Free Republic

Freshman Representative Moira Walsh (D- Providence) joined Matt Allen on WPRO to talk about a wide range of issues - including minimum wage and women's issues. It was a comment at the end of the hour long interview, however, that has garnered attention. When asked by Allen what she found most surprising at the State House, Walsh said, "The drinking. It is the drinking that blows my mind. You can not operate a motor vehicle when you've had two beers but you can make laws that effect people's lives forever when you're half in the bag? That's outrageous!" [Audio player]

Households in New England paid electricity prices last month that were 47 percent higher than the national average.. Consumer energy information released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for its Boston region showed the area's households paid an average of 19.5 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity, compared to the national average of 13.3 cents. The region includes Hampden and Worcester counties as well as Greater Boston and parts of New Hampshire, Connecticut and Maine. The figures came out one day after energy utility Eversource proposed a 10 percent increase in its electricity distribution rates beginning early next year. The...

Lincoln Chafee is deeply unimpressed with the press. The former Rhode Island governor and U.S. senator said Tuesday that his experience running in the Democratic primary last year reinforced his belief that reporters are bad at their jobs . . . Chafee is not just unimpressed with how reporters covered the 2016 primaries and general election. He is also annoyed with how they're covering the current administration. "It's just a full onslaught against [Trump], and I think it's just kind of tiresome," he said in reference to the press' ongoing negative coverage of the Trump administration. "He won. I didn't...

One of the good aspects of federalism is that it allows states to go their own way. As Justice Louis Brandeis put it, they can be “laboratories of democracy.” Unfortunately, that often means that interest groups will capture state legislatures and have their political allies push through foolish legislation that will harm most of the state’s residents while benefiting just a few – mainly their members. (That, incidentally, was true in the case that inspired Brandeis’ observation, New State Ice v. Liebmann. Fortunately, the majority ruled against Oklahoma’s scheme for cartelizing the ice business.) Two states, New York and Rhode...

Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse received an earful from protesters on Sunday night following a community dinner at a Providence school, where they voiced their opposition to all of President Trump's Cabinet nominees and Whitehouse's support for Trump's CIA director, former Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.).Through social media mobilization, hundreds of protesters showed up on Sunday to voice their opposition to the Trump administration and hold Whitehouse accountable for supporting Pompeo's nomination. One of the protesters spoke out over a megaphone prior to the event and said that Whitehouse and other Democratic lawmakers had to vote the way any of the protesters would...

PROVIDENCE -- Federal authorities filed criminal charges against Raymond E. Gallison Jr., Monday alleging the former House Finance Committee chairman robbed a dead man's estate, a disabled person's trust fund and from disadvantaged youth seeking help from the educational non-profit he worked for. His take, prosecutors say, more than $660,000. . . . . .That while working for the taxpayer-supported educational nonprofit called Alternative Education Programming (AEP), Gallison stole more than $64,575 earmarked to help disadvantaged youth attend the Community College of Rhode Island. . .

A former Rhode Island state lawmaker has agreed to plead guilty to fraud charges, becoming the third former House member in 11 days to be charged with criminal conduct and prompting the U.S. attorney to decry the state’s political culture. The charges filed against Democrat Ray Gallison in federal court Monday include mail fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and filing false tax returns. Gallison, an attorney, acknowledged taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from a dead man’s estate and other misconduct. “This says something about our political culture here, which I think should get our attention,” U.S. Attorney Peter...

American college campuses are becoming the main battleground for the First Amendment, usually because faculty or administrators don’t respect the free speech rights of students. In November I wrote about such a case at Iowa State. Another case showing the authoritarianism that increasingly characterizes the professoriate involves the master’s program in social work at Rhode Island College (RIC). A student who did not believe that lobbying the state legislature for “progressive” causes was properly a part of his education and suffered for it filed suit against the school in state court. This remarkable case started way back in 2004, when...

Rhode Island is likely to lose one of its two U.S. House seats after the 2020 U.S. Census, according to projections by reapportionment guru Kimball W. Brace, who has for many years helped Rhode Island lawmakers draw both state legislative and congressional districts

Senate Democrats are making it clear that Sen. Jeff Sessions will not have an easy time being confirmed as President-elect Donald J. Trump’s first attorney general. In a letter addressed to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Democrats on the committee pushed for extensive confirmation hearings, indicating that they plan resistance, despite the fact that they referred to him as “a colleague” with whom they “have a personal and cordial relationship.” The senators also requested that Grassley allow for outside witnesses to testify on Sessions’ track record on immigration, civil and voting rights, women’s rights, and government oversight due...

