On Politics

If hundreds of people offer heartfelt arguments over 12 hours to lawmakers whose minds are mostly made up on the controversial issue of same-sex marriage, does it make any difference?

"I don't know," says Senator Lou Raptakis (D-Coventry), one of the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that held a marathon hearing on the subject from 5 pm Thursday to 5 am Friday.

Raptakis says 9 of 10 committee members stuck it out to the end.

Rhode Island's roads and bridges have been crumbling for years. So why did the most powerful pol in the state, House Speaker Gordon Fox, team up Thursday with one of Rhode Island's top-two emerging political stars, state Treasurer Gina Raimondo, to unveil a new plan for funding road and bridge improvements during a well-attended Statehouse news conference?

Gold star if you guessed "2014."

If you really need another good reason to support your local NPR affiliate, we bring you the latest report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism: The State of the News Media 2013.

This will come as no surprise to anyone who watches local television in this or just any market across the nation, but there is more junk food-journalism on local TeeVee news than ever.

So now the most ridiculous and irresponsible decision of former Gov. Donald Carcieri’s tenure has come home to roost. That, of course, would be the decision to gamble $100 million or so of the taxpayers’ money on Curt Schilling’s ill-fated 38 Studios video game company.

The company is now bankrupt. As ProJo State House veteran Katherine Gregg reports, the budget proposal from Governor Lincoln Chafee, the most vocal opponent of this fiasco during the 2010 governor’s race, has proposed making the initial $2.5 million payment to bondholders.

The Boston Globe reported Monday that the Canadian government has established a business accelerator program in Cambridge to help its ``most promising young start-ups tap into the expertise and energy of the growing innovation economy around MIT and, ideally return home with new customers, connections and ideas.’’

As anyone with a pulse is aware, the area around Kendall Square in Cambridge has evolved over the past two decades from a seen-better-days warehouse and manufacturing district into an innovation lodestone.