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Mashpee, Mass. -- From a blustery perch over a Cape Cod beach, Chuckie Green gestures toward a stretch of horizon where he says construction of the nation's first offshore wind farm would destroy his Indian tribe's religion. The Wampanoag - the tribe that welcomed the Pilgrims in the 17th century and known as "The People of the First Light" - practice sacred rituals requiring an unblocked view of the sunrise. That view won't exist once 130 turbines, each over 400 feet tall, are built several miles from shore in Nantucket Sound, visible to Wampanoag in Mashpee and on Martha's Vineyard....

From: DGiannotti@eth.state.ma.us FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 6, 2009 Contact: David Giannotti, Communications Division Chief 617-371-9505 Ethics Commission's Enforcement Division Alleges that Town of Harvard School Superintendent and a Former School Committee Chairman Violated the Conflict of Interest Law Allegedly Used Official Positions to Secure Reimbursement of Private School Tuition by Harvard Public Schools The State Ethics Commission's Enforcement Division, in two Orders to Show Cause ("OTSC"), alleged that Harvard Superintendent of Public Schools Thomas Jefferson ("Jefferson") and former Harvard School Committee Chairman Paul Wormser ("Wormser") violated G.L.c. 268A, the conflict of interest law, by using Jefferson's official position as Superintendent,...

A manager at a Massachusetts retail store claims he was unjustly fired after he told a colleague he thought her impending marriage to another woman was wrong.

Just got off the phone with Cong. Delahunt's office (again). Asked what his intentions were regarding the healthcare vote. Girl taking calls said he had not made up his mind yet. I asked her how the calls were breaking down. She said about 50/50. I asked her how many calls they had taken. She says about a hundred.

Old Ironsides’ upscale Charlestown neighbors are trying to pull off what British, French and Barbary pirate guns failed to accomplish in more than two centuries - silencing the cannons of the nation’s oldest commissioned naval vessel. Miffed residents of a posh condo complex have invited the commanding officer of the USS Constitution over for a glass of wine so he can hear for himself that the frigate’s twice-daily cannon blasts - a tradition dating to 1798 - are “more disruptive to the neighborhood than you might have imagined.” Commanding Officer Timothy Cooper received the most recent complaint two weeks ago...

President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress are spending billions of tax dollars to subsidize development of "green jobs" - positions for people and companies designing and manufacturing alternative energy sources such as biomass, wind and solar. One of Obama's buddies, Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, is also a vocal advocate of such subsidies. Last year, Patrick put Massachusetts taxpayers' money where is mouth is by backing a $58 million package of incentives and subsidies to Evergreen Solar, which manufacturers collector panels used in solar energy units. Now barely a year later, Evergreen has announced that it is moving...

While roaming the grounds of the US Capitol yesterday, Kristinn Taylor obtained a list of possible democrat defectors of the now infamous “Healthcare” bill. Kristinn was asked to post this list of wobbly democrats on FreeRepublic in an effort to mobilize our forces and overwhelm these members with phone calls and e-mails asking them to vote NO on the socialization of our healthcare. We also learned that Nancy Pelosi had just scheduled the vote for tomorrow; Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 6:00 PM. For all those who were unable to answer the call to surround the Capitol yesterday, here is...

DUDLEY, Mass., Nov. 4 (UPI) -- A Massachusetts town outlawed owning three cats without a kennel license after a man complained his neighbor's felines were hurting his lawn. Voters at a Dudley town meeting Tuesday night approved the addition of the new language to a town bylaw, which will impose a $100 per day fine for violations, after a local man complained that some of the 15 cats owned by Mary Ellen Richards had destroyed his grass, the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram & Gazette reported Wednesday. Richards said at the town meeting that she now plans to put her house up...

very ironic announcement that I just got in my Harvard email announcing a forthcoming lecture: HARVARD UNIVERSITY EDMOND J. SAFRA FOUNDATION CENTER FOR ETHICS Eliot Spitzer, former Governor and Attorney General of New York, will deliver a public lecture as part of the 2009/10 Labs Lectures on the Question of Institutional Corruption. Thursday, November 12 at 4:30pm Emerson Hall, Room 105 25 Quincy Street, Cambridge This is a ticketed event.

