Ripple

A water drop and ripples

Think of it as a great opportunity for lower-income Americans to charitably step aside.

By Justin Katz | September 20, 2023 |

I know of at least one Massachusetts town where these new residents are about to enter an understaffed school system en masse.  Even more, they are getting free preschool and free transportation to preschool, which for residents is an additional cost that some are deciding is too expensive. We need to understand — and explain…

A water drop and ripples

I don’t think “independent” means what Magaziner thinks it means.

By Justin Katz | September 20, 2023 |

Doublespeak such as that used by Democrat Congressman Seth Magaziner in the following tweet has become so common that we hardly notice it.  He (or a staffer who wrote the post) may not even realize the problem with the word choice (which would make it doublethink, I suppose): If government supports journalism, it is by…

A water drop and ripples

RI pediatricians shouldn’t care more about indoctrination than children.

By Justin Katz | September 19, 2023 |

As is increasingly required, Nicole Solas has gone outside of Rhode Island to bring attention to a problem within the state, writing in Daily Caller: I pay my pediatrician for check-ups and throat cultures, not ideological finger-wagging about sex education in kindergarten. But at that moment I realized that gender ideology in medicine and education was…

A water drop and ripples

By what authority is the Board of Elections discouraging votes for somebody duly placed on the ballot?

By Justin Katz | August 28, 2023 |

This is precisely the sort of application of supposed common sense without due process that incrementally undermines our rights. There is no process for a candidate to remove him or herself from the ballot, and as far as I know, there are no standards in law or regulation for the Board of Elections to determine…

A water drop and ripples

Lovely. We have poison hemlock in RI, now.

By Justin Katz | July 27, 2023 |

Keep an eye out for weeds that have purple-spotted stems and white, umbrella-like flowers: Poison hemlock has made its way to all 50 states, including Rhode Island, except for Alaska, Florida, Hawaii, and Mississippi, so it’s something we’ll all likely deal with at some time or another. Commonly found in yards and fields, on the…

A water drop and ripples

Maybe Stephen King started it with his approach to villain-picking.

By Justin Katz | April 27, 2023 |

As an undergrad, back when the Internet was still brand new, I decompressed by reading through Stephen King books borrowed from the Carnegie Mellon library and noticed something.  One of his recurring techniques was to imagine the familiar as the monster.  Cujo was a dog.  Christine was a cool car.  Firestarter was a little girl.  The title…

A water drop and ripples

Another datapoint in the anti-Catholic shift of the federal government.

By Justin Katz | April 13, 2023 |

As I’ve said, it’s possible to make too much of such incidents (and politics often seems designed to make too much of them), but they’re worth noting as they happen, nonetheless: In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, [Republican Congressman from Ohio Jim] Jordan alleged the FBI “relied on at least one undercover agent to…

A water drop and ripples

The Vermont homeless shelter killing cuts across narrative lines.

By Justin Katz | April 12, 2023 |

As we’re rightly reminded frequently in the face of such incidents, we would err if we overgeneralized from incidents like this one: A homeless woman “was wiping blood off of her hands with a paper towel” after she allegedly killed a homeless shelter coordinator with an ax, police said. Zaaina Asra Zakirrah Mahvish-Jammeh, a 38-year-old…

A water drop and ripples

The U.S. government moves toward state-approved churches.

By Justin Katz | April 11, 2023 |

Conflicts like this can be nothing more than bureaucratic squabbles. They can also be evidence of a move toward a Communist China–esque absorption of religious organizations.  And they can also be mere bureaucratic squabbles that prepare the ground for government absorption of religious organizations. The Archdiocese for the Military Services (AMS) slammed Walter Reed National…

A water drop and ripples

The bitter taste of Projo alums…

By Justin Katz | March 29, 2023 |

It’s interesting to watch these partisan ideologues bash the newspaper that contributed so much to their careers. One wonders whether they’ve ever considered whether their work-product and the journalistic culture they’ve perpetuated has contributed to the paper’s plight: