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A 17-year-old North Andover High School student was stripped of her captain's position on the volleyball team and suspended for five games after she went to a party to pick up an intoxicated friend, reports The Boston Herald. Erin Cox received a call from a friend, who was allegedly intoxicated, and asked her to pick her up from a party on Main Street in Boxford. Being a good friend, Erin went to pick her up, but instead met police just as they arrived at the house, the newspaper reports.

Massachusetts will not use state money to reopen national parks or pay for other federal services cut off amid the government shutdown, Gov. Deval Patrick said today.“We don’t have that kind of money,” Patrick said. “There is no way that our state is in a position to make up for the gap in spending from the federal government. We’re going to do everything we can to soften the blow but we need the government, the federal government, to be opened and fully functioning the way a first-world country ought to.”Patrick also said his administration cannot help state employees who depend...

It’s tough for Eleanor Cox to talk about how heartbroken her daughter Erin is over the punishment she received for doing what she thought was right. “She’s very fragile and I’m worried about her. Very worried about her. She didn’t do anything wrong,” Cox told WBZ-TV on Sunday. Two weeks ago, Erin received a call from a friend at a party who was too drunk to drive. Erin drove to Boxford after work to pick up her friend. Moments after she arrived, the cops arrived too and busted several kids for underage possession of alcohol. A North Andover High School...

MARSHFIELD (CBS) – A Quincy couple has been indicted on charges in the death of their infant daughter in Marshfield two years ago. Five-month-old Mya Barry died of opiate poisoning on September 23, 2011 after drinking from a bottle containing baby formula and heroin, prosecutors said EMTs found Barry on the living room floor of the family’s apartment on Castle Green. She was described as being cold to the touch, not breathing, and her pupils were fixed and dilated. CPR was unsuccessful, and Barry died at the hospital. At the time, police say they found three grams of heroin and...

Clinton Insider Admits To Murder For Hire Claiming He Did It For The Money Larry Nichols, former 10 year accomplice to the Clintons, can now add hit-man to his list of dirty deeds. Nichols dropped a bombshell on The Pete Santilli Show when he very calmly admitted that he had murdered people, on command, for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Mr. Nichols has been a voice crying out in the wilderness since he brought to light the sexual brutality of Bill Clinton during his reign as Governor in Arkansas. That information would eventually play a key role to Clinton's impeachment in...

Full title: The great woman behind the Kennedy men: Rare and never before seen pictures shed light on Rose Kennedy as the matriarch of America's celebrated dynasty A month before the nation marks the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, a new photo book put together by Caroline Kennedy tells the story of her remarkable family through the eyes of her indomitable grandmother. Rose Kennedy's Family Album, which went on sale Tuesday, features a trove of 300 images - many of them never made public before - taken between 1878 and 1946, when John F. Kennedy won the...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she was delighted by Yellen's nomination and praised what she called Yellen's "extraordinary experience and a proven track record of strong judgment and management savvy." Sen. Edward Markey called Yellen a trailblazer and said her experience as the Federal Reserve's vice chair "will provide the stability and continuity our country needs to help ensure our economy recovers fully."

New England’s largest coal-fired power plant has been slated for shutdown, partly due to Environmental Protection Agency regulations.The Brayton Point Station in Massachusetts will no longer provide power to the region’s electrical grid when the plant is shut down in 2017. The plant’s owner Energy Capital Partners has cited several factors for its closing, including competition from natural gas and the need to spend “significant capital to meet environmental regulations and to operate and maintain an aging plant.”Environmentalists argue that coal is no longer an economically viable fuel source.“If Brayton Point can’t make it economically, no coal plant can make...

Rangers issue a handful of citations over the weekend for alleged trespassing. The government shutdown closed the national park Oct. 1. For months, Julie and Eugene Gillies of South Portland planned to celebrate their wedding anniversary in Bar Harbor. They weren’t about to let a political fight in Congress get in the way of their plans to see Acadia National Park, which they visited on their honeymoon 34 years ago. Riding on small motor scooters beneath a bright blue sky Sunday morning, the couple went around the barricades and past the sign declaring the park closed and joined what they...

NEWBURYPORT — Pat Vaillancourt went on a trip last week that was intended to showcase some of America’s greatest treasures. Instead, the Salisbury resident said she and others on her tour bus witnessed an ugly spectacle that made her embarrassed, angry and heartbroken for her country.... For many hours her tour group, which included senior citizen visitors from Japan, Australia, Canada and the United States, were locked in a Yellowstone National Park hotel under armed guard.

