As I write in this week's Phoenix, it will be surprising if the increasingly visible Steve Laffey doesn't run for governor in 2010:

Laffey, a member of the local steering committee for Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign, has been turning up at GOP events in recent months, including a May 24 joint fundraiser of the South Kingstown and Narragansett Republican town committees. Even more significantly, after being stunned by his eight-point loss to Chafee last fall, the preternaturally confident Laffey is poised to get a two-fer with the scheduled publication in September of Primary Mistake: How the Washington Republican Establishment Lost Everything in 2006 (and Sabotaged my Senatorial Campaign).
 
The book will offer the erstwhile rising star renewed national exposure (his publisher, Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin, focuses on conservative authors). Laffey diehards are said to view it “very much as a nationally significant partisan prospectus.”
 
“According to one operative in the conservative wing of the party, the mayor has been very shrewd not to burn many local bridges in his book as his gaze becomes fixed on the governor’s office,” says a local Republican. “Instead of the local cast of characters you might expect outed, look for [former Republican National Committee chairman] Ken Mehlman, [former White House chief of staff] Andy Card, and the NRSC [National Republican Senatorial Committee] to be singled out as sacrificing principles for party. And what would any, ahem, great contemporary political opus be without a reference to Karl Rove?”
 
Just as significantly, Primary Mistake will allow Laffey to reframe the narrative of a calculated gambit in which his reach exceeded his grasp. As put by Sentinel, which won’t make advance copies available until August, Primary Mistake is an insightful account “of the ultimate David vs. Goliath campaign, and an important analysis of how the party of Reagan lost its way. With his straight talk and quirky sense of humor, Laffey will inspire Republicans to stand firm in their convictions in future campaign[s].”

Someone who wrote a letter earlier this week to the ProJo thinks so (he also thinks that Cianci got railroaded):

Obviously, the people of Providence and Rhode Island did not appreciate Mayor Cianci’s tremendous talents — especially Judge Torres, who sent Mayor Cianci literally “up the river,” as the cliché goes.

As a lifelong Worcester resident (unfortunately), I would love to have Mayor Cianci come to Worcester and make it a great city — just like he made Providence a great city. Providence is paradise, whereas Worcester is simply an old, exhausted, run-down, filthy and bombed-out New England mill town which could sure use Mayor Cianci’s magical touch.

Let Mayor Cianci come to Worcester where he will be appreciated and not persecuted.

Scott Wolfe

Worcester, Mass

True story: N4N, who has never landed a foul ball through many years of attending professional baseball games, had a premonition that his catch would come during Monday's Sox game against the Cleveland Indians.

It was a beautiful night, it was great to have the chance to welcome back Trot, and to cheer Youk's insider-the-park home run, and my seat in rightfield box 95 was well-suited for grabbing an errant baseball. Sure enough, around the second or third inning, a ball came flying out of the batter's box, kicked off the second tier around first base, and bounded right into the eager hands of a guy sitting ONE ROW in front of me.

I had also had a premonition last year that Ortiz's 50th home run would make its way to me. As it happened, the ball was smacked on a straight line to my perch in the center field bleachers, but fell about eight rows short. (In fairness to Papi, he would have had to have hit the ball 450+ feet for it to make its rightful landing.)

So close, but so far. 

It was wholly predictable that those scribes staking out Fort Dix or the Coolidge House in Boston would get little from the newly freed Buddy Cianci other than a fleeting glimpse of the former Providence mayor.

Some of this comes down to herd reporting. Still, the reporters had to be there, I suppose. Buddy is news, and even with his absence of comment -- beyond a quick hello -- he would probably have been disappointed if no cameras were there to greet him.

N4N always looks forward to reading Edward Achorn's Tuesday op-ed column in the ProJo. While I don't agree with everything he says, his writing is clean, sharply focused, and he always has a strong point of view. Maybe I'm imagining it, but he seems to have focused more criticism on President Bush and other Republicans after, as part of a 2005 profile, I rapped him for being too single-minded in his criticism of Dems. (The piece is no longer online, but thanks to the Way Back Machine, you can read the first part here.)

Anyway, more than one liberal has expressed a wish that Achorn stick to writing about baseball, a topic where he displays keen knowledge and an obvious love of the game. This week's column, about Barry Bonds' pursuit of the all-time home run record, is no exception:

In another age — as flawed and filled with prejudice as it was — baseball had the gumption to defend its reputation. After several Chicago “Black Sox” players were found innocent in a court of law of defrauding the public by throwing the 1919 World Series, Kennesaw Mountain Landis, the new baseball commissioner, banished the men from baseball for life. He didn’t care what the court said. He cared about sending a message: Baseball will be honest.

Mr. Selig could have thrown Mr. Bonds out of baseball the same way, and fought hard in the court of public opinion when the players union screamed. But that would have pulled on a thread, unravelling the corruption now woven into the game. So instead, Bud is standing by, collecting ad revenues, while this disgraceful clown claims the most prestigious record in sports.

