Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

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The Doctrine of Subsidiarity and the Liberty of the Person

I find this in a letter to the editor written by Terrence Richardson of Glastonbury: “People generally don’t understand that the issue” –central to the Supreme Court draft decision on Roe v Wade – “isn’t about what we want. It’s about which authority is best suited to make the decisions: SCOTUS [the Supreme Court of the United States], 50 independent state legislatures, or one U.S. Congress.” That is a brief description of the Principle of Subsidiarity , an indispensible vein of liberty that runs through all governments everywhere, but most glowingly here in the United States. The animating idea of subsidiarity is that public functions should be exercised as close as possible to the citizen. The doctrine, originally a principle of social organization within the Catholic Church, holds “Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a g

Blumenthal, An Achilles without An Achilles’ Heel?

Blumenthal finding shelter from the storm “The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice”― G.K. Chesterton A few months prior to the November 2022 elections, Connecticut’s media is focusing upon ideological factions within the GOP . These factions are much in evidence in the state’s upcoming U.S. Senate race, which at the moment pits three Republican challengers against present U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal. All the members of Connecticut’s all-Democrat U.S. Congressional Delegation will be defending their seats in 2022. For various reasons, Blumenthal is considered by many commentators as the GOP’s San Juan Hill. Reading between the lines of many media reports, Blumenthal, it would appear, is nearly invulnerable to attack. He is a Connecticut Achilles without an Achilles’ heel. Blumenthal has won by comfortable margins all of his races during his three decades long stint in Connecticut politics. In his current race against three Repub

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy On The Abolition Of Privacy

Murphy It sometimes seems that controversy on important political and cultural issues showcased in Big Media is a one-way street, a no-exit cul-de-sac. To some it may seem that reading commentary on issues of moment is pretty much like overhearing a one-way phone conversation. The un-recorded voice, rarely heard or given sufficient space to make a detailed presentation, must always be inferred, often incorrectly. Following a “leaked” first draft of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the right of state legislatures to decide whether or not states should pass laws regulating abortion, one discovered, in Connecticut and elsewhere, the usual explosion of opinion on the Supreme Court’s attempt to chuck Roe v Wade overboard. The Alito decision found serious errors in Roe v Wade and concluded that in the future the Court should not preempt state legislative authority in deciding abortion issues. In this way all the hustle and bustle surrounding abortion, not in the least stilled since the C

Abortion Comes Home To Connecticut

Susan Bysiewicz There is little doubt that Democrats this election year will be sounding the Abortion Gong in nearly every competitive political race. Here is Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz’s sound-off, courtesy of CTMirror : “Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz said Stefanowski is offering women no assurance he would veto any (emphasis mine) effort to restrict access to abortion in Connecticut, a state whose legislature passed a law 32 years ago codifying the tenets of Roe. “’It’s one thing to support the current law. It’s another thing to step forward and say if a bill should come to your desk, that you will veto it, and you will fight any attempts to weaken our law, because those happen every year,’ Bysiewicz said. ‘So you’re not pro-choice, in my estimation, until you step up and say that.’” Republican gubernatorial aspirant Bob Stefanowski supports current law, but Bysiewicz and Governor Ned Lamont believe that Stefanowski’s pledge does not go far enough. Everyone – including p

Representatives Owe Their Constituents The Truth

The overriding obligation of both journalists and political representatives was best expressed by Edmund Burke in a letter to his constituents. “Your representative,” Burke said, “owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.” Try always to say the truth, never say more than you know, and always know more than you say. Representations of any kind, journalistic or political, swing on the notion that the representative – whether a journalist presenting propositions to his readers, or a politician claiming to represent the true interests of his constituents – is obligated to present the truth without fear or favor. He owes this to his constituents, if he is a representative, or to his reading public, if he is a reporter or commentator. Connecticut’s Junior U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, has been in office long enough, nine years, so that congressional ways are familiar to him. Prior to filling U.S. Senato

Roe v Wade Draft, Connecticut Rumbles

Opinion writing in Connecticut tends to drive everything left, including common sense, which used to preside over reasoning. A Connecticut opinion writer has made in The Day a strong case for voting against Governor Ned Lamont. He writes that he doesn’t “like the way Gov. Ned Lamont has presided over Connecticut.” Lamont was “born rich and entitled, and that alone might not be something to hold against him, except that it explains a lot about the prince-like way he has governed, contemptuous of laws meant to ensure open and transparent government.” Lamont’s management style is “arrogant,” and “he has presided blindly over what appears to be a government of monumental corruption, with senior administration managers, who didn't heed warnings about no-bid contracts, jumping ship as federal authorities probe literally hundreds of millions of dollars in state spending.” But, the commentator argues, “… given the news this week from the Supreme Court, I'll probably vote for him aga