Free Republic

Sure, Mitt Romney just had a huge win in Florida—but his favorability ratings have been sinking miserably since the New Year. Andrew Romano on why the GOP’s long primary race in 2012 won’t mirror the Dems’ in 2008. Plus read more Daily Beast contributors on what Romney’s Florida victory means. On stage last night in Ballroom C of the Tampa Convention Center, Mitt Romney, the winner of the 2012 Florida Republican primary, tried his darndest to simulate the emotional state that Homo sapiens refer to as “happiness.” “Our opponents in the other party ... like to comfort themselves with the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington is starting to dig deep in a $2.6 billion underground solution aimed at helping clean up the polluted Potomac River and the ailing Chesapeake Bay, the biggest U.S. estuary. In the U.S. capital's biggest public works project in more than 40 years, work started this fall to cut about 16 miles of tunnels to keep overflow sewage and stormwater from running into the Potomac. The project, designed to be finished in 2025, is seen by environmentalists as part of resolving the next great water pollution challenge facing the United States -- keeping fouled runoff out of...

Just before Mitt Romney left the Massachusetts governor’s office and first ran for president, 11 of his top aides purchased their state-issued computer hard drives, and the Romney administration’s e-mails were all wiped from a server, according to interviews and records obtained by the Globe. Romney administration officials had the remaining computers in the governor’s office replaced just before Governor Deval Patrick staff showed up to take power in January 2007, according to Mark Reilly, Patrick’s chief legal counsel. Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign, said the governor’s aides did nothing wrong.

Two new sets of Republicans are feeling deflated today -- the Chris Christie hopefuls and the Sarah Palin stalwarts. The Christie decision didn't surprise me, perhaps because I grew up in Jersey. In fact, Christie and I attended the same high school! Anyway, Jerseyans are many things (not all of them nice), but slick dissemblers we are not. When Christie said, repeatedly, and in ever more colorful terms, that he wasn't running, I believed him. And, while I understand the boomlet for him, I'm also a little relieved to see that he is indeed a truthful guy. Sarah Palin, by...

WESTFIELD – How much does it cost for a 60-foot-tall clock tower erected as one of the capstones of a now nearly $80 million project to build a new bridge across the Westfield River here? The price tag for the new clock that’s debuted along Routes 10 and 202 on Elm Street is $500,000. Whether it was federal, state or city money which paid for it isn’t exactly clear; the buyer apparently remains a mystery. No matter what public funding source paid the bill, though, it’s among the expenditures for a project that’s been four years in construction, four decades...

State officials gave a clean bill of health to a 110-pound overhead light fixture just 10 months before it crashed onto a Big Dig tunnel roadway — but they failed to notice its aluminum casing was rusting away, the Herald has learned. Transportation Secretary Jeffrey Mullan yesterday defended the April 2010 report on the corroded light fixture that fell during a Feb. 8 morning commute — as well as the 23,000 other 2010 tunnel lights inspections — as “exhaustive,” but in the same breath he admitted the visual checks that he called for were “deficient.”

State transportation officials say they have discovered some corrosion in the lighting for the Big Dig tunnels in Boston. Secretary of Transportation Jeffrey Mullan said Wednesday one of the 110-pound fixtures fell but did not hit any cars. Mullan said there are about 23,000 light fixtures in the tunnels, and corrosion has been found in fewer than two percent. He said there’s no danger to the public.

Former Gov. Mitt Romney, a likely GOP presidential candidate for 2012, told supporters he won’t announce his candidacy before the end of the year — but political analysts said yesterday the discussion is the strongest indicator yet that he’ll run. “We know who is running, they’re just doing everything but coming out and saying so,” said Andy Smith, director of the Political Center at the University of New Hampshire. Romney held a conference call with 245 of his top supporters Thursday and told them that unlike his failed 2008 run, he won’t be announcing until later in the cycle, according...

HAVERHILL -- Former Massachusetts Turnpike chairman Matthew Amorello failed to appear in court today to face drunken driving charges, leading a Haverhill District Court judge to issue a default warrant for the man who once oversaw one of the largest public works projects in the state's history. A court official told Haverhill District Court Judge Stephen Abany this morning that Amorello is currently hospitalized at the UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester. The reason for his hospitalization was not specified in court. However, a spokeswoman said in a telephone interview that Amorello is not listed in the hospital's patient database....

