Justin Katz
I missed last night’s Tiverton Town Council meeting because, on top of dealing with some essential technology problems with my arsenal, we had a bit of toxic contamination in the home. Well, that’s probably exaggerating: we broke one of those energy efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs and, realizing that they contain mercury, the obsessive in…
Charles Bakst presents a question that he thinks the governor ought to ask himself, and although my way of answering it mightn’t be what Bakst expects, I think it’s a worthy consideration: I said Carcieri would say he wasn’t calling them bad people, only that they’d made bad decisions. [URI Feinstein hunger center director Kathleen…
There’s that learning curve again. Amidst all of the things that I’ve had to learn as a homeowner (not including carpentry, plumbing, electrical, and so on), it took me until today to realize an important part of my town’s tax structure: In addition to my annual property tax bill for the Town of Tiverton, I…
I’d like to, if I may, correct a couple of misconceptions on Matt Jerzyk’s part without thereby lending credence to the parts of his post to which I don’t think response merited: … please provide me one woman in the entire state of Rhode Island who, when confronted with the reality of having a child…
It would have been too much, I suppose, to hope that the New York Times would take the opportunity of the recent stem-cell breakthrough to correct a longstanding falsehood in its analysis spin of the issue to date. It is, nonetheless, disappointing that it persists: Early in the controversy, opponents, including Mr. Bush, often said…
I know it’s de rigueur to advocate for those who require additional help in school in an effort to bring them as near to the average line as conceivably possible, but something just seems wrong (in certain lights, immoral) about opposing this change, as described in the Rhode Island Catholic, in a state with as…
Although it’s not online, a letter of mine encouraging my fellow residents of Tiverton to ask the Charter Review Commission to reopen the question of partisan elections is in the current issue of The Sakonnet Times: To the editor: At the latest Charter Review Commission meeting, member Frank Marshall made a successful motion to strike…
In a relatively short op-ed, Republican state office holders Nicholas Gorham (Coventry) and Laurence Ehrhardt (North Kingstown) make it clear to anybody who reads the paper how dire is the need to vote a large segment of our current slate of legislators right out of office: On Oct. 10, the Tax Foundation ranked Rhode Island…
We’re rightly wary when credit card companies target college kids. (I’m still smarting from the puncture that I received in the bull’s-eye.) So why is the New York Times treating it as some kind of a rights story that pharmaceutical companies are no longer targeting young women with discounted birth control? The change is due…
Perhaps it oughtn’t be the case — me being a family-oriented traditionalist and all — but I’m not a devotee of Thanksgiving. It might be my workaholism. It might be my lack of interest in football. And I’m not a big fan of turkey. (In part because tryptophanic considerations trigger a workaholic aversion.) It’s always…