Mr. Aaron’s extraordinarily dismissive statement — that he may be playing golf that day — puts the record in perspective. It is something to be ignored, not honored and joyfully shared by the community of those who revere the game of baseball.

By the way, Howard Bryant's Juicing the Game is an incisive account of baseball in the steroids era

It figures that a day after Linc Chafee expresses possible interest in running for state general treasurer the ProJo has a piece in which he mentions the possibility of staying out of politics. To the ex-senator's critics, this will be further evidence of his Hamlet persona, although, to be fair, it's so early concerning 2010 that just about everyone is keeping their options wide open.

Former US Senator Linc Chafee might run for the general treasurer's office in 2010.

While he remains undecided about his future political plans, Chafee told N4N this morning that the treasurer's office is among those he's considering, along with governor and mayor of Providence. "It's still a long way away," he noted.

With that caveat, and with a mention of how Treasurer Frank Caprio has been mentioned as potential Democratic gubernatorial candidate in 2010, Chafee said the post holds some interest for him. "I enjoy that kind of work," he said. "These are all things that could be out there."

Tax subsidies for development projects in Providence have been a contentious subject in recent years. Edward Mazze, a professor of business administration at URI, took on the "let's-make-a-deal state" with a smart op-ed in Saturday's ProJo.

In particular, Mazze calls for a hard look at the reality and rhetoric of fostering business in the state:

In an era of transparency and accountability, it is time for the state to develop a scorecard to measure the real impact of the economic deals made in the last 10 years to attract and keep industry. This scorecard should be updated every two years with a report to the state’s taxpayers. The scorecard could be used in evaluating future deals so that they do not create a long-term financial burden on the state after those who made the deal are no longer in state or local government.

This question is worth contemplating as we head into the Memorial Day weekend.

For many of those who grew up during the Vietnam War era, the subsequent elimination of the draft was a welcome development. Yet the advent of the all-voluntary military has allowed most Americans to remain very tuned out as the war in Iraq goes on and on.

Even with the approval of additional funding for the war, Bush administration officials are working to lower expectations, raising the question of when this misadventure will come to an end.

Meanwhile, In Providence, Mark Stahl sends word that the local organizing group Declaration of Peace was slated to have a vigil, from noon to 1 pm today, in front of US Senator Jack Reed's Provdence office. "We are considering making this a weekly vigil," Mark writes. "The vigil this week will be in keeping with Memorial Day and will be a simple display of the boots of soldiers killed in Iraq with information on the human cost of war and the need for adequate services for veterans. Please join us if you can and let us know what you think of the idea. For more information, please email sene@afsc.org or call 401-521-3584."

I agree with Toby that there are better ways of handling Thayer Street's purported parking-noise issues than to clamp down on motorcyclists. Not to totally dismiss the concern of those driving this, but this also seems to smack a bit of the nanny state increasingly coming to small town Providence. Could you imagine a city like San Francisco trying to do such a thing?

Yes, the bikers might be somewhat loud, but they're also an easy target. Hunter S. Thompson's Hell's Angels remains the classic account of how small town mores can be used to make motorcyclists seem much worse than they are. 

Longtime RI broadcaster Ron St. Pierre, who maintains friendly ties with former Providence Mayor Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci Jr., asserts that Buddy has "no bitterness" about his lengthy stay in federal prison and will have "no agenda" upon his return to Providence.

While some have speculated that Buddy, who is considered likely to take up a talk-show perch -- perhaps as colleagues with St. Pierre, John DePetro, and Dan Yorke at WPRO AM -- will be a thorn in the side of David N. Cicilline, St. Pierre does not expect that to be the case.

Speaking during a taping this morning of WPRI-WNAC TV's Newsmakers, St. Pierre said that Cianci, because he maintains his innocence, has no remorse. (A jury convicted RI's rascal king of a single count of racketeering conspiracy back in 2002.) The show will be broadcast Sunday, at 5:30 am on WPRI (CBS) and at 10 am on Fox Providence.

St. Pierre, who remains in contact with Cianci and has visited him at the federal prison in Fort Dix, New Jersey, says the former mayor has lost about 60 pounds, largely by walking, and has a good tan from spending time outdoors. Without his array of hairpieces, Cianci now resembles the late actor Peter Boyle, St. Pierre said.

Cianci is due to be released later this month to the Coolidge House, a halfway house in Boston, and he has work lined up at Fifteen Beacon, a posh hotel near the Massachusetts State House. (Last year, I wrote about the possible fallout of Buddy's return to Rhode Island.) He is expected to return to Rhode Island following the formal completion of his sentence in July.

The WPRO talker says he has no idea whether Cianci will land a talk-radio gig in RI, although it would be a natural thing for him to do.

The affection held by many Rhode Islanders for Cianci is misplaced, because of the corruption associated with his two tenures at Providence City Hall, St. Pierre said, but as with the Sopranos, there's sometimes little restriction on public fascination with dubious behavior.

Tyler and Allison's excellent Taqueria Pacifica at AS220 has posted a few tables on the sidewalk outside its Empire Street location in Providence, making for excellent people-watching on these beautiful spring days. Take in the view while chowing on one of the TP's superb Joesadilla, a kind of chicken quesadilla, with the optional guacamole and hot sauce for full effect.

