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A decade after the ‘Boston Miracle,’ violent crime has again overtaken parts of the city. Can the miracle makers create a new peace?
In the early infancy of this five-week-old year, Boston has been rocked by four homicides and 10 non-fatal shootings. By the time this goes to print, there may well be more.

In the early infancy of this five-week-old year, Boston has been rocked by four homicides and 10 non-fatal shootings. By the time this goes to print, there may well be more. On January 24 alone, a 22-year-old male died at Boston Medical Center after being shot near his home in Mattapan. Blocks away, police busted a man the same age for gun possession following another shootout. And in East Boston, cops arrested a 13 year old for armed robbery. Needless to say, residents of Greater Boston have seen brighter, less bloody days.

Once upon a time, though, the Hub won more accolades for curbing violence than for all its pro-sports feats combined. After initiating bold tactics that dramatically stunted youth-homicide rates in the late 1990s, efforts to curb street violence were heralded as models for reducing gang killings and shootings nationwide. In 1997, President Bill Clinton came here to launch a national safety plan aimed at replicating the “Boston Strategy to Prevent Youth Violence” in other metropolises. That same year, Mayor Tom Menino was singled out for honors at the United States Conference of Mayors, where he received the Ford Foundation Innovations Award for presiding over what was popularly hailed as the “Boston Miracle.”

Soon after, Newsweek ran a cover story touting the cooperation between Boston police, pols, community members, and black clergy.And in 1999, when the number of homicides plunged from an all-time high of 150 to 31, its lowest rate in two generations, other large cities — including New York — adopted Boston-type plans to combat their own spiking murder trends.

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Obama’s days of greatest power and popularity lie before him. But be warned: he might not do what you want with it.
Barack Obama’s popularity should not be judged by the day-to-day, media-driven vagaries of politics — nor by the wishful thinking of his opponents.

Barack Obama’s popularity should not be judged by the day-to-day, media-driven vagaries of politics — nor by the wishful thinking of his opponents. Current Republican leaders — trying to capitalize on momentary blips, and hoping to boost optimism and activism within their diminished ranks — are nonetheless trying their best.

The Obama skeptics are fond of invoking comparisons between 2009 and 1993. That was the year that the last Democratic president took over from a Republican predecessor, and it led to dramatic GOP off-year gains the following election — in reaction, it is said, to the same liberal over-reaching we now see with Obama.

It’s the wrong analogy. A more apt precedent is 1981, when Ronald Reagan was struggling with a recession in his first year in office.

Then, as now, the president had charged into office with a majority of the popular vote (unlike Bill Clinton, who won just 43 percent of the vote in 1992) — along with a wave of party gains in the House and Senate.

But by early November of 1981, according to a New York Times poll, Reagan’s approval rating had dipped to 53 percent. (Obama is right around the same figure today.) Reagan’s numbers continued to decline, plunging into the low 40s (and even lower by some measures), as unemployment continued to climb through his second year in office.

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In his new book, Three Felonies a Day , Harvey Silverglate dissects the corrupt justice practiced by federal prosecutors
Silverglate’s thesis is as provocative as it is simple: justice has become sufficiently perverted in this nation that federal prosecutors, if they put their minds to it, could find a way to indict almost any one of us for almost anything. It is a truly radical notion.

Harvey Silverglate is a difficult talent to pigeonhole. A combative criminal appellate and trial lawyer, he has dedicated himself to defending civil liberties in their broadest definition. In the process, Silverglate has carved out a special reputation as a scourge of campus-based “political correctness,” and has won numerous awards for his long-standing legal and political coverage in the Phoenix.

Now, he has published his second book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (Encounter Books, $25.95).

Silverglate’s thesis is as provocative as it is simple: justice has become sufficiently perverted in this nation that federal prosecutors, if they put their minds to it, could find a way to indict almost any one of us for almost anything. It is a truly radical notion.

Silverglate presents a series of freestanding case studies that range from Wall Street to the Massachusetts State House, to Boston City Hall, to a suburban doctor’s office, to a Midwest university, to the newsroom of the New York Times.

At this curious moment in history, Silverglate’s book might not shock either the left or the right. For some time now, the two opposing wings of the American centrist polity have been alarmed by the predatory nature of our national government. For those in the middle of the political spectrum, however, Silverglate’s book should be a bracing wake-up call. Liberty and freedom are being compromised, one prosecution at a time.

Your book was written during the Bush years. But now, Barack Obama is president. Why should the concerns you lay out inThree Felonies a Daystill be on progressive minds? The big, bad Bush Republicans are gone.
You raise an interesting point. A lot of my liberal friends assume that my book is about prosecutions under the eight years of Bush. This, however, is not a phenomenon that is relegated to any particular political party. The abuses are found under every president from Reagan to today.

Including Clinton and Obama?
Under Clinton, yes. And I see little reason to think that they will not continue under Obama.

Pinpoint when prosecutors began running amok.
The mid 1980s. That’s when I began to notice this phenomenon. I have been a criminal-defense and civil-liberties lawyer from 1967 onward, so somewhere short of two decades into my legal career is when I noticed this problem.

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