Quick Read
Yesterday, a post in this space looked at the way in which Trinity Rep leveraged woke identity politics to bully a Providence Journal theater critic over a critique in her generally positive review of A Christmas Carol. Today, let’s consider a letter that RI ACLU Executive Director Steven Brown (a white man) and Policy Associate Hannah Stern…
Oh, Dan, Dan, Dan. In drug trials, researchers give a control group of participants a placebo (or a pill with no medical effect) because it is understood that just doing something can have an effect on people’s symptoms, or at least their perception of their symptoms. In most cases, the effect is small, which is why…
Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the school-shooting story in Oxford, Michigan, is that it shouldn’t have happened at all, judging from details provided by Tim Meads in the Daily Wire: The morning of the attack, school administrators met with the boy’s parents and showed them disturbing notes found that day indicating the boy was willing…
Judging by social media comments, mainstream media types have been thrilled to hear from NPR that people are dying with COVID-19 at a higher rate in Trump-supporting counties across the United States. Of course, substantive analysis would require many more caveats than our social-media-driven culture tends to address. As the article concedes, the analysis does…
In the middle of the Sixteenth Century, St. Francis Xavier wrote to his friend, St. Ignatius of Loyola, of his experience ministering to Christians in India: We have visited the villages of the new converts who accepted the Christian religion a few years ago. No Portuguese live here, the country is so utterly barren and…
Political observers in Rhode Island shouldn’t be surprised by this announcement from Rhode Island House Minority Leader Blake Filippi: Representing the People of Charlestown, Block Island, South Kingstown and Westerly is the best job, one which I hope to continue in the years ahead. I look forward to helping the Republican nominee for Governor, and…
When I became a vaccine supporter in the spring, my reasoning involved a balance of risks and of tradeoffs. Over several posts I won’t dig out of the archive right now, I concluded that the risks of the vaccines were extremely low and that they did improve outcomes versus COVID-19, even though the risks posed…
An observer doesn’t have to be cynical to wonder why the Huffington Post published its extensive article warning of the RI Political Co-Op’s division of Ocean State progressives yesterday. After all, the article was fueled in large part by “a left-wing Rhode Island activist who requested anonymity to protect professional relationships.” Anonymous sourcing in a case…
In October, the national good-government group Judicial Watch published training documentation from the Westerly, Rhode Island, school department received from a whistleblower. The training was developed by Rhode Island’s Highlander Institute, which recently transformed from a legitimate educational organization helping students with “learning differences” into one of the state’s leading promoters of the racist ideals…
An interesting (and long) article appeared in the Huffington Post today, in which Daniel Marans details the friction within Rhode Island’s progressive movement. The tone is of fair reportage, but a point of view does come through, starting with the implicit critique of the Political Co-op in the headline: “A Progressive Civil War Threatens the…