As expected, the General Assembly has passed a measure to make medical marijuana legal on an ongoing basis in Rhode Island. The legislature is expected to override a gubernatorial veto.

Te-Ping Chen recently offered a look in the Phoenix at the surprisingly quiet fallout of implementing medical marijuana in RI.

As we know, Curt Schilling had his hands full even without offering some chin music to A-Rod last night. The first series loss for the Sox in about a month is not a big deal in and of itself, yet Schill's recent performance is cause for concern. The big fella was somewhat testy when challenged on it this morning on WEEI.

The Sox will remain in strong shape if Beckett maintains something close to his early-season form, and if Schill can pitch a little bit better. It would be good to see Manny looking better at the plate, but if past performance is any guide, he will heat up with the warmer weather. 

Earlier this week, WPRO AM's Dan Yorke took on Lincoln Chafee, one of his favorite bete noires, using the former senator's commencement address at URI last Sunday as a metaphor for, as Yorke and other critics view it, Chafee's fecklessness. The offense? The phrase "Go waste, young man" -- a message, the talk-show host said, at odds with what young people should be hearing.

At least one of Yorke's callers rose to Chafee's defense, describing his graduation address as being both complex and instructive. With a short piece in this week's Phoenix, I heartily agree:

Trying to find one’s way as a young adult can be a slightly bewildering process at times, and even the best or most well-intentioned recommendations upon graduation are subject to interpretation and execution.
 
Chafee, though, deserves credit for distilling something thoughtful, universal, and wise from his own personal experience.
 
As [the ProJo's Bruce] Landis wrote, the “Go waste, young man” quip was a play on words – “Go West, young man” — usually misattributed to the mid 19th-century editor Horace Greeley, “which encouraged the young and ambitious to join in the nation’s expansion.” And, “Chafee wasn’t encouraging the graduates to waste time, but rather to ‘give themselves some space,’ the chance to have ‘experiences that might not immediately relate to a career path, but that nonetheless [might] be important in building a personal foundation.’ ”
 
Chafee explained to the graduates that his horse-shoeing experience remains with him, in how he learned the importance of diligence and gained an enhanced appreciation for the world beyond his native Rhode Island. “West is a state of mind,” he said, “that I urge you all to find in the coming months, before you accumulate too much in the way of real responsibility — career, family, mortgage, credit-card bills.”
 
There was an echo in the former senator’s words of Henry David Thoreau: “If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music in which he hears, however measured, or far away.”
 
Chafee, who is now teaching at Brown University, his alma mater, manifested this outlook during his Senate career — most notably by being the only Republican to vote against the war in Iraq. He was notable in Washington, too, for speaking like a real person, not a plastic and overly calculating political creature.

RI Future's Matt Jerzyk writes in this week's Phoenix about how Rhode Island is poised to become the first state with a border-to-border wireless network, and how people like Saul Kaplan, the state's creative economy guru, sees this as an important tool for much needed economic development.

Operating from a refurbished mill west of the Providence Place Mall, once a hot spot of Providence’s industrial economy, a group of innovation leaders plan to make Rhode Island the first state with a fast and accessible border-to-border wireless network that could spur economic growth, improve government services, and enhance the Ocean State’s place in the 21st century.
 
Before you harbor hopes of being able to surf the Web from the beach or check your e-mail from a public park, it should be noted that this wireless network is not oriented to consumers. It’s primary purpose is to serve businesses and nonprofits, and to spur economic growth by increasing efficiencies and communication in organizations.
 
The Rhode Island Wireless Innovation Networks (RI-WINs) is a public-private partnership that has worked closely with the state Economic Development Corporation (EDC) to get a wireless network completed by the end of 2008, at a cost of $28 million — none of which will be borne by the public.
 
Boosters point to myriad possibilities. Imagine, for example, that an EMT is able to provide immediate streaming data to a hospital as a heart attack victim is being taken there, so that doctors have real-time knowledge of the patient’s condition. Think of teachers who are able to build ties between students and parents, thanks to constantly updated and easily viewable student portfolios. Or consider the increased coordination and efficiency with which emergency responders could operate during a hurricane, terrorist attack, or other calamity.

Congrats to the winners of Rhode Island for Community & Justice's annual Metcalf Diversity in the Media Awards, who were feted during a breakfast yesterday at the Providence Marriott.

The Journal covers the story today (although apparently not online), including how the ProJo's own Paul Davis won a Metcalf Award, his third, for his six-part 2006 series about Rhode Island's place in the slave trade. The award is named for former ProJo publisher Michael P. Metcalf, who died in a mysterious 1987 bicycle accident.

(Speaking of the slave trade, the ProJo recently detailed how Ted Widmer -- perhaps the only person in the world who bears the distinction of being a former Phoenix columnist and a former special assistant to a president -- helped to create the $50,000 George Washington Book Prize, and how one of the finalists is Charles Rappleye, the brother of WJAR-TV political reporter Bill Rappleye, for his Sons of Providence: the Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution.)

