Blue v. Red
Jonah Goldberg has a good buck-up-young-conservative-soldier essay in a recent National Review (subscription required) in which he makes the observation that media liberals are suspiciously likely to predict that any emerging conservative movements will never get off the ground and then that their doom soon awaits, when they do. This line is particularly valuable as…
Alright, so it’s low-hanging fruit, but the letter to the editor reply of Nicholas Kondon (Hope Valley) to a prior letter by Evelyn Zifcak (North Smithfield) simply begs a response. Wrote Ms. Zifcak: Tea parties get a bad rap, especially the Washington, D.C., march where 1 million folks from all over the country exercised their…
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if this sort of thing were written about our small Northeastern state? [Texas] Republicans did not take the bait [to raise taxes]. Governor [Rick] Perry told the legislature to not even bother sending him a bill with a tax increase, because he would not sign it. Instead, he submitted a budget…
The horrible story of senseless killings in Owosso, Michigan, clarifies social dynamics that were the subject of debate after the murder of abortionist George Tiller: Harlan Drake or “Hale” as he is known to friends is now charged with 2 counts of 1st Degree Premeditated Murder for the killings of James “Jim” Pouillon and Mike…
Putting down his column about the race for attorney general of Rhode Island, I thought about what an improvement the Providence Journal’s Ed Fitzpatrick is over his predecessor. And then he had to go and write a bit of got-a-laugh-at-the-cocktail-party received wisdom like his reaction to the story of parents opting their children out of…
It is, unfortunately, behind a subscriber wall, but John O’Sullivan’s recent article about types of revolutions (taking recent unrest in Iran as a starting point) is excellent fodder for Sunday afternoon pondering, while mowing the lawn or whatever you have to do today. In essence, O’Sullivan follows a speech by Italian President Fancesco Cossiga in…
Oswald Krell is at it, again — proving, this time, that beating a strawman for long enough begins to resemble a pillow fight against one’s self: Low tax states are more violent, have higher rates of teen pregnancy, somewhat higher poverty rates, and lower median incomes. Do low taxes cause these problems? No. Correlation is…
Not being sufficiently well versed in Japanese politics, I won’t enter the discussion about just how “conservative” the country’s Liberal Democratic Party has been, but the expressed plans of the more-liberal Democratic Party that just won control don’t bode promisingly: Fed up with the [LDP], voters turned overwhelmingly to the opposition Democratic Party of Japan,…
We’d like to welcome, of course, Brian Hull to the RI blogscene in his new role as proprietor of RIFuture. I, for one, am hopeful for a return to the collegiality of the Matt Jerzyk years and am determined not to be the cause should that prove unworkable. That said, what better method of offering…
Sometimes Bob Kerr is really difficult to take, and I’m beginning to put my finger on the reason. In his Friday column, he characterized Rep. Barney Frank’s quip that conversation with a particular town hall participant would be like “trying to have a conversation with a dining room table” and query as to her planet…