How’s that “hope and change” working out for you? I can’t speak for the Democrats, but Republicans - particularly New England ones - are loving it. After a year of defeat and dire predictions, Massachusetts conservatives have renewed hope for 2010. There’s definitely change on the way, and in a state whose legislators are about 90 percent Democrat, change can only be good for Republicans. And who can we thank for this new conservative spirit of hopeful-changeyness? The Republican Party’s new hero: Barack Obama. One year ago today, pundits were writing off the American right for the next election cycle,...

lredmond@lowellsun.com BOSTON -- As a Billerica gun case heads to the state's highest court next week, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, Police Chiefs and other high-profile groups are urging the Supreme Judicial Court to reject the constitutional challenge to the state's safe firearm-storage law. The groups are joining with Middlesex District Attorney Gerard Leone, who is challenging a Lowell District Court judge's ruling that dismissed a gun-storage case against Richard Runyan, a Billerica man who kept an unlocked semiautomatic hunting rifle under his bed where it could be accessed by his teenage...

(snip) The GOP wins in New Jersey and Virginia are breeding a new competition among Republicans to take part of the credit. Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, potential rivals for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, both tried to bask in glow."We worked extremely hard on behalf of Bob McDonnell and the entire Republican ticket in Virginia, and helped him close strong with a full day of campaigning in the final week; in New Jersey, we endorsed Chris Christie early and made sure he had the resources to be competitive against his better-financed opponent," Romney told supporters of his Free &...

A Massachusetts man has been fired from his sales A Massachusetts man has been fired from his sales position at the Logan Airport branch in Boston of Brookstone allegedly for telling a female manager that his Christian faith says homosexuality is wrong. Peter Vadala was fired, and the company says he violated a tolerance policy. But Vadala reports his dismissal came because he expressed his Christian view of homosexuality after a female manager made repeated references, as she approached him four times during work hours, to her plans to marry her lesbian partner. "At the start of the day, she...

In a case that could have a major impact on water use in Massachusetts, the attorney general’s office argued before the state’s highest court yesterday that the Department of Environmental Protection can impose limits on the amount of water municipalities draw from aquifers, rivers, and lakes.... The case, which the Supreme Judicial Court did not immediately rule on, stems from a state policy adopted in 2007 that allows the department to limit residential water use to 65 gallons a day per person for basins at risk of drought and 80 gallons a day per person for those with less risk....

Almost 20% of West Virginians eligible to vote are either dead or have moved. Five States with the Most Dead People Eligible to Vote: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Washington, West Virginia, Wyoming. FUN TIME IN ACORN TOWN: DEAD PEOPLE RULE! Are you lonely when you go to the polling place? Want some company? Perhaps, you'd like to take along a dead "friend" to vote with you. That's a scenario that's becoming more possible across the United States. A combination of old voter registration lists that still contain the names of dead voters and voters who have moved, new "Motor Voter" legislation,...

New York beef manufacturer Fairbanks Farms has issued a voluntary recall of a little more than half a million pounds of ground beef. The recall, which affects states from Maine to North Carolina -- Maryland included -- comes after one person died in New Hampshire and people were sickened in other states after eating beef thought to be contaminated by the bacteria E.coli. The products, which include ground beef, meatloaf and meatball mix, carry sell-by dates from Sept. 19-28 and were sold under such brands as Trader Joe's Butcher Shop Fine Quality Meats, Giant Meatloaf & Meatball Mix and BJ's...

Sunday I spoke to a room full of potential Republican candidates at a training session in Foxboro, MA. And while I don’t like to brag, I must report that, every time a certain name was mentioned, the crowd let out a cheer. And that name was . . . Doug Hoffman. If you’re like 70 percent of America - 99 percent one month ago - you probably don’t recognize the name. He’s the obscure, underfunded, third-party candidate for an Upstate New York congressional seat. And, just maybe, the future of American politics. When President Barack Obama picked Rep. John McHugh...

Over the last several months homosexual activist campaign workers from across the country have been traveling to Maine to campaign against the upcoming vote for traditional marriage. It's been largely paid for by national homosexual groups. But all along the Massachusetts homosexual lobby has been a major organizing and fundraising arm of the pro-gay marriage push in Maine.

On Nov. 9 Wade Rathke will be speaking at Springfield college,Marsh Hall in Springfield Mass at 7:0PM and at UMASS on Nov. 10, Gordon Hall at 4:00PM. We will be arriving a half hour early to both. When I say we, I mean the western Mass 912 project. Our signs will be aimed specifically at ACORN's and Rathke's legal problems; they will also be aimed at student age people. Apparently we have a troll on our site, they have discovered our plans and plan to counter us. I am asking for help from anyone that can make it. The following...

A Massachusetts man was fired from a national retail corporation because of his traditional beliefs on same-sex marriage. Peter Vadala was formally dismissed from his job as second deputy manager of the Brookstone store at Boston’s Logan Airport on August 12, 2009, after a supervisor reported him to Human Resources regarding an incident two days earlier.

The details of Congress’ health care “reform” legislation are finally coming into focus, and it’s not a pretty picture. Congress is essentially proposing a national version of the failing Massachusetts system. In 2006, Massachusetts adopted a health care plan which included an individual mandate requiring residents to purchase state-approved health insurance, new regulations on insurance companies specifying who they must cover and what benefits they must provide, and a government-subsidized “public option” for low-income residents. Supporters promised a utopia of “universal coverage” which would save money while improving quality of care. However, the exact opposite has occurred — health costs...

Not long ago, Americans feared and ridiculed the police states cursing too many parts of the world. We worried that they might one day conquer us despite their poverty and general misery even as we mocked their totalitarian tactics — especially their “Papers, please” mentality.  Indeed, being forced to prove one’s identity to a bureaucrat on demand, having to carry and produce documents with personal information for his approval — or condemnation — seemed especially horrifying. One of our classic films, Casablanca, revolved around the deadly hassles of obtaining or forging such papers under the Nazis; episodes of Mission Impossible...

Gays demand tolerance and inclusion. See how long that lasts once should they continue to get people fired because they dare not agree with their brand of "marriage"....

Cop brutality figure Rodney King turns celeb boxer King in the ring By O’Ryan Johnson / Herald Exclusive Sunday, November 1, 2009 Rodney King, the famed police punching bag whose beating caught on tape put a bull’s eye on cops and eventually led to the 1992 Los Angeles riots, has turned celebrity boxer and says he’s aching for a rematch with one of the members of L.A.’s “finest” who viciously pummeled him in March 1991. “I was supposed to fight one of the police officers that beat me. I worked out to get ready for it. But then somebody started...

The complaint that led to her firing began as a routine missing dog case. Rochester resident Janet Torren said her 4-year-old dog, Shai, went missing on Sept. 18 after it escaped while she was visiting her son’s home on Birch Street. Torren said the dog had a microchip implanted in her ear. She said she called the microchip company, 24PetWatch.com, and learned the Stoughton dog officer had scanned the chip into the system on Sept. 18. Torren said she called the dog officer on Sept. 21, and Bousquet said in a taped message that she had no knowledge of the...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney may have worked with Democratic candidate Stephen Pagliuca, but he’s supporting fellow Republican Scott Brown in this race to succeed the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. The 2008 GOP presidential contender is headlining a fundraiser Friday night in Brown’s hometown of Wrentham.

Mitt Romney passed over the race for the open Senate seat in Massachusetts, but has decided to get involved in his own way. He is holding a fundraiser for Republican state Sen. Scott Brown, in his long-shot bid to become the successor of the late Edward M. Kennedy.. Romney will appear tonight with Brown in Wrentham, Mass. The event should provide a needed financial shot in the arm for the under-resourced campaign -- Brown raised $154,000 through Sept. 30, the lowest of any of the major party candidates. State Attorney General Martha Coakley led the four-person Democratic field with $2.2...

A patient at a Massachusetts General Hospital bipolar clinic stabbed his psychiatrist during a treatment session yesterday afternoon, and was then shot dead by an off-duty security guard, in a frantic scene that a colleague later described as “every psychiatrist’s worst nightmare.’’ Dr. Astrid Desrosiers, a 49-year-old instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, the mother of grown children, and a celebrated doctor in the city’s Haitian community, was in stable condition at MGH and recovering from her wounds, relatives, colleagues, and hospital officials said. Police identified the assailant as Jay Carciero, 37, of Reading. Relatives described him as a...

States that allow gay marriage can't force the federal government to provide benefits to those couples, the Obama administration argued Friday in court papers in a lawsuit by Massachusetts. The Justice Department is at odds with Massachusetts - the first state to allow gay marriage - over a 1996 federal law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Massachusetts sued in July, saying that law is discriminatory and deprives gay couples in the state of some federal spousal benefits. The Obama administration agrees the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, is discriminatory and wants it repealed,...

Oct 28, 2009 — Two articles announced solutions to the evidential problem that most troubled Darwin – the sudden appearance of complex animals at the base of the Cambrian fossil record.  Both of them involve chemical elements.  The only difference is which element. Science Daily announced a “Novel Evolutionary Theory For The Explosion Of Life.”  The article acknowledged that “The Cambrian Explosion is widely regarded as one of the most relevant episodes in the history of life on Earth, when the vast majority of animal phyla first appear in the fossil record.”  The article also acknowledged it to be a...

