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February 2007 Archives
3:38 PM Wed, Feb 28, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Steve Peoples  Email
A handful of Republicans have come forward today to express interest in running for the state party leadership team. Only one of them, however, is seeking the top spot. David Cote, chairman of the South Kingstown Republican Town Committee, has......
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11:29 AM Wed, Feb 28, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Steve Peoples Email
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testified before U.S. Sen. Jack Reed and the rest of the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday, as the panel considered President Bush's request for an additional $100 billion supplemental spending bill to fund operations in Iraq......
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5:52 PM Mon, Feb 26, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Steve Peoples Email
PROVIDENCE -- Secretary of State Ralph Mollis' communications director Adam Bozzi is broadening his horizons. Literally. The 28-year-old North Providence native, who moved to the Mollis camp after his old boss, Lt. Gov. Charles Fogarty, narrowly lost his gubernatorial bid......
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4:54 PM Mon, Feb 26, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Steve Peoples Email
PROVIDENCE -- Just a handful of people knew before the Providence Newspaper Guild Follies who this year's Mystery Guest was going to be. One of them was an 11-year-old Tiverton boy. Evan Kinnane practically stole the show from his co-star,......
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9:29 AM Mon, Feb 26, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
In the same week Governor Carcieri proposed a budget containing furlough days -- days off without pay -- for state workers to save money, he signed off on new jobs and raises in the upper echelons of state government. The......
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9:28 AM Mon, Feb 26, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
As the General Assembly mulls moving up the state’s presidential primary, Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis is backing a plan that would see different states host early primaries each election season on a rotating basis. The plan, from the......
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9:27 AM Mon, Feb 26, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Last week was winter break for the General Assembly, a welcome respite after a flurry of activity the previous week. When Senate spokesman Greg Pare said, at week’s end, that there were “a couple of hundred bills introduced in the......
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9:26 AM Mon, Feb 26, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Not every restaurant in Rhode Island gets honored by lawmakers when it opens. But if that restaurant happens to be in Lincoln Park, it gets the royal treatment. The other week the Senate passed a resolution honoring Lincoln Park’s latest......
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9:25 AM Mon, Feb 26, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Attention, all lobbyists: The secretary of state’s office invites you to attend a training session this week. Topics include registering online with the LobbyTracker system, financial reporting requirements, interacting with lawmakers, interacting with the media, and ethics. Mollis will hear......
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9:22 AM Mon, Feb 26, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
What’s it like to run against U.S. Rep. James R. Langevin? Jennifer Lawless, the Brown University professor who challenged Langevin in a Democratic primary last fall, will headline the League of Women Voters’ annual League Day at the State House......
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12:25 PM Tue, Feb 20, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Steve Peoples Email
HARTFORD, Conn. -- U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd may be the home state presidential candidate in 2008, but a new statewide poll released Monday shows he's far from the top choice among voters in Connecticut. The Quinnipiac University survey shows Dodd......
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12:16 PM Tue, Feb 20, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Steve Peoples Email
BOSTON -- Republican Mitt Romney, flush with cash from early fundraising, this week will air his first presidential campaign ad to introduce himself to voters in several early voting states. The 60-second spot describes the former Massachusetts governor as a......
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2:09 PM Mon, Feb 19, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Andrea Panciera Email
What better day than Presidents Day to take a closer look at the idea of Rhode Island moving up the date of its presidential primaries? The Journal story by Scott MacKay not only explores the proposal, but revisits the history......
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1:07 PM Mon, Feb 19, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Steve Peoples Email
Rhode Island's Jack Reed was among a handful of high-profile Democratic senators to speak at a news conference Saturday afternoon immediately following the Senate's contentious vote on whether to debate an Iraq resolution. Democrats needed 60 votes in the unusual......
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1:01 PM Mon, Feb 19, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Steve Peoples Email
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who presents himself as a staunch ally of gun owners, has acknowledged he joined the National Rifle Association just months before announcing his candidacy. The former Massachusetts' governor said Sunday during an interview on ABC's......
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9:20 AM Mon, Feb 19, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
After reading the other day in a Providence Journal story about one lawmaker’s proposal to force lawmakers and general officers to pay 10 percent of their health-care premiums, several lawmakers have come forward and decided to pony up voluntarily. All......
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9:18 AM Mon, Feb 19, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Well, here’s a novel idea. Limit General Assembly sessions to 125 calendar days each year. The sessions, which begin on the first Tuesday in January, habitually dribble on late into June -- and in some years, weeks beyond that --......
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9:16 AM Mon, Feb 19, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
At the West Valley Inn on Feb. 1, about 500 people attended a fundraiser for House Speaker William J. Murphy, noshing on farfalle with shrimp, ziti with red sauce and steamship round of beef, between getting drinks from the open......
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9:13 AM Mon, Feb 19, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
When House Democrats weren’t dining at the West Valley Inn, you might have found them at the Capital Grille, Capriccio, Mill’s Tavern or Citron. Those are the venues where House Speaker William J. Murphy held meetings or dinners, paid for......
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7:14 PM Thu, Feb 15, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Andrea Panciera Email
PROVIDENCE -- General Assembly leaders are moving to try to make the nation’s smallest state a player in choosing the next U.S. president by holding the state’s 2008 presidential primary a month earlier than its usual March date. Under legislation......
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3:56 PM Tue, Feb 13, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Steve Peoples Email
NASHUA, N.H. -- Illinois Sen. Barack Obama repeated his apologies for an offhand remark that the lives of U.S. troops killed in Iraq were "wasted." At an appearance in Iowa on Sunday, the Democratic presidential candidate told listeners: "We now......