According to Boston Public Schools, school bus drivers in the city are staging an illegal work action. According to a statement from Boston Public Schools, "United Steelworkers of America Local 8751, which represents approximately 700 school bus drivers in the city of Boston, is staging an illegal work action this morning aimed at disrupting school bus service to students in BPS, private, parochial and charter schools."

She’s reportedly waiting until 2014 before she starts thinking about 2016, but Hillary Clinton, according to one national poll, is your frontrunner for the White House — by a wide margin.And Elizabeth Warren is your fastest rising star.The former secretary of state and first lady dominated last week’s new Quinnipiac University survey, which showed her gobbling up 61 percent of support and beating any Republican challenger — be it New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Kentucky U.S. Sen. Rand Paul or Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz — by anywhere from 13 to 23 points.

They filled the Dorchester apartment yesterday afternoon, dressed in their Sunday suits and black dresses, some whispering in Portuguese, others erupting in anguished wails. At the center of this universe of grief sat Dominga Carvalho, a 60-year-old woman who had just flown back from Cape Verde to bury the third, and last, son she’s lost to these streets.

A staggering 127 state prison inmates have been caught stealing unemployment pay while behind bars in the past three years, labor department officials revealed yesterday after days of Herald inquiries — then admitted some of the cases were never passed on to the Attorney General’s office for prosecution. The Herald began inquiring about prisoners pulling jobless pay after a front-page story Tuesday reported that Kevin Smith, 42, of Mattapan, a laid-off construction worker and convicted robber, scored $58,000 in unemployment dough while serving a two-to-three-year prison sentence at MCI-Cedar Junction.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick had some harsh words the federal government as he made stops in the western part of the state today. “It’s embarrassing," said Patrick. “The Tea Party Republicans are playing a big game with the lives of some little people frankly,” he said. “I think that’s got to end.” The democrat says this is not a new issue, but it has reached a new level. “We have had perennial arguments over more than 200 years about what we want government to do or not do,” he said. “But rarely, until today, have we had a question about...

September 30, 2013 PRESS RELEASE For Immediate Release Contact Scott Lively 413-250-0984 Sdllaw@gmail.com Lively to Run For Massachusetts Governor Statement of Pastor Scott Lively: After long contemplation and prayer I am convinced that I should run for Governor of Massachusetts. I will run as an independent. The people of this state need a candidate who can clearly and unapologetically articulate Biblical values without fear or compromise. They need a candidate who will tell the simple truth that abortion is murder, and homosexuality is condemned by God (but that Jesus forgives and heals those who repent). That parents and not the...

When the stars come out, it is not always nighttime. Take, for instance, the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal ceremony on Wednesday afternoon at Sanders Theatre. The six medalists included a White House adviser (Valerie Jarrett), a playwright with a Pulitzer Prize (Tony Kushner), a U.S. representative called “the conscious of Congress” (John Lewis), an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (Sonia Sotomayor), the commissioner of the National Basketball Association (David Stern), and a Hollywood director with three Oscars (Steven Spielberg). The medals, awarded since 2000, go to writers, artists, philanthropists, and others for outstanding contributions to African-American culture. Jarrett...

Lawyers for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev asked a judge on Wednesday to lift restrictions placed on the alleged Boston Marathon bomber that prevent him from communicating with other inmates, or visiting anyone other than his family and legal team. They say the restrictions are "unnecessarily harsh and isolating," and hinder their work on his defense. "He is confined to his cell except for legal visits and very limited access to a small outdoor enclosure, on weekdays, weather-permitting," says the motion. "The purported basis for these conditions lies in the crimes he is alleged to have committed prior to arrest, not any behavior...

BOSTON -- A sharp-tongued Gov. Deval Patrick on Wednesday said he was "embarrassed" by having to explain the government shutdown to a group of visiting students from London this week, and hopes voters punish Republicans at the polls next year. "I think tea party Republicans are playing a big game with little people and I hope God forgives them for that, but I hope voters won't," Patrick told reporters after celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month. Well into the second full day of the federal government shutdown, the Democratic governor said his party shouldn't have to compromise by acceding to Republican demands...

