A Level 1 sex offender from Wakefield was indicted for raping and abusing at least 13 children at an unlicensed day care service run by his wife.

The boys and girls from Reading, Stoneham, Melrose, and Wakefield ranged in age from just eight days to 3 1/2 years old.

Middlesex District Attorney Gerard Leone said John Burbine videotaped his attacks on the children and posed them in a suggestive manner. “I’ve never seen a case this bad,” Leone said.

Burbine’s wife is also facing charges of recklessly endangering children and running an unlicensed day care operation. Investigators said she knew about her husband’s past and even told neighbors to keep their children away from him. Nevertheless, she apparently arranged for him to supervise infants and toddlers.

Soul searching about the state’s justice system and its system for tracking sex offenders has already begun. Burbine was convicted of child sex abuse in 1989. He was classified by the state’s Sex Offender Registry Board as a Level 1 sex offender, meaning he was considered at low risk of reoffending. Yet he was investigated in 2005 and 2009 on suspicion of sexually abusing young boys. In both instances, Leone said, investigators determined the charges were “not prosecutable” because the victims would not come forward.

The pictures of Level 1 offenders and their crimes are not listed on the state’s Sex Offender Registry website, but information on Level 1 offenders is provided to local and state law enforcement officials. Laurie Myers, who has pushed for tougher sex offender laws, told the Boston Herald that state lawmakers should require Level 1 offenders to be listed on the state website along with Level 2 and 3 offenders so parents can check them out.

Many Massachusetts communities have enacted ordinances restricting where sex offenders can live and sometimes go. The theory behind the ordinances is that if restrictions are placed on where sex offenders can live or go public safety will be enhanced. The ordinances have been criticized as ineffective because it is rare that a sex offender will assault someone randomly; sex offenders typically victimize family members or people they are in regular contact with. The Burbine case would seem to fall in the latter category. Burbine’s wife appears to have put him in child-care situations where he came in regular contact with his victims.

                                                                                                    –BRUCE MOHL

BEACON HILL

Gov. Deval Patrick says he intends to finish his term and then head to the private sector. Maybe he just wants to make more money, CommonWealth reports.

Patrick has blamed Washington gridlock and the looming fiscal cliff for the slowdown in the state’s economy. Economists beg to differ.

US Attorney Carmen Ortiz for governor? The Globe’s Frank Phillips reports that none other than Gov. Patrick himself is talking up the idea, and doing so to the top two leaders in the Legislature — even though lawmakers are bracing for possible indictments of legislators from Ortiz’s office in the Probation Department patronage investigation.

Sen. Fred Berry says goodbye after 30 years on Beacon Hill.

Globe editorial page to municipal leaders angry over proposed local aid cuts:  Stop yer whining.

MUNICIPAL MATTERS

Newton police increase security around Mayor Setti Warren but decline to say why.

The Eagle-Tribune reports on a laborer let go by the Lawrence Department of Public Works after taking a series of unpaid leaves to take care of his dying wife. The paper tries to juxtapose that sad tale with the agency’s hiring of former state rep Jose Santiago as a laborer. Coincidence or the machinations of Mayor William Lantigua?

A statue of the baby Jesus stolen from a Nativity scene next to Quincy City Hall is back after being found in a cemetery about a mile away. The statue had once before become the focus of a search when it was stolen in 2004 and recovered after the Patriot Ledger posted a reward.

A biotech development Cambridge officials let die on the vine is back for more.

The town of Plainville is having difficulties getting paid the town’s share of betting receipts at Suffolk Downs and the Plainridge Racecourse. Town officials blame the state’s new casino law, which, they say, may have inadvertently eliminated the mechanism allowing the state to distribute the funds.

NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON

Ezra Klein of The Washington Post argues that the appointment of South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint as head of the Heritage Foundation signals the death of think tanks.

Time suggests a cap on charitable tax deductions won’t be a death knell for nonprofits.

Sen. Mitch McConnell takes a hard line in the ongoing budget deliberations, but that’s ok, since House Speaker John Boehner has chased Senate leaders and Nancy Pelosi out of the negotiating room, leaving fiscal cliff talks down to himself and President Obama.

Some high-profile 1 percenters, including new Red Sox acquisition Mike Napoli, look to protect their bounty from the tax hit of the fiscal cliff.

ELECTIONS

Lowell Sun columnist Peter Lucas contrasts the negligible cost of filling the Senate seat vacated when John F. Kennedy became president with the multimillion-dollar circus that would ensue now if Sen. John F. Kerry takes another job. The Wall Street Journal goes after Kerry’s Vietnam record.

Mitt Romney’s campaign had $25 million left after the election. Maybe he can write Elizabeth Warren a check?  (OK, maybe not.)  Meanwhile, Romney strategist Stuart Stevens blames Sandy, Mother Nature’s October surprise, for the campaign’s loss of momentum.

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

The jobless rate hits a four-year low.

A column in Governing asks why states are pouring money into convention center expansions when the market is glutted already. The column says the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, which wants to nearly double its size, is grumbling about Atlanta’s convention center offering free rent to a group the MCCA was trying to lure.

The Globe reports that a standoff between the state and developer over lease terms is imperiling the $450 million Fenway Center project that is to be built over the Massachusetts Turnpike near Kenmore Square.

Apple will shift a small portion of its computer manufacturing to the US. The Wall Street Journal notes that the $100 million Apple will invest in the project amounts to two percent of Apple’s 2013 capital expenditures. The computing company had previously come under fire for human rights concerns, including a number of suicides, at companies run by its Chinese suppliers.

EDUCATION

The superintendent of Wareham schools announced his retirement after what he said was an “unjust” evaluation of his job performance.

John Schneider of the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association (and a former executive vice president at MassINC) argues in a Standard-Times op-ed in favor of a proposed new charter school in New Bedford.

HEALTH CARE

A new federal tax on health plans as part of Obamacare could hit Massachusetts hard, the State House News Service reports (via Lowell Sun). New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says he will let the federal government run the online marketplace for health care in his state, the Star-Ledger reports.

Problems are found at three more Massachusetts drug compounding pharmacies.

In the National Review, an op-ed warns that states that allow the federal government to set up health insurance exchanges instead of taking on the task themselves are setting up a Trojan horse for a single-payer system.

TRANSPORTATION

A Boston University graduate student becomes the fifth bicyclist killed this year on Boston streets.

The now-fired MBTA driver whose Green Line trolley rear-ended another train last week worked a second full-time job, at the Boston Housing Authority, where he regularly worked an overnight shift before hopping into the driver’s seat of a train.

ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT

A Superior Court judge has ruled in favor of the town of Fairhaven in a suit to stop the town from operating two wind turbines.

A growing mound of construction debris stored at the Raynham dog track is drawing the ire of officials and residents who say the pile exceeds the limits allowed by a DEP permit and has led to a fine by the state.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

The former owner of a Fall River nightclub whose bar was shut down after undercover federal agents allegedly witnessed drug sales has been charged with intimidating a witness scheduled to testify in the case.

MEDIA

WCVB-TV medical editor and ABC contributor Dr. Timothy Johnson will retire at the end of the year after 40 years on the air.

The Washington Post is preparing to launch a paywall, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Daily Beast may take the same step, Bloomberg reports.