Free Republic

Squatting on steps to protest MBTA vote Occupy Boston is back — but without the tents this time — in a threatened 10-day sit-in on the State House steps to protest looming MBTA fare hikes. An offshoot of the group that camped in Dewey Square for 71 days last year until cops broomed them said there will be no canvas this time, just people squatting out in the weather, in the shadow of the Golden Dome. But the cold granite steps already have a name: “Camp Charlie.” “It’s really a 10-day -occupation,” Occupy Boston spokesperson Gunner Smith said about the...

Obama’s little temper tantrum over the Supreme Court voting down his unconstitutional takeover of the health insurance industry may have awakened a sleeping giant — the Judiciary. Good lawyers know better than to tick off judges. And your common graduate of Cleveland State University knows the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of the law. Apparently a Harvard education was wasted on the president because on Monday, the president said it was “unprecedented” for a “group of unelected people” to tell him no. Instead of studying John Marshall, Charles Evans Hughes and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Barack Obama must have been...

Following outrage from parents; a changed version of "God Bless the USA" has been pulled from an upcoming school assembly concert. According to parents, children at Stall Brook Elementary school were told to sing "We love the USA" instead of "God Bless the USA" during the chorus of the popular Lee Greenwood song.

Federal immigration officials have notified President Obama’s uncle that they want to discuss his deportation to his native Kenya, confirming for the first time since last summer that he could still be forced to leave the country. The notice arrived days after Onyango Obama resolved a drunken driving case in Framingham that exposed the quiet 67-year-old as living in the United States illegally 20 years after he was ordered deported. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Brian P. Hale said Tuesday that now that Obama’s criminal case is over, “ICE has communicated, in accordance with standard procedure, with the attorney...

President Obama's uncle has reportedly been granted a hardship driver's license by the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles just a week after he lost the right to drive for 45 days in a deal in a drunken driving case. The license granted Monday allows 67-year-old Onyango Obama to drive from noon to midnight to get to work as manager of a Framingham liquor store. Obama convinced a hearing officer that the inability to drive would pose a hardship on his job working for Conti Liquors, the Boston Herald reported. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/04/03/obamas-uncle-gets-massachusetts-drivers-license-back-after-drunk-driving-arrest/#ixzz1r32XWPJP

Gov. Deval Patrick defended President Barack Obama’s handling of the economy on Tuesday morning, blaming a “sclerosis” in Congress for impeding the president’s ability to make the type of investments that have been successful in Massachusetts. Describing his administration’s three-legged stool for economic development – education, innovation and infrastructure – Patrick pointed to 23,000 jobs created in the first two months of 2012 and growth in the biotechnology and clean energy sectors as proof that his strategy is paying off. While critics of a stimulus law say it may have worsened the nation’s fiscal problems, the governor said 90,000 people...

Drivers hoping to slip the surly -- and traffic congested -- bonds of Earth moved a step closer to realizing their dream, as a US firm said it had successfully tested a street-legal plane. Massachusetts-based firm Terrafugia said their production prototype "Transition" car-plane had completed an eight-minute test flight, clearing the way for it to hit the market within a year. "With this flight, the team demonstrated an ability to accomplish what had been called an impossible dream," said founder Carl Dietrich. The two-seater craft, which has the rounded features of a Fiat 500 and collapsible wings, is on presale...

Just a week after he copped a plea in a drunken-driving rap, President Obama’s illegal-alien uncle has landed a hardship driver’s license from the Registry of Motor Vehicles, making it perfectly legal for him to drive in Massachusetts — even though the feds say he doesn’t belong here. Onyango Obama, 67, who lost his regular license for 45 days last week, scored his limited license yesterday from the Registry’s Wilmington branch, after convincing a hearing officer that life without wheels would have posed an undue hardship on his livelihood as a liquor-store manager. Obama bolstered his case with a letter...

A sea of hooded activists descended on the steps of City Hall Saturday morning to join the 1,000 Hoodies Walk to protest the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman in Central Florida in late February. The shooting has sparked an international furor over racial profiling, catching fire on social networking channels and inspiring protests across the globe. The local event appeared to live up to its billing as nearly 1,000 people of all ages and racial and ethnic backgrounds turned out in Springfield. The crowd convened at City Hall and Court Square before...

In the first early releases of convicted murderers since a parolee shot and killed a Woburn patrolman in 2010, the state Parole Board on Thursday unveiled decisions to parole one man convicted of a Springfield murder and two other men convicted of murder. In the Springfield case, the board voted unanimously to release Raborn Allah, formerly known as David A. Warrick of Springfield, who had actually been released on parole once before. "These are the first decisions to release lifers," since the fatal shooting of Woburn Patrolman John Maguire on Dec. 26, 2010, Joshua Wall, chairman of the parole board,...

