Justin Katz
The Providence Journal, as represented by Steve Peoples, still isn’t giving the whole story when it comes to Rhode Island’s Family Independence Program: Lawmakers spent yesterday afternoon poring through Governor Carcieri’s 101-page plan that would dramatically cut benefits to the poor, while encouraging a “work-first” model and promoting “healthy marriages.” The governor’s sweeping proposal, if…
It’s disappointing even to have to argue against such arguments as the one put forward by Ron Wolk, a member of the governor’s task force on urban education: The main reasons students are not learning algebra and geometry is that they don’t really want to. They think higher-order math is irrelevant to their real lives.…
Following the titular formula typically used in articles about scientific (or at least quasi-scientific) studies, the Providence Journal gave this story the headline “Views may spur hate crimes”: Anti-immigrant sentiment is fueling nationwide increases in the number of hate groups and the number of hate crimes targeting Latinos, a watchdog group said Monday. The Southern…
It’s been awhile since I checked in on Fred on Everything and remembered to do so only at a reader’s suggestion about a particular piece on immigration: One of the speakers was Phil Rushton, of the University of Western Ontario, whose specialty is the study of racial differences in intelligence. Only among the ideologically befogged…
I’ve had mixed feelings about the reliance on student portfolios for the awarding of high school diplomas. On the one hand, it does place an active, foreseeable academic achievement before all students. On the other, most of the work is done as regular coursework and set aside for the portfolio, which aggregates the work in…
Before giving six reasons that the West is worth defending, George Weigel writes: In his book, “Without Roots,” Pope Benedict XVI deplored the addiction to historical self-deprecation rampant at the higher altitudes of European cultural and intellectual life: a tendency to see in the history of the West only “the despicable and the destructive.” The…
There are basically two general theories about what is going on in Rhode Island. Tom Sgouros enunciates the leftward (vested interest) explanation more succinctly than most of his compatriots (paragraphs reprinted out of order): So this is the situation: The Assembly and Governor have together created a tremendous budget crisis. The crisis was caused by…
If you needed any further evidence that National Review Online’s Jonah Goldberg is a left-wing double agent tasked with distracting and immobilizing thirty-something conservatives, look no farther than this post, into which he slyly slips a link to 100 classic Nintendo games playable online. Well, I suppose it has been awhile since I won CastleVania.
Having recently stood, almost alone, against fascist attempts to mandate no-fee gift certificates, I couldn’t help but chuckle — or, more accurately, to “pffft!” — as I filled out my car registration renewal today: Since when, I guess, has a meddling oligarchy thought it worth the time to meddle with itself? (Dirty-minded readers need not…
Come an idle Saturday night (“idle” being a very relative adjective in my case), our referral logs led me to a September post by URI professor Michael Vocino, in which Professor V. voices some misconceptions about Anchor Rising, specifically, and conservatives in general. The minor one, first: If you go to the spokespeople for the…