The North Shore Connector is No. 3 in the nation among stimulus-funded projects that waste taxpayer money, two Republican senators say. In a report released Tuesday, Oklahoma's Tom Coburn and Arizona's John McCain said the $528.8 million light-rail extension beneath the Allegheny River to bring T riders to destinations such as PNC Park and Heinz Field is an example of stimulus dollars spent to fund projects with "questionable goals," or those that "are being mismanaged or were poorly planned." The "Summertime Blues" report, their third in a series, identifies 100 projects throughout the country that received money from the $787...

WASHINGTON – Sen. Scott Brown says he thinks former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is qualified to be president but right now he's supporting former Gov. Mitt Romney for the 2012 Republican nomination. As for his own ambitions, he say "absolutely in 2012" he's ruling out any run for the presidency. And in an interview broadcast Friday on NBC, Brown said "I'm not even going to jump" at a question about whether he would seek the presidency.

The Massachusetts Republican Party has nominated the most extreme pro-homosexual, anti-family candidates for Governor and Lt. Governor ever to run as Republicans for a state's top offices. Predictably, the results were greeted by cheers in homosexual blogs and websites across the country. The delegates to the Massachusetts State Republican Convention last Saturday overwhelmingly nominated Charlie Baker for Governor and his hand-picked running mate Richard Tisei for Lt. Governor. As some observers put it, the RINO takeover of the Massachusetts Republican party is now complete. Vast numbers of social conservatives essentially sold out their principles in favor of the party establishment's...

Here is video of Bill O'Reilly interviewing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney last night, where he pressed him hard on what he called the "fiscal disaster" of RomneyCare. Romney said it is essentially costing what they expected it to cost. He also claimed the plan takes people who had no health care and gives them a chance to purchase private, market-based health care. Romney argued that RomneyCare differs from ObamaCare in that it is a state-based solution rather than a Federal Program! He finally admitted that his plan in Massachusetts has NOT brought health care costs down, and he said...

America has just witnessed an unconscionable abuse of power. President Obama has betrayed his oath to the nation — rather than bringing us together, ushering in a new kind of politics, and rising above raw partisanship, he has succumbed to the lowest denominator of incumbent power: justifying the means by extolling the ends. He promised better; we deserved better. He calls his accomplishment “historic” — in this he is correct, although not for the reason he intends. Rather, it is an historic usurpation of the legislative process — he unleashed the nuclear option, enlisted not a single Republican vote in...

Link only, per FR posting rules

In a vacuum there’s nothing newsy about this, but 2012 isn’t a vacuum. We’ve talked before about the developing narrative: Palin vs. anti-Palin, “true conservatives” vs. centrists, blue-collar vs. white-collar, and … populists vs. “elitists.” With Beck having brought down the house at CPAC and the GOP in the grip of tea party fee-vah, why oh why would a potential nominee spritz cold water on populism? Branding, dear boy, branding: As Mitt Romney sets out this week to promote his new book, “No Apology,’’ he is also auditioning for a rapidly disappearing role in American politics: a politician who is...

A top Massachusetts lawmaker is calling for a review of pedestrian handrails in Big Dig tunnels that have been connected to the deaths of seven people, including a state trooper. Most were dismembered.

Thus prompting the question: How uncool did he used to be? "He’s changed, he’s changed. You know, he’s actually — before he was an outsider coming in and he was, you know, kind of, you know, stiff. But he’s actually, like, funny, he’s like — when he was at my events he was cracking jokes, when we were on the bus — I was like, who is this guy? He’s really kind of, I think, settled into his role kind of being the elder statesman of the party and everything he went through as president. It’s kind of, and once...

(snip) The long-odds contender for the right to wage an up-hill fight against Teddy Kennedy bases his campaign on something rare among current Republican office-seekers: a positive, innovative and daring proposal. Tuesday in historic Faneuil Hall, at the fourth debate between the two contestants in the Sept. 20 GOP primary, heavily favored Mitt Romney mixed Republican boilerplate with me-too liberalism ("Sometimes I'll vote with Ted Kennedy"). His opponent, John Lakian, opened by commenting that Romney, in emphasizing crime and welfare, did "the traditional things that politicians do." (snip) When other Republican stars also proved reticent, the 47-year-old millionaire business-consultant son...

