Free Republic

WINCHENDON — At the elbow of the bar, where afternoon regulars with calloused hands gripped $3 longnecks, the consensus was clear in the Toy Town Pub: America needs President Trump’s business smarts. The country needs Trump’s tell-it-like-it-is bluster because politicians who told us what we wanted to hear got us into this mess. It needs Trump to build that wall along the Mexican border to protect Americans who can’t find jobs. Most of all, America needs Trump to restore prosperity to forgotten places like Toy Town, the nickname Winchendon acquired a century ago — before the toy industry left. That...

Bay State women say they are headed to the nation’s capitol for the Women’s March on Washington Saturday to demand accountability from President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress. “I decided to go down on Nov. 9,” said Anna Josephson, 32, of Waltham. “I’m worried about his appointments, his hatred and his fearmongering ... I can’t see any sign from him that he thinks women are people, too.”

BOSTON –  Lacking authority to change the laws of physics to allow more sunlight on the darkest days of winter, a special commission is instead considering whether Massachusetts should change the laws of man and observe daylight saving time year-round. If adopted, Massachusetts residents wouldn't have to set their clocks back in November and forward in March, as most of the U.S. does. Benefits of having daylight saving time throughout the year could include energy savings and less seasonal depression, proponents suggest

State Attorney General Maura Healey’s office and a Worcester gun dealer have settled a case that involved selling handguns that were not Massachusetts-compliant. The Gun Parlor has agreed to end sales of handguns that do not meet state-mandated safety regulations, specifically load indicators and magazine safety disconnects, and pay $10,000 in fees and costs associated with an investigation into the store while $25,000 in fines will remain outstanding and will be waived if the shop remains in compliance for two years. “In Massachusetts, we rely on gun dealers to help ensure responsible gun ownership and use by following the...

State Police responded to the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Facility in Shirley after dozens of inmates refused to be locked in their cells Monday evening. The Department of Corrections says 51 inmates in the P-1 Housing Unit at the maximum security prison were involved in the incident. All corrections officers were safely evacuated from the unit and the prison’s Special Operations team regained control of the inmates at approximately 7:00 pm. Souza Baranowski prison cell (WBZ-TV) Souza Baranowski prison cell (WBZ-TV) The situation is still being assessed, but there were no injuries to any officers. A source tells WBZ the unit was...

WASHINGTON — In a break from tradition and from the rest of the Massachusetts congressional delegation, Representative Katherine Clark plans to boycott the upcoming inauguration of Republican President-elect Donald Trump as a form of ceremonial protest. Clark, whose district includes many of the northern and western suburbs of Boston, said she believes attending the inauguration would “normalize” Trump’s promotion of “bigoted, misogynist, anti-Semitic, and racist claims.”

FALL RIVER, Mass. (KKTV) - A Massachusetts sheriff believes he has a way to aide President-elect Donald Trump in building a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border. Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson has unveiled an initiative he's tabbing Project N.I.C.E., which stands for National Inmates' Community Endeavors. He says inmates from the Bristol County House of Correction could volunteer to help build the border wall or clean up disaster sites. In his bio for Bristol County it states Hodgson continues to remain actively involved with other sheriffs throughout the United States to call for careful and thoughtful immigration reform with an...

"It appears we're going to have an old folks' home." That's the ever-outspoken Harry Reid, Nevada's retiring senior senator, talking about Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders being the unofficial early front-runners for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Warren, at 67, is the youngest of the Big Three, and she's the only one who excites both establishment Democrats and progressive activists. But is the senior senator from Massachusetts game for a presidential run? Some pundits believe she's already positioning herself for it. Warren, the former guiding light of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, recently announced she's joining the Senate's...

A Jamaica Plain woman’s decision to label her house a “Trump-Free Zone” — calling President-elect Donald Trump a “criminal” and “greedy pig” — is even offending some of her own anti-Trump neighbors in the leafy, left-leaning neighborhood. “He wasn’t my candidate but I don’t agree with that type of voicing, saying those things about him,” said Bill Nelson, who lives several houses down from the home sporting the hand-scrawled invective.

Comes now Maura Healey with the revelation that Trump supporters are so consumed with hate for immigrants, Muslims, gays, women in yarmulkes, guys with green hair and girls with nose rings, she's set up an emergency hotline for the above victims to report any Trump ruffians who so much as look askance at any post-Nov. 8 liberal still wallowing in their double lattes and tofu burgers at the defeat of Madam Mao ... I mean, Hillary. The state attorney general is so convinced that the Make America Great Again crowd is on the verge of a blue collar pogrom of...

On this day [12/16] in 1773, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships moored in Boston Harbor and dump 342 chests of tea into the water. Now known as the “Boston Tea Party,” the midnight raid was a protest of the Tea Act of 1773, a bill enacted by the British parliament to save the faltering British East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the company to sell its tea even more cheaply than that smuggled...

Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh joined a crowd of more than 2,000 people at Boston's largest mosque on Sunday night for a rousing conversation about diversity and solidarity as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take over the White House.

Last Tuesday evening at the Canton Public Library, a group of concerned local citizens, united by their shared values and a deep and abiding terror over a Donald Trump-led White House, gathered to discuss ways that they could support their fellow residents and help ensure that the Canton community remains “safe for diversity.” “We’re a group dedicated to making every family in Canton feel safe,” explained the promotional flyer prepared by the group’s founder, Kathleen “KK” Howley, a former senior reporter for Bloomberg News. “We want to know if our neighbors need help, and we want to stand with them.A...

About 250 demonstrators - split between BPS and college students - marched from the Common to the State House and City Hall today to urge Gov. Baker and Mayor Walsh to formally declare sanctuaries for not just undocumented immigrants but other minority groups, including lesbians, gays and transgender people as we move into the Trump era.

WASHINGTON — All hogs in Massachusetts will be able to stretch their legs and turn around in their crates and all hens will be able to spread their wings under a law passed in November by voters in the state. Laws like this one, which strictly regulate how farm animals are confined, are becoming more common across the U.S., as large-scale farming replaces family farms and consumers learn more about what happens behind barn doors. Massachusetts is the 12th state to ban the use of some livestock- and poultry-raising cages or crates, such as gestation crates for sows, veal crates...

“Donald J. Trump will be the next president of the United States and we have the right to protest and stand together against the inexcusable statements he has made about, and the harmful policies he promises to enact against, immigrants, Muslims, black Americans, the disabled, the LGBTQ+ community and women,” organizers wrote in a description for a Facebook event.

There is a massive nine-alarm fire blazing in Cambridge near Berkshire and York Streets. Nine alarms are the most that can be called. Firefighters from communities well outside the area being called in. Cambridge police are asking that the public avoid the area. Multiple buildings are on fire, including a church. At least one building has reportedly collapsed. Fire companies from all corners are on-scene to assist, including from Boston, Newton, Waltham and Wakefield.

Gov. Charlie Baker revealed Monday that he had spoken by phone with President-elect Donald Trump, whom he did not support, after his election. Although the conversation was private, this column has obtained a totally bogus, invented transcript of the conversation. It went like this:

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/adriana_cohen/2016/11/cohen_hampshire_college_needs_an_education_on_what_flag_means#.WD7KRvd_oSw.twitter

The way things are going, Donald Trump is going to have to get a restraining order against Elizabeth Warren. The senior senator from Massachusetts, with her extreme and escalating rhetoric against Trump, is acting as though she's unhinged. It is either a restraining order or a call in to Attorney General Maura Healey's new hate crime hotline that was set up following Trump's election to report acts of intimidation or harassmen