Carroll Andrew Morse

Reason 2 to Pardon Jim Taricani: The President can Advance his Agenda by Doing the Right Thing

By Carroll Andrew Morse | November 15, 2004 |

The President and his conservative coalition, as a matter of principle, do not like activist judges, i.e. judges who use their power to go beyond just interpreting the law. Here is uber-conservative and Bush supporter Phyllis Schlafly on the subject… “Finally, we have a president who comes right out and targets ‘activist judges’ as the…

Reason 1 to Pardon Jim Taricani: It’s the Right Thing to do

By Carroll Andrew Morse | November 14, 2004 |

Rhode Island just passed a separation-of-powers referendum on the state level. But do we have it at the Federal level? Separation-of-powers means that a legislative branch of government makes the laws, a judicial branch of government interprets the laws, and an executive branch of government enforces the laws. At the moment, Jim Taricani is being…

The Jim Taricani Case

By Carroll Andrew Morse | November 14, 2004 |

Providence Journal media writer Andy Smith has an update on the Jim Taricani situation in Sunday’s paper. For those unfamiliar with the events, here is the background. Jim Taricani is a political reporter for the local NBC affiliate, WJAR-10. In 2001, about two months before the (former) Mayor of Providence was indicted on federal corruption…

Truce Watch

By Carroll Andrew Morse | November 12, 2004 | Comments Off on Truce Watch

Arianna Huffington has an article on her blog nominally analyzing how Kerry’s reluctance to talk about foreign policy contributed to his defeat, yet in her detailed tactical description how foreign policy came to be muted, she doesn’t tell us what she thinks that the Kerry campaign should have been saying. She attributes the avoidance of…

Anti-Specter Details Needed

By Carroll Andrew Morse | November 11, 2004 |

I’d like to offer a suggestion to the conservatives mounting a challenge to Arlen Specter’s chairmanship of the Senate judiciary committee. They need to do a better job explaining what exactly the powers of a committee chair are, and exactly how a committee chair can frustrate the appointment process in a way that any other…

The Dems and National Security

By Carroll Andrew Morse | November 11, 2004 | Comments Off on The Dems and National Security

My latest article for TechCentralStation, on the subject of the Democratic party and national security issues, ran today. As luck would have it (or maybe it’s my vast network of spies in the vast right-wing conspiracy), the article serves as something of a response to blog entries from Kevin Drum and Matt Ygelsias (scroll up)…

Can you Secede From the Bizarro World?

By Carroll Andrew Morse | November 10, 2004 |

And having opened talking about the local roots of this blog, I now move immediately to a national-level post… The (mostly tongue-in-cheek, I think) talk about some sort of red-state blue-state secession has me feeling like I’m living in the Bizarro World. I have a track record on the issue of secession. I’ve written a…

Late, as Usual

By Carroll Andrew Morse | November 10, 2004 | Comments Off on Late, as Usual

My apologies for being late to the kick-off party. Thanks go immediately to Justin for setting this blog up and giving it a professional look. It makes it almost look like we are important! Now, my temptation is to next write the sentence “but of course, as conservative leaning individuals in Rhode Island, we’re not”.…

One-Party States

By Carroll Andrew Morse | November 9, 2004 | Comments Off on One-Party States

John Fund documented in yesterday’s Opinionjournal, that more and more states are tending towards one-party rule at the state level. This is an intersting trend. If you believe what people say about voting for “the best candidate” instead of party affiliation, you would expect, at the local level, less dominance by any single party, because…