Free Republic

Hundreds of people armed with shovels met at the Old Bayside Expo at 7 a.m. on Tuesday morning to help dig out the city’s subway. The MBTA put out the call to unions over the weekend, saying that they needed people with shovels to dig out parts of the Red and Orange Lines. Three hundred people showed up and were paid about $30 an hour. […] The MBTA hasn’t been advertising the temporary shovel jobs or tell us how much they're willing to spend. […] The MBTA is also using prison inmates to help clear the tracks. …

AMHERST, Mass. — The University of Massachusetts at Amherst has banned Iranian nationals from admission to certain graduate programs in a move that school officials say aligns its policy with U.S. sanctions against Iran. The university will no longer admit students from Iran to some programs in engineering and natural sciences.

House Speaker John Boehner’s on-staff amnesty advocate Becky Tallent is in talks with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s potential presidential campaign for a job, meaning if she takes it she’d leave Boehner’s office. Tallent is former chief of staff to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)—having personally crafted the amnesty bill McCain and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) introduced in the twilight years of the George W. Bush administration—and then also worked on immigration policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center. “Jeb’s team is looking to hire Rebecca for policy,” a former George W. Bush White House aide told Breitbart News. “The...

we might soon come to regret enabling the world’s most powerful narcissist by handing him a selfie stick. Those who are concerned that Obama’s antics – mugging into a smudgy mirror, failing to successfully dunk a cookie into a glass of milk, and pantomiming free throw shots for no particular reason, all in the hopes of increasing the number of young Obamacare enrollees (with BuzzFeed’s complicity) .. ... this video was shot mere hours after the United States government confirmed that another of its citizens, Kayla Mueller, died in ISIS custody. The day that this video was shot, February 10,...

Nostalgia is overrated, a Harvard psychologist says. “The bad-dominates-good phenomenon is multiplied by a second source of bias, sometimes called the illusion of the good old days,” Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker said at a forum sponsored by the Cato Institute last November. “People always pine for a golden age.” “They’re nostalgic about an era in which life was simpler and more predictable.” And Dr. Pinker has some cold water to throw at them, metaphorically speaking, of course. “When I told people that I was writing a book on why writing is so bad and how we might improve it,...

Massachusetts Senate President Stanley Rosenberg is engaged. A spokesman for the Amherst Democrat confirmed Thursday that Rosenberg is planning to marry his domestic partner, Bryon Hefner. The two have been together since 2009. The relationship between the 65-year-old Rosenberg and the 27-year-old Hefner briefly became news last year after Hefner allegedly mocked outgoing Senate President Therese Murray on Twitter and boasted about his influence in the Legislature. That prompted Rosenberg to reassure his Democratic colleagues that he planned to enforce a "firewall" between his personal and professional lives. Rosenberg was elected by his fellow senators to replace Murray, who stepped...

MBTA General Manager Beverly Scott jetted off at taxpayer expense nearly every month during her two-plus-year tenure — sometimes several times a month — to conferences and meetings around the country, even as the troubled transit system was collapsing around her, a Herald review shows. A review of Scott’s monthly expense reports provided by the MBTA as part of public records request shows she spent 106 days traveling out of state while at the helm of the T, taking 30 trips in 24 months. During that time, Scott, who announced yesterday she’s stepping down in April, racked up $56,753 in...

BOSTON — Rebekah Adelstone usually drives to work, which takes 15 minutes. Since record snows have fallen, she has not wanted to risk losing her precious parking spot, so she has taken a bus to the subway. But on Tuesday, after even more snow fell, the subway system was shut down. So she ended up taking two buses to work, and her commute stretched to two hours. Her ordeal was typical of many residents, who soldiered through the more than six feet of snow that has piled up in the last 17 days. With no chance to melt, the snows...

The "snowmaggedon" of the past two weeks will almost certainly move Boston into the top 10 snowiest winters of all time Monday. "It's like the Energizer Bunny. It just keeps going," said Storm Team 5 meteorologist Cindy Fitzgibbon. The seemingly never-ending snowfall will give Boston over 73 inches for the winter, passing the 72.9 inches that fell during the winter of 1903-1904. As of 7 a.m., 66.3 inches had fallen this winter season at Logan Airport, where snow is officially measured. "For the past 14 days it seems like we have had a constant snow removal operation in Boston," said...

