Free Republic

Massachusetts is dumping the contractor that created the state’s dysfunctional online health insurance marketplace and may hire a new company to fix the Health Connector website, a top state official said Monday. “We have made the decision we’re going to be parting ways with CGI,” said Sarah Iselin, who was hired recently by Governor Deval Patrick to oversee repairs to the website, which hasn’t worked properly since it was launched last October. The state has scrambled since then to sign up thousands of residents for health insurance that meets the requirements of the federal Affordable Care Act., resorting to using...

Following a change in the rules incorporated in the new federal farm bill, Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration announced on Tuesday that the state would be investing $3 million in additional home heating assistance for families to avoid the potential loss of up to $142 million in food stamp benefits for 163,000 families. Under the initiative, the Department of Transitional Assistance will be partnering with the Department of Housing and Community Development to provide at least $20 in heating assistance to eligible families through the H-EAT programs. The subsidy will qualify those families for an additional $80 in monthly Supplemental Nutritional...

Of all the things to be nostalgic for, infectious diseases probably don’t make it onto many lists. However, if you happen to pine for the good old days when measles was an active public health threat, I have good news for you. The anti-vaccine crowd is bringing it back. There is currently an outbreak of measles in New York City. Considered eliminated in the United States in 2000, last year saw a record number of outbreaks around the country. It’s only three months into 2014, and not only is the nation’s largest city seeing cases in several boroughs, but other...

More people are moving out of New Jersey than are moving in. The same is true for Illinois and New York. Those three states top the "outbound" list compiled by United Van Lines, the big St. Louis-based moving company that has put together an annual survey of where Americans are moving for the last 37 years. The company analyzed a total of 125,000 moves across the 48 continental states and the District of Columbia in 2013 and came up with a picture of migration patterns across the U.S. According to Professor Michael Stoll, chair of the Department of Public Policy...

MEDFORD, Mass. — Colleges are paying students to take a year off after high school to travel, volunteer or do internships so that students of all income brackets can benefit from “gap years.” A new program at Tufts University and existing ones at a handful of other schools aim to remove the financial barriers that can keep cash-strapped students from exploring different communities and challenge their comfort zones before jumping right into college. The gap year program starting this fall at Tufts will pay for housing, airfare and even visa fees, which can often add up to $30,000 or more....

The dank South Boston warehouse held a chill last weekend when the flatbed arrived, a 20-foot-long landscaping trailer with a wood plank floor stained by dirt. Around the flatbed gathered almost a dozen people — predominantly men from the surrounding blocks — wearing winter coats and work gloves. The job ahead was daunting: transforming the flatbed into a parade float with seven faux cannons. From each cannon would flow a different color of the rainbow — fabric draped over plastic piping — landing in a pot of gold. Randy Foster and Steve Martin had done this before. They built a...

The fight over Southie’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade got frosty yesterday, with Boston Beer Co. pulling its longtime sponsorship from the parade over the organizers’ refusal to let gay veterans march — and one Southie bar fighting back with a vow to boycott the brew. “Sam Adams doesn’t support South Boston. They don’t want to support veterans like my father and uncle, so they can go sell their beer elsewhere,” said Tommy Flaherty Jr., a lifelong Southie resident whose father and uncle own the landmark Cornerstone Pub & Restaurant on West Broadway. Flaherty Jr. said he and his father, Thomas...

<p>The maker of Sam Adams beer says it is withdrawing its sponsorship of Boston's St. Patrick's Day parade because organizers exclude gay groups.</p>

WORCESTER — Attorney General Martha Coakley is supporting a gay couple's legal battle against the Diocese of Worcester after the pair was allegedly denied the right to buy a church-owned mansion in Northbridge. Two Sutton men, James E. Fairbanks and Alain J. Beret, a married gay couple, filed a civil suit in Worcester Superior Court in 2012 against the diocese and its real estate agent after their offer to buy the Oakhurst Conference and Retreat Center, a 44-bedroom mansion in the Whitinsville section of Northbridge, was rejected by the Diocese of Worcester.

Sam Adams Pulls Its Sponsorship of St Patrick's Day Parade Over Gay Rights Boston parade organisers failed to reach an agreement with gay rights advocacy group, causing beer brewer to withdraw support 14 March 2014 The New York parade organisers have also come under fire for their policy toward LGBT people. The maker of Sam Adams beer says it is withdrawing its sponsorship of Boston’s St Patrick’s Day parade a day after negotiations to allow gay groups to march broke down. Boston Beer Co said in a statement Friday that it is disappointed that an agreement couldn’t be reached between...

