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There has been a “Well I Swan” reaction this week in certain quarters to President-Elect Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of Defense. The big concerns seem to be that Pete Hegseth is a Fox News host; that he lacks defense policy experience or foreign policy chops that he has certain tattoos; and – oh, hey,…
There is a Presidential popular vote chart getting a lot of attention out there that seems to show a big drop in Democratic votes from 2020 to 2024. However, as pointed out by Dan McLaughlin, I think people are getting over their skis before all of the data is in. I thought a picture showing…
While developing plans for the future, I’ve been reading about the history of American journalism, and an observation from the post-Revolution period has been worth more than a few underlines. Political parties always want dedicated media outlets, but media outlets dedicated to partisan politics never pay for themselves. Jefferson had to give a no-show State Department job…
Mark Steyn’s daily pre-election column is vintage Steyn today. But in Botswana everyone voted on Wednesday, the last up-country results came in on Thursday, the ruling party conceded and the new guy was sworn in on Friday. That’s a normal election in a normal country. Meanwhile, back in the greatest country in the history of…
I’ve fallen way behind, so this tweet from Ken Block is a couple months old, but its content is (unfortunately) timeless in Rhode Island: The picture being painted for me by over ten current and former DOT employees is a toxically managed organization where who you know is far more important than how you do…
While steadfastly refusing to cite any limits on how late into a pregnancy non-emergency abortions should be allowed, Kamala Harris has claimed that her campaign promise “to put back the protections that are in Roe v. Wade into law” would not legalize abortion until the moment of birth. But if Roe were to be “codified”…
I realized this when watching Democrats’ repeated proclamations about jobs numbers during the Obama years only to see those numbers quietly revised the following month, almost always with the revision making touted jobs disappear, rather than quiet corrections representing improvements. Now, it seems crime data has the same partisan infection. All year, we’ve been hearing…
The news cycle flows by so quickly, lately, that political actors and activists are learning it’s sometimes best to just keep your head down and let the controversy of the day join the rest of the noise tomorrow. Nonetheless, I think there’s something worth noting in the now-passed story about Russia funding some conservative commentators.…
Following the determination in April that the Washington Bridge eastbound was becoming “considerably more sensitive” (gulp), RIDOT contracted to install a new, combined structural health monitoring and vehicle weigh-in-motion program on/between the Washington Bridge and the Iway (Providence River Bridge). In May, RIDOT entered into a five year “sole source” – i.e., no RFP –…
I find it ominous that one of my children’s dentist just cancelled an appointment for tomorrow due to short staffing. RI’s medical infrastructure feels a bit like we could get the equivalent of an emergency Washington Bridge closure at any time. Or maybe we’ve been getting them, but the people who run the state are…