Free Republic

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has voted to renew the license of the Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth for another 20 years. The agency announced Friday that it has authorized staff to renew the license before it expires on June 8. The NRC voted 3-1 for relicensing, with outgoing chairman Gregory Jaczko the only no vote. Gov. Deval Patrick called the NRC’s decision "extremely troubling." He and other officials sought to delay relicensing until pending safety and environmental concerns were resolved. The NRC says the plant is safe, and the 6 ½ year review of Pilgrim’s application was the lengthiest...

Quick quiz: Who is the Massachusetts governor currently running for president? Sounds too easy, right? It’s Mitt Romney, of course. Wrong. The answer is Deval Patrick.

A longtime top aide to Gov. Deval Patrick was busted on drunken driving charges over the weekend and has been put on unpaid leave, the Herald has learned. Ron Bell, the governor’s $97,000-a-year community affairs director, was arrested at 3:30 a.m. Saturday in Brookline after being stopped for alleged erratic driving, police said. Police said Bell, 48, was swerving and nearly hit a median strip on Boylston Street before he was pulled over. He had a “moderate” odor of alcohol, his eyes were “glassy and bloodshot,” and he failed three field sobriety tests, according to a police report. Bell refused...

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick is the other South Sider who has made it big in national politics. “My life is often described as ‘improbable,’ ” Patrick writes in his just released memoir, A Reason to Believe, which opens with a scene where a 15-year-old Patrick braces for humiliation when he realizes he boarded a southbound Wabash Avenue CTA bus near 54th St. without money for the fare. The driver lets him ride anyway, telling him, “Just pass it on, son.” That act of kindness helped shape the values of Patrick, a Democrat re-elected last November after a sometimes stormy first...

After sending Bubba out to shore up the barricades last week, Obama himself is joining frantic efforts to save Democrats in districts recently thought safe for eternity... and they were- until now.He and the DNC have apparently deduced that 2010 is indeed to be an election like no other... and that they'll be the ones mostly on the receiving-end of all that pent-up electoral rage. Polls say it's getting uglier for them by the day, and the President's actions betray just how scared they are... even in deep-blue Massachusetts. Gov. Deval Patrick’s campaign announced today that President Obama will be...

In an apparent move to distance Deval Patrick from U.S. Rep. John Tierney’s family troubles, the congressman’s newly convicted wife was removed yesterday as co-chair of a deep-pockets fund-raiser North Shore Democrats are holding in the governor’s honor Oct. 19. At a function in Waltham last night, Patrick dodged questions from the Herald as to whether he pressured Patrice Tierney to back out or if the Democratic Party now thinks of her as a liability. “I think it’s her decision and a totally understandable one,” Patrick said. “I don’t know the whole story, but it sounds like a very, very...

GOP gubernatorial challenger Charles D. Baker is gaining steam in the hotly contested three-way race, coming within a seven-point striking distance of Gov. Deval Patrick in the most recent Rasmussen Reports poll. Patrick still has the lead at 41 percent of the voters polled, but he’s dropped from the 45 percent support he got last month. Baker has climbed to 34 percent - up from 31 percent last month - while State Treasurer Tim Cahill’s support has remained flat at 16 percent.

Muslim leaders in Massachusetts fired back Friday at gubernatorial candidate Tim Cahill, who they accused of making "bigoted" statements after Gov. Deval Patrick met with members of the Muslim community. In a statement, a coalition of Muslim leaders called Cahill’s remarks "bigoted ... undignified" and "anti-democratic," and said the governor has a right to meet with members of all religious backgrounds. Last weekend, Patrick met with around 1,000 Massachusetts Muslim leaders who wanted to raise awareness about their faith and become more civically engaged.

‘Is Tim Cahill the real deal?” That’s the question I started getting asked last week after the Massachusetts treasurer, who is running for governor as an independent, launched his high-profile attack on our local version of Obamacare. “If President Obama and the Democrats repeat the mistake of the health-insurance reform here in Massachusetts on a national level,” Cahill declared, “they will threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years.” It was enough to make a tea-partier shake his pitchfork with joy. Which was the point. By the most important measure — the $3 million sitting in his campaign...

While Martha Coakley’s campaign teeters on the brink of becoming the biggest political implosion since that of her predecessor, Tom Reilly, there’s another Bay State Democrat who’s watching the Scott Brown freight train in a state of terror: Gov. Deval Patrick. Patrick insiders say the governor’s campaign people are horrified by Brown’s surge, considering that Patrick is facing a candidate eerily similar to Brown in Republican health-care honcho Charlie Baker, not to mention a well-funded moderate Democrat in independent candidate Treasurer Tim Cahill.

A new poll from Suffolk University and the decision by two noted pollsters to declare the race a toss-up provide more evidence that voters in the Bay State could do the unthinkable next Tuesday: fill the senate seat held for almost 47 years by Ted Kennedy with a Republican. If that happens, it will be a bit of cosmic justice exacted on the state's Democrats. Not once, but twice, they changed the Massachusetts law on filling Senate vacancies to maintain their hold on power. ...Coakley's problems. She hasn't helped herself with a bad debate performance this week and a clumsy...

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown is blasting Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration for calling the National Guard to check whether Brown’s enrollment takes him out of the heated race to replace the late Edward M. Kennedy.

Hey, Deval, if you thought your recent poll numbers have been abysmal - and they have been - wait until after this latest pool-closing fiasco. You’ll be . . . drowning. Do you know what the governor calls a Herald plane hovering over his sparkling pool and cabana on his $1.7 million estate in Richmond on the second-hottest day of the year? “Every rich man’s nightmare.” The name of Deval’s Berkshires retreat, by the way, is Sweet P Farm. Now we know what the P stands for - pool. Talk about tone deaf - firing Dan Grabauskas, not firing Jim...

State Treasurer Tim Cahill this week will change his political party designation from Democrat to unenrolled, the first step in mounting an independent challenge to Democratic governor Deval Patrick in the 2010 general election, two advisers said today. Cahill, a lifelong Democrat who has served as treasurer since 2003, would not comment on his plans, but campaign advisers said he will make the switch at Quincy City Hall sometime this week. They said the move doesn't necessarily mean he will run against the sitting governor; he has told them he will either campaign for governor or treasurer as an independent...

Bay State Gov. Deval Patrick blasted WTKK yakker Jay Severin on his own radio station today, calling his remarks about Mexicans “way over the line” - and said he was “embarrassed” to be associated with the Hub station. Patrick - who skewered Severin during his monthly segment on Jim Braude and Margery Eagan’s WTKK-FM (96.9) show - said he was “disappointed” that the station let the right-wing host back on the air this week. “I found Jay Severin’s comments on the air about Mexicans hateful and hurtful, really just way over the line and I was just as disappointed, frankly,...

Gov. Deval Patrick has stashed four staffers in big-bucks jobs at several of the quasi-public agencies he is now vowing to reform - including one post worth a jaw-dropping $190,000 a year, the Herald has learned. Patrick ordered up a probe of salaries at quasi-public agencies last week as taxpayer outrage peaked over his tapping of Sen. Marian Walsh for a long-vacant $175,000-a-year post with the Massachusetts Health and Educational Facilities Authority. But four Patrick administration staffers have landed at quasi-public agencies:

[“Uncle, uncle,” - Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick] Why are you crying “Uncle,” Gov. Patrick? It’s the taxpayers who are getting the wedgie. So a reporter asks you about your bone-headed comment about make-work jobs for your feel-good friends and you say “uncle.” But last I checked, we taxpayers are still on the hook for Carol Aloisi’s salary. And while paying Sen. Marian Walsh $120,000 is better than paying her $175,000, the fact remains that when you took office, Governor, the assistant executive director of the Health and Education Facilities Authority was costing us zero. So you get away with keeping...

One of Barack Obama's closest political allies and one of John McCain's will share duties at a dinner Monday night Obama is hosting to honor McCain, whom he vanquished in the November election.

Howie thread beginning with his Sunday Herald column

Despite a slumping economy and looming budget crunch, Gov. Deval Patrick has hiked his office budget by an astonishing 80 percent, adding questionable new staff positions like “director of grassroots governance” and pumping millions into an extravagant “civic engagement” program. “We know the governor had a goal of creating 100,000 new jobs in his first term, we just didn’t know he was going to create them all in the Corner Office,” said Sen. Michael Knapik (R-Westfield). Added State Sen. Scott Brown (R-Wrentham): “People in my district are asking, ‘What is this guy doing?’ They get 1 to 2 percent increases...

Governor Deval Patrick has decided against taking action to allow illegal immigrants to pay resident tuition and fees at state colleges and universities this fall, an administration official said yesterday, crushing advocates who were counting on the governor to deliver on a pledge to support the students. Earlier this year, Patrick said he was considering ways to offer illegal immigrants in-state rates, such as issuing a regulation, adding that it would be "the right thing to do." The governor declined to comment yesterday, but an administration source who spoke on condition of anonymity said Patrick decided that there were "significant...

DARTMOUTH, Mass. -- A new gambling study shows some Massachusetts residents who have not supported casinos in the past may be changing their minds. "Fifty-seven percent of Massachusetts residents still favor two or more resort casinos in the state of Massachusetts. That number is actually four percent higher than when we last did this poll in September," said Dr. Clyde Barrow, a public policy analyst at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. The study was funded by a real estate development firm with land interests in the proposed Palmer and New Bedford casino sites. The research showed that as the state's deficit...

Governor Deval Patrick isn't merely penning his memoirs. The book proposal he submitted to publishers reads like the roadmap for a self-help manual, one in which he will celebrate optimism, rail against cynicism, and seek to inspire a nation with his own life story. The 65-page pitch letter that led to his $1.35 million advance last week from a Random House imprint reveals, in its overflowing optimism and aggressive marketing plan, just how high the freshman governor is aiming when the book is published in 2010. It details a strategy to sell at least 150,000 copies through a "vigorous media...

How many times have I told you? With Deval, it’s all about showing him the money. Originality is not his strong suit; he follows in the footsteps of others. Jesse Jackson makes a fortune in the racket Tom Wolfe called “steam control,” and Deval shakes down Coke and Texaco. But when you’re building a $7 million mansion in the Berkshires with a nut of maybe $30,000 a month, it doesn’t matter how big your “severance packages” were, you always need more dough. So now Deval mimics Barack Obama. He finds some new marks and scores a $1.35 million advance for...

NYT THURSDAY: New Massachusetts Governor 'On The Ropes'... Developing...

Governor Deval Patrick has set up a novel political fund-raising system that allows him to skirt the state's campaign finance law by channeling big contributions through the state Democratic Party, which, in turn, has paid off hundreds of thousands of dollars of the governor's political expenses.

BOSTON — Gov. Deval Patrick is releasing a state budget Wednesday amidst the gloomiest financial outlook Massachusetts government has seen since deep budget cuts earlier this decade. Even so, there are early indications that Gov. Patrick will pursue an aggressive agenda as he begins his second year in office. He has already revealed the budget will include a $368 million increase for public education and an 8.3 percent increase in beaches and parks funding, to $100 million. How he proposes to increase spending in targeted areas, while closing a potential $1.3 billion shortfall and dealing with a slowing economy, will...

There are plenty of stakeholders with plans riding on Gov. Deval Patrick's proposed $1 billion state investment in life sciences -- from the people for whom life-saving innovation is being developed to the scientists, educators, entrepreneurs and businesses depending on state support to thrive and commercialize. Yet for all of the political wrangling, public discussion and media attention since Patrick introduced the bill in May, the bill has yet to move through the state Legislature, receive funding or prompt state officials to name a new executive director to the agency slated to manage the bulk of funding associated with the...

Plans for an embryonic stem-cell bank at the University of Massachusetts Medical School for researchers around the globe took a major step forward last week when the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center authorized more than $8 million for the bank and an associated registry. It is a significant step in Central Massachusetts’ evolution as a major center of biotechnology and biomedical research. Interim chancellor Michael F. Collins said the bank should be operating within eight to 12 months, the registry even sooner than that. That is in keeping with the fast pace at which Gov. Deval L. Patrick’s life sciences and...

Governor Deval Patrick, determined to exert control over the University of Massachusetts system, is undaunted by his failed bid last month to remove UMass board chairman Stephen P. Tocco and is still planning his ouster, according to administration officials. Patrick aides have been testing sentiment among UMass trustees and said they expect the governor to have sufficient support to remove Tocco in a matter of months. Patrick was publicly stung when his allies on the board could not muster enough votes last month to force out the influential Tocco, who is an appointee of Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, but...

