Editorials

11/23/2009

To our readers
Because of staffing problems at the Associated Press in New York, there are no “Voices Around the World” today.

11/22/2009

Editorial: Condemning R.I. jobs
With unemployment through the roof in Rhode Island, it makes no sense for Providence to threaten companies that employ thousands of people and pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the economy. Yet that, incredibly, seems to be what the city is doing, in identifying blue-collar businesses in the working port area along Allens Avenue as potential targets for eminent-domain seizures, apparently for the benefit of developers of waterfront property. The developments, with their service-sector jobs such as maids and waiters, are unlikely to pay anywhere near as well as working-port jobs.

11/21/2009

Editorial: Speech and privacy
It may have been mere incompetence, but it is chilling that the Obama Justice Department sent a subpoena for an undeclared reason to an Internet news site, Indymedia.us, demanding records of all traffic to that site on June 25, 2008. Even more ominously, it demanded “all other identifying information” of people who visited, including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, Social Security numbers, bank-account numbers, credit-card numbers, etc.

11/20/2009

Editorial: Maxwell Mays: 1918-2009
Maxwell Mays, who died Monday at 91, was one of the most popular people in Rhode Island. But then, he was selling happiness.

Editorial: Juveniles and justices
Science has shown something that parents have long known — the juvenile brain is not fully formed. Teens engage in reckless and often abusive behavior without clearly understanding the consequences.

Editorial: Ports, planes and jobs
On Nov. 7, we ran a cartoon by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s David Horsey, expressing rather sour grapes about his town’s loss of Boeing airplane-assembly jobs to South Carolina. Boeing concluded that workers in North Charleston could do the job cheaper and better than those in Seattle. So it is investing $750 million in a facility there.

11/19/2009

Editorial: Clarify the burial law
We are saddened that someone such as Mark Goldberg, of Providence, would not be allowed to claim the body of his long-time domestic partner, Ronald Hanby, soon after the latter’s suicide. But the lack of clear state law on this matter resulted in Mr. Goldberg’s suffering a nightmarish delay of a month in getting his partner’s body after Mr. Hanby died because Mr. Goldberg was not recognized as having the rights of a family member. That is in spite of the fact that documents made it clear that Mr. Goldberg was the appropriate person to claim the body.

Editorial: Wrong-site surgery syndrome
The latest case of wrong-site surgery at Rhode Island Hospital demonstrates just how difficult it can be to eradicate such errors. In October, a surgeon performed procedures on two parts of a patient’s finger. Instead, the separate procedures had been designated for two different fingers.

Editorial: Murdoch vs. Google
Those who believe that Google has become a dangerous monopoly whose appropriation of other people’s intellectual property and personal information has become a scandal were heartened the other week by media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s tough remarks about what he calls a “kleptocratic” and “parasitical” company. (Perhaps wisely because of his own company’s flawed record in such things, he didn’t mention Google’s deals with dictatorial governments to filter out information that regimes might not like.)

11/18/2009

Editorial: Courting trouble in NYC
President Obama should revisit the decision of his attorney general, Eric Holder, to try the five top al-Qaida plotters of 9/11, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in a civilian court in the heart of New York City.