Free Republic

He’s not saying Moore should go “if” the sexual assault allegations are true. He’s telling him to get out now. Mitt Romney called on Roy Moore to step aside from the Alabama Senate race Friday, becoming one of the only Republican politicians to say, unequivocally, that Moore should go in light of accusations that he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl. (TWEET-AT-LINK) On Thursday, The Washington Post reported that four women said Moore pursued them when he was in his 30s and they were between the ages of 14 and 18. The most serious case involves Leigh Corfman, who was 14...

@MittRomney Innocent until proven guilty is for criminal convictions, not elections. I believe Leigh Corfman. Her account is too serious to ignore. Moore is unfit for office and should step aside.

One of Mitt Romney's high school classmates says that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee was 'evil' in his younger years, and acted like he was a schoolboy gone mad 'like Lord Of The Flies'. The Romney camp was reeling after the revelations that he forcibly shaved the head of a high school classmate who was regularly taunted for being gay. The former governor of Massachusetts grabbed tearful John Lauber and hacked away with a pair of scissors because he thought his bleached blond hair was ‘wrong’. Mr Romney also supposedly mocked another student who was a closeted gay by shouting...

An ad from a pro-Obama super PAC suggests that Mitt Romney is responsible for a woman's death. The TV ad by Priorities USA Action has Joe Soptic, who has been used in Obama campaign ads, telling the story of what happened to his wife after Mitt Romney’s company, Bain Capital, closed the GST Steel plant where Soptic worked until 2001. On the screen are these words: "Mitt Romney and Bain Capital made millions for themselves and then closed this steel plant." Soptic says "I lost my health care. And my family lost their health care. And a short time after...

ATHOL – The town is negotiating an agreement for marijuana growing at a sprawling mill that has been mostly vacant for decades, and it could bring 500 jobs to town. Town Manager Shaun A. Suhoski said recently he is working on the host community agreement after a vote of non-opposition by selectmen last month for a medical marijuana indoor cultivation facility at 134 Chestnut Hill Ave., the former Union Twist Drill Co. mill. The building is owned by Bill Purple, 93, president of the L.P. Athol Corp., which purchased the building in 1986. Mr. Purple has been redeveloping the 365,000-square-foot...

Today, the Massachusetts state House of Representatives and Senate approved the conference committee report reconciling differences between the appropriations bills that contained gun control language banning bump fire stocks and trigger cranks. This piece of legislation, House Bill 4008, will now go to Governor Charlie Baker’s desk for approval. It is important that Governor Baker line item veto the gun measure out of the HB 4008. Please contact Governor Baker and urge him to line item veto the gun measure provision out of HB 4008! Click the “Take Action” button below to contact them. Under this provision, a “Bump Stock”...

BOSTON — One year after the lights went permanently dark inside the Bay State’s remaining human-staffed tollbooths, giving way to the era of all-electronic tolling, a bill on Beacon Hill touted by a powerful Democrat from Lynn would expand tolling throughout Greater Boston, with high-traveled freeways like Route 128, Interstate 93, Interstate 95, and Route 2 transitioning into tollways. State Senator Thomas McGee, the chairman of the Joint Transportation Committee, filed the bill, “An Act Establishing the Metropolitan Transportation Network,” last January. His bill was heard by the committee on Tuesday. Testifying at the hearing against the bill was Citizens...

GOAL Alert GOAL has learned that the MA House of Representatives engrossed a new budget bill (H.3979) during informal session today, which includes the Linsky amendment regarding modification of firearms. Please Take Action 10/26/17 GOAL has learned that the MA House of Representatives engrossed a new budget bill during informal session today, which includes the Linsky amendment regarding modification of firearms. The language is in two parts. The first section (Section 18), copied below, would make any basic modification and or maintenance of a firearm illegal, including required maintenance like lubrication of moving parts. Section 131R. Whoever possesses, owns or...

LUNENBURG, Mass. — Emily Nash has been playing golf for years. The 16-year-old is on the Lunenburg High School boys golf team. There is no girls team. On Tuesday night, Nash had the lowest score -- 75 --- in the Central Mass Division 3 Boys' Golf Tournament. She was the technical winner, but wasn't awarded the first place trophy. “I wasn't aware that if I won I wouldn't get the title or the trophy,” Nash said. The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, or MIAA, rules state, “Girls playing on a fall boys team cannot be entered in the Boys Fall Individual...

The rage is still strong in some Trump opponents who plan to band together to "scream helplessly at the sky" on the one year anniversary of the 2016 election. Facebook events around the country invite people to gather together and let out a "primal scream for the current state of our democracy" on Nov. 8. The idea came from Boston, where people will gather in America's oldest park, the Boston Common, to scream. Other liberal cities like New York, Austin and Philadelphia picked up the idea.