RICJ (formerly the National Conference for Community & Justice) has been generous in awarding Metcalf Awards to the Phoenix in the past. We finished out of the action this year, although the judges had kind words for last year's package about Latino and black involvement in Rhode Island politics.

Alex Rodriguez is a tremendously talented baseball player, but he's also a jackass. After his limp-wristed maneuver during the 2004 ALCS, he demonstrated this again last night. Eliminated during a play at second base, A-Rod came out of his slide and leaned hard into Dustin Pedroia with his elbow. A hard slide into second base is fine, but this bush post-slide gyration went well beyond that.

Mrs. N4N and yours truly were in complete agreement that Curt Schilling should -- and will -- send Mr. Rodriguez a little message tonight. 

Today's Quote of the Day, naturally, relates to the news of Buddy Cianci's pending gig, following his release from the federal pen, at the plush Boston hotel Fifteen Beacon, and it comes from Boston PR maven George Regan, who represents the hotel's owner.

Asked by the ProJo's Michael McKinney why the former Providence mayor would work at the hotel, Regan said: "[Hotel owner] Paul Roiff wants to do the right thing. And [Cianci's] got to have a job. So why not? The Providence Journal is not going to hire him."

Understatement of the decade, George.

There's little love lost between Rhode Island's former rascal king and the state's newspaper of record. In fact, because of this, Cianci once had a (not wholly realistic) secret plan to buy the ProJo:

Cianci seemed serious enough a few years ago when he ran into a member of the Providence Newspaper Guild at Murphy's, a downtown bar, and expressed his interest in buying the Journal in cooperation with the Guild. "It wasn't much more specific than he thought he could line up some major backers," says Guild administrator Tim Schick. "We attempted to follow up, but there was never any [additional] contact made. He never got back to us."

Another hint of Cianci's aspiration to become a media mogul came during a September 2000 roast of Phoenix columnists Phillipe and Jorge at Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet. ProJo columnist Bob Kerr, the master of ceremonies for the event, recalls how Cianci told him "that when he bought the Journal, the first thing he would do is have me pick up his shirts every morning. He also said, although I did not hear it, that he was going to change the name of Fountain Street to Cianci Way, so the Journal would have to put his name on the letterhead."

Btw, N4N agrees with those who believe the ProJo has treated David Cicilline, relatively speaking, with kid gloves, and also that Cicilline has put city government on a stronger ethical footing. 

Kudos & Congrats to The Wild Colonial, which has been selected by Esquire magazine as one of the best bars in America for 2007.

Not for Nothing, but the Colonial has previously been heralded in the Phoenix for offering "a thinking person's pint." 

To celebrate the Esquire accolade, the Colonial is hosting an event Thursday night in which Red Sox tickets will be raffled off, to benefit the Rhode Island Community Food Bank. This kind of thing shows how the WC is not just a fine place to have a drink, but a community-minded institution that plays a positive role in Providence. (Disclosure: N4N is a charter member of the WC softball team, and yes, I went 3-for-3 last night, and yes, I'm hitting above .500, thank you very much.) 

We all know how Buddy Cianci could, as my old prof Kevin White used to say, talk a dog off a meat truck. Now comes the news that his first post-release gig from the federal pen in Fort Dix, New Jersey, will be doing PR for Fifteen Beacon, a tony Boston hotel near the Massachusetts State House. (For those paying close attention: this word comes from Boston PR impresario George Regan, who, long ago, was Kevin from Heaven's press secretary at Boston City Hall, and whose clients now include hotel owner Paul Roif.)

A little more than a week ago, Providence had recorded two homicides this year. Now, that number has doubled, to four.

The way in which the body count can suddenly rise explains why some observers, as I wrote last week, remain guarded in discussing Providence's success in reducing violent crime. Then again, the two latest homicides -- one stemming from a dispute between two men with criminal records and another involving domestic violence -- don't necessarily mean that the city is any less safe.

On a related note, reduced federal funding for police officers is cited as a factor in why a number of cities are experiencing increased violent crime. In Providence, the staffing level has held steady, with just under 500 officers in the PPD, an increase from the comparable figure 10 years ago. US Representative Jim Langevin recently voted to pass the COPS reauthorization act, which is intended to help local law enforcement agencies around the US to add 50,000 officers over the next six years.

According to a recent press release from Langevin's office:

From 1995 -2005, the COPS hiring grants program, created under the Clinton Administration, helped local law enforcement agencies hire 117,000 additional police officers, which played an important role in significantly reducing crime across the country.  Over those 10 years, Rhode Island received $34.9 million in COPS funding, which enabled the state to hire an additional 385 police officers.

Unfortunately, over the last few years, the Bush Administration and Republican-led Congress showed little support for COPS hiring grants - reducing funding from more than $1 billion a year in the late 1990s to $198 million in 2003 and $10 million in 2005.  Then, in 2006, the Republican Leadership completely eliminated the program.