Whether it’s walking in the woods or catching up on reading, Hillary Clinton appears to be enjoying more leisurely activities than running a contentious presidential campaign. On Sunday, Clinton was spotted browsing books at The Savoy Bookstore in Waverly, Rhode Island, according to the Westerly Sun. She was joined by Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and son-in-law Marc Mezvinky, as well as her grandchildren, Charlotte and Aidan. The visit was a surprise to bookstore employees and shoppers, who sensed something was about to happen when black SUVs and men wearing earpieces rolled up to the store. Employee Jessica Wick took to...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Reports are coming in from several locations around the state of long lines at the polls, driven by high turnout that has overwhelmed the ballot-counting machines. "The volume is so high it's causing the backlog," said Tony Pires, the director of administration in Pawtucket. "The turnout is so large that one machine can't keep up with the volume." Pires added, "It doesn't seem to be a local issue. It seems to be state-wide." Lines of two hours have been reported at Summit Commons on Hillside Avenue in Providence. Pires also said voting machines were overwhelmed at the...

Hundreds of women, girls and other supporters proudly donned their yoga pants Sunday afternoon as they peacefully paraded around the Rhode Island neighborhood of a man who derided the attire as tacky and ridiculous. Alan Sorrentino says the response to the letter to the editor, printed in The Barrington Times Wednesday, has been “vicious” and that he’s received death threats. He implored marchers to stay away from his home and maintained the letter was meant to be humorous. But organizers say the so-called yoga pants parade wasn’t a protest against Sorrentino specifically but part of a bigger movement against misogyny...

BARRINGTON, R.I. (WPRI) — In just a short amount of time, more than 100 women have made plans to wear yoga pants and march in a parade down a street in Barrington. The parade comes in response to a Barrington Times letter to the editor written by a town man about his dislike for yoga pants. The backlash to Barrington resident Alan Sorrentino’s letter came almost immediately, with many women taking offense and sharing their feelings on social media and the Barrington Times website. WPRI’s news partners at The Providence Journal spoke to the woman who organized the event and...

America’s first offshore wind power plant will cost about $17,600 dollars to build per home it will power. Three miles off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island, the wind farm is supposed to generate enough energy to power 17,000 homes, but will cost $300 million to build five turbines. This cost is just to build the turbines, not to operate them. The extremely high cost of offshore wind doesn’t worry environmentalists and progressives, however, because, as Salon.com says about the project, “it’s the precedent that counts.” Despite the extremely high cost, federal officials want to power a whooping 23...

Juanita Broaddrick has accused Bill Clinton of raping her in 1978, and most recently, she’s challenged Chelsea Clinton’s complaints about “attacks” on her parents. Now, Hillary’s trolls are making Broaddrick pay the price for speaking up. The retired Arkansas nursing home administrator shared exclusively with The American Mirror some of the awful messages social media users have sent her over the last two days.

Commercial fishing boat owners and groups are reacting to the executive action taken by President Obama that created a marine national preserve in the North Atlantic on Sept. 15. They say that banning commercial fishing there is unnecessary, since the fishing industry has already been working with government agencies on conservation measures.

Not an AP photo: NEWPORT, R.I. (AP) — The U.S. Navy’s futuristic Zumwalt destroyer has arrived in Rhode Island for its first port visit since leaving the shipyard to join the fleet. The stealthy destroyer arrived at Naval Station Newport Thursday afternoon. It left Bath Iron Works in Maine, where it was built, on Wednesday. It’s headed to its commissioning in Baltimore, then to its homeport in San Diego.

Statement of Methodology: This survey of 500 likely North Carolina general election voters was conducted between September 5 and September 7, 2016, and is based on live telephone interviews of adults who indicated they were likely to vote in the November 2016 general election for president. Each area’s quota and demographic information -- including race and age -- was determined from previous like elections and 2010 Census data. Samples of both standard landline and cell phones were called using a probability-proportionate-to-size method, which means that the phone numbers assigned to each county were proportional to the number of likely voters...

Donald Trump, according to a new poll, is down just three points on Hillary Clinton in the traditionally-reliable Democratic state of Rhode Island, a state Barack Obama won by 27 points in 2012. A poll released Wednesday from Boston’s Emerson College shows Clinton at 44 percent, Trump at 41 percent, Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson at 8.4 percent and Green Party nominee Jill Stein at 3.5 percent. ... The college polled the presidential race in six New England states and New Jersey. The results show Clinton ahead in all seven states, though the contests are tight in Rhode Island, New...