Free Republic

On Thursday, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez launched a major legal offensive in an attempt to address the online risks faced by minors. The lawsuit targeted Meta Platforms, Inc., its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and associated entities such as Instagram, LLC and Facebook Holdings, LLC. This bold action seeks to prevent the exploitation of children on social media platforms. “Our investigation into Meta’s social media platforms demonstrates that they are not safe spaces for children but rather prime locations for predators to trade child pornography and solicit minors for sex,” Attorney General Torrez said in a statement. “As a career...

Massachusetts gas station owner fed up with what he considers attempts by oil companies to fleece customers with outrageously high prices at the pump has stopped selling gas as a protest. Reynold Gladu, who has run Ren’s Mobil Service in downtown Amherst for nearly 50 years, drained his tanks earlier this month and has no current plans to refill them. “I don’t want to be part of it anymore,” Gladu told The Daily Hampshire Gazette for a story published Tuesday. “This is the biggest ripoff that ever has happened to people in my lifetime.” Gasoline in Massachusetts is averaging more...

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is in mourning this week following the news that one of their own had lost their life at such a young age. Men’s lacrosse player Aidan Kaminska, who is just 19-years-old, has passed away. According to Kathy Reakes of Suffolk Daily Voice, Kaminska “died suddenly” on Monday at his family’s house. The cause of death is unknown. “The Massachusetts athletics department extends condolences to Aidan’s family, friends, teammates, and coaches,” the university said in a statement. “University resources are available for members of the UMass community to utilize during this challenging time.” In 2022, Kaminska...

A veteran New York state judge killed himself less than two weeks after his home was raided by investigators, according to one of his attorneys. John Michalski, an acting justice on the Erie County Supreme Court, died by suicide Tuesday at his Amherst home, where federal and state law enforcement officers had executed a search warrant 12 days earlier, the Buffalo News reported. He was 61. “It’s heartbreaking,” defense attorney Terrence Connors told the newspaper. “He was such a good guy. This just didn’t have to happen.”

Students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst will be required to receive a COVID-19 booster shot ahead of the spring semester, or obtain a medical or religious exemption, the school said Wednesday. The rule is similar to the university’s requirement that nearly all students be vaccinated against COVID to be enrolled for the fall semester. Only a few hundred students received exemptions for medical or religious reasons. ... UMass will require students to be tested between 10 and 14 days before the beginning of the spring semester, administrators said. The university will also continue a policy requiring face coverings indoors...

A proposed temporary moratorium on construction of large solar farms received support from residents at Monday’s Town Council meeting. Council president Lynn Griesemer and Councilor Patricia De Angelis co-sponsored the proposed moratorium. If approved later this year, the idea would amend current zoning bylaws, with a ban until May 2023 on “the permitting and approval of large-scale ground mounted solar photovoltaic installations.”

More than 400 Amherst College students have signed a letter objecting to COVID-19 protocols that require masks outdoors and prohibit them from going to off-campus restaurants and bars. Indoor dining at the school is also banned. The college had already mandated that all students, faculty and staff be vaccinated. The letter to college president Carolyn “Biddy” Martin says “the guidelines are not based on any given data, have been developed without student input, are significantly stricter than our peer institutions, and are in conflict with (U.S. Centers for Disease Control) guidelines.” Martin wrote on the college’s website Aug. 27 that...

Students at Amherst College are about to face some of the toughest COVID restrictions in the country as they begin the Fall 2021 semester next month. The private liberal arts college, located in Amherst, Massachusetts, announced the tightened public health rules Tuesday in response to concerns about the spread of the Delta variant. For now, the restrictions will apply from move-in until September 13 (via The Amherst Student): The restrictions include: indoor double-mask mandates, two Covid tests upon arrival, a bi-weekly testing requirement, limits on indoor gathering sizes, off-campus travel restrictions and an elimination of in-person dining services. Upon arrival,...

A liberal Massachusetts town has created a fund that will be used to pay reparations to eligible black residents to “repair past harms” it committed against them or their ancestors. The Amherst Town Council voted 12-1 earlier this week in favor of establishing the fund, council clerk Athena O’Keeffe confirmed. No money is in the fund yet, but town finance officials have proposed a plan to put $210,000 in the account later this year, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported.

A liberal Massachusetts town has created a fund that will be used to pay reparations to eligible black residents to “repair past harms” it committed against them or their ancestors. No money is in the fund yet, but town finance officials have proposed a plan to put $210,000 in the account later this year, The Daily Hampshire Gazette reported. Amherst, a town of more than 39,000 with a black population of just over 2,100, according to the Census Bureau, is home to The University of Massachusetts’ flagship campus and Amherst College, a liberal arts university. Voter registration data shows it’s...