Reversing his previously stated belief that none of the Republican candidates for the GOP presidential nomination have all three legs of the conservative stool, Rush Limbaugh told his listeners Monday that Mitt Romney is indeed a three-leg conservative. Describing the three legs as "national security/foreign policy, the social conservatives, and the fiscal conservatives," Rush said, "The social conservatives are the cultural people. The fiscal conservatives are the economic crowd: low taxes, smaller government, get out of the way... The foreign policy crowd is obviously what it is. I don't think there's anybody on our side who doesn't care about national...

Recently, I asked a GOP consultant, who must remain nameless here, this question: Who advises Sarah Palin? His answer: No one. Really? I asked. Yes, he said, really.

The national health care reform debate is far from settled, but one of the casualties is already clear: former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Three years ago, Romney was heralded for his innovative effort to institute near-universal health care in his state. But now that the issue has emerged as a partisan fault line and the Massachusetts plan has provided some guidance for Democratic reform efforts, Romney finds himself bruised and on the defensive as the GOP rallies around opposition to President Barack Obama’s plans. When Romney came to Washington last week to speak to social conservative activists at the annual...

BOSTON, MA—Six former managers of Aggregate Industries N.E., Inc.’s concrete division, the largest asphalt and concrete supply company in New England, were convicted of conspiracy to defraud the United States by a jury in U.S. District Court in Boston late yesterday. Acting United States Attorney Michael K. Loucks; Theodore L. Doherty III, Special Agent in Charge of the New England Regional Office of the United States Department of Transportation, Office of Inspector General; Warren T. Bamford, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation - Boston Field Division; and Colonel Mark Delaney, Superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police...

BOSTON (AP) — Two former managers of a Big Dig contractor pleaded guilty Wednesday to being part of a conspiracy to deliver substandard concrete to the massive highway project. Six former managers of Aggregate Industries NE Inc. were indicted in 2006 on charges they falsified records to hide the inferior quality of more than 5,000 truckloads of concrete. They were accused of recycling concrete that was too old or already rejected by inspectors and in some cases double-billing for the loads.

New Jersey officials have been planning the next train tunnel under the Hudson River for so long that it is already on its third name. This month, work is scheduled to begin on the Mass Transit Tunnel — formerly known as the Trans-Hudson Express and, before that, Access to the Region’s Core — more than 15 years after it was conceived. A ceremonial groundbreaking was set for Monday alongside a highway in North Bergen, N.J., the site of the first small piece of what could be the biggest transit project in the country. The tunnel, which is expected to take...

A group of lawyers is trying to stage a modern-day Boston Tea Party against what they see as unfair Massachusetts Turnpike tolls. Attorney Jan Schlichtmann...is leading a group arguing Massachusetts has been acting illegally by using money from the east-west Turnpike to pay debts for the north-south Big Dig project. Schlichtmann and the others argue the tolls amount to a user fee that can only be used to maintain the roadway on which they were incurred

The family of a Jamaica Plain woman crushed to death in the 2006 Big Dig ceiling collapse will collect more than $28 million ... A spokesman for the Turnpike, Mac Daniel, said, "The tunnel collapse in 2006 was the result of a colossal failure of oversight by past administrations..." Investigations of the collapse showed that a string of failures - and, in some instances what authorities said was negligence - caused the collapse ... Concrete panels weighing 26 tons fell from the ceiling after the failure of bolts that had been secured with epoxy. The National Transportation Safety Board faulted,...

Last week also brought the story of Albert Arroyo, a Boston firefighter who applied for disability retirement in March on the grounds that he was left "totally and permanently disabled" after tripping on a staircase in March. He went on injured leave and continued to collect his full salary, tax free. But Arroyo's "total and permanent disability," it appears, wasn't very disabling. In May he entered a men's bodybuilding competition, and finished eighth. When the fire commissioner learned of Arroyo's bodybuilding prowess, he shifted him from injured leave to regular sick leave. (On Friday, Arroyo was ordered to return to...

"Friends, red-necks, suckers, and fellow hicks," he would say, . . . "That's what you are. And me - I'm one, too . . . Oh, I'm a sucker, for I fell for that sweet-talking fellow in the fine automobile . . . But I'm standing here on my own hind legs, for even a dog can learn to do that, give him time. I learned. It took me a time but I learned, and here I am on my own hind legs." And he would lean at them. And demand, "Are you, are you on your hind legs? Have...

