Destruction – in both a literal and constitutional sense – has been left in the wake of the eight-year Texas tornado that was the George W. Bush presidency. Citizens are understandably upset, but criminal prosecutions of former (or current, for that matter) government officials, cathartic as they may first appear, are not the answer.

The Boston Globe’s metro columnist, Kevin Cullen, has a revealing piece in the January 22nd issue about Harvard’s cozying-up with Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy, who is holding political prisoner Fathi Eljahmi, while Harvard Business School is hosting and promoting Khadafy’s son, Saif Al-Islam. (And, notes Cullen, the Globe published an op-ed by Khadafy after receiving an entreaty from the Libyan family’s New York-based public relations firm.

If Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan is confirmed as the nation’s first female solicitor general – she’s been nominated to supervise all federal government litigation in the Supreme Court by HLS alum and President-elect Barack Obama – she would be addressed as “General Kagan” by the justices (and by others as well), New York Times Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak noted on January 7th.

By Kyle Smeallie & Harvey Silverglate

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em – or at least have them join you.

That appears to be the newly-adopted attitude of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), marking a logical denouement to the celebrated case this past summer in which three MIT students uncovered technological vulnerabilities in the fare collection system.