Dear Friend of Justice,

The Pittsfield police gave Bee's mother a nice Mother's Day present -- they descended en masse, lights flashing, on her home this morning.

They pounded on her door, demanding Bee, claiming that they had a warrant for his arrest.

When they conceded to Bee's brother that they in fact had no warrant, they were denied admission.

Judge Locke had issued Bee a court order giving him permission to visit his mother from yesterday through Monday morning.

No one bothered to tell the people who do the GPS monitoring or the Pittsfield Police.

One of the most amazing things about Massachusetts government is its gross incompetence -- gross incompetence that extends all the way to the top.

PITTSFIELD — A Dalton man cannot be charged with kidnapping his own children, his attorney argued yesterday, because the children were not in the state's jurisdiction when a Juvenile Court put them in state custody.

Louis A. Piccone, 45, is facing kidnapping charges in what the state claims is a case of international flight, in which the parents spirited the children to Russia — where their mother is a citizen — via Canada and Paris.

Piccone and his wife, Elena, were under investigation by the state Department of Social Services for alleged abuse of one of their three children. On Jan. 18, the DSS persuaded a Juvenile Court judge to grant the agency temporary custody of the children while the investigation was carried out.

But John G. Swomley, a Boston attorney representing Piccone, argued during a hearing in Central Berkshire District Court yesterday that the Juvenile Court had no authority over the children because they left the state on Jan. 15 — three days before the hearing — and were staying in New York. Swomley said the children never returned to Massachusetts after that date.