Free Republic

When the gun instructor got through describing the restrictive gun laws in Boston and in Massachusetts -- which are just about the toughest in the nation -- one student asked: "If the gun laws are so tough, how come there are shootings every night in Boston?" "That's a good question," the instructor replied. "The answer is that the gun laws are aimed at the good guys, the law-abiding people, like you and me. The bad guys ignore the law and get all the guns they want." That is the dilemma facing governors, mayors, legislators and even the president as the...

Incumbent U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, in the closing days of the campaign, is the underdog in this race for the Senate. And though it may take a last-minute surge for Brown, the Republican in a heavily Democratic state, to win this thing, it could happen, especially if independents and "regular" Democrats break for him. It happened two years ago when Brown, an unknown state senator, captured the imagination of the voting public. He came out of nowhere to beat heavily favored Attorney General Martha Coakley, the Democrat, to win the "Kennedy seat" and shock members of the Massachusetts Democratic establishment....

Four years ago the voters put their faith in a man who offered vague promises of hope and change at a time when any change looked like a good idea and hope was in short supply. What this nation got in Barack Obama was a president who used an economic crisis to further his redistributionist agenda — and, not surprisingly, failed miserably at restoring American prosperity. Oh, he brought change all right — to a government-knows-best philosophy that has given us four years of high unemployment, higher gas prices, a $16 trillion deficit, and a job-killing regulatory environment. And this...

You would have thought that Barack Obama and George Bush were best buddies. After beating up on his predecessor in the White House for five years or so -- throwing everything at him except his well-worn golf clubs -- President Obama finally had something nice to say about George Bush. It is strange, as the saying goes, how politics makes for strange bedfellows. It is enough to make a strong man cringe, or reach for the Jack Daniels. Bush, whiling away his time in retirement down at his ranch in West Wherever, Texas, no doubt was shocked, if he chanced...

If I were President Barack Obama, I would send Susan Rice to Libya. She deserves to be rewarded for her loyalty. And not to worry about her safety, because Obama could send with her the six Secret Service agents assigned to protect White House adviser and family friend Valerie Jarrett, even though nobody can figure out why a presidential aide needs all that protection. Perhaps Washington is more dangerous than Benghazi. Those six agents would represent more security than what was provided by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for defenseless Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, who was murdered,...

Waltham-based electric car battery maker A123 Systems, which has received hundreds of millions in state and federal funding, expects to default today on certain debt payments and could be headed for bankruptcy, according to a document the company has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission."No assurance can be given that the company will be able to avoid restructuring, reorganization or a bankruptcy filing," the troubled firm said in a filing yesterday. A123 Systems said it expects to miss its October interest payment on $143,750,000 worth of 2016 corporate notes. The company said it also expects to miss a payment...

Barack Obama was not the only loser in the first presidential debate with challenger Mitt Romney on Wednesday. Sen. John Kerry took it on the chin as well. And, incidentally, so did the Obama lapdogs in the liberal mainstream media who have been apologizing, protecting and covering up for Obama since the day he arrived on the national political scene. Obama, hesitant, defensive and unprepared in his 90-minute encounter with an aggressive Romney, left the stage in Denver looking as though he had just been waterboarded. And Kerry, Obama's debate coach, could not get out of town fast enough. And...

It is the issue that will not go away. For two debates in a row in the hotly contested U.S. Senate fight between incumbent Sen. Scott Brown and challenger Elizabeth Warren, the lead-off question has dealt not with unemployment or the economy, but whether Warren is really a Native American or merely a Cherokee of convenience, i.e., a fake Indian. And despite charges from Warren's cheerleaders in the media that Brown is behind the attacks on her alleged Native American background -- and whether she has used her "minority" background to get ahead in academia -- in both cases, the...

Will Gov. Deval Patrick's words about Mitt Romney being a rotten governor come back to haunt him? "Mitt Romney talks a lot about all the things he's fixed," Patrick told a roaring crowd at the Democratic Party convention last month. "I can tell you that Massachusetts wasn't one of them." After listing all the things that went wrong in Massachusetts when Romney was governor -- from the usual "crumbling" roads and bridges to cuts in education funding -- Patrick said of his predecessor in the governor's office: "He's a fine fellow and a great salesman, but as governor he was...

Clearly, there is not much left of the good-old-boy network when it comes to former governors of Massachusetts. This was made abundantly clear before, during and after the Democratic Party Convention, when Gov. Deval Patrick, who followed Mitt Romney in the governor's office, and former Gov. Michael Dukakis, who preceded him, went after the GOP presidential nominee with a vengeance. Patrick hit him high and Dukakis hit him low. If this were a Sunday NFL game, the referee would have called the two Democrats for unnecessary roughness -- piling on. Dukakis was and is particularly tough on Romney. He has...

