Justin Katz

A Crack in the Machine?

By Justin Katz | December 15, 2005 |

Yeah, I know, it’s silly and not a little suspicious that such a thing would become a news story at all. Still… Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey has apparently been making some revisionist history — digitally removing a one-time political ally turned foe from all images on his Web site. The photos remain, but the…

Killing on the Radio

By Justin Katz | December 14, 2005 | Comments Off on Killing on the Radio

Shortly after 2:00 p.m. today, I’ll be discussing Israel’s recent euthanasia law with Howie Barte on WHJJ, 920 on the AM radio dial.

That Old Smugness

By Justin Katz | December 9, 2005 |

Feeling a bit too much the elder rebel — whose rebellion is increasingly merely to laugh at the enemy’s antics — I suggested to a URI College Republican in a comment to my previous post that it is only recently that campus communities have had to face the idea that perhaps anti-conservatism isn’t simply an…

After Horowitz, the Hoopla

By Justin Katz | December 8, 2005 |

I’ve been following the letters to the editor exchanges in the University of Rhode Island’s student paper, The Good ¢5 Cigar, subsequent to David Horowitz’s appearance on campus, including an angry offering from the man himself. In today’s edition, however, is a letter from John Biszko, a Tulane student displaced back home, as it were,…

On the Wavelength

By Justin Katz | December 5, 2005 |

For anybody with a spare half-hour tonight: Brown student radio interviewed me about living and blogging conservative in Rhode Island for tonight’s edition of Off the Beat. The show airs locally on 88.1 FM and globally via online stream at 7:30 p.m.

Re: Rhode Island’s Retrograde Fiscal Culture

By Justin Katz | November 30, 2005 | Comments Off on Re: Rhode Island’s Retrograde Fiscal Culture

Andrew puts his post about Rhode Island’s fiscal position relative to its neighbors in the “Rhode Island Economy” category, but the issue is at least as political and cultural as it is economic. Over years of patchwork research, I’ve found that Rhode Island always tops Massachusetts in all the wrong ways. It takes bad or…

The Prick of Liberal Conceit

By Justin Katz | November 25, 2005 | Comments Off on The Prick of Liberal Conceit

The Providence Journal’s Bob Kerr slipped a curious few paragraphs in the midst of a 600-word piece of derision: Brown students are not enjoying their unintended celebrity. But then they haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory on the social front lately. For a while now, neighbors of the university have been complaining that student parties…

Re: War Is Peace

By Justin Katz | November 20, 2005 | Comments Off on Re: War Is Peace

This sentence in Andrew’s previous post captures something that has been eating away at my confidence that September 11, 2001, seared a new clarity into the thinking of the American people: … toothless is not how our enemies see us today; toothless is how they saw us leading up to September 11. A series of…

Chafee as Weather Vane for the Conservative Rebellion

By Justin Katz | November 11, 2005 |

Something in a Corner post by Larry Kudlow might help to tie local Rhode Island concerns to the broader political landscape: Why Republicans don’t say more about the tax-cut related economic expansion is beyond me. And whether Tuesday’s disappointing election results provide a wake up call for the GOP remains to be seen. But they…

Frog-Marching Liberal Democracy Around the Globe… Successfully?

By Justin Katz | November 2, 2005 | Comments Off on Frog-Marching Liberal Democracy Around the Globe… Successfully?

Rod Dreher’s latest addition to the conservative-ire-at-Bush line of commentaries has made an appearance on Anchor Rising, so I thought I’d mention that I’ve contemplated part of it further in a post over on Dust in the Light: Dreher, it seemed to me, began to drift not long after he made the leap from displaced…