Back in the fall of 2006, long before Brian Williams confessed to "conflating " his helicopter adventures over Iraq, Nick Santangelo knew the NBC news anchor was a fraud.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker believes Mitt Romney is a "good man and would have been a good president," but now that the former Massachusetts governor has officially backed out of the 2016 race, Walker would like his support among the list of possible Republican presidential hopefuls. "I would love to have his endorsement," Walker told Fox News Channel's Bret Baier during a segment that aired Friday of an interview that will be running as part of a series surrounding potential 2016 candidates. At the same time, Walker said that he thinks it is "a time for new fresh ideas," and...

Donna Hannigan was one of the original members of the Cape Cod-based group Grandmothers Against Gun Violence. As the group evolves its mission and activities, she said, the focus remains on gun violence as a public health and safety issue, not a political issue. The goal of Cape Cod Grandmothers Against Gun Violence is to raise awareness about gun violence.

Susan Sarandon, Olivia Wilde and Edward Norton are among the more than 90 entertainers urging Sen. Elizabeth Warren to throw her hat in the 2016 presidential race. The group — which also includes Mark Ruffalo, Natasha Lyonne, Julia Stiles, and “The Avengers” director Joss Whedon — penned an open letter this week to the Massachusetts Democrat, pushing her to make a White House bid.

It’s always nice to see an unexpected win like this especially given Boston U’s own general positions on armed self defense on its campus. But what has me scratching my head is that ASCRI’s proposal specifically targeted manufacturers who make firearms for civilians.

A tanker offloaded enough liquefied natural gas at Boston Harbor last week to heat 30,000 homes for a year, bolstering New England’s tight pipeline capacity just as a new wave of below-average temperatures threatens to strain energy supplies. But some advocates say this strategic slug of LNG during the coldest days of the winter can do more: It may help lower wholesale power prices from Connecticut to Maine, helping to hold down the cost of electricity for homeowners and businesses. That’s a debatable claim, but it highlights the intensifying dispute over whether New England power customers should spend billions of...

Liberal activist groups have more than 200 “house party” events planned across the country this weekend as part of an effort to get Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, to run for president in 2016. The “Run Warren Run” campaign, comprised of members from the groups MoveOn.org, Democracy for America and Ready for Warren, is planning more than 200 “organizing house parties” in 46 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and Guam to try to develop ideas for how they can convince her to run.

WASHINGTON — When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint session of Congress in March, it is unclear whether everybody invited will actually show up. Democrats have criticized House Speaker John Boehner for circumventing the administration when he invited Netanyahu to speak, and the White House has already said Obama will not meet with him when he’s here. BuzzFeed News asked several Senate Democrats whether they planned on skipping the speech or not. Most said they either hadn’t thought about it or they hadn’t decided. But there were no hard answers in the negative. Only one senator definitively said...

Mitt Romney’s not running for President again, telling supporters that it’s time for the Republican Party to look to other leaders for its future. Democrats may wonder whether they have to tell Hillary Clinton the same thing. In a PPP poll taken this week, Hillary Clinton can’t get to 50% against any Republican challenger paired against her, even Romney: The automated poll of nearly 900 registered voters, conducted last week by Public Policy Polling, found that 48 percent of respondents had an unfavorable opinion of Clinton, compared to 43 percent who viewed the former secretary of State favorably.While Clinton...

John Kerry has many titles—secretary of state, former senator, one-time Democratic candidate for president. The globe-spanning diplomat can add one more: snow shoveling scofflaw. […] On Thursday, (Boston) officials tagged Kerry with a $50 fine at 9:45 a.m. for failing to clear the snow from the side of his Beacon Hill mansion. Kerry was in Saudi Arabia attending the funeral of King Abdullah with President Obama. …

Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch belonged to a student group that brought Jew-hating Palestinian terrorists to Harvard Law School every year she was a member. Lynch belonged to the Harvard Black Law Students Association (BLSA) from 1981-1984 when she was a student. During those years the radical black group brought representatives from the Palestinian Liberation Operation (PLO). The group’s leader, Mohammed Kenyatta, called for the “liberation of Palestine” and expressed support for the terrorist organization. The BLSA defended bringing the terrorists in a letter to the editor of the Harvard student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson. Jewish student organizations protested the...