Free Republic

Mumbles Menino is so desperate to grab some of that new meals tax money, he’s starting to sound like Popeye’s old friend Wimpy. The mayor of Boston goes out Friday talking about hamburgers, and how this proposed tax increase would only cost you 18 cents on a $9 bacon double cheese with fries, which will work out great down the road because your property taxes will go down by thousands of dollars because of that extra 18 cents. In short, Mumbles will gladly give you a tax cut Tuesday for an 18-cent hamburger tax today. It’s a scam of course....

The Boston Redevelopment Authority went to court yesterday to prevent four of its key officials from having to answer questions under oath about a deal in which a city-owned parcel of land was transferred to an Islamic group for construction of a mosque. Lawyers for the city's most powerful agency argued in Suffolk Superior Court that critics of the mosque project at Roxbury Crossing had no right to depose the BRA officials about the project or obtain more documents than those already provided to the David Project, a nonprofit Jewish advocacy group. Leaders of the David Project have questioned the...

The Islamic Society of Boston's effort to build the region's largest mosque has received at least $1 million in financing from a Saudi Arabia-based bank dominated by governments that critics of the mosque project say support Islamic extremism. The Islamic society acknowledged yesterday receiving a $1 million loan from the Islamic Development Bank in late 2005 -- principal owners of which are Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iran, and Egypt -- after opponents of the mosque project provided the Globe with documents showing that the bank paid about $500,000 in mosque construction bills late in 2005. Work on the mosque, which is...

Mayor Thomas M. Menino is chastising shock jocks Opie & Anthony and WBCN for broadcasting a live "Homeless Shopping Spree" yesterday where homeless people were given money and were taken to a New Jersey mall... "This so-called "shopping spree" is a sick and twisted exercise that degrades the most vulnerable members of our society," Menino. "This is wrong, and we need the public . . . who care about the homeless and about basic human decency to stand up and tell them so." According to a live broadcast of the program yesterday, more than 2,000 people showed up at the...

Hey youse, yeah I’m talkin’ to youse out there, youse think it’s easy bein’ Mumbles Menino? All these years as mayor, and you gets no respect. The city looks lousy, companies are movin’ out, half the drugs in the police evidence room are missing, you backed Tom Reilly for governor, they keep puttin’ “holiday tree” up the Web site - things get any worse and James Baker and Lee Hamilton will be writing a report about you, which as everyone knows is the singular of “youse.” But still, the Mayor toils on, moving through the city, accompanied only by a...

The Herring family is all too familiar with the ruthless, unimaginably violent actions of a girl gang that has taken to terrorizing Dorchester in recent months. In March, 8-year-old Daryus Herring - that’s right, a little 8-year old boy - was surrounded and stomped by the girls that call themselves the Crown Path gang. The attack left the child unconscious with four broken ribs. Days later, the same girls tried to beat up the boy’s big sister - 13-year-old Shaquice Herring - after she asked them, “Which one of you jumped my brother?” The wannabe girl gangsters responded by throwing...

A crime-fighting theory that says stopping major crimes begins with stopping small ones has influenced policing strategies in Boston and elsewhere since the 1980s. But scholars are starting to question whether fixing broken windows really fixes much at all. ON THURSDAY, Mayor Thomas M. Menino announced a new initiative. The Boston Police Department, he said, will be cracking down on misdemeanor offenses, including loud parties, unleashed dogs, public drinking, and even littering. ''Today we are addressing what may sometimes appear to be smaller issues," the mayor said at a press conference, ''but for those of us familiar with the 'broken...

I am proud to live in a country where religious freedom is a fundamental belief, and where our elected officials are judged by their performance in office, without religious tests. Though the beliefs they hold in their hearts surely inform every decision they make, elected officials are properly judged by the policies they pursue, not by the religion they practice or by their adherence to the tenets of our own religious beliefs. So, I was troubled to read that picketers protested Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s address to the Catholic Charities of Greater Boston Christmas dinner earlier this month, criticizing the...

CARICATURES OF CATHOLIC belief have been a staple of American life since the Colonial period. Once upon a time, the cartoons were drawn and the caricatures were promoted by Protestant bigots. That's rarely the case anymore, except on the fringes of the religious fever swamps (and, to be sure, among certain devout secularists). In an odd historical twist, cartoon Catholicism and the crudest caricatures of Catholic belief are often promoted today by Catholic political leaders. Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino is a case in point. In the course of his recent remarks to the Catholic Charities Greater Boston Christmas dinner,...

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has raised the level of rhetoric and insulted religious Catholics across the state by telling a homosexual newspaper this week that those who want to enforce the Church's teachings and instructions are, in his words, "hateful." Catholic Charities, an arm of the Archdiocese of Boston but run by a separate (and unfortunately, left-wing) board of directors, had announced that it was honoring Mayor Menino at its annual fund-raising dinner to be held next Friday, Dec. 9, at the Boston Harbor Hotel. Many religious Catholics were outraged and communicated with Archbishop Sean O'Malley that he should not...

