Free Republic

A year after Judicial Watch reported a rise in illegal aliens using fake Puerto Rican birth certificates to obtain authentic U.S. passports and drivers’ licenses, the feds have busted a Massachusetts operation run by corrupt state workers. The state employees sold drivers’ licenses and state identification cards to illegal immigrants who bought Puerto Rican documents on the black market, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). The operation perpetuated voter fraud because some of the false identities and addresses were used to vote in Boston, the state’s capital and largest city. The case is the latest of many illustrating that...

By coincidence, stories about the 5-year-old boy from Fitchburg made the news the same time that reports broke about former Gov. Deval Patrick being urged to run for president. What's the connection? Patrick was governor in 2013 when the boy, missing for seven months, was found dead in a suitcase dumped off a highway in Sterling

Winter is coming for the North. Last year, three states in the Northeast — New Jersey, New York and Connecticut — landed in the top five places people were moving out of fastest, according to 2017 data from United Van Lines. (The other two states on the list were Illinois and Kansas.) And data from Pew Charitable Trusts found that while people are all about moving to the South (their population grew by nearly 1.4 million people from 2014 to 2015) and the West (866,000 more people,) the population growth in the Northeast is “sluggish.” The Northeastern exodus is particularly...

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is sounding the alarm with her Democratic base, warning a Senate run by Detroit bad boy Kid Rock could be the second coming of Donald Trump. The “Wasting Time” and “All Summer Long” rap rocker-turned-country singer tweeted on Wednesday that he’s running for U.S. Senate in Michigan. Although it’s been largely dismissed so far as a publicity stunt, Warren isn’t taking any chances with the longshot Republican. “I know a lot of people are thinking: this is some sort of joke, right?” Warren wrote in an email blast with the subject line “Senator Kid Rock (R-MI).”...

BOSTON (AP) — A prominent Irishman who lived illegally in Boston for years has been deported, closing a case that has generated fear and anxiety within the state’s sizeable Irish expat community. John Cunningham returned to Ireland on Wednesday night, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed on Thursday. The 38-year old electrical contractor had been in custody since he was arrested at his home on June 16. Federal immigration officials have said Cunningham represented an ‘‘enforcement priority’’ because he overstayed a 90-day visa by more than a decade....

#BREAKING LIVE: Evacuations are taking place after a vehicle tested positive for explosives at the gate of Hanscom Air Force Base near Boston, Massachusetts. http://nbc4i.co/2tMD3Ye

SOUTH HARWICH — Tom and Trish Kennedy are back in town. The IT entrepreneurs who shaped BackOffice into an internationally successful data solutions company, then sold it to a Goldman Sachs-backed investment group, are developing an innovative technology center and AppFactory at the offices of their former business that will bring dozens of new jobs to town. Last Wednesday they celebrated the opening of their training center at 940 Route 28 with an open house for local businesses, community leaders and customers of their new business, Zudy. The new venture is a digital transformation company with a no-code platform known...

Breaking news - car hits pedestrians near Logan Airport.

BOSTON -- On the day Boston Children's Hospital celebrated being named "the number one pediatric hospital in the nation" by U.S. News & World Report, I was interviewing Dana Gottesfeld in nearby Somerville, Massachusetts. Dana is the young wife of Martin "Marty G" Gottesfeld, an imprisoned technology engineer/activist who used his skills to fight against medical child abuse committed at Boston's Children's Hospital. "That is so Boston," Dana observed Tuesday in response to the new ranking -- which is already splashed in multiple gold medallions across the hospital's website. It's all about power, prestige and pull in the top echelons...

If Cheech & Chong of the Massachusetts Legislature can agree on passage of a compromise marijuana bill, there is nothing they cannot do. Cheech & Chong were, of course, the pair of old stoners from the '70s and '80s whose marijuana movie "Up in Smoke" became something of a cult film classic. The movie is about smoking weed, and it mellowed out an entire generation. The lyrics of the movie's theme song go like this:

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker cautioned that a health care bill proposed by U.S. Senate Republicans would cost 264,000 state residents their health coverage and have a cumulative negative impact of more than $8.2 billion on the state by 2025, while Sen. Edward Markey described defeating the bill as the legislative fight of his life. In a letter to the state's all-Democrat Congressional delegation, Baker, a Republican, wrote that the bill would "increasingly strain the state's fiscal resources, result in greater numbers of individuals without insurance and destabilize the commercial insurance market." He separately joined Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe in urging...

