Perhaps the Boston Globe should keep an edited version of this story in its files until events warrant publication. The edited version might look like this:

Report says legal system fails boys in trouble

By Frank Labour, Globe Staff, 10/10/2010

In a Dorchester street, a 42-year-old woman lay stabbed in the head and chest, one of her daughters bleeding from her side, another daughter with broken teeth -- all victims, police say, of an attack by two young lads, one 15, the other 11.

The current story -- the one concerning wayward girls --, this sad story is reminiscent of the political fervor of the Boston Globe in some of its good (i.e., its most "liberal," its most "progressive") old days, days when it might have carried the following sort of story:

Boston incinerated by hydrogen bomb: Minorities and women disproportionately affected!

--Yes, yes: I confess, I confess, yes, I do confess: I have used this line before -- and I even borrowed it from some other source (a trustworthy but not confidential one) without giving credit. Mea culpa! But in mitigation: the Boston Globe is such a tempting target.

The Boston Globe might have said -- now I am not saying that the Boston Globe should have said; no, I am not saying that --, but I do say that I am warranted in saying that the Boston Globe might have said that the legal system failed the three stabbing victims, the ones who were waylaid by the wayward girls who were so badly let down by our legal system.

The pages of the Boston Globe are just replete with failure, aren't they?