House Speaker Gordon Fox, D-Providence, is the featured guest on WRNI's Political Roundtable, which runs at 5:40 and 7:40 a.m. during Friday's Morning Edition. Fox talks with Ian Donnis and Scott MacKay of WRNI and URI political science Prof. Maureen Moakley about the Assembly, taxes, the state budget, the Central Falls teacher firings and what the House plans to do to help move the state out of the recession.

Rhode Island's recession-wracked voters have scant confidence that the state's elected leaders can bring the state out of the current economic mess, according to Brown University's latest public opinion survey.

The survey was sent after poll supervisor, Brown Political Science Prof. Marian Orr, rechecked numbers for U.S. Sen. Jack Reed. In the first version of the poll sent earlier today, Reed's numbers added up to more than 100.

A day before he formally unveils his Republican challenge to US Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, John Loughlin is using Facebook to play up comparisons with Scott Brown's upset victory in Massachusetts. As Ted Nesi reports at Providence Business News:

Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse voted against confirmation of  Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, but the way he did it won't make him eligible for a profile in courage award.

After the Democratic leadership had salted away the votes to confirm Bernanke _ which the White House wanted_  Whitehouse announced his opposition.

Amid a keynote address by Steve Laffey tomorrow evening to a meeting of the Rhode Island Tea Party, speculation continues about whether the former Cranston mayor is planning a late entry to the governor's race. Democratic activist Matt Jerzyk puts it more definitively:

The confirmation of Ben S. Bernanke to a second four year term as chairman of the Federal Reserve has hit some bumps of late, but Rhode Island Democrat Jack Reed says he will cast a vote to give the former Princeton economics professor a second term.

Ah, the politics of Rhode Island basketball, or, Linc Almond would never have done this:

Governor Carcieri moved his state of the state speech  from Wednesday to Tuesday evening because of  Providence College basketball. You see, the Friars are playing Big East rival Connecticut on Wednesday and some well-placed fans apparently didn't want to have to choose between the guv's annual address to the General Assembly and PC hoops.

The nasty secret of health care overhaul is that the rates of uninsured citizens vary widely across the country. In Massachusetts that rate is about 3 percent. In Texas it is 25 percent. That's because Massachusetts in 2006 established a state-regulated health care system after negotiations between then-Gov. Mitt Romney and the late liberal icon, Ted Kennedy.

In the aftermath of Scott Brown's victory on Tuesday, the question now on everyone's tongue is: "Who's the next Scott Brown?" State Representative John Loughlin, a Republican challenging US Representative Patrick Kennedy, hopes to ride the same wave of voter discontent that propelled Brown's upset of the poltical order. But John Loughlin is not Scott Brown. He's John Loughlin. This is because:

With just 10 reps and senators in the General Assembly, the Rhode Island Republican Party has lost ground during Governor Carcieri's time in office. But the party is feeling its oats following Scott Brown's big upset yesterday: