WASHINGTON – A year after the United States and five other world powers — including the United Kingdom, France, China, Russia, and Germany — signed a controversial nuclear agreement with Iran, U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) is joining with several Republican colleagues to try and stop the Obama administration from making further "ransom" payments to the Iranian government.
Yesterday, Sen. Ayotte joined Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and other Republican lawmakers in introducing the No Ransom Payments Act of 2016, which would require Tehran to return $1.7 billion paid by the U.S. to settle a decades old dispute and would prohibit the federal government from making additional payments to the terrorist-sponsoring regime.
One of the shortest-lived political parties in Massachusetts history pushed through a state constitutional amendment whose after-effects still bedevil us today. More than a century and one-half ago, the so-called Know Nothing party passed an amendment to prohibit any state funding for non-public schools, specifically targeting the burgeoning Irish-Catholic population in Boston and other large cities. Motivated by a deep anti-Catholic animus, the Know Nothings feared an influx of newly arriving families with children attending parochial schools.
In an effort to shed light on the very different school choice question confronting families and educators today, the Pioneer Institute is calling upon Bay State political leaders to remove the portrait of a Know Nothing governor from "the top of the grand staircase, in a place of honor and prominence, at the entrance of the Massachusetts House of Representatives." The impressive portrait is that of Henry J. Gardner, thrice elected governor of the Commonwealth when terms lasted only one year.
