Free Republic

So the producer of the new film about Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick scandal says some “very powerful people” tried to kill his movie. What a surprise — NOT! “Unfortunately,” Byron Allen told Variety last week, “very powerful people tried to put pressure on me not to release this movie. They went out of their way to try and influence me in a negative way.” Byron Allen is a TV comedian from the ’80s who has become a successful Hollywood mogul. He just bought what’s left of The Weather Channel for $300 million. By the way, he’s also black, so you would...

California is indeed the Golden State where Medicaid is concerned. The HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) has found that, by exploiting Obamacare’s expansion of the program, California has enrolled hundreds of thousands of ineligible adults in Medicaid. Consequently, the state has bilked the federal government out of more than $1 billion in funding to which the state was not entitled. Indeed, these figures probably understate the amount of money that California officials have fraudulently extracted from the taxpayers. The OIG sampled a mere six-month period, from October 1, 2014 through March 31, 2015, to arrive at its damning assessment....

The Presidential Personnel Office (PPO) sounds like one heck of a time. According to a recent Washington Post report, the office tasked with vetting presidential appointees had the audacity to partake in alcoholic drinking games, happy hours, and even use of tobacco products. Egads! “The Presidential Personnel Office (PPO) is little known outside political circles. But it has far-reaching influence as a gateway for the appointed officials who carry out the president’s policies and run federal agencies.Under President Donald Trump, the office was launched with far fewer people than in prior administrations. It has served as a refuge for...

A Boston judge has cleared a group of climate protesters who were facing criminal charges stemming from a 2016 protest over a pipeline in West Roxbury, citing the necessity of their actions in a potentially landmark ruling. “It may well be the first of its kind in a case involving climate change, in that it’s a judicial recognition of the measures that we need to take to address climate change,” said Andrew Fischer, an attorney for some of the defendants. “In that sense, it is a revolutionary step.” The protesters, including Karenna Gore, the daughter of former Vice President Al...

American once touted as possible ambassador to EU tells of being detained at Boston airport and subpoenaed by Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia inquiry {snip} In a statement sent to the Guardian, Malloch, who described himself as a policy wonk and defender of Trump, said the FBI also asked him about his relationship with Roger Stone, the Republican strategist, and whether he had ever visited the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has resided for nearly six years. In a detailed statement about the experience, which he described as bewildering and intimidating at times, Malloch said the federal...

A Texas man who was arrested Sunday after police said they found a weapons stockpile that included an AK-47, AR-15 and bump stock in his hotel room told investigators that he was on a classified government mission, The Lowell Sun reported. Francho S. Bradley, 59, and Adrianne D. Jennings, 40, were taken into custody after Bradley called police to the hotel room to report that someone was breaking in. Police responded and found the weapons, the report said. Bradley called the police while away from the room and informed authorities that he had a firearm in his hotel room. Tewksbury...

We are suffering from a large-scale culture clash in the United States. Strains of anxiety and vitriol pervade our daily discourse where we’d be better served with laughter and congeniality. So why are we so divided? What is feeding it? A good touchstone for where we are and where we are heading as a society is our college campuses. This May, Boston’s streets will be clogged with U-Haul trucks driven by the parents of newly minted college graduates packing up and heading home. Honest-to-goodness adults, ready to take on the world

FULL TITLE: What’s Not to Love? Far Left Groups Outraged at Pompeo’s Promotion – Proving He’s the Right Man for the Job The far left Right Wing Watch is not happy that Mike Pompeo will be the next Secretary of State. RWW says he’s too hard on Islamists and too much of a Christian. he American left believes Christians are a threat to societ while denying. Pompeo, who would become the country’s top diplomat, has repeatedly framed the fight against terrorism as a war between Christianity and Islam, as The Intercept reported in detail when he was nominated to head...

The data firm used by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, is taking its turn in the eyes of many as the villain responsible for the apocalyptic outcome of the presidential election of 2016. Others, of course, have included Russia and the Electoral College system, but progressives are especially distressed about this one. That a crude and brutish outfit like the Trump campaign could use their data-mining tools and politically allied platforms like Facebook against them adds extra sting to the wound of the loss.

Mueller's involvement in one of the FBI's most embarrassing cases resident Donald Trump directed angry tweets at Special Counsel Robert Mueller over the weekend. The tweets were prompted by the Department of Justice’s decision to fire Deputy Director Andrew McCabe Friday as recommended by the bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility took action on McCabe after the DOJ’s Inspector General handed over evidence that the former FBI agent lied under oath and leaked information to the media. Trump’s Tweets on Mueller appeared to some Republicans and Democrats to be a veiled threat to fire Mueller. Those lawmakers warned the president that...

Billy Galvin has been at the Statehouse longer than Josh Zakim has been alive. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Except for the possibility that Galvin, the veteran secretary of state, may for the first time in his long political career face serious Democrat primary opposition. And the question is: Does Galvin face a bridge too far? The challenger is Josh Zakim, 33, a Boston city councilor, who is seeking to oust Galvin. If the name is familiar it is because the Zakim Bridge is named after his father. Ordinarily, a bridgeless Zakim would be no big deal....

Massachusetts college librarians state that wishing someone a “Merry Christmas” or saying “God bless you” if they sneeze is an act of “Islamomisic microaggression”. Librarians at Simmons College in Boston have banded together to write what they have titled The Anti-Oppression Library Guide. While controversial, the guide is intended as a resource to promote equality and limit religious oppression. While the guide is not an official policy of Simmons College, some of its beliefs have already made their way to reports in mainstream media outlets like Fox News. Librarians at the college argue that “Islamomisic Microaggressions are commonplace verbal or...

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...

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.

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.

The Boston Police Department apologized early Monday after tweeting a Black History Month tribute post that honored a white man. The tweet, which was deleted less than an hour after it went up Sunday night, was posted on the department’s official account “in honor of #BlackHistoryMonth.” However, the tweet celebrated the accomplishments of former Boston Celtics coach and president Red Auerbach, who was white. Police officials responded to mounting criticism Monday on Twitter.

Boston authorities said they seized more than 33 pounds of fentanyl—enough to kill millions of people—in connection with one of Massachusetts’ biggest drug busts ever. In announcing the results of a six-month wiretap probe called "Operation High Hopes," prosecutors said the synthetic opioid was being sold on the street by a drug gang with links to Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa Cartel, the drug organization once led by Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.

The leading Democratic candidate for a Virginia House seat the party is targeting in 2018 moved to the state just a year-and-a-half ago, but you'd never know it from watching his campaign's first ad.Roger Dean Huffstetler, who is both outraising and outspending his Democratic opponents in Virginia's largely rural fifth district, announced his campaign less than a year after he moved in the summer of 2016 to Charlottesville, a blue city located near the center of a rural red district. His first ad—which, based on a nearly $50,000 expenditure, appears to have been created by a major D.C. advertising firm...

A professor at Northeastern University in Boston is under fire after he was recorded during a public lecture saying he “wouldn’t mind” seeing President Trump dead. “Sometimes I want to just see him impeached. Other times, quite honestly — I hope there are no FBI agents here — I wouldn’t mind seeing him dead,” Barry Bluestone, a professor of political economy, said during a Jan. 31 public event called “The Rule of Law in a Time of Polarization,” Campus Reform first reported.