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Rhode Island Tag

There are a small number of movies that had a profound impact on me as a child. Having grown up in the generation for whom nuclear war was the looming threat, many of those formative movies concerned the aftermath of nuclear war. I particularly remember Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove.

Readers of Legal Insurrection know who Linc Chafee is. For several years we covered the once-upon-a-time Republican Senator (in a seat he inherited from his father), and Independent former Governor of Rhode Island, is quirky, to put it mildly.

You may have noticed I've been a little thin around here lately. It's been crunch time for me as the semester is nearing an end, and I've also had some personal matters to attend to.

It's a little quiet here in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Because today is Victory Day, formerly known as VJ Day, formerly known as Victory Over Japan Day. The progression of names to the generic Victory Day was to accomodate the hurt feelings of, umm, who exactly? The Japanese over whom we were victorious and who started it but couldn't finish it? Historically the day is to mark Victory Over Japan, but history is a casualty of the war waged by political correctness and hurt feelings.

Anti-Israel activists thrive in darkness. On campuses and municipalities, they spend months and sometimes years planning attacks on Israel that are often unveiled only at the last second, leaving Israel advocates scrambling. That is unfolding with a vile antisemitic campaign called "Deadly Exchange," which seeks to blame Israel and American Jewish groups for domestic U.S. problems in the policing of minority communities. Run by the misleadingly named Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Deadly Exchange seeks to exploit pre-existing domestic racial tensions to stoke antisemitism in order to turn minority communities against Israel.

Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island has earned national mockery due to his obsession with Brett Kavanaugh's high school yearbook entries, particularly a fart joke entry. Even Saturday Night Live made fun of him. One of Whitehouse's pet theories, that the "Devil's Triangle" reference in Kavanaugh's yearbook entry related to sex acts, not a drinking game, just took a big hit, Kavanaugh classmates back him up, ‘Devil’s Triangle’ was a drinking game at their High School.

The Rhode Island Senate race between incumbent Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse and Republican challenger Robert Flanders is not on anyone's radar as competitive. It should be.

Former White House spokesman Sean Spicer did a book signing in Middleton, Rhode Island this weekend. Plenty of fans showed up to buy his book and have it signed but so did a gaggle of obnoxious leftists. Nothing will be allowed to be enjoyed, if progressives have anything to do with it.

Recently, I reported that that U.S. District Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California tossed out the lawsuits that the cities of Oakland and San Francisco filed last fall against six fossil fuel giants. The two cities were seeking to hold the oil companies liable for the cost of infrastructure upgrades and remediation expected as they deal with effects of rising sea levels. Undaunted, the state of Rhode Island has now filed a lawsuit against Big Oil.
Rhode Island’s attorney general sued a dozen oil and natural gas companies and their affiliates Monday in state court, accusing them of causing climate change and not sufficiently mitigating its effects.

Considering the depravity of the past few days, I thought this would be a good time for an update. The featured image is the view tonight looking south from my backyard in Rhode Island. A hopeful sign.

I was in Durham, NC, earlier this week, where my wife received treatment from doctors at Duke Medical Center. With plenty of time to spare, it occurred to me that I should get a selfie at the Duke Lacrosse house to post on the website. While the 2006 prosecution and April 2007 dropping of all charges pre-dated Legal Insurrection, the false accusations, mob mentality, and faculty perfidy seemed to be a prelude to the campus due process disregard emboldened later by the Obama administration.