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.

Eli Pariser's new book, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You, focuses on the downside of the personalization imposed by Google, Facebook, and other sites.

Those Google search results, tailored to your interests and politics, are shielding you from challenging ideas, argues Pariser, former executive director of liberal adviocacy group moveon.

Congressman David Cicilline, who has faced a firestorm over his handling of the city budget as mayor of Providence, got a chance to change the subject today - holding a press event to formally introduce his "Make it in America" block grant proposal and to tout a broader, six-point plan to boost the state's manufacturing sector.

Well, people, it's over. If you haven't heard, the end is coming Saturday. The Rapture. The holy will ascend to Heaven and the rest of us will be left to the endure the brutal destruction of the planet. And the Phoenix has a handy dandy guide to the Big Show!

That's right. Radio preacher Harold Camping is guar-on-teeing Judgement Day this weekend.

A day after Rhode Island's House of Representatives passed a compromise civil unions measure, as widely expected, Gallup has released a poll finding - for the first time in its history - majority support nationwide for gay marriage, with 53 percent in support and 45 percent opposed. A nine-point surge of support in the last year alone shows how quickly opinion is evolving.

Now that Treasurer Gina Raimondo has laid out some options for substantial pension reform, the hard part: getting meaningful legislation passed.

Last year, the Pew Center on the States released a report titled "The trillion dollar gap" that took a nationwide look at the pension challenge (see pages 7-11, in the executive summary, for an overview of reform efforts across the country).

Brett Broesder, former campaign manager for Attorney General Peter Kilmartin, has an interesting piece over at golocalprov suggesting that Congressman David Cicilline's biggest challenge will come in the Democatic primary, not the general election:

...when it comes to a Republican ousting the incumbent – don’t believe the hype.

I have a piece in the forthcoming edition of the Phoenix on cybersecurity. But first, a little preview here - and some thoughts that didn't make it into the piece.

For the uninitiated, cybersecurity entails protecting the country's computer networks against largescale theft of intellectual property and the sort of attack that can take down an electric grid or destroy bank records.

I've got a piece in the Phoenix today on the momentum surrounding cybersecurity legislation, designed to stave off attacks on critical US infrastructure and bite into billions of dollars in intellectual property theft.

One point that didn't get into the piece: the importance of election year politics.

National security issues, in theory, have the sort of bi-partisan appeal that might override electoral considerations.

Congressman James Langevin's cybersecurity amendment, which passed the House last year, was defeated today. From the Congressman's office:

While recognizing the importance of moving forward with the bill, the Congressman expressed disappointment that the House did not pass an amendment he offered to address our country’s urgent need to strengthen its cybersecurity.

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.

Netroots Nation, the annual confab of progressive bloggers, has become a sort of whistlestop for left-leaning politicians. In 2007, all the major Democratic candidates for president participated in a lively debate at the event, then known as the YearlyKos Conference. Since then, figures like Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid have made the pilgrimage.

Attorney General Eric Holder is in town today, hosted by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. And a brief press conference at the Institutue for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence in Providence was, predictably, dominated by questions about medical marijuana.

U.S. Attorney Peter Neronha delivered a letter to Governor Chafee in late April threatening to prosecute operators of the three medical marijuana dispensaries, or "compassion centers," set to open in the coming months.

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.

Retired Representative Patrick Kennedy got a nice little boomlet of media coverage last month with his push for a new "moonshot" - a la his famous uncle's push for a moon landing. This one, he says, would take us inside the human mind, unlocking the mysteries of mental illness.

Kennedy's familial ties add some resonance to his call.

At the height of the David-Cicilline-left-Providence-bankrupt story, it was hard to imagine him ever escaping its harsh glare. But veteran political observers noted that the year-and-a-half until the next election is the proverbial "eternity in politics" and that attention would inevitably shift elsewhere - especially as the Taveras Administration began the painful process of cutting.

Providence Mayor Angel Taveras' top-to-bottom review of city finances, which revealed a two-year, $180 million structural deficit, has badly damaged the reputation of his predecessor, David Cicilline, who stands accused of covering up the capital's fiscal problems while running a successful campaign for Congress last fall.

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.

The death of Governor Chafee's two-tiered sales tax proposal and the gay marriage bill he advocated have prompted more than a few declarations of irrelevance.

But with Smith Hill Democrats set to caucus today, and a formal budget proposal expected in the coming days, it may be time to re-evaluate.

That budget, by most accounts, will include some sort of sales tax expansion.