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11:53 AM Tue, Feb 13, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Jack Perry Email
PROVIDENCE – Gov. Carcieri’s chief of staff Jeffrey M. Grybowski is leaving at the end of the month to return to private law practice. He will be replaced on March 1, as chief of staff, by Brian Stern, a top......
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9:19 AM Mon, Feb 12, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
The Most Rev. Thomas J. Tobin, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, was at the State House to deliver invocations and blessings on inauguration day. He returned last week — albeit vicariously and unwittingly — when Rep. Douglas......
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9:17 AM Mon, Feb 12, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Gablinske is the same lawmaker who recently asked the state Ethics Commission to address this question: “how full-time union employees, who are also legislators, are able to promote union interests through legislation.” In a letter to the commission, Gablinske said......
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9:16 AM Mon, Feb 12, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Lawmakers said goodbye last week to a man who was a State House fixture for years. Benjamin H. Hawksley, who ran the shoeshine stand in the capitol basement for decades, died last week. He was 61. Known throughout the......
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9:14 AM Mon, Feb 12, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Careful readers of The Providence Journal will remember a story the other day about legislation by Sen. Paul W. Fogarty, D-Glocester, that would require all of his colleagues in the Senate and House as well as the governor, lieutenant governor,......
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9:13 AM Mon, Feb 12, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
With new committees at the State House comes the hiring of new legislative staff. The House has hired South County lawyer Karen Ellsworth to help the newly created House Municipal Affairs Committee get its legal bearings. A one time court......
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9:11 AM Mon, Feb 12, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
For those who missed this on the Political Scene blog on projo.com last week: Former U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee’s state director, John R. Pagliarini, has landed a top spot on the staff of Republican Governor Carcieri. Pagliarini, known familiarly......
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9:09 AM Mon, Feb 12, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis has been assigned to two committees of the National Association of Secretaries of State. Mollis will serve on the Standing Committee on Voter Participation and the Standing Committee on Elections and its Subcommittee on......
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6:39 PM Wed, Feb 07, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Steve Peoples Email
PROVIDENCE -- The Secretary of State's Office said today that it's working to correct glitches in new voting machines that caused problems with some ballots in the last election. The AutoMark voting machines were specially designed to help the disabled......
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4:48 PM Wed, Feb 07, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Steve Peoples Email
U.S. Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse took jabs today at the Bush administration's Iraq policy and Republican senators' recent move to block Iraq debate. The Rhode Islanders were part of a small group of Democratic senators holding a press......
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4:09 PM Wed, Feb 07, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Steve Peoples Email
Rhode Island's Democratic freshman senator took one of the nation's most important stages last night, attacking President Bush's Iraq policy and the GOP's move to block Iraq debate. "The Senate has been called the world’s greatest deliberative body. Let us......
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6:25 PM Mon, Feb 05, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Steve Peoples Email
Two members of Rhode Island's congressional delegation slammed President Bush's $2.9 trillion spending proposal for 2008, which was released today. U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a member of the Democratic majority in the Senate Budget Committee, said of the Republican president's......
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4:30 PM Mon, Feb 05, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Steve Peoples Email
Former U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee's state director, John R. Pagliarini, has landed a top spot on Gov. Carcieri's staff. Pagliarini, known familarly as J.R., begins work next week as Carcieri's $110,816-a-year deputy chief of staff. He replaces Clark Greene,......
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9:23 AM Mon, Feb 05, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
That woman striding through the Providence Place mall last Thursday afternoon with three boxes of shoes from the Steve Madden store was Jan Jones. She’s the former Las Vegas mayor who’s a top executive at Harrah’s Entertainment, the folks behind......
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9:22 AM Mon, Feb 05, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
In the wake of Governor Carcieri’s budget release last week, the governor is being accused from all sides of being insensitive to the needs of various interest groups. But at least one of the budget-balancing initiatives would affect him directly.......
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9:20 AM Mon, Feb 05, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
During major political speeches, it’s customary for the speaker’s supporters and staff to be the first to clap at the speech’s high points. It’s one thing to start off the applause for your boss, but to start off the laughter?......
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9:18 AM Mon, Feb 05, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
It was a packed room Tuesday, Jan. 30 for the State of the State address. In addition to the 75 members of the state House of Representatives, the House chamber had to hold Senate members, state general officers, judges, education......
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9:17 AM Mon, Feb 05, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
State Rep. David A. Caprio, D-Narragansett, was recently given a high honor. But it wasn’t because of a great bill that he sponsored or work he did in his community. No, Caprio, 39, was just named one of Providence Monthly’s......
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9:15 AM Mon, Feb 05, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Wireless Internet service is now available in the state library and in the public information division of the secretary of state’s office. The state library, on the second floor of the State House, has official state documents including the General......
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9:13 AM Mon, Feb 05, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
With the recently inaugurated general officers still putting the finishing touches on their staff rosters, Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis’ office announced one new appointment this week. The secretary of state’s chief financial officer will be Paul Dombrowski. Dombrowski,......
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7:14 PM Fri, Feb 02, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Steve Peoples Email
Rhode Island's freshman senator, Sheldon Whitehouse, issued a statement this afternoon following the release of the much-anticipated assessment of Iraq by United States' intelligence agencies. The report, titled "Prospects for Iraq’s Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead," begins with this blunt......
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