Carroll Andrew Morse

What to Make of Chris Dorner’s Admirers

By Carroll Andrew Morse | February 23, 2013 |

Last weekend, a small number of people turned out at Los Angeles Police Department headquarters, in some combination of protest and memorial for former LAPD officer Chris Dorner, who killed four people in Southern California, before killing himself during a standoff with law enforcement. Meanwhile, in the virtual world, a Facebook tribute describing Dorner as…

Coming up in Committee: Nine Sets of Bills Scheduled to be Heard by the RI General Assembly, February 12 – February 14

By Carroll Andrew Morse | February 11, 2013 |

Local Impact: Central Falls 9. H5047: “Six hours of over-the-road driver’s training from a licensed driver’s training school” required for a first-time driver to obtain a license. (H Corporations; Tue, Feb 12) 8. Bud. Arts. 3 and 4: Changes to state employee benefits involving removal of divorced spouses from family health plans and establishment of…

Coming up in Committee: Fourteen Sets of Bills Scheduled to be Heard by the RI General Assembly, February 5 – February 7

By Carroll Andrew Morse | February 4, 2013 |

Local Impact: East Providence, Foster, Johnston, Middletown 2 Inobvious Priorities: H5162 adds “city and/or town owned manhole covers and bridge placards” to a list of items that precious metals dealers are required to hold for fourteen days before doing whatever they’re planning to do with them next. (H Judiciary; Tue, Feb 5) 14. H5165: Allows…

Walter Russell Mead: “Two hundred years ago people thought that the only real jobs involved growing food”

By Carroll Andrew Morse | January 31, 2013 |

Walter Russell Mead, on the relationship between American politics and American society…Does the American middle class (and by extension, the middle class in other advanced democracies) have a future in a post-blue world? That is the basic question at the heart of American politics;. As I’ve noted, 4.0 liberals think that it doesn’t, and think…

Coming up in Committee: Six Bills Scheduled to be Heard by the RI General Assembly, January 29 – January 31

By Carroll Andrew Morse | January 28, 2013 |

6. H5114: A preliminary sign that the Rhode Island General Assembly may once again be taking a keen and perhaps unusual amount of interest in the rental of motor vehicles; this bill would require anyone “who rents or leases more than five motor vehicles in any one year” in the state of Rhode Island to…

Coming up in Committee: Three Sets of Bills Scheduled to be Heard by the RI General Assembly, January 22 – January 24

By Carroll Andrew Morse | January 22, 2013 |

Let’s really make the new Rhode Island General Assembly session official; the list below is based on the Rhode Island General Assembly website as of 11:00 am today… 3. On Tue, Jan 22, the Senate Rules Committee will discuss the Senate rules for 2013-2014. 2. H5086: Allows “developmental disability agencies” to operate their own “self-insurance”…

Walter Russell Mead on the Future of the New England Tradition Everywhere

By Carroll Andrew Morse | January 21, 2013 |

At his blog on the American Interest website, Walter Russell Mead describes a “New England” social tradition…The New England tradition, rooted in Puritan experience and theology, wants a strong state run by the great and the good to serve as the moral agent of the conscience of the community. It is the duty of the…

A Future Nobel Peace Prize Winner Looks to a Theologian to Make Sense of History

By Carroll Andrew Morse | January 21, 2013 |

The modern philosophic since the revival of classicism in the Renaissance fall into the same ancient errors. They are either idealistic or naturalistic. If the former, they tend to lose a sense of the finiteness of human nature, conceiving the self as identical with reason. If the latter, modern man seeks to interpret himself wholly…

The Knights of Columbus and Rhode Island’s Proposed Same-Sex Marriage Law

By Carroll Andrew Morse | January 18, 2013 |

Rhode Islanders United For Marriage, a same-sex marriage advocacy coalition, issued a press release yesterday which included a fact-check style response to a paid advertisement run in the Warwick Beacon by the National Organization for Marriage, a same-sex marriage opposition group. The press release claimed that the NOM ad contained “falsehoods and misleading statements”. The…

The Governor’s 2014 Budget for Rhode Island in Historical Perspective

By Carroll Andrew Morse | January 17, 2013 |

Here is the recent history of Rhode Island state government expenditures updated to reflect the Governor’s proposed budget for 2014, made possible in part by the fast work done by the State of Rhode Island Budget Office to make the complete budget available on the ri.gov website. As always, actual dollar amounts spent (or, in…