If only Osama bin Laden had been hugged more as a child. If only the 19 wild-eyed jihadists who hijacked our airplanes and murdered 3,000 of our brothers and sisters six years ago had some kind of “human understanding” of the people they set out to systematically torture and kill. Then, Gov. Deval Patrick, would we all be sitting around together sipping tea? We’d like to believe that a few of Patrick’s lines at yesterday’s 9/11 memorial ceremony at the State House were the product of first-time jitters, or perhaps a truly clueless speechwriter. Unfortunately, the governor’s fuzzy recollection of...

Governor Deval Patrick plans to unveil a proposal today to make Massachusetts' community colleges, among the priciest in the nation, free to all high school graduates in the state by the year 2015, according to documents obtained by the Globe. The proposal is the centerpiece of Patrick's vision for a "cradle to career" education system that would dramatically expand the concept of public education in Massachusetts. The plan, which he will outline during commencement at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, would also provide preschool for all children, extend the school day and year, and guarantee two years of community...

GARDNER (MA) In his first commencement address of his administration, Governor Deval Patrick called for civic engagement yesterday, while delivering a broadside against Bush administration policies. Patrick's exhortation appeared to resonate with many of the 656 students graduating from Mount Wachusett Community College and their families, who gave him a long standing ovation. (snip) Without naming President Bush or members of his administration, Patrick took aim at their response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, saying that in its wake, the nation has been governed by fear. Patrick said fear "drove us to round up people of Arab...

As controversy enveloped his young tenure, Gov. Deval L. Patrick says he took an impromptu phone call from former President Bill Clinton that helped rescue his fledgling governorship from the downward spiral of its first 100 days. “We were on the phone for almost an hour,” Patrick said of the recent conversation. “He reminded me just how important it is to stay focused on the (political) destination, even though there is an awful lot of effort to get you off that focus.” The tete-a-tete with Clinton, a mentor to Patrick who gave him his first government job, shows the powerful...

--But popularity high despite his missteps-- Governor Deval Patrick remains a highly popular figure in Massachusetts, but his constituents are concerned about his performance as the state's new chief executive after several stumbles during his first months in office, according to a Boston Globe poll. Sixty-three percent of the 500 adults surveyed last week view the new Democratic governor favorably, which is comparable to his standing just before his landslide victory in November, when he received a 60 percent favorable rating in a Globe poll. But despite Patrick's continued popularity, only 48 percent approved of the way he is handling...

Statement From UMass President On Governor's Stem Cell Policy Announcement Today & UMass Stem Cell Initiatives University of Massachusetts President Jack M. Wilson today expressed his strong support for Governor Patrick's proposal to reverse state restrictions on stem cell research imposed by the previous administration, citing the importance of the research in developing cures for disease and in maintaining Massachusetts' national leadership in the life science industry. Wilson also serves as Vice Chairman of the Board of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, which oversees state funding for life science initiatives. "As the president of the University of Massachusetts, which does...

Mitt Romney, in NH today, launched an assault on the man who now holds his former office, Democrat Deval Patrick, over the issue of Gay Marriage. Patrick has just forced the state to recognize 26 out-of-state gay marriages, which would not be recognized in their home states. Romney had prevented the marriages from becoming official, this before he began enforcement of a 1913 state law that prevents out-of-state couples from marrying if the marriage would not be recognized in the their home state. Saying the action was an example of the need for a Constitutional amendment to prevent same-sex marriage....

Governor Deval Patrick today announced a major shakeup of his new administration that includes the resignation of the $72,000-a-year aide he hired for his wife and the addition of new communications and political advisers. Amy Gorin, whose husband led Patrick's fund-raising committee during the campaign, was hired to handle scheduling and interview requests for Diane Patrick, a law partner at Ropes & Gray. Her resignation comes just 10 weeks into a new administration that has been dogged by missteps. To help after several weeks of negative press, Joe Landolfi will take over as a senior communications adviser to the governor....

You’re Lt. Gov. Tim Murray and you’re not in Worcester anymore. You have tire tracks up and down your back from all the times Deval’s crew has thrown you under the bus this past week. First it was the Ameriquest disaster. You got pushed out in front of the cameras to say, “No problem.” An hour later, Deval lobbed a press release out into the hall, saying, “Big problem!” Then, Saturday night, Deval’s moonbats left you hanging out in an Al Haig-like I’m-in-charge moment. It was another press release: Deval is going to a “flexible” schedule for a while, because...