An armed attacker, who attempted to rape a woman inside her Tewksbury, Mass., hotel room, ended up calling an ambulance for himself after his victim hit him in the face with a frying pan. Frank Harrison, 46, entered a woman’s hotel room at 5:30 a.m. on Sept. 29, armed with a knife and ready to attack. But his victim fought back as he attempted to sexually assault her. The woman grabbed a frying pan inside the hotel room and wacked him across the face with it. Harrison quickly fled the room and called 911 because of his injuries. Police arrived...

During recent comments to members of the Boston Bar Association, officials from the Department of Children and Families indicated that Massachusetts will no longer allow individuals with conservative social values to raise foster children. In a video of the address, recruitment officer Michelle Gordon described “new expectations” of foster parents, explaining that the DCF is in the process of “weeding out some of this passiveness and sort of destructive behaviors that are occurring.” Gay rights activist Erika Rickard, who serves on the Commission on LGBT Youth, claimed that two in every 10 foster children are gay. As a result, she...

The countdown to the government shut own has come and gone. For the first time in 17 years the U.S. government has been shut down after lawmakers in the House and the Senate failed to agree on a spending bill to fund the government. We continued the conversation with Massachusetts Congressman James McGovern, a Democrat from the Bay State's second district. He joined us on the phone. He reflects on seeing the shutdown of 1996. “At least back then I thought the Republicans believed in a public sector, and now this Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, they don’t...

Gov. Patrick slammed the government shutdown today and House Republicans, saying Massachusetts will suffer while politicians hold the government hostage. Along with national parks and monuments, 22 Head Start programs in the state will close because of the shutdown and the payment status of 4,000 state workers who are paid in whole or in part by federal grants is up in the air, Patrick said. “Those kids are out while the minority and the House like everything about Obamacare, actually, except the Obama part — but want to shut down the government,” he said The governor said the state would...

A New Hampshire academic institution's leadership has approved a $3.6 million housing project for its lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex and allied students. The Board of Trustees at Dartmouth College decided to approve the project, known as The Triangle House, at their meeting in September with work set to begin this month. Before launching The Triangle House, Dartmouth already created a "Gender Neutral Program" which "allows for same-gender, opposite-gender or other-gender identities to live together regardless of biological sex." Dartmouth is not the only New England academic institute to recently expand its housing options to include LGBT or gender...

BOSTON — As the federal government moved closer to a partial shutdown, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick on Monday criticized conservative Republicans in Washington for the failure of Congress to compromise and avoid a closure. "I don't think there is a citizen who ought not be seriously dismayed by the willingness of a small group of radical right wing Tea Party members to drive the economy and the country over a cliff," Patrick told reporters on Beacon Hill. Patrick said the shutdown "is a very dumb thing to do and a very disappointing thing." Patrick criticized the U.S. House's approval of...

SOUTHAMPTON, Mass. (WWLP) - More moose are being spotted in western Massachusetts, and some people would like to see a change in state policy, which would allow for moose hunting. The practice is allowed in other New England states such as New Hampshire, where it is so popular that they have to hold a lottery just to get a license, but here in Massachusetts, it is against the law. This time of year, moose sightings tend to be more common. This is due to the fact that September is the beginning of their mating season, in which moose are less...

This week, low-income minority residents of Cambridge public housing learned a cold, hard truth about their “homes.” These apartments aren’t their homes at all. They belong to the government. And because the liberals who run Cambridge government don’t like smoking, the citizen-residents of Cambridge’s housing projects must learn to not like it, too. Smoking has been banned. The new policy takes effect next August. Massachusetts software businesses just learned a similar lesson. For years, these businesses overwhelmingly gave their political contributions to Democrats. Those same liberal pols turned around and hit these Obama-supporting, Prius-driving computer geek friends with the “tech...

It's now official policy in Massachusetts: Adults holding traditional values will no longer be allowed to adopt or be foster parents. On May 15, 2013, the Boston Bar Association held a forum with the Mass. Department of Children and Families (DCF) and the Mass. Commission on LGBT Youth. The DCF speakers confirmed that they are "weeding out" adoptive and foster parents who are not willing to wholly accept and support LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender) self-identification by a child in their care. The general topic of the evening was the growing number of LGBT youth needing foster care. The...

