The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly…This week in Rhode Island

The Good

Christmas!

It’s five days away. With one week’s less build up from Thanksgiving, and one week less to shop, most people seem ready – more than ready – for a little down time, family closeness and fun, some home cooking, and let’s not forget the ‘reason for the season’. Hanukkah will usher in on the 22nd, and Kwanzaa on the 26^th. Before the hustle and bustle – if you do that sort of thing – for New Year’s Eve, let’s take a breath and wrap ourselves in the joy of the season. We wish everyone the happiest of holidays.

The Bad

The Weather

Isn’t it much too early – a little too early – to be this cold this soon? And while we don’t really mind a nice fluffy snow, this ice stuff is wreaking havoc in our emergency rooms and auto body shops. Let’s hope for a gentler week ahead for Christmas.

An Active Shooter – in Westerly

To turn on the national news and to hear that there is an active shooter situation going on somewhere isn’t unusual these days – we even listen with half attention, it has become so common. But this time it was an active shooter in – Westerly, Rhode Island. We’re starting to learn more. Initial reports are the shooter was a resident who shot 2 staff members, killing one, and 1 resident. He was about to be evicted from his subsidized apartment, and Westerly police indicated he was in their files, but unclear as to why. We’re small in Rhode Island, and like the Governor said, we need to wrap ourselves around this community.

The Ugly

The FBI – and the FISA Court.

The statement calling out improprieties in the FBI issued by the FISA Court is step one in fixing the entire system of surveillance. What is the FISA court? The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is a U.S. federal court established and authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States. But the court is not innocent in trusting every word submitted by the FBI. This is an opportunity to admit the ugly capability of spying on any American it sets its mind to, and now is the time to change these policies and regulations. Some good can come out of the impeachment of the president that reaches far beyond the president himself. More is sure to come.