On Politics

Has there ever been a defeated presidential candidate any less gracious than Mitt Romney? Or has he been sucking on a lemon since his loss to President Obama last week?

In a conference call with large campaign donors Wednesday, the defeated Republican candidate blamed his loss on “big gifts’’ that the president has been giving out to “the African-American community, the Hispanic community and young people’’ as well as to women during his first term.

Former House Majority Leader George Caruolo, who has re-emerged as a bigger force since Governor Lincoln Chafee took office, has been appointed by Chafee as head of the new state Board of Education.

The governor says this via news release:

Former state representative John Loughlin, who ran a spirited GOP campaign against David Cicilline in 2010 (see photo at left), says the RI GOP has to be more moderate to succeed in Rhode Island.

No, it’s not bill number 420.

State Representative Edith Ajello, chairwoman of the House Judiciary Committee, plans to re-introduce a bill in the new legislative session to legalize recreational marijuana. (The legislation wound up being held for further study this year; House Minority Leader Brian Newberry was among the cosponsors.)

Reason.com has more on a related event:

Peter Kerwin, who was fired earlier this year from a job as program director for the Rhode Island Higher Education Assistance Authority, says the state Personnel Appeals Board voted yesterday not to take up his case.

Joseph R. Palumbo, the lawyer for the RIHEAA, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Kerwin says he found the Personnel Appeals Board’s decision curious since, he says, lawyers from both sides were asked during an October 9 meeting to schedule four additional dates in November to discuss the case.

David Boies, one of the nation’s top lawyers, has agreed to help argue the Rhode Island pension overhaul lawsuit that is winding it way through state courts.

Boies, who practices in New York City, has been involved in many celebrated cases, including the Gore v. Bush case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court and decided in favor of Republican George W. Bush in a 5-4 decision. Boies represented Al Gore in that matter.

Politico assesses the emerging peer group of Rhode Island’s junior senator:

The Senate is about to become a liberal lion’s den.

Pointing to some well-publicized snafus during last week’s election, Central Falls mayoral candidate James Diossa is encouraging the state Board of Elections to go with the current eight polling places in the December 11 mayoral election, rather than cutting the number to two.

Diossa, in a news release, says the CF Board of Canvassers has proposed cutting the number of polling places:

Can Rhode Island women replicate New Hampshire’s success in having an all-female congressional delegation and a woman governor, to boot?

That’s part of challenge thrown down on Facebook by former Providence Journal political columnist M. Charles Bakst:

Should the ProJo have its editors to take a refresher course in Political Science 101?

It appears that way after the strange coverage of House Speaker Gordon Fox’s reelection.

No ProJo reporter or columnist, with the notable exception of Mike Stanton, did any real ground-level reporting in the East Side district that Fox represents, which is about a mile from the Fountain Street newsroom.