Free Republic

Rules for being a true fan By Bill Simmons Page 2 columnist Ugh ... the dog days of February. The Olympics just ended. The NHL and NBA are limping toward the playoffs. We're still a few weeks away from WrestleMania, Junior Kiper's final NFL draft rankings, the Masters, fantasy baseball and watchable spring training games. The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue already came out. You know what that means? We're delving into my "BREAK OPEN IN CASE OF EMERGENCY" treasure chest of column gimmicks! Today's topic: Shouldn't there be rules for being a sports fan? Shouldn't somebody write down some sort ...

Public Hearing Alert On Tuesday, March 5, 2002 the Joint Committee on Criminal Justice will hold a public hearing on many remaining bills. The meeting is scheduled to take place in room 222 (State House) at 11:00 a.m. The bill that should most concern gun owners and sportsmen is H. 4709 “AN ACT RELATIVE TO CRIMES AGAINST PUBLIC PEACE”. This bill will have a great adverse effect on anyone who owns a firearm of any type in Massachusetts. GOAL strongly urges ALL gun owners and sportsmen to attend this hearing. If you are not able to attend, please contact the ...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Democrats on Friday abandoned their demands that first-time voters be allowed to prove their identity with merely a signature, a major sticking point in the debate over overhauling elections.</p> <p>The agreement removed the biggest hurdle to passing a $3.4 billion bill aimed at preventing a repeat of the 2000 Florida presidential vote dispute. The House passed its $2.6 billion version in December.</p>

Brother Of Convicted Hockey Dad Charged With Assault Suspect Accused Of Smashing, Flinging Phone A brother of the Massachusetts hockey dad convicted of beating another hockey dad to death was arrested and charged in a case of apparent consumer rage Wednesday. Police said James Junta was at Best Buy and went into a rage after he was told he couldn't return a cell phone without a receipt. Junta reportedly tried to smash the phone by stomping on it, and he then threw it at a female employee, hitting her in the leg, according to police. Junta, who has a criminal ...

Fraudulent Activity at A.G.’s Office? The U.S. Attorney General’s office is concerned about “extensive fraudulent activity” at the Mass. Attorney General’s office concerning the regulations on handguns, according to the Gun Owners’ Action League....Cont.

IF ONE WERE to round up all the Communists in Massachusetts and send them home, chances are almost all of them would slither back to Cambridge. Except one, Mario Coyula-Cowley, who would have to hop an imperialist American aircraft back to Cuba. Harvard has just imported Coyula direct from Fidel Castro’s duty-free Shop of Monstrously Bad Ideas to teach two classes in the Graduate School of Design. For Harvard, it’s all about the free exchange of ideas. If ideas are only flowing one way — out of Cuba, well that’s fine with them. And if Coyula’s $50,000 salary helps prop ...

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- A Boston Red Sox fan all his life, Dan Duquette knows what it's like to have his heart broken by the team. Choking back tears as he said goodbye to his dream job, the former Red Sox general manager said he would be back at Fenway Park cheering on the team he ran for eight years before being fired Thursday. Dan Duquette was all smiles a year ago, but is out of a job with new management. "I'm most disappointed that I will not have the opportunity to realize the goal Red Sox fans and I ...

Here's the situation. I'm going to be moving into VA in a few months and as its - gasp - not impossible to possess a firearm (where I live explains that) I'm interested in getting my first handgun. Problem is (a) I've never even SEEN a gun before and don't know where to start in terms of training or what to purchase and (b) I'm going to have to continue to be registered as living in MA (long story) and am not sure how not being a resident of VA will affect or disallow a purchase. Any help?

<p>WASHINGTON - Senator John F. Kerry's effort to require increased fuel efficiency in cars drew criticism from an unlikely source yesterday - environmentalists who are usually his staunch allies.</p> <p>They reacted negatively after Kerry told reporters he would consider supporting the option of increased use of diesel fuel in automobiles.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON - Two Democrats who hope to lead the House of Representatives after this fall's midterm elections will headline a $10,000-a-plate fund-raiser next week in Boston.</p> <p>Less than a week later, Al Gore, the former vice president, will make his first fund-raising appearance on behalf of a congressional candidate, serving as the guest of honor at a Washington benefit for Representative Richard E. Neal, Democrat of Springfield.</p>

Judge Coven Agrees: Judges Are ‘Burned Out’ Is This Why Coven Makes So Many Terrible Decisions? By Atty. J. Edward Pawlick August 16, 2001 Judge Mark Coven, who sits at the District Court in Quincy, agrees that he and other judges are “burned out.” He wants to start sitting in other courts so that he can become “refreshed and renewed,” he wrote in the Boston Globe. We couldn’t agree more. That’s why we’ve written many times that our judges should not sit in the same court for years – particularly in family courts. We’ve noted often that this particular person, ...

