Both ends of the blogosphere
Matt also has a bit on Governor Carcieri being talked up as a VP possibility for Mitt Romney:
The WaPo's Chris Cillizza has a good run-through of the possible VPs for each candidate. Look who he has listed for Mitt Romney:
* Don Carcieri: The Rhode Island governor doesn't get much publicity, but he has been elected and reelected in a VERY blue state and, before getting involved in politics, was a successful businessman. Sound like someone else you know?
Meanwhile, Anchor Rising's Justin today publishes another op-ed in the ProJo, taking folks, including my Newsmakers' colleague, to task:
Steve Aveson likened the decrease of public assistance for undocumented children to a “harsh carrot and stick”; “we deprive children of this support” so that their parents will “get the idea . . . and they’ll go away from Rhode Island.” But even a compassionate welcome can be worn out, and in truth, it only makes sense to devote scarce financial resources to their education and non-emergency health care if our invitation is for them to stay.
But the state’s primary moral obligation is to those who are not strangers, to provide an environment in which they can thrive of their own initiative. Thwarted by vested interests at the voting booth, many Rhode Islanders have been attempting, via moving van, to communicate to those Democrats in the Senate that the budgetary policy statement is unjust. It is on their backs, and at the cost of their aspirations, that Rhode Island’s powerful have been solving their deficit of maturity and failed comprehension of consequences.
As someone with a long-running (and unpaid) connection to the show, I think Justin oversteps in prescribing an advocacy role to Aveson, who like myself and other panelists, uses various rhetorical devices (the ever-popular devil's advocate, for example) in the interest of posing questions and stimulating discussion.
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ian-have you EVER done anything but roll over for steven brown?is he exempt the "devil's advocate" treatment or hard questions you seem to have for everyone else-i assume you are friends with matt jerzyk and pat crowley so i don't expect you to take them to task(you probably shouldn't interview friends either)but i can't imagine a snotrag like steven brown having a friend at all-nevertheless he always gets a pass from you-did you really think jessica's law was a bad idea?when rhoda perry and joe trillo vote for the same bill,it must be good,but not for steven brown-he wants a level playing ground for CONVICTED child molesters-i'd like to see what he has to say to the mother of the little boy who was abused in new bedford-that offender should never have gotten free-i know it was a judge that let him go-but the aclu carries water for these predators day in and day out-do i sound unreasonable?maybe.i had a relative who was raped as a child and she never lived a normal life -never had a good day-and she hadn't deserved that-nor does any child-so while brown whines about state budget cuts hurting children,he doesn't give a damn about people who really hurt children forever-but with your crowd his shit doesn't stink
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Joe, you are sadly mistaken. I have asked the same kind of tough questions of Steve Brown that I ask of other subjects. For example, during Brown's most recent appearance on Newsmakers a few weeks back, I asked him why the case involving the father of the New Year's baby is a civil liberties concern. Crowley is an acquaintance of mine, and on this week's show I ask him at which point do the concerns of the state becoming greater for people like himself than those of his union members. I wouldn't call that "rolling over."
I don't necessarily agree with every stance ever taken by the ACLU, but I happen to think that defending the Bill of Rights is a good and important thing. Rational people recognize that child abuse is a terrible thing, and that throwing out civil liberties doesn't make for a safer society. If you don't like the ACLU, that's your prerogative.
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ian-i did not accuse you of "rolling over" for patrick crowley-i've never seen you interview him,so how could i-i will be watching tommorrow but the subject isn't one on which i have any strong opinion-i just thought that interviewing a friend is hard to do and stay objective if it concerns a controversial subject-i didn't think you held steven brown's feet to the fire at all,but i guess we'll disagree on that-my negative experiences with the aclu goes back decades and includes subornation of perjury by that organization(in another state) which didn't work for them-they are not concerned with the bill of rights-2nd amendment case in point-i know the "progresive" stance on that issue-if we had the time i would've liked to explain the hypocrisy of the aclu in the nambla case in massachusetts-dave kane asked me to do so in a 2 minute segment on his radio show-when i was done he admitted that the points i made had him thinking,which,considering kane's affinity for the aclu was something i didn't expect-there are people aside from the aclu who defend civil liberties-as a matter of fact-i don't think they do-ian let me close by saying i hope you never find yourself accused of things you had no idea ever happened(if they did)and defending these baseless accusations in a deposition-i did,thanks to the aclu and was completely by a federal court as were all the other targets of those outright lies-and all we did was our job-executing a court ordered search warrant-i have lived in the real world my whole life and don't have a lot of time for high minded theories about how things should play out
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"but I happen to think that defending the Bill of Rights is a good and important thing."
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Is that right Ian? You're articles on the Second Amendment supporting freedom of choice for citizens to keep and bear firearms are, I presume, quite extensive?
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Mike, there's a big ocean of news out there. For one person, I'd say that I cover a pretty broad range of issues and viewpoints.
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Mike, there's a big ocean of news out there. For one person, I'd say that I cover a pretty broad range of issues and viewpoints.
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How about a follow up to your Liz Roberts hagiography where she promised to solve the issue of universal coverage by proposing legislation "in January". Well, duhhhhhhh. It's February and "nothing" has happened. Big surprise.
Progressives-all questions-no answers.
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Following up on the pronouncements of Roberts and other elected officials is a natural path to pursue, and I suspect that myself and other reporters will do this in the future. However, the opportunity to break other stories is more immediately appealing to me.
Mike, perhaps you should start your own blog (I believe the software is freely available on the Web), so you can air all the stories you describe as being overlooked.