Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Democrats seem to be frustrated rather than perplexed by Governor Jodi Rell. She was supposed to have been a lightweight, a pushover politically and somewhat naïve. The Democrats were prepared for a caretaker governor. They wanted to knock her off after a first term and claim the prize that has eluded them ever since Gov. William O’Neill left town under a hail of rhetoric, but Rell has proven to be too clever by half. Here in Connecticut, as everyone knows, an effective conservative response to reckless spending is impossible. Rowland knew this; Rell knows it. Politically, what this means is that there is no enemy to the right – especially within the Democratic Party. So, to succeed in politics, a Republican need only shore up redoubts on the left. There is no need to fear the slings and arrows of non-existent Democrat conservatives. The easiest way to disarm ones political opponents is to spend a lot of money, a method favored by Republican moderates surrounded by liberal Democrats. T...

Even after the Rowland corruption scandal, life goes on. But sensitive noses have detected the odor of fish in the air, and an amendment to Senate Bill 956 seems to give off a radiant glow, like the proverbial mackerel in moonlight. Two writers at the Hartford Advocate – a paper not known for its conservative leanings; see Alan Bisport’s frequent eruptions on the moronic and possibly traitorous Bush II regime – have zeroed in on the legislation and found it wanting. The amendment, the brainchild of liberal state senators Edith Prague and Senate Deputy Majority Leader Andrew McDonald, is a gerrymandered piece of legislation, slipped surreptitiously into a bill extending compensation for prison workers to account for times when they travel to and from their jobs, and cunningly designed to benefit only one constituent – as well as a law firm that has contributed to the campaigns of both obliging legislators. The genesis of the bill’s subsection, signed into law by a somnambulant Gov. Jodi...

The Able Danger disaster will soon be coming to a newspaper near you. Much of the information contained in this column can be found on various blog sites, both liberal and conservative, now crackling with the story. This is what is known so far about the brewing scandal: • Able Danger, an intelligence unit established by the Pentagon in 1999 to identify al-Quada affiliated members and cells for U.S. Special Operations Command, hit pay dirt sometime in August or September of 2000. According to a military intelligence official and U.S. Rep Kurt Weldon, who claims to have spoken to four people involved with Able Danger, the intelligence unit identified Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi as members of an al-Quada cell named “Brooklyn” by the internet sleuths because of the cell’s loose connection with Brooklyn, New York. Atta and two other cell members went on to achieve notoriety by steering planes into the Trade Tower buildings in New York, killing upwar...

The few sentences that follow below were selected almost at random from a commentary on Judge John Roberts, whose nomination to the U S Supreme Court, we are told by the commentator, “has reignited the controversy over faith and the confirmation process… From everything that has been reported so far, Roberts looks eminently qualified for the high court. His record paints a picture of a temperamentally moderate jurist who would be very unlikely to challenge precedent in the name of ideology, or to use his public position to advance his personal values. But what if there was a nominee who showed less restraint? Would that candidate's beliefs still be out of bounds for questioning as long as they were religious in nature?” Now, the first thing we should notice in this commentary is the author’s use of the devil word “ideology. Is religion an ideology? If it is an ideology, and if it is the only ideology not to be permitted to inform the decisions of Supreme Court justices, have we not...

Though she was Lieutenant Governor in former Governor John Rowland’s administration, Governor Jodi Rell has managed to position herself as a reformer, a marvel to opposition Democrats. Leaders in the dominant opposition party look upon Rell as a puritan in petticoats. But the governor has trumped the Democrats on ethics, and her critics are not marveling too loudly. There is some reason to believe that the amusingly frantic concern for ethical behavior among state politicians when Rowland almost daily was being turned on a media spit for several months has waned since the former governor, an annoying threat to Democratic hegemony, had been removed from office. The tepid reaction of leading Democrats to the FBI investigation of state Sen. Ernest E. Newton suggests a nostalgic desire for a return to business as usual. The Newton case eerily parallels Rowland’s downward spiral. Newton is accused of accepting a $5,000 bribe from Warren Godbolt, the executive director of Progressive Trainin...