Town of Amherst is Worse than Cardinal Law in Supporting Child MolestorsMost of Liberal Establishment Still in Denial &nbsp;February 14, 2002 The town of Amherst is demonstrating that most of the liberal establishment in Massachusetts is still in denial about men who molest young boys. Those powerful people are much more liable for molestations than Cardinal Law because everyone&#146;s now keenly aware of the devastation it causes to boys. It wasn&#146;t so clear ten years ago when the Cardinal made his mistakes.&nbsp; Should Cardinal Law Have Stopped Vagina Monologues?&nbsp;In the production of Vagina Monologues now being staged by women ...

‘We Told You So, Boston'; Your Homosexual Network Twenty Years Later It now turns out that a book published in 1982 had warned us that this was all going to happen in Massachusetts . “We told you so,” says Connie Marshner, who works at the Free Congress Foundation, which expressed their concerns in 1982. The book was The Homosexual Network: Private Lives and Public Policy, by Enrique Rueda, a Catholic priest then in the diocese of Rochester . “If you had read that book you would not have been surprised by the revelations that have been coming out of ...

A truce between two of the country’s largest motorcycle gangs — both of which have chapters in New Hampshire — is breaking down, and law enforcement officials are concerned that the violence which comes with turf wars will escalate. Last week 23 bikers, seven of whom are from New Hampshire, were arrested outside a club in Revere, Mass., heavily armed and apparently ready for a battle with an unidentified rival biker gang, police said. Those under arrest are reportedly members of the Outlaws motorcycle club, once arch-rivals and deadly foes of the Hells Angels. New Hampshire State Police Lt. ...

P> It's like being a 25-year-old Saudi Arabian in the first days after 9/11. That's how somebody I know described being a priest in the archdiocese of Boston today. Are you good ol' Father Joe, or a sexual terrorist? Do you head out boldly now in your Roman collar, or slink out incognito in khakis and jeans? You see a priest's picture in the paper dispensing ashes to a 12-year-old. You see Cardinal Law greeting teenagers at some weekend confab. It may be irrational and it's surely unfair but it's there nonetheless: that sense of oh-my-God-let's-hope-everything's-on the-up-and-up. The second-guessing: What ...

Poll: Mass. wants Mitt HERALD POLL/by David R. Guarino Tuesday, February 26, 2002 Republican Mitt Romney would steamroll into the governor's race a certified front-runner, far more popular than the wounded acting governor and besting every Democrat in the field, a new Herald poll shows. In a staggering sign the GOP could abandon acting Gov. Jane M. Swift for Romney, 48 percent of Republicans surveyed now disapprove of the job Swift is doing as governor. Meanwhile, 69 percent of Republican voters view Romney favorably while only 36 percent give Swift favorable marks. And while Swift's plummeting fortune now has ...

Homosexual activists will hold a public meeting in the Chenery Middle School, Belmont, Massachusetts. Our Diversity - Thursday, 2/28/2002, 7:30 PM, 95 Washington St. Get the map and come to the debate!

<p>BOSTON -- Twenty people working at Logan International Airport were charged Wednesday with lying to get their jobs or security badges.</p> <p>Samantha Martin, Sullivan's spokeswoman, said 15 people were taken into custody in a sweep Wednesday morning. Five more workers were expected to be in custody by the afternoon.</p>

Has Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s first secretary of labor, asked the former president and fellow Oxford Rhodes Scholar for his help in his campaign for Massachusetts governor? Not according to campaign manager Mark Longabaugh, who says: “This race is about Robert Reich and the state of Massachusetts, not the former president.” Back in December, Reich told the Boston Herald that Clinton “was encouraging” about his making the race. Those quotes lit a political fire in the Bay State because Clinton is close to front-runner Steve Grossman, the former national Democratic chairman. Reich backed off any claim to Clinton’s backing.

Please, Mitt, I'm not asking anymore, I'm begging. If you don't come back and run for governor, your home state, which is pretty much how you described Massachusetts to more than 50 million people on TV Sunday night, is going right down the Dukakis tubes. Starting in January, we'll be going back to the future of good jobs at good wages, public-private partnerships, weekend furloughs for murderers, national models and investments in the future. I know, Republicans are taught to wait their turn. But if not now, when? If not you, who? Mitt, we need you. You haven't been ...