Free Republic

Can you imagine calling up a family that has just seen their home burn to the ground and offering to buy their land for below market value? This is apparently happening in Hawaii right now on a massive scale. Grieving property owners are being bombarded with calls from very greedy people, and I think that says a lot about the current state of our society. We literally worship material possessions and financial gain, and the sheer greed that we are witnessing at this moment is absolutely staggering. Lahaina was hit harder than anywhere else by the fires, and it turns...

BOSTON -- On the day Boston Children's Hospital celebrated being named "the number one pediatric hospital in the nation" by U.S. News & World Report, I was interviewing Dana Gottesfeld in nearby Somerville, Massachusetts. Dana is the young wife of Martin "Marty G" Gottesfeld, an imprisoned technology engineer/activist who used his skills to fight against medical child abuse committed at Boston's Children's Hospital. "That is so Boston," Dana observed Tuesday in response to the new ranking -- which is already splashed in multiple gold medallions across the hospital's website. It's all about power, prestige and pull in the top echelons...

Justina Pelletier is back in the hospital, according to a family spokesman. Pelletier, 16, spent 16 months at the center of a widely publicized custody battle between her family and the state of Massachusetts. She returned to her West Hartford home on June 18.

After a long legal battle between her family and state officials, Massachusetts may finally have agreed to allow Justina Pelletier to return home to her parents. On Friday, the Massachusetts Health and Human Services (HHS) filed a motion for review of reconsideration and dismissal in the case of Justina Pelletier. This action follows Liberty Counsel’s motion to return Justina home. justinapelletier15The pro-life legal group tells LifeNews the motion indicates that HHS is in agreement to return the custody of Justina to her parents and said it anticipates a court order from Judge Johnson in the near future releasing Justina into...

Despite recent setbacks, attorneys for Justina Pelletier’s family announced Friday that the Massachusetts Department of Health and Human Services filed a motion that agrees to send Justina to her home in Connecticut.

Justina Pelletier, the teen at the center of a legal battle between the Pelletier family and Boston Children’s Hospital over custody and proper medical treatment, received a surprise 16th birthday party from her friends over the weekend. The case is drawing national attention, as Boston Children’s Hospital filed a “medical child abuse” complaint against Justina’s parents last year, leading the state to take custody of her and hospitalize her for almost a year. justinapelletier18The tragic case has been dragging on for well over a year as pro-life groups have complained about how she has been denied education, religious services or...

“Why can’t Justina just come home?” Of course that’s the question Lou and Linda Pelletier are asking about the daughter taken from them more than a year ago. As a parent, isn’t it the question you’d ask? That’s not the question the Patrick administration wants people asking in the Justina Pelletier case. They want you asking why Justina’s parents won’t just accept Health and Human Services Secretary John Polanowicz’s family reunification plan. The Patrick administration doesn’t want you asking parenting or medical questions. They’re handling Justina like a political issue. How do I know? Because I saw Justina’s “reunion” plan...

On Good Friday, the Pelletier family delivered over 700 “Get Well” cards for Justina Pelletier, the sick teenager who state officials wrongfully took custody of away from her parents. The Pelletier family was not allowed to visit their daughter on Easter Sunday. The news comes after attorneys working with her family released a letter Justina reportedly wrote saying she is not being treated well. Today, pro-life attorney Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel told LifeNews that Justina’s health continues to deteriorate. justinapelletier3“On Good Friday, Justina Pelletier received cards adorned with encouraging scripture and powerful messages of hope from concerned Americans across...

It’s time for grassroots Americans to rise up and come to the aid of the Pelletier family to end their 14-month nightmare. Take immediate action to stop this heinous, sickening and unconstitutional government overreach by signing the national petition to “Free Justina Now!” Please sign the petition and make phone calls--see below.

We’ve now reached the “Watergate” stage of the Justina Pelletier debacle: What does Gov. Deval Patrick know and when did he know it? Justina is the former Tufts Medical Center mitochondrial patient seized by Boston Children’s Hospital and the state Department of Children and Families, who turned her into a somatoform subject. After reports in these pages Friday that she was being denied the opportunity to attend Easter Mass with her devoutly Catholic family, Patrick rushed out a letter to state Rep. Marc Lombardo (R-Billerica) about accommodations DCF was making. “I see in your letter that you continue to misunderstand...