Mayor Thomas M. Menino said yesterday that critics campaigning to have him ousted as keynote speaker at a Catholic Charities fund-raiser next week are blinded by anger and risk weakening the Catholic Church by making it more exclusive. 'Faith, hope, and charity, that's what the church is about," the mayor said in his first public remarks on the issue since Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley announced last week he would not attend the event. ''If these people are Catholic and charitable, where does this animosity come from? They are not charitable at all. As a Catholic, I am trying to help...

Tradition trumps inclusiveness It's a Christmas tree Joanne Laucius The Ottawa Citizen Tuesday, November 29, 2005 Rideau Hall performed a rapid about-face on the name of its seasonal evergreen yesterday after a staff member called it a "holiday tree" in a CBC interview. "At Rideau Hall, we will be putting up a holiday tree as we find it reflects the traditions of many cultures, and it is inclusive," Rideau Hall spokeswoman Lucie Brosseau said. Not so fast. Soon after, in response to a query from the Citizen, Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean's spokesman said there had been a mistake. It was...

O'Malley won't attend dinner at which Menino is honored November 24, 2005 BOSTON --Disagreement over Mayor Thomas Menino's views on abortion and same-sex marriage has prompted Archbishop Sean O'Malley to cancel plans to attend the annual Catholic Charities Christmas dinner next month.Also, O'Malley is sending a letter to every parish in the archdiocese in which he says the church's opposition to gay marriage should not be interpreted as hostility toward homosexuals, and Catholics should strive to end discrimination toward gays and lesbians. snip-------------- The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, a conservative Catholic group, has called for a boycott of the dinner...

There's something about Thanksgiving that truly brings out the hate in America's most miserable extremists. Some of the most notorious fresh examples: From Bill Schechner at San Francisco's KPIX: Arab-Owned Liquor Stores Attacked In Oakland OAKLAND Security tapes from the San Pablo Liquor Market on 23rd and San Pablo Ave. in Oakland show 11 men dressed in the manner of members of the Nation of Islam walking into the market at about 11:30 Wednesday night. After confronting the clerk behind the counter they push him aside, topple some groceries, open the wine, soda and alcohol coolers and throw the goods...

The fuming Nova Scotia lumberjack who donated the spruce to be lighted on Boston Common has a message for the Hub: Feed that “holiday tree” to a woodchipper. “My family donated a Christmas tree. If Boston wants to call it something else, maybe they should just send it back,” said Donnie Hatt, the logger who donated the 48-foot-tall white spruce that grew in his front yard for 36 years. “If I’d known there would be this much craziness, I would have ground it up myself.” Hatt was referring to the flurry of media calls he’s received since yesterday’s Herald reported...

Boston, Nov. 23 (CWNews.com) - Boston's Archbishop Sean O'Malley will not attend a December dinner honoring the city's Mayor Thomas Menino. The dinner is a fundraising event for the local office of Catholic Charities. The archbishop's withdrawal from the December 9 event follows a series of protests from lay Catholic leaders, who have pointed to Mayor Menino's record on key moral issues. C.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, cited the mayor's "relentless opposition to the moral teachings of the Roman Catholic Church" in a November 17 statement urging the archbishop not to attend the dinner....

Jerry Falwell and an army of conservative lawyers drew a line in the snow yesterday, warning Boston and other cities: Don’t mess with Christmas. And even before the first volley was fired, City Hall caved. Just after a top lawyer for the conservative Liberty Counsel blasted the Hub’s annual “holiday tree” ceremony, a Menino administration official scrambled to do damage control. “This is a Christmas tree,” Boston Parks Commissioner Toni Pollak insisted about the Nova Scotia spruce the city will light Dec. 1 on historic Boston Common. “It’s definitely a Christmas tree.” However, the city’s official Web site refers to...

Louis Farrakhan's increasingly incoherent ramblings, making news this weekend, reminded the Radio Equalizer of another so-called civil rights leader, Al Sharpton. What happened to his planned liberal talk radio show? After revealing his intentions to the media in May, we've heard almost nothing since. At the time, Rush Limbaugh thought Sharpton's prospects were fairly decent, but the whole issue now seems to be forgotten. According to reports at the time, "The Al Sharpton Show" should have been on the air by now.

BOSTON -- When NewsCenter 5 showed a controversial T-shirt to Mayor Thomas Menino, he was so upset he called for the boycott of the store selling it. NewsCenter 5's Jorge Quiroga reported that the T-shirt's slogan, "Stop Snitchin'," is street slang for, "Don't cooperate with police."

As evacuation nightmares unfold in Texas and Louisiana, Boston's plan to move more than 1 million people out of the city in an emergency remains vague and leaves much to chance – highlighting the Hub's potentially deadly vulnerabilities. "Lives are on the line here," said retired Navy Cmdr. Hank Chase, a disaster relief expert who called the city plan "superficial." Among the glaring shortcomings of the Hub's "Operation Exodus," provided by the city: #Shaky plans for those who cannot "self-evacuate" in their own cars; # No concrete plan to ensure hospitals and nursing homes are rapidly evacuated; # No plans...