Free Republic

"Prominent Attorney Alan Dershowitz Says He’d ‘Like to Help Out’ Parents of Justina Pelletier in Custody Battle" Prominent attorney Alan Dershowitz is offering to help the parents of 15-year-old Justina Pelletier reclaim custody of their daughter. Image source: Fox News via The Right Scoop Image source: Fox News via The Right Scoop “I’d like to help out…” the Harvard Law professor and media figure said during an appearance on “Huckabee” Saturday night, noting he’s a member of the Massachusetts bar and could offer his legal expertise. “When you hear about a case like this you scratch your head and you...

Alan Dershowitz told Huckabee tonight that if everything we know about the #FreeJustina case is true, then this is a horrible abuse of human rights and of civil liberties. He said that Massachusetts law is clearly on the side of the parents, pointing out that if there is a conflict in medical opinion over a child under Massachusetts law, the dispute is settled by the parents, not the hospitals or the state. He even offered to help the parents get custody back of their daughter. Watch:

Surpassing California for the first time, Texas is leading the nation in technology-related exports, according to a new report. State companies that make computers, semiconductors and communications equipment, among other products, exported more than $45 billion in products in 2012, according to the TechAmerica Foundation, a tech industry lobbying firm. That was driven by Texas’ 7 percent growth — about $3 billion — in tech exports from 2011. Tech exports supported nearly 1.5 million jobs nationwide and about 331,000 jobs in Texas, according to the report. California, meanwhile, declined 2.8 percent, to $44.8 billion in technology exports. Technology exports accounted...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – After 129 years, North Adams Regional Hospital is shutting down. Hospital workers were informed of the decision on Tuesday. Around 530 people will lose their jobs. The decision to shut down comes as the hospital files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. It also affects the VNA & Hospice, along with the Northern Berkshire Healthcare Physicians Group. Current patients will be transferred to other facilities through April 4. The emergency room will close on Friday. “In the six years that I have been on the board we have investigated every possible avenue and exhausted all options as we...

Via the Examiner, you can thank Ben Howe for producing this. Is it a presidential campaign teaser? The last line, borrowing Obama’s campaign slogan from 2008, seems freighted with extra significance. I’d never seen something like this from Cruz before either. At first blush, I thought maybe it was his way of stealing a little thunder from Rand Paul’s overt presidential maneuvering lately. Here’s Cruz reminding conservatives that Rand won’t be the only game in town next year.But after looking through his campaign YouTube account, I realize I’m wrong. Cruz has released at least two ads similar to this one...

For the past several months, the Pelletiers have met face-to-face with Justina once weekly in supervised visits of no more than one hour. Now, Massachusetts DCF is denying the Pelletiers visitation with Justina in another blatant act of vindictive punishment. This new act demonstrates DCF's unwillingness to reunite the family and exposes the agency's lack of interest in the welfare of Justina or the Pelletier family. Instead, DCF is concerned with getting back at a family that spoke out against their heavy-handed custody grab. By prohibiting Justina from seeing her family, DCF is treating her differently than all other minors...

A 9-alarm blaze ripped through a brownstone building in Boston’s Back Bay “like a blowtorch” Wednesday, killing two firefighters and injuring more than a dozen others battling what officials described as one of the fastest-moving fires seen in decades. "We lost two heroes today," Mayor Marty Walsh said. "It's a sad day for the city of Boston.” Fire officials confirmed at a press conference Wednesday night that Lt. Ed Walsh and Firefighter Michael Kennedy died in the fire at 298 Beacon St. Thirteen other firefighters were injured. "Two great firefighters," said Rich Paris, president of the Boston firefighters' union. Walsh,...

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...

A new congressional report on the federal investigation into the Boston Marathon bombings includes few previously unknown details of the case. The report, released Wednesday, speculates without any evidence that bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev might have met with militants overseas months before the explosions and says it's reasonable to assume he was inspired by the activity and ideology of foreign terror groups. It also acknowledges that the facts as known about his travel don't indicate any connection between the bombings and any outside terror network.

Up until the time police put her in handcuffs and loaded her into a cruiser, Ann Musser was not expecting to be arrested. “I just wished that at least for my first time getting arrested, I had something interesting to say about what I had done wrong,” said Musser, a Holyoke resident. Musser was arrested at her home Friday night on an outstanding arrest warrant issued by Holyoke District Court for failing to appear in court. The court appearance was scheduled last September because Musser had failed to comply with repeated requests from the city of Holyoke in June for...