Three years ago, the Phoenix's Steve Stycos reported on how police tactics threatened to put free speech and assembly rights on the line during the Democratic and Republican national conventions in Boston and New York. (Anyone who made it to Boston had to be troubled by, if nothing else, the designated "protest pen" for dissenters.)

More recently, the New York Times reported on how the NYC police spied broadly before that city's 2004 RNC.

Now, as the paper has revealed, alt-cartoonist Ted Rall was among those under police scrutiny.

Quelle surprise! Rush Limbaugh was excoriationg the immigration bill a short time ago, calling it "classic liberalism," and contending that it amounts to a "redistribution of wealth" since, as he clearly believes, illegal immigrants consume more taxpayer-funded services than they support.

Why is it that conservatives like Rush never have these same kind of equity concerns when it comes to the upward redistribution of wealth and huge tax breaks for big corporations?

But I digress.

The New York Times reports today that employers are balking after aiding in the creation of the new immigration bill, because "it would not cure the severe labor shortages they forsee in the coming decade."

In the last few years, employers have become a potent force in the debate on immigration, pleading with Congress to authorize more visas for both high- and low-skill workers.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, a bill co-author, said the point system was devised so America “can compete for the best minds that exist in the world.”

Robert P. Hoffman, a vice president of Oracle, the business software company, endorsed that goal but said the bill would not achieve it.

“A merit-based system for allocating green cards may sound good for business,” said Mr. Hoffman, who is co-chairman of Compete America, a coalition of high-tech companies. “But after reviewing the proposal, we have concluded that it is the wrong approach and will not solve the talent crisis facing many U.S. businesses. In fact, in some ways, it could leave American employers in a worse position.

. . . .

David Isaacs, director of federal affairs at the Hewlett-Packard Company, said in a letter to the Senate that “a ‘merit-based system’ would take the hiring decision out of our hands and place it squarely in the hands of the federal government.”

Employers of lower-skilled workers voiced another concern.

“The point system would be skewed in favor of more highly skilled and educated workers,” said Laura Foote Reiff, co-chairwoman of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, whose members employ millions of workers in hotels, restaurants, nursing homes, hospitals and the construction industry.

 I know, I know, Rush. The Times is just a commie rag, right?

I like Terry Francona and think he has done a fine job in managing the Sox, keeping a level tone and recognizing that there's a lot of baseball still to play this year. The outcome of the three-game series with the Yankees that starts tonight could offer a few more clues.

Still, can it be solely coincidence that the Sox thus far have A) won every game in which Alex Cora has played; B) have won every Sunday game; and C) have won every game attended by N4N (including yesterday)?

The Ocean State hasn't had a state-sponsored execution since 1845, when Irish immigrant John Gordon was handed after being convicted of killing industrialist Amasa Sprague.

On Saturday, June 2, the Cranston Historical Society is slated to hold a six-hour forum about this case, which, as Brian C. Jones recently wrote in the Phoenix, has become shrouded in ambiguity over the years:

It’s enduring Rhode Island mythology that Gordon was innocent, and that, seven years later, that injustice led to the abolishment of capital punishment here.
 
Rhode Island remains one of 12 states without the death penalty, but the truth of the case is murkier. Modern experts say it can’t be proved whether Gordon was innocent. But the evidence was circumstantial, and the legal proceedings might not have passed muster today.
 
Scott Molloy, a University of Rhode Island historian, says anti-immigrant emotions inflamed the case — something that resonates in today’s debates about immigration.
 
These and other aspects of the Gordon-Sprague incident will be analyzed Saturday, June 2, during a six-hour forum at Cranston’s Sprague Mansion, where the murder victim lived. “It was the greatest murder case in Rhode Island history,” Molloy contends, surpassing even the celebrated trials of socialite Claus von Bülow in the 1980s, given the significant issuer raised by the older case.
 
The tale involves two families. The Spragues were wealthy and powerful, and held posts such as governor and United States senator. Amasa Sprague oversaw the family’s textile empire.
 
The Gordons included Nicholas, who ran a store and tavern, and his brothers, John and William. Authorities maintained the Gordons plotted to do away with Amasa, after he engineered the suspension of Nicholas’s liquor license, to curb drinking by Sprague factory workers.
 
URI’s Molloy says that Irish Catholic immigrants then numbered only 3000 to 4000, out of a Rhode Island population of 100,000 mostly Protestant Yankees.
 
Voting rights — and therefore jury service — were limited to certain property owners, and the John Gordon jury included no Roman Catholics, Molloy says. Trial records contain references to supposed “Irish character” traits, such as clannishness, which explained the brothers’ willingness to murder.
 
The execution, in turn, produced strong emotions. Molloy says a funeral procession through Providence included 1300 people as it passed the Old State House on Benefit Street, the site of the trial.

The newish Obama for Rhode Island plans to hold a June 13 fundraiser, starting at 5:30 pm, at the Peerless Lofts in downtown Providence. The headliner will be Brown's men's basketball coach Craig Robinson, who is the brother of Barack Obama's wife Michelle. The former two-time All-Ivy player at Princeton resides in Providence and was selected as the Ivy League Men's Baskeball Coach of the Year. 

