Free Republic

Massachusetts Senate President Stanley Rosenberg on Wednesday called upon Berkshire Gas to lift its moratorium on new and expanded natural gas service in the region — but a spokesman for Berkshire's parent company, the publicly-traded Avangrid, told The Republican that the moratorium on new hookups would stay in place without a "permanent solution" for additional natural gas capacity in western Massachusetts. ... Berkshire Gas had hoped to purchase capacity on the line. Berkshire's parent company, Avangrid, had also signed on as an investor in the $5-8 billion Kinder Morgan pipeline. Berkshire more than a year ago imposed a moratorium on...

“Just words,” the refrain famously went in Deval Patrick’s run for governor 
in 2006. With reports that the Hillary Clinton campaign is considering the former 
Massachusetts governor as her running mate, it would be wise for the former secretary of state to revisit some of Deval’s notable quotes before making 
her decision. “Just words,” indeed. We can start in her “home state.” We all know about Deval’s assessment of the 9/11 terror attacks as “a failure of human understanding” and “the failure of human beings … to learn to love each other,” but years later he sniveled at New Yorkers...

Jim Donnelly is a registered Republican who is disgusted. His lifelong party, he believes, has done little for anyone but the wealthy, the well-connected, and its own leaders. "I'm a strong Republican and this is the worst I've ever seen it," said Donnelly, 73, a retired factory production manager who lives in Lansdale. "In Washington, D.C., and in Harrisburg, the Republicans are only looking out for themselves. I don't see any Republican I like except for Donald Trump - because he says it the way it is." Donnelly has a lot of company in Pennsylvania. For decades, the state has...

SPRINGFIELD – A toddler who fell off a second-story porch in the Forest Park neighborhood Friday afternoon was taken to a hospital with unknown injuries, a fire department spokesman said.

Free Republic stands for God, family, country! America! "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United State of America." Securing the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity is our mission on FR. We cannot secure the blessings of liberty with Hillary in the White House. When Trump wins the lion's share of the primary votes, states and...

The great white environmentalist sharks smell blood in the water. It’s gushing from mortally wounded US coal companies that the Obama EPA has gutted as sacrifices on the altar of “dangerous manmade climate change” prevention and other spurious health, ecological and planetary scares.Peabody Energy, Arch Coal and other once vibrant coal producers have filed for Chapter 11 protection, shedding some $30 billion in shareholder value and tens of thousands of jobs in their companies and dependent industries. The bloodletting has left communities and states reeling, union pension funds and 401k plans empty, and the health, welfare, hopes and dreams of...

On his Real Time show on Friday, HBO comedian Bill Maher referred to the U.S. military as a "mass murder machine" as he recalled that the reason he likes Bernie Sanders so much is because the Vermont socialist is the only presidential candidate who would argue against building a bigger military. A bit earlier, as he discussed with the New Yorker's Lawrence Wright the possibility of Saudi government officials being linked to the 9/11 attacks, Maher also made a crass reference to Tea Party conservatives -- whom he has mocked in the past as "teabaggers" -- by referring to Muslim...

This month, having lost massively to Hillary Clinton across the Southeast, Sanders commented that the bevy of early Southern primaries “distorts reality.” In other comments soon thereafter, perhaps covering for what was obviously a lapse in political acumen, he clarified that those early states are the most conservative in the country. Not really. And not really. While some segments of the South are undeniably conservative, Dixie is also home to a large and reliably Democratic cohort — African Americans. Many of the most liberal people serving in today’s Congress were elected by Southerners, and especially black Southerners. The reality is...

My unscientific poll of Maryland voters in next week’s Democratic presidential primary gives Bernie Sanders a 100 percent lead in early returns. “I just voted for Bernie Sanders today,” said Thomas Frank, author of several books, including 2004’s best-seller What’s the Matter with Kansas?, and this year’s Listen, Liberal: or, Whatever Happened to the Party of the People? “I advance voted in Maryland. I have my little ‘I Voted’ sticker on my shirt,” Frank told me in an interview this week. Frank spoke with Sanders back in 2014, when he was deciding whether to run for president and whether to...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s effort to close out the Democratic race may be going awry, as a new poll shows she’s in danger of losing California to Sen. Bernie Sanders. According to a new Fox News poll conducted April 18-21, Clinton has the support of 48 percent of likely Democratic primary voters, while Sanders is right behind with 46 percent. That’s the closest margin yet between the two in the state, which awards more delegates to the Democratic National Convention than any other. Clinton holds a substantial delegate lead over Sanders and remains heavily favored to win the...