SYRACUSE -- A series of public lectures on the future of Interstate 81 will be held this summer and spring. The speaker series bring renowned planning professionals, municipal leaders and community development experts to share their experiences and expertise. The first guest speaker will be Virginia Greiman, a veteran of Boston's Big Dig project and a leader in the field of project management. "Our community can learn a great deal from simply listening to others who have struggled with and overcome similar challenges that we now face," said Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney. "I look forward to welcoming Professor Greiman...

Yesterday South End restaurant Club Cafe announced that it would no longer serve Sam Adams due to the brewer's association with the parade. In an open letter on its facebook page Club Cafe stated that they were "disappointed that Sam Adams does not understand that the organizers of the St. Patrick's Day Parade continue to demonstrate that they do not respect LGBT Irish Americans by excluding LGBT members of this community from openly marching in the St.Patrick's Day Parade." This morning Sam Adams released a statement that said, in part "We share these sentiments with Mayor Walsh, Congressman Lynch and...

Boston St. Patrick's Day Parade fighting big political & financial pressure to include hardcore homosexual group. On Wednesday MassResistance got a call from the organizers of the South Boston St. Patrick's Day Parade. The parade is this Sunday, March 16, at 1:00 pm. We spoke with them at length. They need help from good people in Boston and across the country. We are asking everyone who gets this email to make a few phone calls and/or send a few emails. You can make an important difference with your activism.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was caught on a hot mic Thursday telling Secretary of State John Kerry to let him know how he could “help” with House Speaker John Boehner. Screengrab via NBC News Screengrab via NBC News Kerry had just testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee on the need to provide Ukraine with economic assistance amid its turbulent transition following the ouster of former President Viktor Yanukovich. Both House and Senate Republicans have expressed opposition to the proposed bill, mainly over a provision that would give unused U.S. Military money to the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.). Graham was offering...

As with most things, there are good and bad aspects of the Tea Party movement. And all the bad ones were on display March 6 in a speech by Ted Cruz to the Conservative Political Action Conference that replayed every silly thing ever said by conservatives and added some riffs of his own. He began with a mocking refrain about "presidents" Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney (two of them veterans impaired by their trauma), chiding them for not being his kind of conservative. He also asked if we remembered their reigns. Well, we do remember, and we remember...

Who says the Obama administration can’t bring people together? Polls may show that America is more politically divided than ever (Obama’s approval rating among Republicans hit a record-low 5 percent last week). But today in Worcester the lion will lie down with the lamb as Tea Party activists and teacher’s union members team up to “welcome” Obama’s secretary of education, Arne Duncan, with twin protests. That’s how much they both hate “Common Core.” Common Core is the latest federal education reform fad. Like “No Child Left Behind” before it, Common Core uses federal money to bribe local schools into using...

National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden said today that rather than helping combat terrorism, the U.S. government’s massive surveillance programs have led to “tremendous intelligence failures” and may have contributed to allowing the deadly Boston Marathon bombing to have taken place. “We’re monitoring everybody’s communications, instead of suspects’ communications,” Snowden said during a live video conference at Austin’s popular South by Southwest festival. “That lack of focus has caused us to miss leads that we should’ve had. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the Boston bombers, the Russians had warned us about him… And if we hadn’t spent so much on mass...

"Boston Makes Final Preparations for 2014 Marathon New protocols will "preserve the traditional feel and character of the Boston Marathon" after 2013 bombings." 03/10/2014

(CNN) -- Modern-day peeping Toms in Massachusetts, the sorts who get their thrills snapping "upskirt" photos on crowded subways, now have their behavior criminalized. Gov. Deval Patrick signed a bill Friday, according to his office, making photographing or recording video under a person's clothing -- think down a blouse or up a skirt -- a misdemeanor. "The legislation makes the secret photographing, videotaping, or electronically surveiling of another person's sexual or other intimate parts, whether under or around a person's clothing or when a reasonable person would believe that the person's intimate parts would not be visible to the public,...

Police in riot gear have arrested at least 35 people participating in the pre-St. Patrick’s Day “Blarney Blowout” at the University of Massachusetts’ flagship campus in Amherst. […] Amherst Police Capt. Jennifer Gundersen says officers used pepper spray to disperse the crowd. …