Justin Katz
Having been struggling for an interesting way to frame this, I was much relieved to read Marc’s recent post about demographics and Republican states’ receiving more government aid while (ostensibly) voting against Big Government. Blogger Sensible Mom has explored the data in a bit more depth (the bracketed comment is hers): But let’s focus on…
Mackubin Thomas Owens, a professor at the War College in Newport, has done a little preliminary strategic brainstorming in the event that the Blue States try to secede: To begin with, where would the blue-state secessionists get the military force they would need to vindicate their action? After all, to paraphrase Thomas Hobbes, principles, no…
Especially without being in that state, it’d be difficult to guess the political dynamics of a probable proposal in the Connecticut legislature: On Election Day, voters in 11 states approved constitutional bans on gay marriage. But when the Connecticut legislature meets in January, the state may buck the national trend. Democrats hold strong majorities in…
PROEM: Since this is my first post on same-sex marriage on this blog, it is probably relevant to note that I’ve already written extensively on the topic. Barbara Gordon of Pawtucket is “distressed” at various efforts to write into the law explicitly what, until recently, everybody thought to be there by definition: I believe it…
On the radio, Dan Yorke is talking about the possibility of Condoleezza Rice’s ascension to the post of Secretary of State. Yorke speaks often and forcefully in support of women’s rights and respectful treatment of them, so I’m sure it pains him to say it, but he’s concerned that Condoleezza’s gender will represent a problem…
I see that Marc beat me to mentioning that Tom Coyne piece. When I first spotted Coyne’s headline, on Saturday, before I realized who the author was, I smirked; in Rhode Island, even the mantra that the “politics have got to change” has been corroded by endemic apathy. The most proximate cause of my delay…
While we’re in the midst of our first weekend content lull, it seems as good a time as any to republish a vlog post of mine from January 2003 (mostly so it’ll be in the archives here). In the surrounding weeks, I made a few short blog-like videos, but the time it took to make…
Commenting to a post by Marc, Rich from East Greenwich offers several specific questions that he might ask if mediating teacher contract disputes there. Among the considerations that he proposes is a comparison of teachers compensation with the median for the town. Although not addressing East Greenwich, Marc and I worked through some of these…
Pre–election day, Marc and I had a short cross-blog exchange that touched on the state ballot’s spending referenda. Marc did his homework and argued on behalf of some of the spending measures, including the URI biotech center. For my part, noting that I considered mine little more than a protest vote, I declared: “not a…