Ten weeks into a disastrously bad first term as Massachusetts' governor, Deval Patrick announced today that he has to cut-back on his workload because of the burden placed on him and his family. So reports Fox. Perhaps Patrick will become the first telecommuting governor, staying at his $8 mansion and working via laptop. His reign has certainly been an eyeful. As President Clinton's Assistant Attorney General For Racial Quotas and Slavery Reparations, Patrick apparently had enjoyed a much more relaxed lifestyle than that of the governor of a state so polarized and driven half insane by Liberal politics. His proflagate...

(WBZ) BOSTON Governor Deval Patrick is facing questions over some contributions he received during his campaign for governor. The donations came from employees of two firms building a new development in Cambridge. Two of the donors now work for the governor, and that's just one of the issues being raised. Dan O'Connell and Greg Bialecki were both involved in the Northpoint development in Cambridge. O'Connell is now Patrick's Secretary of Housing and Development. Bialecki is one of Patrick's top aides involved in real estate permitting. In February, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled against the Northpoint construction project in a lawsuit...

BOSTON - Deval Patrick rode a populist wave to become Massachusetts' first Democratic governor in 16 years and the second African American elected governor in U.S. history. But nine weeks into the job, he faces a possible ethics investigation after missteps that threaten his reforms and have added a whiff of scandal to his brief tenure. The former top U.S. civil-rights enforcer in the Clinton administration has publicly apologized twice in recent weeks over separate errors of judgment in what some expected to be a honeymoon period marked by the return of a bold, liberal agenda to one of the...

Gov (Deval Patrick) rips feds' treatment of illegals...

Was Gov. Deval Patrick’s intervention in a financial deal involving Ameriquest ethical? No it wasn't, he works for the taxpayers now. Maybe not, but it's just the freshman jitters. Yes, he can call all he wants as long as he's not paid.

The moonbats are in mourning. In meltdown. In the muck, the mire. De-mooned. De-pressed. De-swooned. Ma-rooned. Pass the Xanax, please! What happened to Divine Deval, man of hope, the man who was to restore holier-than-thou progressives - dare I say liberals - to disinfect the Corner Office after 16 years of nasty, greedy, let-them-eat-cake-crumbs-and-like-it Republicans? "It started with the (inaugural) parties," says The Uber Moonbat of Roslindale, Erik Gehring. I first met him last fall, on his Trek 700 bike, Centre Street, Jamaica Plain, the belly of the moonbat beast by the Blissful Monkey Yoga Studio, the Wonder Spice Cafe,...

The moonbats are in mourning. In meltdown. In the muck, the mire. De-mooned. De-pressed. De-swooned. Ma-rooned. Pass the Xanax, please! What happened to Divine Deval, man of hope, the man who was to restore holier-than-thou progressives - dare I say liberals - to disinfect the Corner Office after 16 years of nasty, greedy, let-them-eat-cake-crumbs-and-like-it Republicans? “It started with the (inaugural) parties,” says The Uber Moonbat of Roslindale, Erik Gehring. I first met him last fall, on his Trek 700 bike, Centre Street, Jamaica Plain, the belly of the moonbat beast by the Blissful Monkey Yoga Studio, the Wonder Spice Cafe,...

Gov. Deval Patrick yesterday admitted he “really screwed up” by spending tax dollars on a leased Cadillac and high-end office furniture, but he strongly defended the hiring of a $72,000-a-year chief of staff for his wife. “Every governor has had staff to help support the work of the office, including the work of the first lady,” Patrick said during an impromptu press conference. “It’s official business.” However, a Patrick aide could recall only two events Diane Patrick has attended this year, one to promote early education initiatives in the State House and a second to appear at a reading event...

Howie Carr live thread. Column to follow.

Governor, come in, please. Loosen your ascot and stay a while. A quick question before we get started: Who are you getting your political advice from these days, Leona Helmsley?......Pretty much everything you've been doing since the day you were elected, knock it all off, every single bit.

BOSTON --He's only one month into his first term in elective office, but already Gov. Deval Patrick is facing scrutiny of his personal spending after he asked all department heads to trim their budgets to help close a budget gap of more than $1 billion. In a week that saw Patrick proposing measures to raise the meals tax at restaurants and close corporate tax loopholes -- a move some companies view as a tax hike, he also was forced to answer questions about his use of a state police helicopter and a new Cadillac DeVille to move around the state....