Justin Katz
One hopes that most devout Christians — Catholics especially — have a wave of initial suspicion upon hearing such admonitions as “if we only care about heaven, then we’ve lost Jesus’ sense of urgency about loving your neighbor. We’re all kin, so my neighbor is also the polar bear and the bumblebee.” It is wise,…
As if to demoralize conservative hawks heading into an election year, the Bush administration is falling back to the U.S. political-class default with respect to Palestinian terror: The “road map” for peace, conceived in 2002 by Mr. Bush, had become a hindrance to the peace process, because the first requirement was that the Palestinians stop…
Not long after I’d circled the following paragraphs in my copy of today’s paper, I noticed a typical bit of ad ignorantiam over on RI Future: Carcieri’s chief budget officer, Rosemary Booth Gallogly, suggested earlier in the week that the administration may have “another alternative if there were a fiscal crisis.” A provision in Rhode…
In response to my inquiry to RI Senate President Joseph Montalbano as to the reason that “not one of the proposals that came out of last year’s [small-business economic] summit, including revisions to the stringent new fire code, made it into law,” Senate Director of Communications Greg Paré emailed that Senator William Walaska (D, Warwick)…
Representative Kenneth Carter (D, North Kingstown/Exeter) deserves credit for putting forward one piece of the solution: “… a humane society is concerned about all its members, including those who must pay the bill for the needier,” he said. “We cannot continue to drain others dry so that individuals on public assistance are able to do…
Any softening of Rhode Island’s new wish-list fire code are welcome, but this seems a little too typical of the state’s operating practices to inspire comfort: Senate President Joseph A. Montalbano testified at an open hearing on the code regulation changes that was held last September, to re-emphasize the Senate’s position that the code changes…
Kenny Cicerone, of North Providence, has caught the online-activism bug. His North Providence Taxpayers Association is seeking to file an ethics complaint against Senate President Joseph Montalbano “for being a municiple court judge in North Providence, where he solicits votes, and he was appointed as judge after voting to give the town council a raise…
Mark Steyn’s Sunday NRO column is a bit uneven, but much can be forgiven of the man who turns such masterful phrases as this: Terrific. In a Huckabee administration, nothing is certain but hope and taxes. Did he poll-test the line? Was it originally “What I didn’t raise was tobacco”? Or did he misread the…
Although I’m fully sympathetic with the inclination to ignore complications, I find it hard to believe that syndicated columnist Froma Harrop hasn’t heard the basic argument against the following assumption, spoken this time with reference to health insurance (emphasis added): You see, health care has become just another racket by which clever operators can scoop…
Some of the numbers floating about at tonight’s Tiverton Town Council meeting left me unable to suppress my guffaws. The town pays, if I heard right, $13,000 per family healthcare plan. Indeed, according to the outgoing town administrator, Glenn Steckman, the reason he included a healthcare buyback in the contract that he put forward for…