Golocalprov's piece on underage drinking at Providence Police Chief Dean Esserman's home has focused attention on the state's "social host" law, which imposes penalties on parents who knowingly allow underage drinking on their property.

Esserman, of course, maintains that he did not knowingly allow underage drinking - that he broke up the party when he discovered the booze.

Senators Jack Reed and Tom Harkin demanded in a conference call with reporters this morning that the GOP take Medicare reform off the table in the debt-ceilings negotiations. From The Hill:

The attempt by Republicans to tie Medicare reforms to negotiations on raising the debt ceiling is "absolutely irresponsible," Sen.

Sheldon Whitehouse must be smiling. Barry Hinckley, the Republican challenging Rhode Island's junior senator, is attacking the incumbent for voting against Congressman Paul Ryan's budget, which would - in Democratic parlance - "end Medicare as we know it."

From golocalprov:

Despite his support for Medicare and Social Security, Hinckley says Ryan’s proposed budget is a good starting point to getting the country back on firm financial footing.

The New York Times had a piece this weekend on Rhode Island's Medicaid experiment - and the GOP's push to trumpet it in the sale of its Medicaid block grant proposal:

With Republicans pushing to rein in Medicaid costs, an experiment in Rhode Island is drawing the attention of some conservatives who say it has led to substantial savings without reducing care for the state’s poorest patients.

Rhode Island's US Attorney Peter Neronha is remaining mum. But a Wall Street Journal story suggests his office has played a central role in a Google probe that could end in one of the biggest corporate settlements in the nation's history. From the Journal's story:

Google Inc. is close to settling a U.S. criminal investigation into allegations it made hundreds of millions of dollars by accepting ads from online pharmacies that break U.

The Providence Phoenix gathered a nice little clutch of awards at this weekend's New England Newspaper & Press Association's annual fete - this one covering work from mid-2009 to mid-2010.

The paper took first place in the religious reporting category for a piece on Brown University biology professor Ken Miller's quest to reconcile religion and evolutionary theory - to the consternation of the atheist crowd.

I've got a cover story in this week's Phoenix, due to hit the newsstands tomorrow, on the medical marijuana movement's liminal moment.

The arrival of compassion centers means medical pot is about to take a huge, transformative leap into the mainstream. And while most in the movement welcome the change - it should mean greater access to marijuana and no more skulking about for black-market weed - there is a touch of ambivalence about what will be lost: an underground, DIY culture that, in its best form, is quite generous and neighborly.

Governor Don Carcieri has joined Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, a likely 2012 presidential candidate, in a legal challenge to the cost of President Obama's health care law. This marks Carcieri's second major foray into national health reform politics - readers will recall that, in May, he pressed Attorney General Patrick Lynch to join in a 20-state lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the reform

A sleepy race for months, the Massachusetts gubernatorial contest is finally picking up steam, with incumbent Democrat Deval Patrick facing an increasingly tough challenge from Republican Charlie Baker, former chief executive at health insurer Harvard Pilgrim. Today, Baker's dramatic move to pull Harvard Pilgrim out of Rhode Island in 1999 is the subject of a lengthy piece in the Boston Globe:

Interesting piece in the Washington Post today, featuring a Rhode Island doctor, on the conundrum that medical marijuana presents for physicians. An excerpt:

For doctors such as Pradeep Chopra, long accustomed to prescribing carefully tested medications by the exact milligram, medical marijuana presents a particular conundrum.

The health care debate was, of course, saturated in political posturing. And passage of the bill has done nothing to sate the appetite of a political class eager to strike a pose. Exhibit A: the 14 Republican attorneys general who filed or joined suits challenging the constitutionality of the reform bill.

Legal experts agree the legal challenges have little chance of success.

This week's Phoenix editorial hails a mighty Democratic victory. An excerpt here:

The Democrats won and the Republicans lost. That, in a nutshell, is the bottom line. After 15 roiling months of bitter and divisive debate, the nation’s first African-American president, Barack Obama, in harness with the first female Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, made history.

The late Senator Ted Kennedy spent decades fighting for health reform. And yesterday, at the signing ceremony for the health overhaul bill, Representative Patrick Kennedy gave President Obama a copy of the health reform bill that his late father filed in 1970. That was widely reported. But what did the Congressman scrawl on that memento? Politico has the details:

From the Washington Post, Patrick Kennedy leaves a graveside note for his father after passage of health reform:

The political odyssey of health care reform in many ways is the story of Ted Kennedy, and as President Obama signed the historic bill into law Tuesday, Kennedy's gravesite was a place of quiet celebration and poignant reflection.