Andover parents Kristin and Scott are speaking out on behalf of their daughter. She along with two of her friends are freshmen at UMass Amherst. A picture posted on social media of the three friends not wearing masks outside was handed over to the university and that has landed them in serious trouble. “There was a photo sent to the administration of these girls outside off campus on a Saturday. This is why they lost a whole semester of their schooling,” Kristin said.

Professor Edwin Driver arrived in Amherst in 1948 as one of the first Black teachers hired at a flagship state university in the country. But the 23-year-old sociology instructor at what would become the University of Massachusetts Amherst says he was denied pay raises for decades, despite being one of its most published professors. Driver and his wife, who was from India, also encountered roadblocks trying to buy a house in the mostly white college town. Their three children faced racism from neighbors and school officials alike. ... Kamm Howard, co-chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in...

Neal beats back primary challenge from progressive Alex Morse in Massachusetts BY MAX GREENWOOD - 09/01/20 09:44 PM EDT 53 166 Rep. Stephen Lynch beats back progressive challenger in Massachusetts Neal beats back primary challenge from progressive Alex Morse in Massachusetts Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, fended off a primary challenge from Holyoke, Mass., Mayor Alex Morse on Tuesday in a blow to progressives who had hoped to unseat the longtime incumbent. The Associated Press called the race for Neal just before 9:45 p.m. local time. The incumbent was ahead by...

Actor and climate change alarmist Harrison Ford flew his 19-year-old son off to college on a carbon emissions-pumping private jet this week, according to a report by Just Jared, which says the Indiana Jones actor, his son, and wife Calista Flockhart were seen exiting the jet in Amherst, Massachusetts. Harrison Ford flying hundreds of miles on greenhouse gas-spewing jet flies in the face of his constant climate change alarmism. Earlier this year — while in in Mexico City to promote his latest film — Ford praised teenage climate worrier Greta Thunberg and trashed the United States, claiming that the nation...

he union representing resident assistants at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst says the plan to reopen residence halls this fall while in the middle of the pandemic is “suicidal,” and says its members will have no part of it without increased precautions for their safety. Members of the Resident Assistants and Peer Mentors Union, part of United Auto Workers, Local 2322, on Monday were nearly unanimous in opposing plans to reopen the residences calls with the start of the fall semester. According to a statement, 95% of members voted to authorize the union’s bargaining team to formally refuse to...

Martin Gugino — the 75-year-old man who was shoved to the ground by Buffalo police in a video seen by millions — is a long-time peace activist and “gentle person,” according to friends. The resident of Amherst in Erie County is a member of the People United for Sustainable Housing Buffalo and anti-nuclear group Kings BayPlowshares, the Buffalo News reported. “He’s a gentle person who really believes that he must stand up for what he thinks is right,” said Gugino’s pal Terrence Bisson. “That’s why he went to the demonstration. He would never resist physically any kind of orders. He’s...

Louis Shenker, a 21-year-old junior at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, just wanted his MAGA hat back from the graduate student who ripped it off his head on campus. He wore the hat to a December 6, 2018 protest organized by the university’s graduate student union against Trump and local police. Video shows that when Louis, who is 5’6’’ and 140 pounds, arrived wearing the MAGA hat and holding a large sign, he was immediately surrounded by a hostile mob of older grad students cursing at him and calling him a white supremacist. A woman lunged from the mob and...

The first Amherst College Republicans meeting of the year was targeted by flyers taped to the windows of the meeting space saying, “THIS IS OUR CAMPUS, NOT THE KLAN’S.” The group claims on its Facebook page that “while the flyers are related to another incident on campus that happened September 5, the deliberate placement of the text facing the room where it was known an ACR meeting was occurring leads us to suppose this is an accusation of ACR being connected to the KKK.”

Princeton University professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor issued multiple vile attacks against President Donald Trump in her May 20 commencement speech at Hampshire College, a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Taylor accused Trump of being a “racist, sexist megalomaniac.” “The president of the United States, the most powerful politician in the world, is a racist, sexist megalomaniac,” Taylor said, according to a report by Campus Reform reporter Anthony Gockowski. “It’s not a benign observation, but has meant tragic consequences for many people in our country—from terror-inducing raids in the communities of undocumented immigrants to his disparaging of refugees in search...

The Obama administration’s disdain for the rule of law continues to reverberate. One way is its Title IX madness, which has caught numerous colleges and universities in its web. Among them is Amherst College, which now faces a lawsuit brought by a student who makes a compelling case that he was wrongfully expelled. The facts revolve around a drunken hookup between two students and the woman’s subsequent efforts at covering up her more than willing participation by blaming the male student and accusing him of assault. Amherst’s administration was equally complicit, however, pronouncing the man guilty on flimsy and incomplete...