It’s great news that Nicole Solas is getting some heavy-duty legal support in her efforts as an engaged resident of South Kingstown.  William Jacobson reports for Legal Insurrection:

Now Solas has some high-powered legal help. The Goldwater Institute, which has a very strong litigation wing, will be representing Solas according to a press release issued today by Goldwater, Mom in Classroom Fight Gets Legal Firepower from Goldwater Institute:

… After nearly three months of delay and gamesmanship, the Department has still not provided Nicole much of the information she is seeking regarding classroom instruction. So the Goldwater Institute is stepping in. On Nicole’s behalf, we have submitted a new public records request to ensure that she can access the information she is entitled to about how her daughter is educated. The Institute will hold the Department accountable if it seeks to evade the law or shield information from disclosure.

Nonetheless, we shouldn’t miss an inherent component of this development:  Rhode Island itself lacks the civic health to generate legal help for Solas.  This is one of the most high-profile controversies in the state so far this year.  It deals with the fundamental rights of citizens, and sits right along a political and cultural fault line.  Yet, the civic society of the Ocean State can produce nobody with the resources to support one side of the controversy, against the other side’s limitless resources.

If you want some evidence for why the state is in the condition it’s in and where a little bit of investment might go a long way toward a fix, here you go — not solely on the legal front, necessarily, but generally in upholding an oppositional stance.