Quick Read

Policeman

Lincoln’s lowering standards for police officers is a trend worth watching.

By Justin Katz | May 20, 2021 |

If the development on which Nicole Dotzenrod reports for the Valley Breeze begins appearing in other communities, it could be a sign of a worrying trend.  In the town’s most-recent hiring effort, five applicants met the minimum standards, one chose a different career path, another didn’t pass the interview and background check, and one rejected policing…

Juan Carlos Martinez

Problems arise when we forget that putting people in prison protects the community.

By Justin Katz | May 20, 2021 |

John DePetro reports on the disturbing case of Juan Carlos Martinez: Martinez ( status unknown) was sentenced to forty years at the ACI but was let out in March without officials notifying I.C.E. Martinez is accused of luring female illegals into his house of horrors’ in Providence where he would sexually assault them. Martinez would…

Map of drug overdoes increases by state

Overdoses were way up during Rhode Island’s lockdown.

By Justin Katz | May 19, 2021 |

As shown on the map that is the featured image for this post, the CDC estimates for overdose deaths show them well past projections for every state except South Dakota and Alaska. Rhode Island’s increase was 21.6%, which translated into an additional 71 deaths. I’m a little behind posting this data, which has been out…

Bostom name-calling tweet

More information has come to light about COVID-related pediatric deaths in Rhode Island.

By Justin Katz | May 19, 2021 |

The bad news (other than the fact that children have died, of course) is that it’s difficult to come to decisive answers about such deaths, in part because the way the government has been counting COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths has so muddied the water over the past year.  However, the number that has come…

Mark Zaccaria on Rhody Reporter

Rhode Island municipalities probably aren’t prepared for escalating cyber crime.

By Justin Katz | May 19, 2021 |

Mark Zaccaria argues, for Rhody Reporter, that local officials should start getting used to having a line item for cyber-security as more and more of their activities move online. Of course, it would be nice if the costs of new technology could be offset (and then some) by the savings in labor and productivity that high-tech…

Hundred dollar bills

How many variations of Frank Montanaro exist in and around state government?

By Justin Katz | May 19, 2021 |

Katherine Gregg reports for the Providence Journal the labor-union scion’s latest play to get everything he can out of Rhode Island taxpayers.  Putting things chronologically might help to make it clear: Montanaro was elected to the General Assembly in 1986, at the age of 24 or 25.  Under the rules existing at the time, he could…

Old map of RI

Today marks the 369th anniversary of RI’s first-in-the-colonies ban on slavery.

By Justin Katz | May 18, 2021 |

Ken Abrams provides the language of the law on What’s Up Newport: Whereas, it is a common course practiced amongst English men to buy negroes, to that end they have them for service or slave forever: let it be ordered, no blacke mankind or white being forced by covenant bond, or otherwise, to serve any man…

URI Professor Donna Hughes

Donna Hughes’s advocacy against “sex work” and trafficking comes not from prudery, but experience.

By Justin Katz | May 18, 2021 |

Professor Hughes, of the University of Rhode Island, has worked with many women who have been harmed by the “industry,” which she has found to be irredeemably exploitative. That point comes through clearly in her appearance on Jay Nordlinger’s Q&A podcast. The episode is worth a listen, particularly for libertarians and progressives who don’t understand what anybody…

Mother touching baby's hand

If your life can be upended for saying “men cannot get pregnant,” they can enforce any religious dogma at all.

By Justin Katz | May 18, 2021 |

We’ve been seeing more and more stories like this, which Matt Margolis posted on PJ Media: Francisco José Contreras, a politician in Spain, was temporarily suspended from Twitter last week after declaring that “a man cannot get pregnant” because he has “no uterus or eggs,” in response to an article he shared about a transgender “male”…

38 Special

RI at the leading edge of civil rights… when stopped from violating them.

By Justin Katz | May 18, 2021 |

You’d think it’d be a bigger deal locally that the Ocean State (Cranston, specifically) is at the center of a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision that police violated a resident’s Fourth Amendment rights by seizing his guns without a warrant.  Here’s the ruling on this obvious case.  Credit has to go to the ACLU for…