Quick Read

A disintegrating apple in a child's hand

Apple is a case study in the danger of cultish consumerism.

By Justin Katz | November 30, 2022 |

A scorecard of tech giants would take some work to develop, but Apple is a shameful enterprise, whether it’s better or worse than its alternatives: Tucker Carlson blasts Apple after the company limited the AirDrop feature in China: “Apple is now an active collaborator with China’s murderous police state. When tanks roll into a Chinese…

Framing for a circular window

Gratuitous detail and the human touch are the keys to great architecture.

By Justin Katz | November 25, 2022 |

Ed Driscoll points to a great post by Scott Alexander that investigates the aesthetic gap between the classic and the modern.  Alexander starts with architecture and a “conspiracy theory”: Imagine a postapocalyptic world. Beside the ruined buildings of our own civilization – St. Peter’s Basilica, the Taj Mahal, those really great Art Deco skyscrapers –…

A nurse sitting in a doorway

RI must take the lesson of emergency room woes.

By Justin Katz | November 21, 2022 |

The timing could be better, with Rhode Islanders having no opportunity to change direction via the ballot box for two years, but we really need to learn the lesson of overcrowding in our emergency rooms. Namely, among all the various causes, the most significant is socialized medicine: “We are seeing long visit waits at the…

Judge Wisely Disregards Maliciously Misinformed Mob in Jeann Lugo Ruling

By Monique Chartier | November 17, 2022 |

Judge Joseph Terence Houlihan yesterday acquitted then-police officer Jeann Lugo of simple assault at the June 24 melee at the State House, finding that Lugo was trying to break free from Rourke who was restraining him from entering the “melee” that occurred at the rally. Kudos to Judge Houlihan for issuing this wise and thoughtful…

Mail ballot envelope

The odds in the Congressional tallies are… curious.

By Justin Katz | November 10, 2022 |

In the long days since most Congressional districts in the United States managed to provide sufficient vote counts for victors to be named, Republicans have only needed approximately one-quarter of all remaining districts to claim a majority.  Thus far, the Democrats have beaten the odds, and the GOP is still eight seats away, which is…

"I Voted" sticker in a pile of leaves

CD2 is putting the lie to a National Popular Vote talking point.

By Justin Katz | November 8, 2022 |

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which Rhode Island has ill-advisedly joined, requires that, whenever enough states have joined to control the Electoral College outcome for the President of the United States, all participating states must give their Electoral College votes to whichever candidate won the most individual votes nationally, no matter what their own…

Thomas Eakins Cowboys in the Badlands

A careful look at gun-control rhetoric shows where it’s going.

By Justin Katz | November 4, 2022 |

Here’s a noteworthy WPRI headline: “‘Speechless:’ 7-year-old child brings gun to Boston school.” Must be all those Republicans who control the city! Out of curiosity, I went in search of information about how strict Massachusetts’s gun-control laws are and found myself reminded of that old Weezer song about unraveling a sweater:  “If you want to…

Joe Biden's smile.

The damage Biden does with his self-congratulatory rhetoric is even more than it seems.

By Justin Katz | November 2, 2022 |

Many in Rhode Island are too steeped in the mainstream narrative to even consider such a thing, but Joe Biden is, in his way, nastier, more divisive, and more destructive of our civic norms than what Democrats claim of President Trump.  In fairness to Biden, however, his is just an exaggerated and less competently executed…

A toy school bus

Something’s puzzling about Rhode Island’s SAT scores.

By Justin Katz | October 31, 2022 |

Why are Rhode Island parents so lackadaisical about the poor value they’re getting from the state’s government schools?  As Dan McGowan reports, SAT scores are down from where they were before the pandemic, and they were already low compared with those of neighboring states: Math (minimum score of 530 out of 800): 25.3 percent English…

A pipe winds along a landcape

Natural gas price increases show what happens when we’re prevented from coordinating.

By Justin Katz | October 28, 2022 |

A recently released book by Gale Pooley and Marian Tupy, Superabundance, explores the amazing fact that the prosperity and the availability of scarce resources is proving only to increase as the population grows.  Their most fundamental argument is that people have value.  Every child added to the world increases the wealth of all of us. The authors…