A patient in a psychiatric center near the Massachusetts General Hospital stabbed his doctor this afternoon before being shot dead by an off-duty security guard, police said. maeda_28shooting_met4.jpg(Wendy Maeda/Globe Staff) The physician is in stable condition, Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis said at a press conference this afternoon as he described a chaotic scene. A relative said the victim was Dr. Astrid Desrosiers, a Massachusetts General Hospital psychiatrist who worked at the center. Isabellie Desrosiers, Desrosiers' sister-in-law, said she had been told by Desrosiers' sister that Astrid had been shot. Police identified the patient late this afternoon as 37-year-old Jay...

  Japan Achieves Second Ballistic Missile Intercept Using Raytheon Standard Missile-3 KAUAI, Hawaii, Oct. 28, 2009 /PRNewswire/ -- PACIFIC MISSILE RANGE FACILITY -- The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force achieved another ballistic missile intercept in space using a Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN)-built Standard Missile-3. During the Oct. 27 test, the SM-3 Block IA missile engaged and destroyed a medium-range ballistic missile target more than 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean. Personnel at the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai launched the ballistic missile target. The crew of the Japanese destroyer JS Myoko (DDG-175) detected and tracked the target before...

Either Coakley or Capuano would win comfortably in the Jan. 19 general election against state Sen. Scott Brown, the GOP’s lone serious contender, in the Democratic-leaning state. Coakley performs best in the hypothetical match-up, leading Brown 58 percent to 32 percent among likely voters. Capuano tops Brown 49 percent to 33 percent. Adding to Republicans’ challenges in the race, Brown remains one of the least-known candidates in the field. Fifty-two percent of registered voters say they haven’t heard of him, and another 26 percent had no opinion, second only to Khazei, who is unknown to 56 percent of voters while...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is acknowleding that the health care plan he famously implemented as governor did nothing to address costs. "We were unable to deal with - and didn't have any pretense we would somehow be able to change - health care costs in Massachusetts," Romney said in an interview with CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta. "We still have a fee for service, a re-imbursement system here like every other state in America. That's the way Medicare and Medicaid are structured, that's the way the insurance industry is structured." Romney said "Massachusetts is not the model"...

War On Terror: Sen. John Kerry, who was so wrong about Iraq, now says our commander in Afghanistan is "reaching too far, too fast" and that a "good enough" policy should suffice. It won't. Offering his advice on how to micromanage the war against the Taliban, Kerry said Gen. Stanley McChrystal, President Obama's hand-picked general to fight what he called a "war of necessity," is wrong in saying he needs 40,000 more troops to fight and win it. Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday, Kerry advocated a "good enough" policy designed not to achieve victory in al-Qaida's...

October is 'Gay History Month' - being pushed in schools. Radical "history" includes founders of modern porn movement. It's another one of those things that most parents don't even know is happening. And school officials like it that way. Barack Obama declared June to be "Gay Pride Month." April is reserved for the homosexual "Day of Silence" in public schools. But for the last dozen years the homosexual movement has pushed October as "Gay History Month" as an "educational" experience for schoolchildren across America, including encouraging kids to "come out". And this year is as strong as ever. It's yet...

Where is Tina Fey now that we need her? Martha Coakley is the front-runner for the Dem nomination for US Senate for Ted Kennedy's old seat. In a recent debate, asked about her lack of foreign policy experience, the first credential Coakley offered in response was that "I have a sister who lives overseas, and she's been in England and now lives in the Middle East." View video here.

In Boston, the livin’ is never easy. A new report from Northeastern University finds we’re one of the priciest housing markets in America. Only San Francisco has higher rents, for example. Massachusetts has the highest energy costs in the country. Our roads are very expensive (only New Jersey spends more per state road mile) and are generally crappy - even when they’re not covered with sides of beef. And now Bay Staters face yet another challenge, according to the liberal group ONE Massachusetts: You’re UNDER taxed. In fact, ONE Massachusetts is so certain you want to pay higher taxes, they’re...

Three years after Massachusetts enacted its sweeping health-reform legislation, rising health costs continue to bedevil the state and threaten to derail reform efforts. Despite a significant restructuring of the state's health sector and dominance of nonprofit health plans, Massachusetts still has the highest health-insurance costs in the nation, averaging $13,788 for a family, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. One of the reasons so many people supported the reform effort in Massachusetts is that they were told universal coverage would lead to lower costs. With universal coverage, Massachusetts politicians argued, as many in Washington do today, people would no longer...

