engine holding a hose #notagoodsign

At 7:30, she adds, the train still hadn't moved.

Hooley adds her ride was not improved by her seatmate:

Oh awesome. The guy next to me is on the phone telling his girlfriend he wants to "suck on her neck and shit."

Roving UHub photographer Will Bussiere was roving all the way out in Charlton yesterday when he spotted a Green Line trolley on the back of a flatbed on the turnpike. No clue why.

Earlier:

• Trolley on 128
• Trolley on a train

Massachusetts officials say an emerald ash borer was found in Dalton in the western part of the state on Aug. 31, the first time the destructive pest has been detected in the state.

The bug, named for its color and the way it bores into ash trees, is a potential threat to the vast numbers of ash trees in both western and eastern Massachusetts. State officials say any area where the bug shows up will be subject to the same sort of quarantine familiar to Jamaica Plain residents confronted by the sudden menace of Asian longhorned beetles in 2010.

Davis looks at unfinished coach in Korea. Photo via MBTA.

Acting MBTA General Manager is in Korea this week, trying to find out why the new commuter-rail coaches riders were supposed to enjoying now are nowhere near finished.

Autism Intervention Specialists of Worcester and principal Nassim Aoude today filed a federal libel suit against a New Hampshire man who says it peddles "horseshit" because it refuses to accept his theory that autism is caused by mercury in vaccines.

In its suit, filed in US District Court in Boston, Autism Intervention Specialists wants John Best's blog posts about it replaced with retractions and a suitably large, if unspecified, amount of damages.

The concern pointed to two specific blog posts by Best, one in which he called it pure bullshit, the other in which he calls its employees pure jackasses, and accused Aoude of profiteering on the backs of autism patients:

The Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled today a state law on bank embezzlement should not have been used to prosecute a Worcester couple convicted of staging a fake robbery so that they could make off with money from the credit union where the wife worked.

The Supreme Judicial Court today overturned the involuntary-manslaughter conviction of a Milford woman who didn't seek medical help when giving birth to a baby in the breech position at home.

The state's highest court ruled the state failed to prove the baby would have been born alive or could have been saved even if Alissa Pugh had sought help and that the judge also erred by "imposing a criminal law duty on a woman in childbirth to seek medical assistance." The court added:

A federal appeals court today upheld a North Grafton man's nine-year prison sentence for possession and distribution of child pornography over the Internet.

T. Patrick Kearney argued FBI agents didn't have probable cause for a search warrant of his house - which resulted in the seizure of computers with images of children engaged in sexual acts - because his Internet service provider assigned him a dynamic, or temporary, IP address and that there was inadequate proof that he was the one actually using that address to upload copies of the images.

But in its first ever ruling involving the nature of IP addresses, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said Kearney might have had a case if only records hadn't shown the address was used to repeatedly access MySpace and Yahoo accounts Kearney was using.

Honolulu is building an el (a $5.3-billion el) and the people in charge want to hire our own Dan Grabauskas to oversee it. Wonder if he gets an SUV out of the deal.

His current boss, at the Bronner Group, couldn't be more thrilled:

It is only fitting that America's most exciting mass transit project - in Honolulu - should have a transformational leader like Dan.

Channel 4 reports.

read more at bluemassgroup

J.L. Bell reports that while the widow of Benedict Arnold died in Uxbridge, she was not the widow of that Benedict Arnold. Seems Benedict was a popular name back then.

The Globe reports twas falling asleep at the wheel while doing 75 m.p.h. - and then accelerating past 100 m.p.h. - that led to the wreck of the state-owned Murraymobile.

Richard Beaubien went outside at sunset in Bolton tonight.

Copyright Richard Beaubien. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

A Worcester Line train died this morning in Natick; commuters on that train and the one behind it, which wound up pushing it into town, were, of course, seriously late.

Some trains into North Station were delayed by the ever popular switch problems. At least one Greenbush train was also late because, well, who knows?