… but maybe through the miracle of scratch ‘n’ sniff technology we could make them smell like french fries and Americans would vote in greater numbers. That’s my idea.

Happily, director of FairVote Rhode Island and regular Doser, Ari Savitzky, has a better idea. In a piece in this morning’s ProJo, written with executive director Rob Richie, Ari lays out exactly why the recently vetoed uniform voter registration bill makes so much sense. Designed to pre-register 16-year-olds so that they can be automatically added to the voter rolls at age 18, this initiative has now been vetoed three years running. It should have enough support this year to allow for an override.

Some might conclude this is no big deal, but multiple studies demonstrate that when you vote when first eligible, you tend to become a lifetime voter. Those who stay home are far less likely to vote in the future.

(If I may add my own two cents, it is time for the youth of America to rise up and break the back of the AARP voter hegemony. Until there is universal health care, Nana and Pop-pop should pay for their own damn drugs.)

Attention artists. Help RIPAC design their new T-shirt and if your entry is chosen you can win… a brand new T-shirt! Well, it’s all about the glory really. And the cause. RIPAC is the medical marijuana advocacy coalition that helped our enlightened legislators make marijuana possession legal for qualified patients. But the battle for availability continues. Our decidedly unenlightened governor has vetoed a bill that would have formed a study commission to look into the creation of Compassion Centers. (Musn’t have information… might be dangerous to learn things.) So the sale of the new totally awesome T-shirts will help fund RIPAC’s continuing efforts in this area. (And yes, we all love Harold and Kumar, but this is about medical marijuana.)

deadline for entries July 29/one or two colors only/send entries or questions to RIPAC, 145 Wayland Avenue, Providence 02906/or info@ripatients.org

The honorable Matt Jerzyk has a post to this effect over at RIFuture, as does Sir Ian McKellen Donnis at N4N, but I feel the need to reiterate: what’s up with the AG? While 42 other attorneys general signed on to support the Free Flow of Information Act, which would create a qualified federal shield law for reporters, Patrick Lynch did not. Lynch, who on June 19 was elected president of the National Association of Attorneys General, does justice (no pun intended) to that organization’s alias: the National Association of Aspiring Governors.

I think a lot of Rhode Islanders take for granted an important lil’ Rhody anomaly: most states have district attorneys and attorneys general, these being two distinct positions and offices. We’re small enough that the two positions are lumped into one office. Our attorneys general, therefore, spend the majority of their time and energy prosecuting criminals and upholding severe criminal justice policies rather than representing the larger interests of all our citizens.

In March, I was privileged to attend the 11th Annual Liman Public Interest Colloquium at the Yale Law School. In keeping with the topic of the conference—”Liman at the Local Level: Public Interest Advocacy and American Federalism”—we had the opportunity to hear from Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, Ohio Solicitor General William Marshall, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, and James Tierney, Director of the National State Attorneys General Program. These four fellows have used their positions as state and city attorneys to compensate for the failings, negligence, and misguided decisions of the federal government and judiciary.

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I understand one of his many vetoes this legislative session: the courthouse construction bill, a piece of legislation pledging $88 million to the construction of a new Blackstone Valley courthouse. According to the ProJo, Carcieri said in his veto message, “Never, not even once, has any Rhode Islander — save a legislator or a judge — ever spoke to me of the pressing need to build a court-house in the Blackstone Valley.”

On the urgency of the project, however, Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Williams declared in an April speech:

The need to better serve our citizens in northern Rhode Island and to decongest a severely overcrowded Garrahy Judicial Complex in Providence by building a Blackstone Valley Courthouse is not going to go away.

As a legal intern with the RI Office of the Public Defender, I may not be privy to every aspect of life at the Garrahy complex. I do, however, work there 4 days a week from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and I’m a bit perplexed by the congestion with which the Chief is concerned. In fact, things can get pretty slow around there, and I’ve taken to reading The New Yorker in between Judge Higgins’ arraignments in Courtroom 4C, where I am usually stationed.

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GET READY FOR THE 4TH OF JULY!!!! Come to Movies on the Block this Thursday.

Providence’s only outdoor movie screen opens for its second season. Every Thursday through September, movies will be screened on the corner of Westminster St. and Union St. As always, introducing the show are International shorts presented by the Rhode Island International Film Festival. Pop hits, local shorts, even some music performances. Bring your friends and family down for a drink, some eats, and a free film. Movies start at Dusk, blankets welcome!!!

Those of us who missed Mayor Cicilline at Saturday’s Pride festivities should be placated by news of how he spent that day. The U.S. Conference of Mayors, gathered for their 76th Annual Meeting in Miami from June 20-24, unanimously passed a resolution calling for city-coordinated drug overdose prevention efforts.

