Written

Surveillance cameras on a pole

How exactly will license-plate cameras prevent suicide on the Mount Hope Bridge?

By Justin Katz | June 29, 2022 |

Oddly, that’s a question Melanie DaSilva doesn’t manage to answer in her WPRI article about the plans of local police to put license plate recognition cameras on both sides of the bridge that connects Portsmouth and Bristol.  It’s almost as if a paragraph is missing: [Investigating criminal activity is] not what [the cameras will] be…

Jeann Lugo Should Consider Suing Bill Bartholomew for Defamation

By Monique Chartier | June 28, 2022 |

Justin Katz called it early.  Bill Bartholomew’s extremely clipped video of Jeann Lugo striking Jennifer Rourke at the State House melee Friday night is a serious disservice to the truth. Bartholomew’s clipped video doesn’t show what happened leading up to that moment. So you don’t see Jennifer Rourke laying hands on Jeann Lugo.  Without his…

McKee signs gun control bills

Governor McKee’s gun-control photo-op was wildly inappropriate.

By Justin Katz | June 28, 2022 |

The image used as the featured image of this post shows Rhode Island Democrat Governor Dan McKee signing gun control legislation recently at the State House, and even people who support the outcome should be concerned by it. For the good of our states and our country, Americans used to have a clear, if undefined,…

The moment before Lugo strikes Rourke

Will we ever develop the skills to process online political content like Bartholomew’s doctored abortion-protest clip?

By Justin Katz | June 25, 2022 |

First things first: It is very difficult to imagine circumstances that entirely excuse the actions of Jeann Lugo in a five second clip from last night’s pro-abortion rally at the State House.  Lugo is a muscular man with police training.  Striking a woman — progressive candidate Jennifer Rourke — should not be something he would…

A water drop and ripples

Trying to explain the Supreme Court ruling to a child.

By Justin Katz | June 24, 2022 |

What did they change? Well, there was a rule that said mommies had to be allowed to kill their babies before they were born everywhere in the country, and the court said states could decide whether or not to keep that rule. Why would mommies want to kill their babies?

A sonogram.

The Supreme Court has undone a travesty of law by overturning Roe v. Wade.

By Justin Katz | June 24, 2022 |

Honestly, I never thought I’d see the day, but the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, which invented a Constitutional right to abortion across the country.  To this day, many Americans don’t realize just how radical the judicial legislation was, making the United States much more extreme than most of the world, with abortion…

Blake Filippi

Blake Filippi is exiting the House, and Rhode Island will come to regret it.

By Justin Katz | June 24, 2022 |

Voters (and other citizens) very often make claims about what attributes they want in elected officials that they do not substantiate with their support.  They say they’d prefer public servants who are not career politicians and who are in it for “the right reasons,” by which they generally mean they are not merely seeking power…

A Providence neighborhood through a Statehouse window

Maybe there’s something to “systemic racism” in Rhode Island.

By Justin Katz | June 21, 2022 |

Shift your focus just a little bit from the standard narrative, and you can only shake your head at the conspicuous omission in Amy Russo’s Providence Journal article reporting that “racial disparities in homeownership are more severe than the national average” in Rhode Island: The report, released Thursday and authored by Brown School of Public Health…

Sabina Matos takes the oath of office.

What does Matos have against the First Amendment?

By Justin Katz | June 17, 2022 |

No sooner do I resolve to take the summer off from social media than the Lieutenant Governor of the State of Rhode Island, Sabina Matos, decides it’s politically advantageous to involve me in her primary campaign to retain her seat.  According to her press release: The Ocean State Current and the Center for Freedom and…

A water drop and ripples

What’s the supporter overlap between suicide-barriers and physician-assisted suicide?

By Justin Katz | June 16, 2022 |

This is probably a strange question to pose, but nonetheless, one wonders.  As the state government moves toward spending big money on suicide barriers that will inevitably change the aesthetic character of the bridges on which they’re installed, what is the belief system underlying our local culture?  Where do supporters for such things stand on,…