It's amazing how quickly President Barack Obama and the Democrats have stopped bragging about killing Osama bin Laden. I guess a couple of attacks -- one deadly -- on American embassies and consulates by Islamist mobs and terrorists in Cairo, Benghazi and elsewhere will do that to you. Suddenly it is not so smart to go around pounding your chest, spiking the football, taunting your opponents and taking credit for the assassination of the al-Qaida leader. Up to and through the Democratic Party Convention in Charlotte, N.C., Obama, Joe Biden, Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sen. John Kerry and other...

If Hillary Clinton had gotten any farther away from the Democrat Party convention she would have needed the late, great Neil Armstrong to bring her back. As far as the convention went, she might as well have been on the dark side of the moon. I mean, this lady was physically so far removed from Charlotte, N.C., that it is a wonder she did not fall off the planet. Her first stop in her six-country, week-away tour from the convention was in the Cook Islands, which are somewhere in the South Pacific, around New Zealand. A hint at how remote...

Newsweek sold out in Tampa. "That's because Mitt Romney bought up all the copies," one wise guy said, "so he could give them out to all the delegates." Perhaps so. Truth be known, though, delegates to the GOP convention didn't need actual copies because the sensational Newsweek story about Barack Obama had gone viral around the country and the globe and back again by the time they arrived to whoop it up in Tampa. The story, by Harvard history professor and Newsweek columnist Niall Ferguson, was titled "Hit the Road, Barack. Why We Need a New President." What made the...

Republicans should pray that Barack Obama keeps Joe Gaffe on the ticket. The "Collected Sayings of the Joe," if put in book form, would be an overnight bestseller. It would be so good, these gems could be turned into a hit television reality show or a movie. Screenwriters would kill for the hilarious gaffes and one-liners that so naturally come out of the mouth of the Joe. Gold, pure gold. Republicans desperately need Joe Gaffe running at the Big O's side. It is their ticket to the White House. They pray that the Big O will not dump the Joe...

Paul Ryan may be good; Marco Rubio would have been better. It's almost too easy to say that Mitt Romney's choice of a running mate is like the bland leading the bland. But there is truth to it. At a time when Romney needed fire, he chose rain. He appointed his accountant. Rubio, the passionate and articulate senator from Florida, whose ancestral roots are in Cuba, would have brought fire to the Romney campaign -- along with the state of Florida, and vast appeal to the growing Latin American community in the country. Ryan perhaps helps Romney win Wisconsin, and...

Former Evergreen Solar CEO Richard Feldt’s five-bedroom, two-plus acre Hingham pad is on the market for $9.9 million, nearly $1.4 million more than what the company’s Devens factory sold for earlier this year. The Bare Cove Lane property also boasts four bathrooms, a pool, stone terrace and 200 feet of frontage on Hingham Harbor, according to a real estate listing. “The natural light is incredible. The views are spectacular. The finishes and millwork are masterful,” the listing says. “Rarely does a home of this caliber become available for sale.” Feldt, who left Evergreen Solar in 2010 to become CEO of...

The MBTA bus driver who authorities say “deliberately” hit a Hub meter maid trying to slap her with a parking ticket was released on her own recognizance against the wishes of prosecutors who were asking to keep her in jail on $2,500 bail. Lataria Milton, 34, rushed from Roxbury District Court amid a scrum of reporters and family members who kept cameras at bay while yelling, “There’s no comment.” Milton, a 10-year veteran of the T, is accused of driving her bus into a transportation supervisor and causing a crash in Kenmore Square yesterday morning that involved six vehicles. Prosecutors...

U.S. Sen. Scott Brown demanded challenger Elizabeth Warren cough up nearly $300,000 to reimburse taxpayers for a push undertaken by her daughter’s liberal think tank to register welfare recipients to vote. ”It’s been disturbing for a lot of people to learn that the state’s welfare department undertook an unprecedented voter registration drive at the behest of Elizabeth Warren’s daughter and the organization she represents,” wrote Brown in a statement. “It is clear that this was done to aid Elizabeth Warren’s Senate campaign. Professor Warren has more than $13 million dollars in her campaign account, and if she wants to mail...

Desperation makes for strange bedfellows. How else to explain President Barack Obama's call for help from the man who once said Obama should be fetching coffee for him and Ted Kennedy? That man is former President Bill Clinton, who in an attempt to buttress Obama's sagging campaign for re-election, agreed to give the key nominating speech for Obama at the Democrat Party convention in Charlotte, N.C., beginning Sept. 3. Since Obama can't run on his own dismal performance as president -- not with a stagnant economy, staggering trillion-dollar deficits, inflation and stubbornly high unemployment -- he might as well take...

Transit Police have arrested the bus driver involved in this morning’s ticket-rage smashup in Kenmore Square and charged her with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and operating to endanger. Lataria Milton, 34, a 10-year veteran of the T, will be arraigned tomorrow morning in Roxbury District Court, said authority spokesman Joe Pesaturo. Milton hit a meter maid and three other cars after she was slapped with a $75 ticket for parking illegally in the heart of Kenmore Square this morning, authorities said. The veteran city parking enforcement supervisor who remains hospitalized this afternoon, told her boss, “Tommy, if...