The Resolution championed several strategies to reduce fatalities from drug overdoses, including:

• Supporting the distribution of naloxone – an opiate antagonist medication effective in reversing the respiratory failure that typically causes death from opioid overdose;
• Urging state governments to adopt “Good Samaritan” immunity policies that shield people who experience or witness an overdose and contact 911 from prosecution;
• Calling on the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to fund research to evaluate the effectiveness of overdose prevention interventions and develop model programs; and
• Calling on the FDA to take steps to facilitate the testing and approval of nasal and/or over-the-counter formulations of naloxone and to consider recommending prescription naloxone concurrent with strong opioid analgesics.

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You either love it or hate it, but you can’t forget it once you’ve had it. No, I’m not talking about…well, lots of things. I’m talking about root beer. NY Times wine guy Eric Asimov and his panel taste a bunch of root beers and conclude, among other things, that “too much root beer can make a man mean”.

Our No. 1 root beer, from Sprecher in Wisconsin, a wonderfully balanced and complex brew, uses a combination of corn syrup and honey, while our No. 2, the restrained and flavorful IBC, uses only corn syrup. So even with the importance of the sweetener, something more is at play with root beers.

I’ve always wanted to have a root beer tasting.

This week we’re showing FLETCH.

Chevy Chase anyone?

(And that’s THURSDAY, yo.)

Awww, shit, you gotta be kidding me? How come I didn’t get a memo on this one? Oh, right, because my office is my bedroom and my secretary is my cat. Darn.

Apparently, would-be writers, the trick is not to solicit publishers one-by-one hoping to find one for whom your novel/screenplay/poetry/suckpileofhumanexcrement is a perfect fit. No, no, no, that is –so– 2007. Why waste your name with that? Just place an ad on Craigslist like Gina did:

The headline reads “ Writer seeking Publisher“…

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If you are thinking about running for office this year, you have until this Wednesday to make your intention official. June 25 is the deadline for filing Declarations of Candidacy for federal, state and local office. Secretary of State Mollis posts the necessary forms and all the key dates in the 2008 election calendar on his website at www.sec.state.ri.us. Got a question? Contact me at cbarnett@sec.state.ri.us or 222-4293.

HEY SO there’s a poster/print show this FRIDAY @ 5 Traverse Gallery on the corner of wickenden st. and traverse st (a.k.a next to kabloom, across from the utrecht parking lot– have a latte at coffee xxx-change, eat some cous cous). it’s an OPEN SHOW which means ANYONE can show up and put their prints/posters/flyers/p-copies/l-press/litho-graph-y/s-skreens/etchings/openbitez/soft embosses/pulp prints/etc etc etc up on the wall. maybe some dudes will buy some stuff!
as jay z (local jay z, not beyonce’s jay-z) would say: “IT IS WHAT U MAKE IT”. some come through and MAKE IT GOOD!!!!! (more…)

The RI General Assembly is starting to vote on the budget today.
Here is the website where you can find info on who your state rep is and how to contact them.

Please use it, and please call, and please take a stand about one of the issues in the state budget. The environment bond needs saving, as does funding for our public university system. And then there is the issue of poor families being left out in the cold.

I am going to call Rep. Anastasia Williams. And then, I am either going to crawl into a corner and cry, or I am going to ask Representative David Segal to marry me.

Following last month’s awesome, and huge, meeting, we’ll be getting together on June 24th for the next Social Justice Night.

Stay tuned for more info in coming days.

Come downtown for another 80s classic. This Thursday at dusk.

Seems to be the way things are headed.  I’ll be swamped, and posting less than usual (would be great if other Dosers could help pick up the slack…)

The budget is going to be heard by the full House of Reps on Wednesday, probably passing on Thursday after 12-or-so hours of debate.

The Projo covers it here.  Moments of note include:

• Many kicked of of Head Start and RiteCare;
• Municipal aid reduced, relative to last year’s enacted budget;
• Increase in public school  funding of about 1.5%, but a cut to the college and university systems;
• Affordable energy fund money gets ’scooped’;
• Prisons budget goes down by about 6%.
• Asks (and assumes) federal permission for unprecedented ambiguous Medicaid restructuring, claiming savings of $60 million
• No increase in broad-based state-level taxes, but expect cities and towns to have to raise taxes by maximum amount allowable, and reduce services too.

And some other legislation that’s still in play, as we reach the home-stretch:

• National Popular Vote;
• Pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds;
• Package of renewable energy bills that would drastically increase renewables production here over the next several years;
• RIPTA package (incentives for public employees and college students to use RIPTA)
• End to mandatory minimum sentences
• Probation reform
• Court Fines reform
• Medical marijuana dispensaries

And there’s still the possibility of passage of some of the slew of anti-immigrant bills that were introduced this session…

I’ll give updates as I can, over the course of the week.

In ‘Sicko’ Michael Moore questions why the French government seems so much more responsive to its citizens and comes up with an obvious answer — it’s afraid of them.

The people of Paris are nothing if not riot-ready. Recently British truckers closed down London to protest rising fuel prices. And look at what’s going on in Soeul, South Korea.

This started out as a protest against American beef imports and has grown into a generalized anti-government demonstration. Just look at it. Why hasn’t this been the view outside President Bush’s window for the last five years?