Free Republic

Federal officials revealed Monday they have arrested a heavily armed Massachusetts man who was building bombs in his apartment and planned to attack a crowded university campus cafeteria on behalf of the Islamic State militant group. Alexander Ciccolo, 23, also known as Ali Al Amriki, was arrested July 4 for the unlawful receipt of multiple guns, the U.S. Justice Department said in a news release. His indictment was unsealed today. The college he intended to target was not disclosed... ...Ciccolo's father, Boston police Captain Robert Ciccolo (pictured), contacted FBI September, 11, 2014, saying his son 'had expressed a desire to...

The mother of Baltimore city state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby faced numerous disciplinary actions during her 20-year career as a Boston police officer, though the public wouldn’t know it based on the Freddie Gray case prosecutor’s public statements touting her family’s strong policing history. The 35-year-old Mosby has used her family’s police ties to rebut critics who say she rushed to judgement and overcharged the six cops involved in Gray’s April 12 arrest. The 25-year-old Gray died a week later, touching off rioting in Baltimore and nationwide protests. “Law enforcement is pretty much instilled within my being,” Mosby told MSNBC’s Chris...

LOWELL -- An investigation that began on July 7, when a Lowell police officer found a disheveled and injured girl collapsed in the street, led to the arrest of two men on charges that they violently raped two 14-year-old girls after plying them with alcohol. Describing the case as "an unusually brutal assault," Capt. Timothy Crowley announced the arrests of Henry Espinola, 18, of 79 Andrews St., Unit 2, and Andres Peguero, 18, of 136 Felton St. Both men are charged with three counts of aggravated rape of a child, and two counts of furnishing alcohol to a minor, according...

Donors have given just $30,000 to Lincoln Chafee’s Democratic run for president, leading him to acknowledge that Democratic competitor Bernie Sanders is filling the role he hoped to play in the 2016 contest. Chafee lent his campaign $364,000, according to federal campaign finance filings. The former Rhode Island governor trails by a wide margin in fundraising. The campaign for Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton said it raised $45 million since mid-April, while Sanders, a Vermont senator, has raised $15 million since he joined the race in late April. “I always thought that there was fundraising potential for an honest progressive...

A heckler was ejected from Hillary Clinton’s economic speech in New York City Monday after asking the former secretary of state about her position on investment banking regulations. Business Insider reported that Daniel Burke, a self-identified organizer for the LaRouche PAC which supports political activist Lyndon LaRouche, yelled at Clinton at the conclusion of her speech, “Senator Clinton, will you restore Glass-Steagall?” Clinton did not respond to the inquiry, and Burke was removed from the event location, the New School in Manhattan, by security. Passed in 1933 and then repealed 66 years later, the Glass-Steagall Act separates commercial banks from...

DEVELOPING: The son of a Boston police captain was an ISIS supporter who planned to set off an improvised explosive device and was arrested after illegally purchasing four firearms on July 4, according to the AP and a Justice Department press release. Authorities say 23-year-old Alexander Ciccolo, who also went by the name Ali Al Amriki, spoke about setting off an explosive device “in places where large numbers of people congregate, such as college cafeterias,” and was seen purchasing a pressure cooker similar to the kind used by the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing.

Three years ago he was a long-haired, bandana-wearing hippie walking for peace, now he’s been arrested for plotting to kill Americans for ISIS. Such is life in Obama’s America. Alexander Ciccolo at a peace walk’ in 2012 against nuclear power and weapons. Photo, ABC News from the Napanee Beaver. Another photo can be seen here. Alexander Ciccolo, “Ali Al Amriki” to his Muslim terrorist friends, was busted by the FBI on July 4 after buying firearms from a confidential source working for the FBI, reported WCVB-TV. Ciccolo also reportedly bought a pressure cooker to make an IED. He allegedly was...

Nearly two years after Veo Vessels died, her daughter, 70-year-old Mary Frances Hickman, decided to sell the home her mother had left to her. A sprawling brick house in Oklahoma City’s historic Highland Park neighborhood, it was built in 1924, just a year after Mary’s birth. Decades later, one of Vessels’ great-grandchildren fondly recalls the wood and tile floors, the fish pond, the butler’s quarters, and the multi-car garage where children played house. “It was really, really nice,” says Hickman’s granddaughter, Andrea Martin. That’s part of the reason she’s so surprised her grandmother sold the home in 1993 for a...

What started out as a frontpage supermarket tabloid story in the National Enquirer regarding Senator Ted Kennedy's "love child," is slowly but surely gaining some traction in the mainstream news media. After the story of appeared in the Enquirer, the Boston Herald in Kennedy's own backyard ran a similar story. Now the largest circulation newspaper in the Big Apple, the New York Daily News -- a decidedly liberal news organization -- is running a follow-up story. According to a column in the NY Daily News, Ted Kennedy's alleged love child, Christopher Allen, appears to have corroborated The National Enquirer's claim...