The family of Justina Pelletier will not be allowed to visit their daughter on Easter Sunday. The news comes after attorneys working with her family released a letter Justina reportedly wrote saying she is not being treated well. Jennifer Pelletier, Justina’s oldest sister, alerted supported of Justina on the family’s Facebook page: “There are 75 young people in the Wayside Youth Facility. 74 of them will be able to spend Easter Sunday with their families. The one who will not is Justina Pelletier!”

The Connecticut teen who has been in state custody for more than a year after her parents were accused of medical child abuse after disputing a diagnosis has apparently penned a note, giving a look into how she says she’s being treated. “They hurt me all the time push me all the time and more,” the purported note from Justina Pelletier says. It also says “[they] do not let me sleep vary [sic] much. “Hury [sic]!” Keith Mason, president of Personhood USA, a group helping lead the Free Justina Coalition, told TheBlaze that Justina gave the note to her parents...

Many people who have followed the Justina Pelletier case—largely ignored by the mainstream media, by the way—have thought that there has to be more to it, or that it’s an outrageous out-of-the-ordinary affair. This is the case where the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families forcibly took custody from her parents over a year ago of a teenager who had been treated for years for mitochondrial disease (a genetic disorder), when they brought her to Boston Children’s Hospital for consultation about a related gastrointestinal problem and resisted a quickly-made diagnosis by a medical resident and a psychologist there that she...

At the center of the seemingly incomprehensible case of Justina Pelletier lies one very simple, and unanswered, question: What did her mom and dad do to lose custody of their daughter in the first place? Gallons of ink have been poured on this story since last November, when a Connecticut TV station first reported the story of a sick teenager ripped from her family over a medical dispute between two hospitals. But having read every report on the case, including Judge Joseph Johnston’s ruling Tuesday, I can’t find a single claim — substantiated or otherwise — of bad behavior by...

Massachusetts Judge Joseph Johnston delayed his promised Justina Pelletier ruling for the sixth time on Friday, stating that he will now issue the ruling on Tuesday March 25, 2014 in a facsimile message. The critically ill teenager’s family has been fighting a custody battle against the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) for more than a year. Meanwhile her older sister Jennifer is pleading with friends and campaigners to do all they can to support Justina. Devastated by the delays in getting medication for her sister, she tweeted Friday that armed guards sit in on visits while she is...

Video at link.

A Massachusetts judge ruled Tuesday that the Connecticut teen in the middle of a contentious custody battle between her parents and the state will remain in the custody of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families. The Boston Globe reported that Suffolk County juvenile court Judge Joseph Johnson granted “permanent” custody to the state DCF, leaving it up to the agency to decide if and when 15-year-old Justina Pelletier is returned to her parents’ custody. This decision was in response to a motion filed by Linda and Lou Pelletier, Justina’s parents, and her court-lawyer attorney for a “conditional custody” plan....

A long-running child custody case took a dramatic turn Tuesday, when a Massachusetts juvenile court judge awarded “permanent” custody of teen-ager Justina Pelletier to the state Department of Children and Families. The ruling by Judge Joseph Johnston leaves it up to the agency, not the court, to decide whether or when Pelletier should be returned to her West Hartford, Conn., home. “It’s a huge ruling,” said a person who had been briefed on the decision. “It’s a setback for the parents.” This person said the state, which has had temporary custody of Pelletier for more than a year, has no...

There may be something to the claim that all people want to be free. But it is a demonstrable fact that freedom has been under attack, usually successfully, for thousands of years. The Federal Communications Commission's recent plan to have a "study" of how editorial decisions are made in the media, placing FCC bureaucrats in editorial offices across the country, was one of the boldest assaults on freedom of the press. Fortunately, there was enough backlash to force the FCC to back off. With all the sweeping powers available to government, displeasing FCC bureaucrats in editorial offices could have brought...

There is a call to action today for Justina Pelletier. She is the girl who was taken from her family by Mass. DFS because her family did not want her treatment for Mitochondrial Syndrome to be stopped. Since her treatment has been stopped, her condition has deteriorated. She is now in a wheelchair. In spite of the obvious decline in her condition, she has not been returned to her parents. Please go to the site for further information.