Free Republic

Citing preexisting concerns, Swampscott parents Friday presented the School Committee with a statement of no confidence in the elementary school principal who recently came out as transgender. Shannon Daniels, previously known as Tom, also took an unexpected leave of absence this week. Superintendent Pamela Angelakis initially told parents in an e-mail that she and Daniels had mutually agreed Daniels would go on leave for “at least a few days.” On Friday, the superintendent’s assistant said she could not say when Daniels would return. School Committee chairwoman Amy O’Connor said she received the parents’ petition Friday, and she was just beginning...

The French and Indian War ended in 1763 with the French losing Canada and all their land east of the Mississippi River. King George III decided to leave troops in the American colonies in case of future French incursions or native uprisings. British troops were to be paid with taxes collected from the colonies: the Sugar Tax of 1764 the Stamp Tax of 1765 the Townshend Acts of 1767, taxing glass, paint and paper As the Colonies had no representative in Parliament, the cry arose, “No taxation without representation.” The king imposed Writs of Assistance in 1765 allowing British authorities...

“The group, led by Democrat Senator and Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chairman, Patrick Leahy, arrived in Cuba last weekend to review changes in Washington’s policy toward the island since President Donald Trump assumed office in January 2017. During the press conference, Leahy mentioned the meeting that he and his colleagues held yesterday with Cuban President, Raúl Castro…During the press conference the Senator for Vermont criticized the new direction taken by the Trump administration with regard to Cuba policy.” (Cuba’s Communist party paper, Granma.)The rest of the U.S. delegation consisted of senators Ron Wyden (D-OR), Gary Peters (D-MI), Jim McGovern (D-MA),...

Daniel Frisiello, a 24-year-old Beverly man, has been charged with sending a letter containing white powder to Donald Trump Jr., President Donald Trump's eldest son. And, according to the criminal complaint issued by the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney's Office, Trump's family were not Frisiello's only victims. Frisiello was charged with five counts of mailing a threat to cause injury and five count of making hoax threats, after allegedly sending letters containing powder to five different addresses in the last month.

Department of Justice U.S. Attorney’s Office District of Massachusetts FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, March 1, 2018 Massachusetts Man Arrested for Mailing Threatening Letters Containing Suspicious White Powder BOSTON – A Beverly, Mass., man was arrested today in connection with mailing five threatening letters containing suspicious white powder to high-profile individuals around the country. Daniel Frisiello, 24, was charged in a criminal complaint with five counts of mailing a threat to injure the person of another and five counts of false information and hoaxes. Frisiello was arrested this morning and will appear in federal court in Worcester later this afternoon. As...

The Office of Student Life has placed religious group Harvard College Faith and Action on “administrative probation” for a year after the organization pressured a female member of its student leadership to resign in September following her decision to date a woman. College spokesperson Aaron M. Goldman announced the move to put HCFA on probation in an emailed statement sent to The Crimson Wednesday afternoon. “After a thorough review and finding that HCFA had conducted itself in a manner grossly inconsistent with the expectations clearly outlined in [the Office of Student Life’s] Student Organization Resource and Policy Guide, OSL has...

Heard of Watergate? Get ready for Lowellgate. On Sept. 18, 1972, the evening before the primary election during his second attempt for Congress, Kerry's brother Cameron and one Thomas Vallely, both part of his current campaign team, were arrested by Lowell police at 1:40 a.m. and charged with breaking and entering with the intent to commit larceny. The two were apprehended in the basement of a building whose door had been forced open, police said. It housed the headquarters of candidate DiFruscia. The Watergate scandal was making headlines at this time, and it was called the Lowell Watergate. "They wanted...

Washington -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office acknowledged today that a former staff member had removed references to the California Democrat's net worth on the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia, as well as altered entries about her husband Richard Blum's Chinese investments in 1997. A former staff member "independently went on to Wikipedia to correct some material he felt was not appropriate," said Feinstein spokesman Howard Gantman. "The senator was not even aware of it." The changes to the biographies of members of Congress, allegedly by their staffs, have again raised questions about the credibility of the online encyclopedia that has become an...

Thanks, Obama. The former president appeared at a sports analytics conference hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Friday. But if you were not an attendee at the event, don’t expect to hear much about what Barack Obama shared. Officials managing the 12th annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center put strict rules in place that extended beyond barring the media from divulging Obama’s insights. An e-mail sent to those heading to the venue for the “conversation with Obama” read like a line from the movie “Fight Club”: The first rule of seeing the...