'I've lost my business': Mother is forced to CLOSE her coffee shop after her daughter refused to host a 'Coffee with a Cop' evening there calling police 'racist bullies' The owner of a coffee shop has been forced to shut down her business following backlash over her daughter's anti-police remarks on Facebook. Kato Mele decided to shutter the White Rose Coffeehouse in Lynn, Massachusetts just a week after the controversy erupted, saying she made the decision 'so I can stop being harassed'. The uproar started when Mele's 23-year-old daughter Sophie, who works as a manager at the coffeehouse, said on...

After the Massachusetts Legislature sped restrictions on bump stocks, a tool to increase the firing rate of guns, through the legislative process, senators opened the issue up to a public hearing. No members of the public showed up. "I was not going to ask most of our people to take a day off and come to the Statehouse to talk about something that already happened," said Jim Wallace, executive director of Gun Owners' Action League of Massachusetts.

Police yesterday were searching for multiple suspects who fled the scene of a fatal predawn shooting at the Holiday Inn Express in Dorchester. Police responded to the hotel, located just steps from Interstate 93 South, at 4:15 a.m. yesterday after receiving a call that someone had been shot. When they arrived, they found a man in his mid-20s in a fifth-floor room suffering from apparent gunshot wounds, police said.

Just half of Massachusetts students in grades three through eight met or exceeded expectations on the new "next generation MCAS test" in math and English — the first time the test has been administered. Massachusetts education officials released the spring 2017 test results on Wednesday. Educators were quick to caution against making direct comparisons between a student's performance on the new test and the original, nearly 20-year-old, MCAS. Scoring for the new test falls into four categories: Exceeding Expectations, Meeting Expectations, Partially Meeting Expectations and Not Meeting Expectations. As a result, some students who scored "proficient" on last year's MCAS...

Connecticut abolished tollbooths more than 30 years ago, and every attempt to reinstate them since has been blown out of the water. But that would have to change, says U.S. Rep. John B. Larson, D-1st District, should his proposed underground highway system in Hartford become reality. For the last eight months Larson has talked to nearly every civic group, news editorial board, local business, municipal government, state agency, and federal office, trying to drum up support for his proposed $10 billion “big dig” project. So far, support has been hit or miss for the plan that would sink interstates 84...

Earlier this week John touched on the festival of hot takes surrounding Liz Phipps Soeiro, the librarian at Cambridgeport Elementary School who attempted to refuse a donation of Dr. Seuss books from First Lady Melania Trump. I specify “attempted” because it turned out that the school board stepped in and said it wasn’t her call to begin with. That hot mess should have come and gone fairly quickly, but it turns out that there was another chapter of the story to be written.The Mayor of the town where Dr. Seuss (actually Theodor Geisel) was born decided to add some balance...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Reuters) - A two-term Cambridge, Massachusetts, city councilor and founder of an activist group that trains Muslim-Americans to run for office launched a campaign for U.S. Congress on Sunday that could make him the third Muslim in the chamber. Nadeem Mazen, 34, was set to declare his run as a Democrat for a district northwest of Boston, a seat that comes open next year as 71-year-old Representative Niki Tsongas opts not to seek a sixth term in office. The state’s best-known Muslim elected official, Mazen plans to focus his campaign on economic issues. His attempt to jump from...

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — The mayor of Dr. Seuss' hometown fired back at a school librarian on Thursday who called the children's author's books "racist" and "cliche" in rejecting a donation of them from Melania Trump. The comments of Cambridge Public Schools librarian Liz Phipps Soeiro were "political correctness at its worst," Springfield, Massachusetts, Mayor Domenic Sarno said in a statement. "One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish, I think her comments stink and are ridiculous towards our beloved Dr. Seuss," he said. Dr. Seuss, whose real name is Theodor Geisel, was born and raised in Springfield.....

Here are a few records and interesting asides related to former State Auditor Joe DeNucci, who died earlier this month at age 78. As a professional fighter — he was a world class-ranked middleweight — Joe fought more fights at the Boston Garden than any other fighter. His overall record was 54-15, with four draws, but that does not tell the whole story As the elected state auditor of the commonwealth, he served in that post for 24 years, longer than any of his predecessors. As auditor, he worked with and outlasted a half-dozen governors: Michael Dukakis, William Weld, Paul...

Officials at Cambridge Public Schools are distancing the district from a letter penned by a school librarian rejecting books donated by first lady Melania Trump. In the blog post, published Tuesday on the Horn Book, Liz Phipps Soeiro, a library media specialist at the district’s Cambridgeport School, began by thanking the first lady for the 10 Dr. Seuss books sent to her school “for its high standards of excellence.” But she went on to explain why they would not be keeping the gifted titles. “Cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit are suffering through expansion, privatization, and school ‘choice’ with no...