Free Republic

Screen grab by TurtleBoySports.comBoston reporters went to the homes of several Boston area protesters who were arrested for blocking highways on Thursday. What they found were adult children playing revolutionary while living with their rich parents. A reporter for WBZ-TV, Ken MacLeod was run off a property while seeking to interview protesters. At another he was told he was harassing the protester he was seeking to interview by ringing her apartment call box. “WBZ-TV’s Ken MacLeod went to (Mark) Schwaller’s apartment in Jamaica Plain hoping for some perspective. He didn’t get that but he did get tossed by another man...

Mayor Martin J. Walsh has fired a 25-year-old city youth worker after learning the Roxbury woman was among 11 protesters who chained themselves to 1,200-pound, concrete-filled barrels in Milton on Thursday, snarling morning rush-hour traffic and stalling at least two ambulances, the Herald has learned. As mayor, you have to make tough, difficult decisions. This is not a difficult decision,” Walsh said. “This was not based on the fact of this woman protesting. It was based on the fact of putting the public safety of other people at risk.” Nelli Ruotsalainen, a part-time youth communication specialist for the Boston Centers...

Video at link. It's worth watching. These morons can inconvenience 1000's, maybe even costing lives, but THEY feel harassed when the news comes to visit them. Good job, morons. With PR like this, you are minting new conservatives every day.

LAST WEEK Deval Patrick shed the title he had worn for eight years. This week he donned the first of what will doubtless be a batch of new titles: The commonwealth's former governor announced plans to join the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a "visiting innovation fellow" at the school's Innovation Initiative.As Patrick re-acclimates to life in the private sector, there will be plenty to keep him busy. He told Fortune magazine that he has been approached by venture firms, equity firms, and corporations. He will have his pick of speaking engagements and media appearances. And the political hive will...

If you were upset about tensions between community members and police officers across racial lines, what would be the first avenue to address these issues that came to mind? Obviously you would unload a bunch of heavy barrels, chain yourself to them and block traffic on the interstate. Protesters who said they were trying to call attention to racial oppression blocked traffic on Interstate 93 north and south of Boston Thursday morning. The actions surprised police, snarled the commute for thousands, and forced the diversion of an ambulance rushing a car crash victim to a Boston hospital, State Police said....

Good riddance! Yet... Since the 1990s, students from Mount Holyoke College, an all-women's school in Massachusetts, have staged an annual production of The Vagina Monologues. Not this year. The college is retiring the ritual over concerns that the play—penned by Eve Ensler in 1996 as a way to "celebrate the vagina" and women's sexuality—is not inclusive enough. In a school-wide email from Mount Holyoke's student-theater board, relayed by Campus Reform, student Erin Murphy explained that "at its core, the show offers an extremely narrow perspective on what it means to be a woman ... Gender is a wide and varied...

This was a terrorist attack — on the working people of Boston, by non-working blow-in drifters, losers and knuckleheads. A guy I know from my radio show was using his cellphone to record everything in East Milton Square yesterday during the worst of it. A couple of these bums were on the overpass, wearing the green caps they used to wear during Occupy. (What a coincidence!) The hippies were watching the girls down below blocking traffic coming into the city. Handcuffed to the 50-gallon drums, the gals looked like a pair of beached whales. My friend says to these two...

How many transgender students are currently enrolled at Mount Holyoke? . . . Zero. Via Campus Reform: Mount Holyoke College, an all-women’s college in Massachusetts, is retiring its annual production of the Vagina Monologues this year because the play is not inclusive of transgender students. The annual production of the play is part of a country-wide tradition to perform Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues on Valentine’s Day to raise awareness about gender-based violence and usually coincides with the V-Day campaign. The proceeds are donated to sexual assault prevention organizations or women’s rights organizations.

Protesters shut down I-93 Northbound at East Milton Square and I-93 Southbound in the Medford-Somerville area during the Thursday morning commute causing major traffic backups, according to Massachusetts State police. State Police reported that 17 people from the Medford protest were under arrest and being processed. The protest was organized by the Boston contingent of the group Black Lives Matter, according to an Associated Press report. In a statement posted Thursday morning on the group’s Facebook page, the protest was held “to ‘disrupt business as usual’ and protest police and state violence against Black people.” The protesters have been removed...