The provocative Worcester-based blog Turtleboy Sports, the first to break the story about how a Massachusetts state trooper apparently faced discipline for including incriminating details in his arrest report concerning a judge’s daughter, days ago broke a story regarding a K-9 trooper’s lurid history of drug dealing and money laundering. Both of Boston’s major newspapers — the Boston Herald and the Boston Globe — recently followed up on the Turtleboy report with stories of their own. Neither publication cited, however, Turtleboy’s original reporting, triggering a firestorm of criticism in both newspaper’s online comment sections.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — During his CPAC speech, Donald Trump took a moment to savage Barack Obama, John Kerry and the Iran nuclear deal as the “worst negotiated” deal in history. “We declined to certify the terrible, one-sided Iran nuclear deal,” Trump said to cheers from the crowd. “That was a horrible deal.” “Whoever heard — you give $150 billion to a nation that has no respect for you whatsoever?” Trump asked. “They are saying death to America while they are signing the agreement.” Trump took direct aim at Kerry, who was secretary of state and helped negotiate the agreement...

As a coconspirator in a massive drug case, Leigha Genduso testified in federal court in 2007 about how she helped her live-in boyfriend deal marijuana and hide evidence. She acknowledged laundering money, smoking pot every day, and gift-wrapping pounds of marijuana for her own customer, court records show, but evaded criminal charges in exchange for testifying against her former fiance. Just a year later, Genduso was on the other side of the law, hired as a dispatcher for the Massachusetts State Police. And since 2014, she has served as a state trooper.

Two top commanders in the Massachusetts State Police retired Friday night. Sources tell the I-Team’s Cheryl Fiandaca both Lt. Col. Daniel Risteen and Major Susan Anderson were implicated in the Alli Bibaud scandal, the judge’s daughter whose arrest report was altered on orders of then Colonel Richard McKeon. McKeon and his top assistant retired last year. Attorney General Maura Healey is investigating the incident. The two troopers who blew the whistle on the cover up have filed a federal lawsuit. In a separate story, that Turtleboy Sports was first to report, sources say State Trooper Leigha Genduso was suspended after...

Students and faculty at Harvard University are upset that Lawrence S. Bacow, a qualified attorney, author, and economist, was selected to serve as university president. They are objecting on the basis that he is a white male. Writing for the Crimson, Student Diego Navarrete argued that Bacow won’t be able to represent an increasingly diverse student body at the Ivy League institution. “A thought that I had earlier was that, in a few years, if the diversity of the incoming class keeps increasing, [a] white president will no longer be representative of the Harvard student body, which is a big...

An MBTA trolley driver paid a friend $2,000 to don a Halloween mask and "attack" him while he was on the job, allowing him to fraudulently collect workers' compensation and disability insurance, according to authorities. Thomas Lucey, 46, is facing charges of insurance fraud and other counts, including misleading police, after the bizarre plot crumbled when police pulled fingerprints off a fake plastic pumpkin the so-called "attacker" left behind and traced it back to Lucey's friend, according to Transit Police and prosecutors.

A state trooper has been placed on administrative leave and is now the subject of an internal investigation, the agency confirmed yesterday. Trooper Leigha Genduso was placed on paid administrative leave Monday, according to state police spokesman David Procopio. Genduso earned $151,000 last year, records show. She will face a departmental duty status hearing in the next few days, he added. State police have also launched an Internal Affairs investigation and its conclusions will determine what further action, if any, will be taken against Genduso, Procopio said. He would not say why she was placed on leave, adding that state...

A coalition that includes a Latino membership organization and a former Massachusetts governor filed lawsuits on Wednesday challenging how four U.S. states allocate their Electoral College votes in presidential elections. The lawsuits were filed in federal courts in Massachusetts and California, states that went for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016, and South Carolina and Texas, where a majority of votes went to Republican U.S. President Donald Trump. The lawsuits challenge the winner-take-all system used in those states to select electors who cast votes for president and vice president in the Electoral College after a presidential election. Forty-four other states...

As part of its exclusive series on Libya during the rule of late leader Moammar al-Gaddafi, Asharq Al-Awsat examines the regime’s ties with local and foreign powers, including its attempts to finance western presidential campaigns, particularly in France, the United States and Ukraine. Witnesses from the former regime said that Tripoli had spent some 50 million euros in 2007 to fund the campaign of French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy. Lebanese businessman Ziad Takeieddine, who was present at Sarkozy’s meetings with Gaddafi revealed that the “figures were much higher than that.” Tripoli also pumped 5 million dollars in the presidential campaign...

Mitt’s back. The former governor of Massachusetts and occasional native son of Michigan has a new persona: Mr. Utah. He’s going to bring Utah conservatism to the whole Republican party and to the country at large. Wholesome, efficient, industrious, faithful. “Utah has a lot to teach the politicians in Washington,” he says in announcing his Senate campaign. Maybe.

Elizabeth Warren’s presidential ambitions could be crushed if Oprah ran for president. Who wants a whiny Warren when you could have an optimistic Oprah? And the addition of Oprah would also significantly dilute the women’s vote that Warren would be counting on. But in the current atmosphere, Warren couldn’t very well criticize Oprah when Alisyn Camerota asked her on CNN this morning to comment a possible President Winfrey. So Warren put on a happy face, gushing about Oprah’s Golden Globes speech, calling her “inspiring” and lauding Oprah’s “leadership.” But then Camerota asked whether America is hungry “for another mega-celebrity billionaire?”...