Surprise! The $ 2.4 B Big Dig in Boston is now up to $ 22 B plus! And the federal reimbursement is down from 85% to 27%, leaving MA taxpayers with an unpayable bill due by 2038. If you like MA, you'll LOVE the U.S. under Barack Obama.

BOSTON–Contractors will pay more than $450 million (dollar figures U.S.) to settle the state's lawsuit over a fatal tunnel collapse and to cover leaks and design flaws in the Big Dig, officials said Wednesday. Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, the consortium that oversaw design and construction of the country's costliest public works project, has agreed to pay $407 million, U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan said in announcing the deal. Several smaller companies will pay about $51 million collectively. "The citizens of Massachusetts entrusted Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff to act as their eyes and ears on the Central Artery Project," Sullivan said. "They grossly failed to meet...

IN 2003, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony supposedly signaling the end of the "Big Dig"--the nearly two-decade-long project to ease Boston traffic by routing the city's major thoroughfares underground and underwater via a series of tunnels--Massachusetts Turnpike Authority (MTA) chairman Matthew Amorello, the project's supervisor, insisted that the Dig rivaled "anything in the history of the world built by men." Maybe. It's no doubt true that the largest public works project in the nation's history has grown corpulent on federal largesse, soaring from an estimated price tag of $2.2 billion in 1983 to somewhere near $15 billion today. And $15 billion...

When the clock runs out on 2007, Boston will quietly mark the end of one of the most tumultuous eras in the city's history: The Big Dig, the nation's most complex and costliest highway project, will officially come to an end. After a history marked by engineering triumphs, tunnels leaks, epic traffic jams, last year's death of a motorist crushed by falling concrete panels and a price tag that soared from $2.6 billion to a staggering $14.8 billion, there's little appetite for celebration. Civil and criminal cases stemming from the July 2006 tunnel ceiling collapse continue, though on Monday the...

With a $2.1 million sale price, the “Big Dig” House is a lot more expensive than neighboring residences in Lexington. But what buyers don’t understand is that you can’t compare the house made of recycled material from the infamous Big Dig highway project with a Colonial selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars less, says real estate agent Carole deJong. “There has been some objection to the price,” said deJong, of William Raveis Exceptional Properties. “The fact is that isn’t a four-bedroom Colonial. This is a one-of-a-kind house.” That may be an understatement. Steel beams and concrete slabs that held...

About 500 leaks in Big Dig tunnels are awaiting repair, and that number doesn't include leaks being handled by the project's contractors, according to state officials who warn that future leaks are inevitable. Project manager Michael Lewis also told the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority board Tuesday that the leak-repair program is "effective," and should be viewed separately from new evidence indicating water continues to leak steadily into the Interstate 93 Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr. tunnel. The board did not address an independent engineering firm's analysis that water continues to leak steadily into the O'Neill tunnel - a section of Interstate...

WASHINGTON, July 10 — The ceiling collapsed in one of Boston’s Big Dig tunnels a year ago, killing one woman, because builders used the wrong epoxy to hold the anchor bolts in place, the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday. “We’re talking about the wrong glue here, in effect,” said Kitty Higgins, one of the five members of the board, which said that the epoxy selected dried quickly but lost strength weeks later. A continuing theme of the board’s meeting Tuesday was how small a detail led to the accident. “It’s kind of ironic in a $14 billion project,” said...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The fatal Big Dig tunnel collapse in Boston could have been avoided if authorities had considered that the epoxy securing tons of ceiling panels could slowly pull away, federal investigators concluded Tuesday. The National Transportation Safety Board approved a report saying the likely cause of the accident that killed a woman was ''use of an epoxy anchor adhesive with poor creep resistance'' that could not sustain long-term loads. -- SNIP -- ''Although the epoxy used in the tunnel had acceptable short term strength, it was incapable of supporting much lower loads over an extended period of time,''...

Taxpayers who have already suffered through waste, fraud, delays and even a tragic accident from the budget-busting Big Dig are now getting a new kick in the pants: a bill as high as $333 million that has even Gov. Deval Patrick "fed up." In financial documents to be released today, the Patrick administration will formally disclose that costs have ballooned to at least $14.798 billion and may increase by another $160 million, pending the outcome of negotiations with contractors, sources confirmed. The cost correction comes as Patrick tries to exert more control over the project and the Turnpike Authority, whose...