Several Tea Party groups across Massachusetts are dividing into two camps — those who want to focus on conservative economic issues and others who want to expand into social issues, such as illegal immigration and gay rights. lllustrating that split is a pair of competing April 15 Tea Party rallies — a Tax Day rally in Worcester with speakers focusing on the budget and taxes, and a Patriot Day rally on Boston Common, which also includes speeches from a voter ID advocate and the Rev. Scott Lively, a fierce public critic of gay rights. But both sides told the Herald...

When then-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney signed into law the nation’s most far-reaching state health care reform proposal, it was widely expected to be a centerpiece of his presidential campaign. In fact Governor Romney bragged that he would "steal" the traditionally Democratic issue of health care. "Issues which have long been the province of the Democratic Party to claim as their own will increasingly move to the Republican side of the aisle," he told Bloomberg News Service shortly after signing the bill. He told other reporters that the biggest difference between his health care plan and Hillary Clinton’s was "mine got...

A super PAC supporting former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has used an out-of-context quote from Rick Santorum to argue that the former Pennsylvania senator is irresponsible on economics. The new Restore Our Future spot, called “Care,” ties Santorum saying he doesn’t “care” about the unemployment rate to his spending votes in the Senate.

John Kerry: They're swiftboating Obama 3/29/12 4:24 PM EDT Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) has lent his name to a fundraising solicitation that raises the specter of millionaires and billionaires funding an outside effort against President Obama. "When I was the Democratic nominee for president in one of the closest and toughest elections in history, a group of billionaires did something unprecedented," Kerry wrote. "They wrote million-dollar checks to fund lies about my service on what were called "Swift Boats" in Vietnam -- and in so doing, they turned the boats my crewmates and I served on into a new political...

A deadly armed robber once facing the death penalty, a Dorchester appliance store owner’s killer and a man who did nothing to stop a friend from pumping a Springfield resident full of bullets are the first three “lifers” to be set free since the state Parole Board was revamped by Gov. Deval Patrick following the Dec. 26, 2010, murder of Woburn Police Officer John “Jack” Maguire by a career felon paroled despite serving three life sentences. After 13 consecutive denials of parole applications, the board announced today it will release Vernon Miller, Benley Thompson and Raborn Allah on April 9....

Simon Glik, the attorney who last year forced the First Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm that recording police in public is not a crime, will receive a $170,000 settlement from the City of Boston, stemming from his 2007 arrest for recording police in a public park. Even though criminal charges against Glik were quickly dismissed, it took five years to settle the case because police were seeking qualified immunity in making unlawful arrests, which would have protected them from such lawsuits. Obviously, they were under the impression that the long-standing legal principle of ignorance of the law excuses no...

NATICK, MA --(Ammoland.com)- Commonwealth Second Amendment, Inc. (Comm2A) has filed suit in federal court in Massachusetts challenging the state’s misuse of bonded warehouses to force the forfeiture of privately owned firearms in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process guarantees. Comm2A’s lawsuit on behalf of Russell Jarvis, James Jarvis and Robert Crampton is supported in part by a grant from the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund. Plaintiffs are represented by attorneys David Jensen of New York and Patrick M. Groulx of Somerville, Massachusetts. Defendants are Village Vault, Inc. and Mary E. Heffernan, Secretary of the Executive Office of Public Safety...

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida endorsed Mitt Romney as the party's presidential nominee Wednesday night, saying it's increasingly clear that Romney will win the nomination and that continuing the primary fight will only damage the effort to defeat President Barack Obama. Rubio, a freshman senator and tea party favorite, said he's convinced that Romney will govern as a conservative and will be superior to Obama as a president.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., endorsed Mitt Romney for president Wednesday night on Fox News' "Hannity," saying Romney offers "a very clear alternative" to President Obama's vision for the future of the country. Rubio, a young, first-termer who has been discussed as a possible vice presidential candidate, criticized talk of a fight for the Republican nomination on the convention floor, a possibility that is keeping alive the campaigns of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. "I think that's a recipe for delivering four more years of Barack Obama," Rubio told Fox News' Sean Hannity. Romney has "earned this nomination," Rubio said, though...

BOSTON, Mass. (WWLP) - Representative Cheryl Coakley-Rivera of Springfield led colleagues in the Massachusetts State House Wednesday to observe a moment of silence in honor of Trayvon Martin, a Florida teen who was stalked, shot and killed by a self-proclaimed neighborhood watch captain. “It’s appalling that Trayvon, going home, with a bag of skittles, was followed by a man twice his size, with a weapon, and gunned down,” said Rep. Cheryl Coakley Rivera. “And [the killer is] trying to say that Trayvon was the aggressor,” “There’s definitely a race issue here,” remarked Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier (D-Pittsfield). “In the African-America Community,...