Sanders, he says, is a "false prophet" who could be as dangerous as Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.With Donald Trump putting Mexico at the center of the Republican presidential conversation, the country's former president, Vicente Fox, has gone hard at the GOP front-runner, saying, "He reminds me of Hitler." But Fox, who served as president from 2000 to 2006, has some comparisons for Bernie Sanders that are not much more flattering. "In Latin America, we have a century of experience of suffering from messianic, populist leaders that have broken our economies, that have brought poverty into all of Latin America,"...

t seems a concerted effort is under way to conceal the identity of the Harvard law student who hurled anti-Semitic epithets at Israel's former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni during her recent address at the university. During the question and answer session at her speaking engagement, someone identified merely as "the president of a student organization," invoked an age-old anti-Semitic slur, asking Livni, "how is it that you are so smelly?” He then repeated the question: "A question about the odor of Ms. Tzipi Livni, she’s very smelly, and I was just wondering." CanaryMission.org notes that great lengths are being taken...

Gov. Charlie Baker, under pressure to take a position on the Legislature's transgender rights bill, "believes people should use the restroom facility they feel comfortable using," his office said yesterday, offering the governor's strongest statements on the issue so far. Baker was responding to remarks by GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, who objected to a controversial North Carolina law, saying at an NBC Today Show town hall event, that North Carolina should "leave it the way it is right now" and let people use the bathroom they prefer. The new law in North Carolina requires transgender people to use bathrooms that...

The chair of the Michigan Republican Party has pledged to vote for Donald Trump at the Party's National Convention. She also happens to be the niece of one of the GOP's most prominent Trump critics -- Mitt Romney. Ronna Romney McDaniel said she hasn't spoken with the former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican nominee about her decision.

The State Department official who issued visas to many of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists is still employed by the federal government, according to J. Michael Springmann, the author of Visas for al-Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the World. Springmann, former head of the visa section at the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, told PJM that Shayna Steinger approved 11 of the visas granted to the 19 9/11 hijackers. Fifteen received their visas at the Jeddah consulate. Page 7 of the 9/11 Commission report states that “one consular officer issued visas to 11 of the 19 hijackers.” Those visas...

“Oh my God, they’re so rude” he told me. “We get complaints about them all the time. Just the other day one came into the lobby and caused a scene.” Any guesses who this 20-year Boston hotel doorman was talking about? Trump supporters? Drunk Bruins fans? Nope. He was answering my questions about the cab drivers he deals with day in and day out.

Blunders on Israel abound in the Bernie Sanders camp. On April 14, Sanders suspended his new national Jewish outreach communicator, Ms. Simone Zimmerman, after just two days on the job. Her sacking followed discovery of her calling Benjamin Netanyahu “an arrogant, deceptive, cynical, manipulative a[**]hole,” accusing him of “sanctioning the murder of over 2,000 people,” and presiding over a “brutal military occupation” of the West Bank (a canard I debunk here). In an April 1 interview with the NY Daily News, Mr. Sanders stated that Israel killed over 10,000 Gazans in the 2014 conflict between Israel and Hamas. He later...

President Barack Obama will host a Passover seder this year, but not on either of the nights it is required according to Jewish custom. A spokeswoman told JTA that Obama will host the seder next week following his return from travel overseas. Obama will be in Saudi Arabia on the first and second nights of Passover, Friday and Saturday, attending a regional cooperation summit.

Just when you think once-prestigious Harvard could fall further from grace, Harvard students hurled anti-Semitic epithets at Israel's former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni during her recent talk at the University. Last Thursday, Harvard Law School hosted a panel discussion with guest speakers Dennis Ross and former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. During a question and answer session a president of a student organization mocked the Israeli leader, asking her, “How is it that you are so smelly?” When his question drew stunned silence, he clarified his "question." “A question about the odor of Ms. Tzipi Livni, she’s very smelly, and I...

In 8 out of 10 national polls, Hillary Clinton’s favorability ratings are negative by 15 points or more. According to recent CBS and NBS/WSJ polls, Clinton holds negative favorability ratings by 23 and 24 point margins, respectively. A progressive said to “get things done” won’t be able to win the White House with such negative national ratings. In contrast, Bernie Sanders is the only leading candidate with positive favorability ratings, and this has nothing to do with Clinton being more “vetted.” Bernie doesn’t need private servers and speaks to millions of people in open forums; Clinton is the antithesis of...