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The General Assembly again considered a number of bills dealing with the required installation of ignition interlock devices in the cars of individuals convicted of DUI and other offenses.

Across Rhode Island, school districts are blocking from students vastly more information than was intended by the federal law requiring the use of filtering, leaving students unable to complete their assignments and teachers scrambling to change their lesson plans at the very last moment.

A bill permitting Rhode Island to enter into the International Emergency Management Assistance Compact with other states contained a dangerous provision permitting the suspension of any statutes or ordinances that might impede the military’s ability to respond to an emergency.

Finding that there would be “substantial and irreparable harm” if members of the public were prohibited from attending, R.I. Superior Court Judge Daniel Procaccini today issued an order barring the R.I. Board of Education from meeting in private at a retreat later this month to hear from invited “experts” on the issue of its “high stakes testing” requirement for high school seniors. In issuing a preliminary injunction against the planned private discussion of the issue, the judge agreed with the ACLU that allowing such a discussion to take place in private would significantly undermine the open meetings law’s purpose.

A federal judge yesterday refused to dismiss an ACLU lawsuit brought on behalf of an ACI inmate who was retaliated against by guards after he publicly criticized Department of Corrections’ mail policies and sought legal assistance from the ACLU (see the ruling and the report and recommendation). The pattern of harassment against inmate Jason Cook, which included strip searches, loss of his prison job, destruction of his personal property, and disciplinary time in segregation, began after Cook was quoted in a Providence Journal story criticizing a DOC policy limiting the written materials available to inmates. The policy was later rescinded.