Daniel Kerrigan, 70, father of Olympic silver medalist Nancy Kerrigan, has died in Stoneham, Massachusetts.

Kerrigan’s brother, 45-year-old Mark Kerrigan, has been arrested on a count of assault and battery on a person over 60 following his father’s death. Nancy Kerrigan’s mother, clearly distraught, spoke to press this morning about the incident during which her husband suffered a “massive heart attack” and subsequently died, and the Boston Herald quoted a police report describing the alleged assault:

A five-page police report of the alleged assault at the Kerrigan Cedar Avenue home in Stoneham states both father and son were yelling and pushing “back and forth” until the elder Kerrigan fell over.

The police report states Brenda Kerrigan told police the two men were battling until her husband fell. Police also report Mark Kerrigan put his “hands around his father’s neck” and he said he thought his dad was “faking it” when he fell to the floor.

Mark Kerrigan had to be subdued with pepper spray, the police report states. He also appeared intoxicated, the report adds.

Kerrigan is perhaps best known for the attack on her by rival Tonya Harding’s camp in 1992. She later went on to take the silver medal in women’s figure skating.

I don’t talk about politics in public company. It’s one of my rules. I especially don’t talk about American politics even though I probably know it better than I know the politics of my own country.

So why am I stepping into the piranha infested arena of American politics where one can find oneself shredded to the bone faster than you can whistle a teabagger’s theme song?

Because there has been a shift and I figured that maybe an outsider message to President Obama might be in order.

You see normally I talk about things like Social Media and how it has the potential to change our society but then I see how the Democrats have had their collective asses handed to them by an ex-nude model and I wonder if social change is nothing more than a figment of our imaginations.

It is not only handed to them on a silver platter but it happens in the very state that believed in and supported the father of healthcare: Ted Kennedy. While the dissection over the loss will occupy the Democrat party for sometime the message couldn’t be any clearer.

The message is clear President Obama.

The people of the United States do not want healthcare reform.

They don’t care that their country has one of the largest number of people in the civilized world who can’t afford any kind of healthcare.

They don’t care that more people in the greatest democracy in the world face total bankruptcy due to a family member getting sick.

They don’t care that healthcare companies continue to make billions while they make coverage more and more expensive and cover less.

So President Obama I have a suggestion for you.

It’s time to get out of the healthcare business – all of it (excluding the VA).

Seriously. You of all people know that between Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid the United States will be irrevocably on the road to bankruptcy. You can’t afford what you are already providing and as we look to a future of a tsunami of baby boomers reaching retirement the debt required to support them will be mind boggling.

Those who have opposed any change as well as those against any government healthcare support argue that the market or private business will be able to cover the needs of the people.

So, let them.

Get out of the healthcare business President Obama. Shut down Medicare and Medicaid. Let the market handle the problem. Let the healthcare companies meter out care as they see fit. After all this is what the people are telling you.

In the microcosm of Massachusetts – the home of the liberals, the home of the social giants better known as The Kennedy’s – you have been told that healthcare isn’t the responsibility of the government. You’ve been smacked across the face by the very people who helped put you in that office.

Sure it will be a bitter pill to swallow President Obama but at least you will be able to face the American people and tell them that you have given them exactly what they wanted.

Yup. Exactly what they wanted.

A few days before she returned home to Massachusetts from a cruise near Bermuda, 8 year old Meagan Bilodeau dropped a message in a bottle into the ocean, hoping for a new penpal.

Meagan wanted the bottle to find her a cool new penpal, and it did. 11-year-old Teddy Herrick fished the bottle out of the water and read the message inside:

“I always wished someone would find my bottle if I sent one. If found, would you kindly write back to me? Please? Please? Please?” the letter read.

It was early June when the bottle was sent, and Teddy found the message in late July. The girls are excited to be penpals, but they could just hang out in person. In its under-two-months long journey, the bottle was recovered by the second girl less than twenty miles from Meagan’s Falmouth, MA home.

CNN spoke to a pro about the probable travel trajectory for the bottle:

The most likely path for the bottle would have been to or near the United Kingdom, but an eddy could have broken it away from the Gulf Stream, allowing it to float to Massachusetts, said Jenifer Clark, a satellite oceanographer who works for her own company in Maryland after years of employment with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

A phenomenon that is becoming all too familiar has claimed another victim, 23-year-old Darlene Haynes.

Haynes was found by her landlord, murdered in her Worcester, Massachusetts apartment after police responded to a ”horrifying smell.” Haynes was stashed in a closet and wrapped in bedding, her body so badly decomposed that police had difficulty even confirming her gender. She was approximately eight months pregnant at the time of her death and police are searching frantically for her child, who may have survived the attack.

Although police have not named a suspect, relatives confirmed to media that Haynes was experiencing “harassment” by both her baby’s father and her overly intrusive landlord. Haynes leaves behind three other daughters aged 5, 3 and 1.

Cases of fetal abduction are generally perpetrated by desperate women who have faked a pregnancy and need to produce a child to bear out their deception. In June, 21-year-old Heather Snively was killed in Oregon for her baby. The child did not survive the attack.