Taking a closer look at Massachusetts, in the National Journal, Marilyn Weber Serafini wrote an indispensable review of the state's reform efforts from 2006. Like the bills moving through Congress, that law included both an individual mandate and new insurance regulations. Unlike the Democrats' bill, Massachusetts tried to put off cost control so that people would see the benefits of reform before having to pay the bill. Bay state public reaction is mixed: 70 percent of physicians support the bill, but only 26 percent of the public considers it a "success." The Bay State's reform has expanded insurance to more...

Last Halloween, Gina Uberti took vacation days to celebrate the Wiccan new year in Salem, Massachusetts, the town infamously known for the witch trials of 1692 that ended with the hanging of 14 women. Less than a month after Uberti took part in the festivities of Samhain, one of the holiest days in the Wiccan calendar, she was fired from her job as a district sales manager for Bath & Body Works.

BOSTON — Six Harvard University medical researchers were poisoned in August after drinking coffee that was laced with a chemical preservative, according to university officials. In an internal memo first reported in the Boston Herald's Sunday editions, the school said the coffee came from a machine near their lab that later tested positive for sodium azide, a common preservative used in labs. The six reported symptoms after drinking the coffee Aug. 26, ranging from dizziness to ringing in the ears, and one passed out. They were treated at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and later released.

Last night in Boston, President Obama faced a half-empty hotel ballroom at a fundraiser for his pal, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who is unpopular and facing a difficult re-election campaign. Instead of confidence, he actually expressed doubt: "There really should be no doubt that this guy gets a second term. But let's be honest. This is going to be a tough race ... " Jules Crittenden has a hilarious blog post on the dismal portents for Obama and Patrick, titled "Maybe we can't," delving into the event and the press reaction. A sample: Boston Globe helpfully plays down and buries five long graphs...

Plagued by his own plummeting polls and playing to empty seats at a high-roller Hub fund-raiser, President Obama acknowledged yesterday that his close friend and political alter ego Gov. Deval Patrick faces a rough road to re-election. “There really should be no doubt that this guy gets a second term. But let’s be honest. This is going to be a tough race,� Obama told a room barely half-full with 125 deep-pocketed Democrats who ponied up $6,000 for Patrick and the party. “Re-election is not a foregone conclusion because times are tough.� Reflecting those hard times, the swanky Westin Copley Place...

(UPDATE: 5:14 p.m. A video news update on the president's campaigning in Connecticut has been added below.) Why waste a trip to New England just on some simple public event talking about smart energy or whatever for the evening news cameras? (See news video below.) Tack on a couple of evening fundraisers and divvy up the cost of Air Force One. President Obama returned to his student hangout of Cambridge, Mass. today, this time to MIT. But afterward he went to help raise $600,000 for embattled Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who faces a re-election campaign next year but has current...

President Obama will travel Friday to Massachusetts, one of only two states to implement a universal health-care program similar to his ambitions for the entire country. But he does not plan to use the trip to make his case for far-reaching reform; he will tout clean energy and raise money for the Democratic governor. The president's critics say his reluctance to spotlight the Massachusetts model is real-world evidence that his vision would not work on a national scale. High costs have forced the state to trim benefits for legal immigrants and prompted one safety-net hospital to sue over a $38...

Patrick administration aims to improve firearms safety, but organizations say rules would be a financial burden BRAINTREE - Once a month on a Saturday, the Braintree Rifle & Pistol Club hosts the Second Amendment Sisters, a national organization that advocates and provides firearms training for women. Women who have never held a gun before are invited to learn to shoot. The club provides the weapons and ammunition, and the cost to the woman learning typically does not exceed $10. The novices will have different goals: Some want to feel safer when walking through a dark parking lot at night, some...

Obama’s Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings funded a pornographic anti-Christian art show now on display at Harvard University. Mass Resistance reported: If you want to know what Americans can expect in public schools, look no further. Kevin Jennings is Barack Obama’s “safe schools” czar in the US Department of Education. He’s also the founder of the national homosexual group GLSEN, which sets up “gay straight alliance” clubs in high schools and middle schools across America. GLSEN is officially supported by the Massachusetts Legislature. Jennings is also a former member of the radical homosexual group “Act Up”, and he contributed to...

oppose the vote by Amherst selectmen calling for two Gitmo detainees to be relocated in this Western Massachusetts town as a matter of principle: I don’t support torture. And it would be a grotesque form of abuse to sentence anyone to life in this liberal loony bin. Even those suspected of al-Qaeda connections. Would the two detainees in question, Ahmed Belbacha and Ravil Mingazov, pose a security risk if they were allowed to take up Amherst’s invitation? Nobody knows for sure. But we do know that about 15 percent of those freed from Guantanamo have rejoined the jihad. Just last...

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