Rhode Island has some other close ties to the Democratic presidential candidate. Two of the leaders of Obama for Rhode Island, Joseph Fernandez and Emily Maranjian (who are married to each another) are Brown grads who went to law school at Harvard with Obama. 

Fernandez, whose day job is serving as Providence's city solicitor (Maranjian works as a white-collar prosecutor in Attorney General Patrick Lynch's office), says the presidential candidate is "very much in keeping with what we know" -- a person with a sharp intellect who is unpretentious and unassuming. The other chairs of Obama for Rhode Island are Jeff Padwa, president of the Rhode Island Trial Lawyers Association, and Rhoades Alderson, communications director for Providence Mayor David Cicilline.

The suggested donation levels for the June fundraiser are $230 and $460, and $1150 for a pre-reception on the roof deck of the Westminster Street building (the odd figures are said to be part of the Obama campaign's desire to do everything differently, as well as multiples of the maximum allowable $2300 individual donation). Besides those mentioned, Johnnie Chace is also a chair for the event.

Fernandez was unaware of when Obama may return to Rhode Island, although he expects that "we'll see a lot more of his spouse." Asked about recent polling gains by Hillary Clinton, Fernandez says he is mostly excited about the kickoff event for the local Obama group.

With the all-time high population at the ACI continuing to soar, A.T. Wall, director of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections, makes a timely appearance this weekend on Newsmakers, broadcast Sunday at 5:30 am on Channel 12 (CBS) and at 10 am on Fox Providence. (Due to a timing conflict, I'm not on the show this week.)

In other items of interest for the weekend:

-- Southside Community Last Trust, which promotes urban gardening in Providence, is holiding its annual plant sale.

-- The Steel Yard, a creative outpost on Providence's West Side, on Saturday, from 7-11 pm, holds its annual fundraiser. Tix are $50.

Bud Selig stopped by to chat with Don and Jerry during NESN's broadcast of last night's Sox game. We had visitors over, so the audio was down and I couldn't hear the commissioner's remarks, but that he offered a mewling non-answer to the appropriate question about Barry Bonds and steroids comes as no surprise. (You would think also that the commish could afford a better-fitting pair of pants.)

Non-surprise No. 2: Bill "the Spaceman" Lee has a very different take on the steroids issue (from the Nashua Telegraph via Boston.com's Eric Wilbur):

“Steroids?” Lee said. “I see that our cows in Vermont are being injected with too much BST . . . There are more drugs in our food supply than there are in Barry Bonds. A red herring. It’s wagging the dog, because we don’t want to address that the drug companies control our thing. And the fact that BALCO is the little guy, being squashed by Merck and Upjohn and all the big companies. As they say in Deep Throat, follow the money.”

I get the drift, Bill, but, er, isn't that All the President's Men?

Meanwhile, the Globe's Gordon Edes reveals that the ever-entertaining Julian Tavarez's backup plan as a youth involved becoming an adult movie star.

You see? It's all related.

Speaking of the Capital City, Providence has enjoyed some impressive success in reducing violent crime, a topic I take up in this week's Phoenix:

Every year, as summer approaches in US cities, violent crime spikes as predictably as the arrival of Memorial Day cookouts. The bloodshed is well under way in some places, including Boston, which after enjoying remarkable success in reducing violence in the late 1990s, has recorded 20 murders so far this year, after 75 last year, mostly in the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
 
Providence, by contrast, has bucked a trend in which the number of violent crimes is increasing in many American cities. There were 11 murders in the city in 2006 — half the number of the previous year — and the fewest since 1971. And while Providence this week experienced its third homicide of 2007, its number of major crimes dropped 30 percent from 2002 to 2006, according to police figures, and the most serious violent crimes fell by 27 percent over the same period.
 
While the police and others monitoring the situation remain guarded, knowing how things could quickly change for the worse, Providence’s collaborative, multi-faceted approach to reducing violence has attracted interest from other communities around New England, including Boston, New Haven, and New Bedford. (The topic is slated for discussion as part of a conference May 21 and 22, featuring George Kelling, co-author of the “Broken Windows” theory, at Roger Williams University in Bristol.)
 
The success is all the more striking given how Providence, according to US Census data, is tied with New Orleans as the third-poorest city for children in America.

We can only hope that this reduction in violence will be sustained over time. To their credit, the key players -- including the Providence Police Department and the street workers based at the Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence -- recognize the importance of staying focused.

As I write in the story, Mayor Cicilline deserves credit for helping to bring about a transformation in the PPD, and likewise, Dean Esserman helped to make it happen.

Providence Mayor David Cicilline was slated to join hundreds of other bicyclists this morning as part of the city's annual Bike to Work Day. The weather remained cold and wet, so good for the mayor for encouraging Providence denizens to use their two-wheelers. The only problem is how annual events like this speak to the ongoing marginalization of bicyclists in Rhode Island's capital.

Beyond youthful pockets of the East Side and West Side, you'd be hard-pressed to see many bike riders in New England's second-largest city. The paucity is all the more surprising given how Providence, even with the flaws of some very car-centric intersections, is well-suited for transit by bicycle.