NORTHAMPTON, Mass., Sept. 25 (UPI) -- An email by a student at the all-women Smith College in Massachusetts proposing an all-straight sorority has gone viral, school officials said. The email, originally posted by another student who found it on a Tumblr blog, was purportedly from a straight student at Smith who said she felt "marginalized" by the homosexual community at Smith and proposed an "exclusive" chapter of Delta Gamma for straight women. The writer proposes activities such as "sorority mixers with Amherst men, weekly dinner dates, weekly photo shoots where we would dress up nice [and] baking nights." The message...

Some people call it the “knockout game,” local news affiliates in New York prefer to call it simply a teenage “prank,” but whatever the term, Ralph Santiago is dead – one of three men who recently died or suffered permanent brain damage from what police say are unprovoked assaults. Others, however, are saying it’s not some random crime or occasional “prank,” but part of a nationwide pattern of unprovoked racial violence. The rules of the “knockout game” are typically the same no matter where it happens: Start with a group of black people. Find a white person. Punch him in...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will sign the Arms Trade Treaty regulating the international trade in conventional arms, The diplomats said Kerry would sign the treaty on Wednesday On April 2, the U.N. General Assembly adopted the treaty by a vote of 154 for, including the United States...The no votes were cast by Iran, North Korea and Syria,

BOSTON – Lawyers for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will ask a judge to discuss the timeline and procedure for prosecutors to decide whether to seek the death penalty. A joint status report filed in court says the defense wants the court to address "the death penalty protocol" in federal court on Monday. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will ultimately make the decision about whether to seek the federal death penalty, but the U.S. attorney's office in Boston will make a recommendation. Tsarnaev's attorneys also have the right to make the case against the death penalty.

Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis, who led his department’s response to the Boston Marathon bombing, is stepping down, a department spokeswoman said Sunday. … The decision by Davis to step down is perhaps not surprising. Boston is poised to have a new mayor for the first time in two decades after Menino opted not to seek another term. …

African-American middle school students were forced to act as slaves, pretending to be sold at auction and standing in the darkness of a would-be slave ship, all while enduring racial epithets, a human rights lawsuit filed by a student’s mother claims. Nature’s Classroom in Charlton, Massachusetts has been running this reenactment for many years. Jon Santos, the director of Nature’s Classroom, told The Washington Post that the three-hour exercise was meant to teach students empathy for what slaves were put through, along with lessons about modern day bullying. He denied that racial slurs were part of the curriculum, saying that...

SPRINGFIELD — Supporters of immigration rights plan a rally in Springfield on Saturday in support of two bills they say will keep the state safer. The rally is scheduled to begin at 12:30 p.m. at All Souls Church, 449 Plainfield St., in Springfield. The bills are known as the Trust Act and the Safe Driving Act, according to a statement from organizers. The Trust Act would prevent individuals released by judges and magistrates from then being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. The bill would also clarify that it is not the responsibility of local law enforcement officials to...

Middle school-aged students from Connecticut on a field trip last year were forced to re-enact slavery by pretending to be sold at auction and in fields picking cotton, according to a student's complaint. They were told they would be whipped or worse if they ran, and some were asked to dance for their masters. "I had to hold my head down and could not make contact with the white masters," the 12-year-old student, who is black, said in a statement read to the Hartford school board this week by her father, James Baker of suburban Farmington. "I heard the instructor...

Boston- The overwhelming response to a fund set up for a Boston homeless man who turned in a backpack he found filled with more than $40,000 in cash and traveler's checks is a "statement to everyone in America," says the Virginia man who started the drive. In just over two days, more than $91,000 has been donated to the fund for Glen James. James flagged down a police officer Saturday after he found the backpack containing $2,400 in cash and almost $40,000 in traveler's checks at the South Bay Mall In Boston. The man who lost it told workers at...

A humble homeless man who returned a backpack full of cash and traveler’s checks to police said he felt “very, very good” to do it and used a ceremony honoring him at police headquarters to thank all the people who have ever given him money on the street.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley officially launched her campaign for governor Monday, saying she had learned from the errors made during her stunning loss to Republican Scott Brown in a special election for the U.S. Senate.

Liberal Academia pushing Islam on the children. In case you missed this one, there was a report at JihadWatch and numerous other sources that a Boston school (Concord-Carlisle High) replaced the Pledge of Allegiance with a Muslim poem on the anniversary of 9/11. Now if that isn’t infuriating enough, there is another report out of Arkansas in which a school attempted to sneak in a Muslim speaker to proselytize on the 9/11 anniversary. Parents weren’t told and Liberal media was surprised that parents would have a problem with this. Notice in the video report below, how the media managed to...