The Boston Fire Department is currently battling a 9-alarm fire in the 200 block of Beacon Street in the Back Bay. At least five firefighters have been injured, according to The Boston Globe: Nick Martin, a Boston EMS spokesman, said two firefighters had been transported to Brigham and Women's Hospital, while three others were being evaluated at the scene. It wasn?t clear whether other firefighters might also be injured. Channel 7 reports: Source tells me 2 firefighters suffered 3rd degree burns, 1 went into cardiac arrest, and 1 was reported missing

US officials knew about the potential danger of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, according to a soon-to-be-released Congressional report—but a spelling error led them to miss his frequent flights out to Dagestan for terror training. […] In March 2011, Russian intelligence agency FSB notified the FBI with concerns about Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the Tsarnaev family, which had emigrated to Massachusetts nearly ten years earlier. In the letter, FSB included contact information, with addresses and phone numbers, for many of the members of the Tsarnaev family, including Tamerlan and his mother, and warned that Tamerlan was gaining a reputation for associating...

Now it’s Patches Kennedy’s turn to write his memoir, and no, it’s not a coloring book. The working title is “A Common Struggle,” but surely Ted’s boy can do better than that. When he first ran for Congress in 1994, Patches admitted that he had never had “to worry about making mends meet.” That’s right, making mends meet. And I think that should be the title of his new tome: “Making Mends Meet.” Or “Drinkin’ Doubles Don’t Make a Party.” Or, “One Bad Ice Cube at a Time.” Or, “3 a.m. Roll Call.” The book is due out late next...

I have 17 million reasons for wanting to increase the minimum wage. Yes, 17 million—the number of children whose lives would be a little more secure if their moms and dads earned at least $10.10 an hour. When I was in junior high, my daddy had a heart attack. He was home for a while, the medical bills piled up, and we lost our family station wagon. So my mother did what she had to do: She went to work answering the phones at Sears. The job paid only minimum wage, but it was enough to make sure we could...

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...

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...

The F.B.I. agent who fatally shot a Chechen man in Orlando during an interrogation in May about the Boston Marathon bombing suspects has been cleared of wrongdoing by a prosecutor in Florida and by an F.B.I. internal review, according to law enforcement officials.Another review, by the Justice Department, which is almost complete, is expected to conclude that the agent followed proper guidelines on the use of force when he killed the Chechen, Ibragim Todashev, according to the officials. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to jeopardize their access to classified information.None of the...

A Roman Catholic diocese in Massachusetts that refused to sell a historic mansion to a gay couple is facing mounting legal pressure. Massachusetts' Attorney General Martha Coakley recently filed a brief in support of the gay couple who are suing the Diocese of Worcester alleging discrimination. Filed before superior court earlier this month on behalf of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Coakley argued that the diocese's actions constituted "sexual orientation discrimination." "The commonwealth's compelling interest in protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination derives from their status as a politically vulnerable minority that has suffered a history of discrimination, which continues to...

(Original title: John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Ukraine Foreign Policy) In 1984, Jeane Kirkpatrick, a lifelong Democrat who Ronald Reagan appointed Ambassador to the United Nations, took to the stage at the Republican National Convention in Dallas. The Republicans and this Democrat roundly mocked the unseriousness of the Democrats who wanted to replace Ronald Reagan. Calling them “San Francisco Democrats” — the Democrats had held their convention in San Francisco — Kirkpatrick delivered many broadsides that ring true today. As she said of these San Francisco Democrats, “they always blame America first.” The San Francisco Democrats in 1984 included the...

A group of 28 state attorneys general are calling on Wal-Mart and other retailers to follow the lead of CVS Caremark and stop selling tobacco products in their stores with pharmacies — a move Massachusetts AG Martha Coakley backs but has not yet signed. The group’s letters to Wal-Mart, Rite Aid, Walgreens, Kroger and Safeway said there is a “contradiction in having these dangerous and devastating tobacco products on the shelves of a retail chain that services health care needs.” Woonsocket, R.I.-based CVS said in February that it would stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products at its 7,600-plus stores...