There was a time when supporters of Critical Mass, the activist bike group, were threatening to do something about this, but their efforts seem to have been ephemeral.

I wrote about the Providence bicycling dichotomy in "Battle of the Bikes," an oldie, but goodie from 2001:

For bicyclists accustomed to getting short shrift from motorists, the brief upending of the status quo [during a Critical Mass ride] is fun, unifying, celebratory, and exhilarating. "There's a lot more spirit and there's a lot more energy in a ride like this, and I feel like the cars really have to respect the bikes," says Clara Holzwarth, a recent Brown grad who works at Southside Community Land Trust. Most strikingly, the concentrated presence of so many bikes is also a rarity in Providence, which, other than pockets of the East Side around Brown and RISD, has a surprisingly sparse amount of bicycle use.

"I know a lot of my friends are terrified to ride bikes," says Holzwarth, adding that cars have hit her bike twice in the last four years, albeit without serious consequences. "I mean, people are terrified to drive. Cars definitely aren't paying attention to bikes. You definitely have to be very defensive when you're riding a bike, and it can be kind of scary." Still, the relative lack of bicycle use is curious, she says, since Providence "is so accessible by bike, even faster by bike sometimes. It just sort of depends on your willingness to brave the drivers."

Rather than just braving the drivers, Critical Mass is brazenly defying them while presenting a broader critique of our dependence on cars and consumer capitalism -- not for nothing does the monthly ride start in the shadow of the Providence Place Mall, although Roger Williams's wish for a "lively experiment," chiseled into the back of the State House, also seems appropriate. "Part of the point of Critical Mass -- it has to alter the way that people use the roads," says Mike Araujo, 30, one of the informal organizers of the monthly ride, who works at Trinity Repertory Company, most recently as a child wrangler. The gathering of almost 100 bikes, many adorned with little flags, offers a good feeling of solidarity, he says, and serves "to remind people that we own the streets."

In a significant step forward for public radio station WRNI (1290 AM), which has been handicapped since its inception by a signal that doesn't reach throughout Rhode Island, it is slated to begin broadcasting tomorrow on 102.7 FM in southern RI.

The expansion is thanks to WRNI's acquistion by a group of Rhode Islanders, a story first reported by N4N.

Here are the details, from ace PR maven Rick Schwartz:

From Newport to Narragansett, from Warwick to Westerly, the powerful voices of Rhode Island's first National Public Radio (NPR) station will finally be heard across southern Rhode Island, beginning Thursday, May 17, 2007 when WAKX 102.7 FM begins broadcasting the programming of Providence-based WRNI 1290 AM.

"It's a taken a long time, too long for southern Rhode Islanders to share in the bounty," admits WRNI General Manager Joseph O'Connor, who began searching for a way to broadcast a strong signal to southern Rhode Island almost from the day he was hired to run the station 11 months ago.

Before Thursday, the WRNI broadcast could only be reliably heard in about two-thirds of northern Rhode Island and through a "repeater" station in Westerly. Everywhere else the signal was either spotty or non-existent.

"This, of course, is the opposite of the goals of public radio," notes O'Connor. "Like the excellent local newspapers that circulate throughout Rhode Island, we run stories that get everyone talking about issues of the day, whether it's the war in Iraq, state nursing home laws, or tourism on Aquidneck Island. People need to be able to turn on the radio and find us there. Southern Rhode Islanders have been left out of the party, until now." 

Congrats to O'Connor and his colleagues, who've done a good job of raising WRNI's profile over the last year (disclosure: I'm an occasional guest on WRNI's Political Roundtable). This will only help such efforts.

-- Kudos and congrats to activist and occasional Phoenix contributor Peter Asen, who is leaving Rhode Island to run Mike Brennan's campaign for US Congress in Maine. Peter's a Yankees' fan, but he's still a nice guy.

-- Matt Burgess, the campaign spokesman for Matt Brown's 2006 US Senate campaign, has landed a gig with EMILY's List in DC. Matt reports that he hopes to enjoy some of local EL stalwart Kate Coyne-McCoy's justly famous home cooking.

-- Although the ProJo's Sunday hot streak has cooled a bit, the paper continues to impress with the recent immigration reporting of Scott MacKay and Karen Lee Ziner, not to mention the intrepid Kathy Gregg's ongoing work on Smith Hill.

-- The latest poll shows that Yankee fans still outnumber Royal Rooters in the Nutmeg State, but Sox Nation is gaining.

-- Speaking of baseball, my Boston Phoenix colleague Mike Miliard had a great piece last week about the Boston Braves:

Fifty years ago this fall, a Boston team beat the Yankees in the World Series. Fifty-five years ago, a Boston team signed the greatest home-run hitter who ever lived. Fifty-seven years ago, a Boston team became one of the first in the major leagues to integrate — and its first African-American player went on to win the Rookie of the Year award. That team, obviously, was not the Red Sox. That team was the Boston Braves.