A top House Democrat and Republican differed Sunday about how the United States' effort to solve the Syria crisis swerved from a threat of military force to a possible diplomatic solution, but they agreed that Russian President Vladimir Putin is now leading the effort. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., argued that a potential diplomatic solution couldn’t have been possible without President Obama first saying the U.S. would take military action against Syrian President Bashar Assad for an Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack that killed nearly 1,500 of his own people. “We wouldn’t be at this point if not for the...

(CNSNews.com) – Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has released 2,837 convicted criminal alien sex offenders back into American communities in order to comply with a Supreme Court decision authored by Clinton-appointed Justice Stephen Breyer, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The 2,837 sex offenders represented five percent of the 59,347 deportable aliens released since last September under the supervision of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to the GAO report, which was released Thursday. “There are circumstances in which criminal aliens who have been ordered removed from the United States – including those convicted...

The Massachusetts Health Connector and Massachusetts Association of Portuguese Speakers (MAPS) joined together to help local residents find the proper health-insurance plans for themselves and their families during the upcoming open enrollment period. MAPS is one of 10 organizations across the state that received grants for the Health Connector's Navigator program, in which residents can learn about new coverage options available through the Affordable Care Act. "We're going to be targeting not only Portuguese-speaking individuals and small businesses, but also everyone that needs this," said Paulo Pinto, executive director of MAPS. "And making sure that everyone that is underinsured or...

More than 200 colleges and high schools across the nation participated in Young America's Foundation's 9/11: Never Forget Project. Students came together to establish an American flag memorial on campus consisting of 2,977 flags representing each person murdered in the terrorist attacks. Unfortunately, five student protesters at Middlebury College ripped the flags out of the ground before 3:00 pm. The 9/11: Never Forget Project has been an annual nonpartisan event at Middlebury College for the past ten years. By participating in the 9/11: Never Forget Project, students honor the victims of the attacks, as well as honor the American principles...

(CNN) -- A Boston-area man, who was planning to kidnap children, lock them in a basement dungeon, rape and eat them, should be imprisoned for at least 27 years, federal authorities said in court documents filed this week. . . . Online chats, seized by police, showed Portway call his basement a "dungeon" where he intended to "keep kidnapped children while he sexually abused them and as a place to eventually murder and cannibalize the children."

Three college friends of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were due in court on Friday to answer charges that they helped cover his tracks when the FBI was trying to find the people responsible for the April 15 attack. The men, two exchange students from Kazakhstan and one from the Boston area, are charged with removing a laptop and a backpack containing empty fireworks shells from Tsarnaev's room three days after receiving a text message from him telling them to "go to my room and take what's there," according to court papers. Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, both from...

(Boston) -- A new study from the American Journal of Public Heath shows that U.S. states with higher estimated rates of gun ownership experience a higher number of firearms-related homicides. The study, led by a Boston University School of Public Health researcher, examines the National Rifle Association's (NRA) claim that increased gun ownership does not lead to increased gun violence. It is the largest study conducted to date into the correlation between gun ownership and firearms violence, and the first to comprehensively examine the issue since the tragic shooting last December of 20 children and 7 adults at Sandy Hook...

The principal of Concord Carlisle High School in Boston issued an apology Wednesday after a Muslim poem was recited over the intercom on the 12th anniversary of 9/11, and the Pledge of Allegiance was not. According to principal Peter Badalament, a “small number” of people were outraged at the poem, which was meant to promote “cross-cultural understanding,” (Skip) Mohja Kahf’s “My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears,” tells a granddaughter’s account of watching her grandmother adhere to the religious Muslim custom of washing her feet five times a day

<p>A Massachusetts school district has canceled classes for the day because floors are too slippery.</p>

BOSTON — Rep. Dan Winslow wants to raise the speed limit on certain stretches of interstate highways in Massachusetts from 65 miles per hour to 70 miles per hour. “Our roads are designed for 70. Our cars are designed for faster than 65,” Winslow told the Committee on Transportation Tuesday. If approved, the bill (H 3175) would increase the speed limit on parts of the Massachusetts Turnpike, Interstate 91, and Interstate 95. Newton resident John Carr, who told the News Service highway speeds have been “an interest of mine for about 15 years,” favors an increase in the speed limit,...