Essay
(This essay appears in the January 25, 2013, Providence Journal.) For two years in a row now, The Journal’s article about the first baby born in the new year has contained no mention whatsoever of a father. Studies on the subject are clear that fatherlessness will be a disadvantage to these children, even if they…
Justin liveblogs from the Senate’s “Moving the Needle” Summit.
John Hill’s Providence Journal article about Woonsocket’s deficit problem contains two important lessons … The first lesson is that everybody who’s interested in these topics should read the Ocean State Current. An article here from last May explains the problem … … the second lesson of the article: The public is being poorly served by…
During the handful of interactions I had with Connie Grosch at the State House, last session, she was friendly and very helpful. Moreover, she did her job taking photographs for the Providence Journal well. So, I was sorry to see her name added to the list of personnel cuts that the paper has made in…
Let’s really make the new Rhode Island General Assembly session official; the list below is based on the Rhode Island General Assembly website as of 11:00 am today… 3. On Tue, Jan 22, the Senate Rules Committee will discuss the Senate rules for 2013-2014. 2. H5086: Allows “developmental disability agencies” to operate their own “self-insurance”…
It started with an email exchange among the contributors to Anchor Rising. Somebody suggested that moderates are essentially liberals who “believe in economics.” That got my mind (when hungering for procrastination) to filling out the rest of a political spectrum, and it turned into the circle illustrated below. As you can see, there are eight…
At his blog on the American Interest website, Walter Russell Mead describes a “New England” social tradition…The New England tradition, rooted in Puritan experience and theology, wants a strong state run by the great and the good to serve as the moral agent of the conscience of the community. It is the duty of the…
As of late last week, the House Judiciary Committee was scheduled to vote on a gay marriage bill tomorrow. Around ten days ago, General Treasurer Raimondo sent a letter to Speaker Fox and Senate President Paiva-Weed expressing strong support for the passage of gay marriage in Rhode Island. Anchor Rising obtained a copy of the…
The modern philosophic since the revival of classicism in the Renaissance fall into the same ancient errors. They are either idealistic or naturalistic. If the former, they tend to lose a sense of the finiteness of human nature, conceiving the self as identical with reason. If the latter, modern man seeks to interpret himself wholly…
Thanks to John Loughlin for bringing this to my attention. The original statement by the Romney campaign that was politifact-“checked”: [Mitt Romney] Says Barack Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China” at the cost of American jobs. And a headline from Reuters on Thursday. Fiat sees at least 100,000…