Remember the public debate last year over whether the state should raise the gasoline tax or tolls to pay for the rotten roads around here? Well, the debate’s over. There’s been a compromise. We’re going to raise both the tolls and the gasoline tax. Or so says the Mass. Transportation Finance Commission. They haven’t officially come out and said they want higher gas taxes and tolls. First they’re going to have the traditional “public hearings.” Of course it’s all a complete bag job. Just look at the tell-tale phrases in the news stories about the “shocking” conditions of the state’s...

5 Solid Reasons not to be!

Police in Boston were by far the city's top earners last year, with 25 Police Department employees earning more than $200,000, nearly four times the number who made that amount in 2005, according to city payroll figures released to the Globe. Of the 125 highest paid city employees last year, all but one -- Superintendent of Schools Michael G. Contompasis, who made $221,574 -- were police officers, the records show. Police have long been big earners in Boston, where a powerful union and private detail work have helped boost pay. But in 2006, the amounts were higher than in recent...

Construction engineer John Tsikouras suspected that the salesmen were not telling him the whole story. The men from Newman Associates, a bolt distribution company, approached him in August 1999 and said they wanted his professional advice about a tunnel ceiling that was part of Boston's Big Dig. But Tsikouras said their questions seemed intended to get the Rhode Island engineer's approval rather than his expertise. Would it be safe to hang the concrete ceiling from 7.5-inch-long bolts? No, Tsikouras said. What if the bolts were 5 inches long instead? "I can ask my mother that one," he replied: Even less...

BOSTON - The state attorney general said Monday that he will sue the companies that worked on a Big Dig highway tunnel, claiming their negligence led to the ceiling collapse that killed a woman in July. Attorney General Tom Reilly said he would seek unspecified damages for repairs, loss of tunnel use and toll revenue, and other economic factors in a lawsuit to be filed Tuesday in Suffolk Superior Court. Reilly said that 15 firms involved in the management, design, construction or oversight of the Interstate 90 tunnel would be named in the negligence lawsuit, but that only one -...

Mike Dukakis was a good governor. And if you don’t believe me, just ask Deval Patrick. Here’s the exchange from the final televised debate Wednesday night. Kerry Healey: “I’d like to ask you, do you think Dukakis was a good governor, and why?” Deval: “I think that Mike Dukakis was a good governor in many ways, and we had challenges then.” We sure did, Deval, and the biggest challenge of all, at least to us taxpayers, was named M. Stanley Dukakis. Sure, Deval’s lead in the polls is most likely insurmountable, and tossing a bouquet to the henpecked wimp Mike...

BOSTON, MA, United States (UPI) -- Highway inspectors never properly checked the fatally flawed ceiling of Boston`s Big Dig tunnel that killed a woman this summer, it was reported Saturday. The day after the July 10 ceiling collapse on the Interstate 90 connector, the head of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority said the agency inspected the tunnel`s ceiling just before the tunnel opened to motorists in January 2003.

This is the Christy Mihos commercial that has been in the news around Boston. Produced by Bill Hillsman of Northwoods Ads in MN it's caused quite a ruckus here in Massachusetts. The commercial depicts Independent candidate for Governor Christy Mihos asking Big Dig engineers and politicians why the Big Dig is billions of dollars over budget. The bechtel engineers and politicians do what they do best.

Video

Talk to Sen. Ted Kennedy Thu Sep 28, 1:51 PM ET This was a last-minute addition to the Talk to Power schedule, so the time for questions and comments is shorter than usual. Sen. Kennedy will be fielding your comments over the next 24 hours and responding, via an interview with host Judy Woodruff, on Friday morning. Thanks in advance to Yahoo! users for your thoughts, and to Sen. Kennedy for agreeing to participate. The question of immigration and immigration reform is likely to loom large in this forum, as it has with previous Talk to Power guests. Sen. Kennedy,...

Attorney General Tom Reilly is seeking a special grand jury to grill more than a dozen key witnesses in the Big Dig manslaughter probe, moving swiftly after documents revealed widespread knowledge of ceiling problems in the tunnel where Milena Del Valle was killed, a law enforcment source said. The grand jury, expected to be convened Oct. 3, will hear evidence for six months as investigators seek criminal indictments against officials involved in construction of the I-90 Seaport Connector Tunnel. Several key officials have already retained lawyers, the source said. “Nothing we have seen to date takes us off the path...