Justin Katz
Joseph Buffardi, of Cranston, believes that introducing the concept of merit to teachers’ career advancement is a utopian idea: In a perfect world, one could make a case for instituting merit pay for teachers. But this is not a perfect world. As a public-school faculty member for over 30 years, I will grant that not…
As I’ve suggested before, this case may not have been a big deal if decided in court, and it will probably be even less so since the judiciary didn’t get involved at all: The [Tiverton] School Committee still has to work out some legal details, but it decided to extend the health-care benefits of retired…
This aspect of the article to which Don links in the previous post particularly caught my eye: Ban anyone, other than a “recognized employee of a news organization,” from videotaping or taking photographs of House sessions and House committee meetings “without the express permissions of the speaker.” I’m aware of the tendency of the blogosphere…
You raise some interesting points, Marc, and you’ve sparked a wacky idea — just an out-of-the-box consideration, really, but… Assuming that we don’t manage to change the political culture in Rhode Island to begin unseating incumbents, and given current political trends, what are the chances that a Langevin in the tenth or fifteenth year of…
Ramesh Ponnuru raises a sore point for Rhode Island conservatives: If Langevin wins the Democratic primary, I’d be open to the idea that conservatives should support him over Chafee. Langevin at least votes pro-life most of the time. I’ll admit that I don’t get out there and network as much as I should, but my…
Only seventeen years old, and one Charlestown, Rhode Island, high school student already has the contemporary “no thought required” art world all figured out: Jeffrey Eden devised his award-winning project less than 30 minutes after his high school art teacher asked him to express a thought or two in a three-dimensional way. … The student’s…
People hold religious, social, or any other beliefs in varying degrees. Some treat them as relative, and whimsically; belief is a matter of perspective, so everybody’s beliefs are equally true, including the changing beliefs of an individual over time. Such people are metastatically dangerous, in their way, but the more palpable threat comes from the…
Miguel Guanipa’s voice of reason has been trapped on my To Post list for a while: Wherever there are children who dare recite the Pledge of Allegiance in a public school, judges who think the Ten Commandments should be displayed in the halls of justice, school principals who dare recite a prayer at a commencement…