WORCESTER - Fathi Jaara, charged with murder in the 2014 shooting death of 19-year-old Christian A. Obeng, was found not guilty Tuesday in Worcester Superior Court. A jury of seven women and five men deliberated for about eight hours over two days before acquitting Mr. Jaara in the Oct. 2, 2014, shooting death of Mr. Obeng outside an apartment building at 8 Upland Gardens Drive.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is calling for the ouster of 12 board members at Wells Fargo due to the fake accounts scandal that has rocked the bank. In a letter sent Monday to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, the Massachusetts Democrat said the scandal has "revealed severe problems with the bank's risk management practices." Warren said the central bank has the authority under federal statute to remove the members who were on the board as the matter transpired. "We have received the letter and plan to respond," a Fed spokesman told CNBC. In an agreement with multiple authorities last September, Wells...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has a warning for President Trump: “Donald, you ain’t seen nasty yet.” Warren read aloud from her new book “This Fight is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America’s Middle Class” and took questions at a town hall event in New York Friday, HuffPost reported. Warren blasted Trump for his economic policies, saying they are hurting the middle-class Americans who voted for him. “What Donald Trump and the Republican majority in the House and the Senate want to do to us, is they want to deliver the knockout blow to the middle class,” she said. She...

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey took aim at President Donald J. Trump, healthcare, energy and the opioid crisis in a lengthy address to Worcester business owners Wednesday. Healey told the crowd gathered at Clark University that many of her initiatives are aimed at improving the business environment in Massachusetts. She touted her fight against Trump's national policies, such as the proposed travel ban, support for the Affordable Care Act and plans to build a border wall, as examples of her looking out for local interests.

Gov. Charlie Baker indicated he would support ridding Massachusetts...of its only such (Confederate) memorial. A modest stone marker was placed on Georges Island in Boston Harbor by the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1963. It commemorates the Confederate soldiers imprisoned in Fort Warren on the island during the Civil War (and lists the names of those who died as POWs).

There is no such thing as free college tuition. While it may be free for the fortunate few who get a free college education, somebody pays for it, somebody always pays. And if you are wondering who that somebody is, all you have to do is look in the mirror. So, it would be refreshing if free-stuff politicians, like Republican Gov. Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a Democrat -- the mix-and-match couple of Massachusetts politics -- actually took the time to thank the people who make their free-stuff giveaways possible. W

CATHOLIC BISHOPS BAN SIGNATURE DRIVES — PRO-LIFE CAMPAIGN IN JEOPARDY The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today is criticizing the Bay State’s four Catholic bishops for imposing an immediate ban on signature gathering on church property. The likely target of this decision, and the one to suffer the most deleterious impact, is an initiative petition campaign sponsored by two pro-life organizations, the Massachusetts Alliance To Stop Taxpayer Funded Abortion and the Renew MA Coalition. The effort, led by Attorney Thomas M. Harvey, is aimed at the passage of an initiative amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution which would overturn the 1981...

The decision by Salem State trustees to choose a white male former state representative as the new president of the university has disappointed some faculty and ignited a simmering debate about the lack of gender and racial diversity in the top ranks of public higher education. To critics, the selection of John D. Keenan fit a troubling pattern of trustees at Massachusetts public colleges and universities turning to well-known local politicians to serve as presidents, rather than outside candidates with more experience in education.

Princeton University professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor issued multiple vile attacks against President Donald Trump in her May 20 commencement speech at Hampshire College, a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Taylor accused Trump of being a “racist, sexist megalomaniac.” “The president of the United States, the most powerful politician in the world, is a racist, sexist megalomaniac,” Taylor said, according to a report by Campus Reform reporter Anthony Gockowski. “It’s not a benign observation, but has meant tragic consequences for many people in our country—from terror-inducing raids in the communities of undocumented immigrants to his disparaging of refugees in search...