Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Blumenthal and Harris One has to search long and hard to find any negative news reports on Senator Dick Blumenthal, even in Connecticut's media morgues. Blumenthal recently has hitched his star to President Joseph Biden's presidential juggernaut as a consumer protection chieftain in the U.S. Senate. The two are old friends, and Blumenthal during the past four years has become unfailingly partisan. Just as a rising tide lifts all the boats, President John Kennedy’s formulation, so a rising Democrat election tide has lifted Blumenthal’s dingy. “ Blumenthal heads Senate consumer protection committee, giving him key perch for business oversight ” screams the headline in the Hartford Courant . Blumenthal has been down this yellow brick road before. One of the reasons for tender treatment by Connecticut’s press is that Blumenthal has been, over the years, adept at massaging his state’s media, which often dumped Blumenthal’s press releases into their various formats without the u...

In addition to being compendiums of facts, news reports are a series of embedded impressions. Some politicians call the practice of leading by impressions "planting the flag." In the matter of embedding impressions, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is a rather artful flag planter. As attorney general, Blumenthal has had a good deal of practice, mostly through press releases, of convincing reporters that those people he has targeted for prosecution are guilty of the charges he has brought against them, the reporters being temptingly spurred on by the lurid charges he dangles before them like battle flags. The reporters who receive these impressionistic press releases generally print them in full and then wait until the litigatory process has been completed, at which point they are certain to receive from Blumenthal yet another summary press release that they obligingly print, usually in full. But the real story often lies outside the press releases, curled like some f...

Blumenthal The blog below was Published Six Years Ago. Looking back on these events with the benefit of  hindsight, we now know that Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the committee was dubious. She – and anyone listening to Blumenthal’s hearty assurance that she was telling the truth when she said that Judge Brett Kavanaugh had molested her when he and she were students at different high schools thirty (30) years earlier – had assured the committee  that a witness to the molestation would testify on her behalf. That witness later testified that she had not witnessed the event as Ford had claimed. Three direct witnesses Blasey Ford identified as having been present when the molestation had occurred testified under oath that they could not support her charge.     U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s term expires in January 2029   ___________________________   Kavanaugh v. Blumenthal Before Judge Amy Barrett is called to answer possible objecti...