Editorials

11/07/2009

Editorial: Students over seniority
It is encouraging that Rhode Island leaders are beginning to base their policies more on what serves public-school students than on what pleases powerful special interests. Latest is Rhode Island Education Commissioner Deborah Gist’s order to school superintendents to abolish the practice of assigning teachers most heavily on the basis of seniority.

11/06/2009

Editorial: Good day for the GOP
As is usually the case, the party out of the White House made gains in an off-year election. And as usual, local issues and personalities dominated. Still, some big victories in big jobs, and wins in such smaller places as Connecticut cities and elsewhere, including Woonsocket, made Tuesday night generally a happy one for Republicans, including, we’d guess, the defeat of a referendum approving gay marriage in Maine.

Editorial: A prize in medicine
Often, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is given for work done years ago. So it went with this year’s award, to three American scientists who were just curious about how cells protect themselves when they divide. None of these scientists dreamed that their findings would have dramatic implications for the study of aging or cancer. They simply wanted to understand a basic phenomenon.

11/05/2009

Editorial: Toward cleaner water
After the Clean Water Act was passed, in 1972, America made significant progress in cleaning up its waterways. But in recent years, enforcement has slackened. Also, types of pollutants not covered by the act are more prevalent, compromising water quality in new ways. So it came as a welcome development when, at a hearing last month before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa P. Jackson, pledged a renewed commitment to water quality.

Editorial: Goodbye, Gourmet
In the beginning, there was Gourmet. The food and lifestyle magazine first appeared in January 1941. War was already raging abroad, and America would soon be attacked.

11/04/2009

Editorial: Illegal, at last
After years of pressure by citizens, Rhode Island has finally made indoor prostitution illegal, as it is in every other state (with the exception of some counties in Nevada). This should help police crack down on some of the worst criminals in our midst — violent pimps who brutalize women, entice children to be raped, and traffic in human beings, a kind of modern slavery. It will also let the FBI join in fighting egregious Rhode Island cases involving prostitution.

11/03/2009

Correction
Readers of the print version of the Nov. 3 editorial “Tavern? Bank? Saved!” noticed that the wrong picture ran with it. That’s because of a page-production error associated with The Journal’s new page design that resulted in the picture being sliced and only the left-hand side of it appearing in the picture. We’ll run the picture as it was intended to look, with a correction, in the Thursday paper.

Editorial: Tavern? Bank? Saved!
Last time we looked in on the old Waterman Tavern, in Smithfield — editorially, that is (“Historic conundrum,” June 27, 2008) — it was an eyesore targeted for demolition. It looked more the hazard to safety that town officials saw than the historical treasure envisioned by its owner, the Smithfield Preservation Society.

Editorial: Obama’s agonizing challenge
President Obama’s agonizing (and delaying?) over what to do about Afghanistan/Pakistan is understandable. No approaches in combating the Taliban and al-Qaida are clear and easy. The mountainous, tribe-based region is brutally difficult to fight in, the cost in people and money immense and the regimes that run those countries unpleasant in many ways (but positively paradise compared with anything run by the Taliban).

11/02/2009

Editorial: Bloomberg, despite…
Rich people throwing their money around to win elections generally displease us. But suppose that a billionaire is a superb political leader who deserves re-election. In such cases, we put our discomfort aside and support him or her.

Editorial: The Alliance’s latest scam
We don’t know how much the small group of rich people centered at the Oyster Harbors and Wianno clubs, in Osterville, have paid some members of the Wampanoag tribe to oppose the Cape Wind wind-turbine project in Nantucket Sound. Perhaps investigative reporters will find out.