Bernie Sanders will never be president. But unless Hillary changes her strategy – and soon – he can still wind up toppling her. Something remarkable is happening in American politics. For the first time in our history, a socialist is running a close second and gaining ground on the frontrunner in a presidential race. Anyway you look at it, Senator Bernie Sanders is making history and may very well play a deciding role in who will be the next president. How real is the Sanders movement? Well, at this point in his campaign in 2007, Barack Obama had 180,000 donors...

Sensory hair cells in the cochlea of a Beethoven mouse treated with TMC2 gene therapy. In this confocal microscopy image, microvilli are shown in red and cell bodies in green. The human ear has about 16,000 sensory hair cells. Credit: Charles Askew :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Using gene therapy, researchers at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School have restored hearing in mice with a genetic form of deafness. Their work, published online July 8 by the journal Science Translational Medicine, could pave the way for gene therapy in people with hearing loss caused by genetic mutations. "Our gene therapy protocol is not...

Though long a symbol of responsible parenthood — model TV dad, doctor of education, proud supporter of Temple University — Bill Cosby etched his legacy in stone with a speech in 2004 that took black parents to task. It became famous as the “Pound Cake” speech for this passage: “Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! Then we all run out and are outraged: ‘The cops shouldn’t have shot him.’ What the hell was he doing...

In her computer-generated image, she is the picture of innocence: a 4-year-old girl with long brown hair, chubby cheeks and expressive brown eyes. The image has attracted a staggering 45 million views on Facebook as investigators try to identity the child whose remains were found on a Boston Harbor beach nearly two weeks ago. The mystery of Baby Doe began on June 25, when a woman walking her dog on the western shore of Deer Island called 911 and reported finding a trash bag containing the girl's body. The child was wearing white leggings with black polka dots. Inside the...

Trump up next Live. Listen on the web, or on your phone, you know how to find it...

A 28-year-old Mansfield man, who had a home filled with swords, spears and other weapons, has been charged with posting online threats about President Obama, according to authorities. Andrew J. O’Keefe was charged in a criminal complaint for allegedly threatening to kill Obama in a posting on the FBI’s website. He appeared in U.S. District Court this morning wearing a green T-shirt, basketball shorts and sneakers. O’Keefe was interviewed by authorities on May 15 after that threat was posted but refused to speak with officers, according to the office of U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz. Authorities then conducted a search warrant...

The president and his family have spent almost every single summer on the Massachusetts island since he was elected into the White House in 2008. The Boston Herald reports that Mr. Obama will be spending August 8-23 at the same $12 million Chilmark cottage where his family stayed last year. A manicurist has been booked for three days a week for their stay, according to the newspaper.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney attacked real estate mogul and 2016 GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump on Saturday, telling a CNN reporter he thinks Trump’s remarks on illegal immigrants were a “severe error.” “Do you think Donald Trump’s comments on Mexicans have hurt the Republican Party?” a reporter asked Romney in video carried on CNN on Saturday. “Yes, I think he made a severe error in saying what he did about Mexican-Americans,” Romney replied. “And it’s unfortunate.” “Do you think the candidates should speak up about that?” the reporter followed up. “I think a number of them have,” Romney replied.

2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney will be hosting two rival Republican presidential contenders at a holiday sleepover Friday evening. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio will both be staying over at Romney’s property in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, an aide to Romney confirmed. The aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of what the aide called the private nature of the event, said the former governor and his wife opened their home to the Christie and Rubio families after hearing they would be in town for the holiday weekend. Both candidates are scheduled to march...

A top GOP strategist and pollster for newly re-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is warning that New York Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, "will pay a heavy price" at the polls next year if they don't break with President Obama's policies on Israel and reject any deal he makes with Iran. "Hillary Clinton, [Sen.] Chuck Schumer, [Reps.] Nita Lowey, Steve Israel, Jerry Nadler, Eliot Engel and others are about to get a whole new wave of pressure from Republicans on whether they agree or not with Obama on Israel," New York-based national GOP pollster and strategist John McLaughlin told The Post....

Hillary Clinton and her campaign cronies saw something frightening yesterday: a fired-up crowd of ten thousand people in Madison, Wisconsin, packing the Veterans Memorial Coliseum to the rafters in support of a candidate best known as Not Hillary. The previously fairly obscure Senator Bernie Sanders is drawing the same kind of enthusiasm that Eugene McCarthy sparked in 1968 when he drive an even more inevitable nominee from the Democratic ticket, incumbent President Lyndon Johnson. It is clear that the progressive base of the Democratic Party is fed up with Hillary Clinton, the cozy-with-Wall-Street party insider who parlayed political connections into...