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BOSTON, January 22, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund filed a lawsuit in federal court Friday against a new Massachusetts law that creates a 35-foot "buffer" zone around abortion clinics.  The law essentially eliminates free speech rights within the zone by restricting pro-life advocates from sharing their message with people entering the clinics. "Pro-life advocates shouldn't be penalized for expressing their beliefs," said ADF-allied attorney and lead counsel Michael DePrimo.  "The buffer law is breathtaking in its scope.  It obviously was designed and intended to squelch pro-life speech, but it prohibits much more, such as labor...

Howie Carr thread; talk related to his radio show plus we post some of his columns if not all (we'll start with his Sunday Herald article from today)

Here’s a quiz: Which prominent African-American politician famously said: “The politics of fear is no acceptable alternative to the politics of hope.” If you answered Barack Obama, you’re wrong …Just two years after Obama’s now-famous Democratic National Convention speech in Boston where he asked: “Do we participate in a politics of cynicism, or do we participate in a politics of hope” --Deval Patrick uttered the aforementioned phrase in a statement to the press. Barack Obama went on to serve in the U.S. Senate in 2005, and Patrick was elected Governor of Massachusetts in 2006. And while Obama’s impact as a...

Even as Governor Deval Patrick seeks to license three resort casinos in Massachusetts, he hopes to clamp down on the explosion in Internet gambling by making it illegal for state residents to place a bet on line. He has proposed jail terms of up to two years and $25,000 fines for violators. The provision, buried deep in Patrick's bill to allow three casinos to the state, puts the governor at odds with a fellow Democrat: US Representative Barney Frank, the sponsor of federal legislation to license and regulate online gambling nationally. Yesterday Frank strongly criticized the governor's plan to punish...

Governor Deval Patrick will throw his support behind Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential campaign, an endorsement that could give the Illinois senator a boost in the crucial New Hampshire primary and may help Obama blunt some of Senator Hillary Clinton's recent success in winning African-American support. Administration officials confirmed that the governor called Obama yesterday to pledge his endorsement, and Patrick's volunteers began working out the details of a public rally in Boston Tuesday. Patrick also called Clinton yesterday to break the news that he would endorse her opponent. Patrick has strong ties to the New York senator from...

Governor Deval Patrick is throwing his support to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, an endorsement that will give the Illinois senator a much needed boost in New Hampshire and help blunt Hillary Clinton's courting of African-American leaders

Governor Deval Patrick, determined to exert control over the University of Massachusetts system, is undaunted by his failed bid last month to remove UMass board chairman Stephen P. Tocco and is still planning his ouster, according to administration officials. Patrick aides have been testing sentiment among UMass trustees and said they expect the governor to have sufficient support to remove Tocco in a matter of months. Patrick was publicly stung when his allies on the board could not muster enough votes last month to force out the influential Tocco, who is an appointee of Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, but...

Governor Deval Patrick plans to propose as early as tomorrow that the state sell licenses for three full-scale resort casinos in Massachusetts, citing their potential to spur economic growth, create jobs, and generate new government revenue, according to State House officials who have been briefed on his plan. Patrick will recommend that the casinos be licensed in three regions: Southeastern Massachusetts, Western Massachusetts, and an area that includes Boston and points north, the officials said... All three licenses would be put up for competitive bid, in a process that is expected to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in immediate...

This year I marked the anniversary of September 11th by driving through Massachusetts. It wasn’t exactly planned that way, just the way things panned out. So, heading toward Boston, I tuned to Bay State radio colossus Howie Carr and heard him reading out portions from the official address to the 9/11 commemoration ceremony by Deval Patrick, who is apparently the governor of Massachusetts. 9/11, said Governor Patrick, “was a mean and nasty and bitter attack on the United States.” “Mean and nasty”? He sounds like an over-sensitive waiter complaining that John Kerry’s sent back the aubergine coulis again. But...

...[T]he shot heard around the world and so forth. Anyway, Gov. Patrick didn't want to leave the crowd with all that macho cowboy rhetoric ringing in their ears, so he moved on to the nub of his speech: 9/11, he continued, "was also a failure of human beings to understand each other, to learn to love each other." I was laughing so much I lost control of the wheel, and the guy in the next lane had to swerve rather dramatically. He flipped me the Universal Symbol of Human Understanding. I certainly understood him, though I'm not sure I could...

In his 9/11 commemoration speech, Patrick observed that while the attack on the World Trade Center was “mean and nasty,” (that’s telling ’em, Deval!) the real tragedy of six years ago was the “failure of human understanding.” Yes, 9/11 was, Patrick said “a failure of human beings to understand each other, to learn to love each other.” [Emphasis added.] To find out what the victims of 9/11 didn’t understand about the terrorists that might have prevented the attack, I turned to Debra Burlingame. Her brother, Chic, was the pilot of American Airlines [AMR] Flight 77 - the plane that hit...

BOSTON - The state’s Republican party chief and the prominent brother of a Sept. 11 victim criticized Gov. Deval Patrick for saying at a memorial service the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people resulted "from a failure of human understanding." Peter Torkildsen, a former member of Congress, said Wednesday the comments suggested society somehow misserved the terrorists.

In organizing a State House ceremony for Tuesday to mark the sixth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, planners said yesterday they never envisioned they would set off a political firestorm by not inviting Jim Ogonowski, whose brother was killed in the attacks and who is now engaged in a heated race as he seeks to become the state's first Republican congressman in more than a decade. Ogonowski, who has been a speaker at the ceremony the past four years, was not asked to come back. However, added to the program as the keynote speaker was Martin Meehan, a former US...

The decision to exclude the brother of a pilot killed in the Sept. 11 attacks from ceremonies marking its anniversary has set off a political firestorm in Massachusetts. Jim Ogonowski, who is a Republican candidate for Congress in the heavily-Democratic state, was not asked to speak, as he had for the past four years. Ogonowski?s brother John was the pilot of American Airlines Flight 11, one of two planes that was flown into the World Trade Center. While Jim Ogonowski was not invited, speaking will be ex-Congressman Martin Meehan, whose wife is chairing Democrat Niki Tsongas' campaign against Ogonowski. "I...

There are startling scenes in "Restless Virgins" that are bound to -- and meant to -- shock readers. Three hockey players in a girl's bedroom. Clothes come off. Two of the guys hook up with the girl while the third watches and gives instructions. Another scene: a girl performing oral sex on a guy in a campus chapel. And another: "The three of them went at it for 15 minutes. . . . On the way home, Brady let Quinn take a turn with Emma in the back seat, then pulled over so the boys could switch places again." To...

Gov. Deval Patrick envisions free education for every Massachusetts resident from age 3 through community college. To help him make that vision a reality, Patrick on Monday appointed an 18-member panel to draw up blueprints for the 10-year plan. "We need to change fundamentally the way we think about and most of all deliver public education in this commonwealth," the Democratic governor said. "Everything is on the table." The leadership team will work under former Boston Public Schools superintendent Thomas Payzant, EMC Corp. chairman and CEO Joseph Tucci and Wheelock College President Jackie Jenkins-Scott. That trio has until March to...

Opponents of gay marriage are sharply questioning a budget filing by supporter Gov. Deval Patrick that offers $737,000 for the district of a state lawmaker who switched his vote to help kill a proposed constitutional ban on gay weds. The money, included in a supplemental budget filed late Friday, would help pay for the Southbridge Community Center in the district of state Rep. Geraldo Alicea (D-Charlton), one of 11 lawmakers who switched sides on gay marriage to help Patrick defeat the ban. “We are absolutely concerned about this,” said Kris Mineau, a spokesman for VoteOnMarriage.org, which led a ballot initiative...

This weekend, on the eve of what could be a historic and final vote on same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, Governor Deval Patrick will become the first sitting governor in state history to march in Boston's gay pride parade, according to organizers. Patrick, who marched in the last two Boston pride parades as a candidate for governor, has been working to help defeat a proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which the Legislature is scheduled to vote on at a constitutional convention next week. Patrick appeared last night at an event sponsored by the advocacy group MassEquality, featuring prominent lawyers who...

GARDNER (MA) In his first commencement address of his administration, Governor Deval Patrick called for civic engagement yesterday, while delivering a broadside against Bush administration policies. Patrick's exhortation appeared to resonate with many of the 656 students graduating from Mount Wachusett Community College and their families, who gave him a long standing ovation. (snip) Without naming President Bush or members of his administration, Patrick took aim at their response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, saying that in its wake, the nation has been governed by fear. Patrick said fear "drove us to round up people of Arab...

In most new administrations, you have a transition, and then the inauguration. For Deval Patrick, first it was the inauguration, and now comes the transition, more than four months after the swearing-in. This is not a complaint, you understand. It’s probably best for all concerned - well, at least taxpayers - that Deval had to handle the really big issues first, namely the new Cadillac. But now Deval finds himself compelled to begin the transition, because they need jobs to bribe a handful of holdout solons to switch their votes on gay marriage. Forget their denials, that’s the reality. And...