BOSTON — State police say a group of protesters has blocked a busy Boston area highway at the height of the morning commute. Police say in response they have shut down Interstate 93 north at East Milton Square south of the city, and I-93 south at Mystic Avenue north of the city. A state police spokeswoman says some protesters have chained themselves to highway barriers. The spokeswoman did not know what the people were protesting, but broadcast outlets say one person is holding a sign that reads "united against racism."

A video of car dealership employees in Westport getting into a heated argument with a local pizza delivery man over $7 has led to Internet anger and a personal apology. The video, posted on Liveleak, begins with a delivery man returning $7 in cash to the dealership that he had thought was a tip. By the end of the video, one dealership worker threatens to “put my foot in your ass” and another says he will call the delivery man’s manager and get him fired.

Authored by Jim Clifton, Gallup CEO & Chairman,The U.S. now ranks not first, not second, not third, but 12th among developed nations in terms of business startup activity. Countries such as Hungary, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, Israel and Italy all have higher startup rates than America does.We are behind in starting new firms per capita, and this is our single most serious economic problem. Yet it seems like a secret. You never see it mentioned in the media, nor hear from a politician that, for the first time in 35 years, American business deaths now outnumber business births.The...

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is facing a second lawsuit from business groups upset about a controversial rule they contend will unfairly speed up union elections. The business groups are challenging what they refer to as the NLRB's "ambush election" rule. The Texas chapters of the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) and National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) filed the lawsuit late Tuesday in federal court seeking to overturn the rule. "We are proud to join the legal fight against the ambush rule, which is designed to deprive employers, particularly small businesses who typically do not employ legal counsel,...

The head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce charged on Wednesday that Senator Elizabeth Warren and other backers of what he called "economic populism" were actually seeking a state-run economy. ... "Today we're hearing a lot of talk about so-called economic populism. Its advocates claim they are standing up for the average citizen - but what they really stand for is the unbridled growth of the central government and a state-run economy," ...

"Klansville U.S.A." which was broadcast nationally last night is a PBS American Experience production by WGBH in Boston based on a book of that title by David Cunningham. It is an interesting look at the rise and fall of the North Carolina Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s. A very good historical documentary marred by the jarring flaw of taking a cheap shot at Republicans. It was almost as if the producer and director, Callie T. Wiser, just couldn't restrain herself from taking a shot at Republicans. The documentary stuck to the facts until just a couple of minutes before...

The Boston Globe’s boston.com this morning was silent amid a furor of criticism over their article mocking death threats aimed at Republican House Speaker John Boehner. Boston.com spokeswoman Mary Zanor did not return an email or call for comment today. The story, written by Boston.com associate editor Victor Paul Alvarez and posted on the website’s “Top News” section last evening, was headlined “Would Anyone Have Noticed if Bartender Succeeded in Poisoning John Boehner?” “The question is: Would anyone have noticed? Stories about Boehner’s drinking have circulated for years. His drinking inspired a blog called DrunkBoehner, and in 2010 he brought...

Every now and then, academics drop their guard and reveal that one or another of the shibboleths that the modern academic world holds dear is—a sham. “The loud debate over affirmative action is a distraction that obscures the real problem, because right now affirmative action simply mirrors the values of the current view of meritocracy,” Harvard law professor Lani Guinier wrote in The Chronicle Review on January 9, 2015. “Students at elite colleges who are the beneficiaries of affirmative action tend to be either the children of immigrants or the children of upper-middle-class parents of color, children who have been...

Lawyers for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev asked a judge Tuesday to suspend jury selection in his trial for at least a month because the recent terrorist attacks in France have again placed the marathon bombings “at the center of a grim global drama.” The lawyers said a delay would allow some time “for the extraordinary prejudice flowing from these events—and the comparison of those events to those at issue in this case—to diminish.” …

<p>Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) gave her most definitive answer to date about her 2016 plans in an interview with Fortune published Tuesday.</p> <p>So are you going to run for President? No.</p> <p>In the past, Warren has denied that she's running for president, always speaking in the present tense.</p>

SPRINGFIELD - Police arrested a 23-year-old Springfield man who threatened to kill a Sumner Avenue convenience store clerk during a 2 a.m. dispute over $14 in merchandise and an out-of-state electronic benefits debit card, police said.