That is, they used to be the Boston Braves, though by the time they achieved these milestones they had moved to Milwaukee — lured by a new stadium and a baseball-hungry fan base after several seasons of paltry attendance in Boston — and then later Atlanta, which they currently call home.

In 1953, after 76 seasons of baseball in the Hub, Boston’s other baseball team — Boston’s first baseball team — packed its bags and balls and planted home plate in the Midwest. It was front-page news: a baseball team hadn’t relocated in more than 50 years. This was, of course, four years before two New York teams — the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants — infamously left Gotham for, respectively, Los Angeles and San Francisco. But while the Dodgers remain part of Brooklyn’s founding myth, a mourned fragment of the city’s identity even today, the Braves have all but disappeared from Boston’s cultural memory. This despite the dogged efforts of a few hundred fans, some of whom still insist that the wrong team left town in 1953.

The only thing unmentioned by Mike in his comprehensive story is how the Dugout, a Commonwealth Avenue bar where N4N poured back one or two beers as a BU undergrad, is reputedly equidistant between Fenway Park and the former home of the Braves.

More than a decade after the Internet became a household word, the Web continues to evolve in new and fascinating ways.

60 Minutes offered a look last night at how Redfin (motto: buy a home online and save about $10,000), an Internet-based company in the Pacific Northwest, is chipping away at the six percent commission claimed on home sales by Realtors. Not surprisingly, the entrenched interests of the real estate industry are putting up a stiff fight, using legislation to restrict this kind of operation. I expect that consumer preference, over the long haul, will enable Redfin -- which recently started handling Boston-area home sales -- and its ilk to gain more ground.

Meanwhile, in a piece entitled "Sex, Drugs, and Updating Your Blog," Clive Thompson wrote yesterday in the New York Times Magazine about how musicians like Jonathan Coulton are using the Internet to cultivate, maintain, and build their fan base:

His fans need him; he needs them. Which is why, every day, Coulton wakes up, gets coffee, cracks open his PowerBook and hunkers down for up to six hours of nonstop and frequently exhausting communion with his virtual crowd. The day I met him, he was examining a music video that a woman who identified herself as a “blithering fan” had made for his song “Someone Is Crazy.” It was a collection of scenes from anime cartoons, expertly spliced together and offered on YouTube.

“She spent hours working on this,” Coulton marveled. “And now her friends are watching that video, and fans of that anime cartoon are watching this video. And that’s how people are finding me. It’s a crucial part of the picture. And so I have to watch this video; I have to respond to her.” He bashed out a hasty thank-you note and then forwarded the link to another supporter — this one in Britain — who runs “The Jonathan Coulton Project,” a Web site that exists specifically to archive his fan-made music videos.

He sipped his coffee. “People always think that when you’re a musician you’re sitting around strumming your guitar, and that’s your job,” he said. “But this” — he clicked his keyboard theatrically — “this is my job.” 

The concern about the state's growing use of privately contracted employees has grown into a full-fledged frittata, and for good reason.

From his emergence on the political scene in 2002, Carcieri touted his ability to bring more efficiency, common sense, and accountability to state government. The surfacing of the overly generous contract for a DOT clerk, even though it involves federal funds, makes one wonder why it wasn't discovered sooner.

The governor has also defined himself in opposition to the General Assembly. Yet just a week after he threatened to sic the state police on the Senate Government Oversight Committee, he's back on the defensive and the comittee's inquiry has been further legitimized.

On Monday afternoon, committee plans to resume its inquiry into state purchasing practices. And Governor Carcieri's office just released a statement in which the governor expresses renewed concerns about state DOT contracts.

Meanwhile, the recent revelations come as Rhode Island faces a worse-than-expected budget outlook. All this should make for a very lively wrap-up of the legislative session.

As preliminary moves start to take place for the 2010 political season, House Majority Leader Gordon Fox is a potential candidate for mayor of Providence, although he tells N4N that his current preference would be to succeed Speaker William J. Murphy.

Murphy -- if he sticks with a self-imposed eight-year term limit as House leader -- would yield the post in January 2011. The race is certain to attract a large amount of interest, likely from Representative Peter Kilmartin of Pawtucket and other would-be contenders.

As it stands, Fox remains an inside player in Rhode Island politics, even as a lonely liberal among the legislative leadership, a situation that I describe in this week's Phoenix:

Although House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox considers himself a Red Sox fan, he hopes the Yankees win the World Series this year, so that his favorite player, the talented Stanford-educated pitcher Mike Mussina, can get a championship ring.
 
For many baseball fans, this sort of divided loyalty — in the sport’s most intense rivalry, no less — would be considered blasphemy. Fox, whose third-floor State House office features a Mussina jersey and some related memorabilia, explains it by citing his appreciation for the New York hurler’s intelligence, consistency, and humble approach to the game. Yet the juxtaposition also reflects the kind of balancing act that Fox has had to handle while pursuing and holding one of the General Assembly’s top posts.
 
While Fox’s profession as a lawyer puts him in the legislative mainstream, his identity as an openly gay liberal black man in a socially conservative institution makes him a singular figure in Rhode Island.