The First Blumieblooper

In what may be the first blooper during what promises to be Sen. Dick Blumenthal’s long term in the U.S. Congress, the senator told ABC News: “I think that we will need to address Social Security — if the current trends continue — sometime after the next 10 years or so, but not as part of dealing with the deficit."

It is one thing to kick the social security can down the road ten years, quite another to assert that the problem with the program can be settled without increasing the deficit.

Social security, mistakenly thought by some to be a savings program in which retirees draw from a pool of money to which they have contributed during their working lives, is actually something of a Ponzi scheme in which current retirees draw money from current workers. When the withdrawals exceed current contributions, you have a serious problem, which Mr. Blumenthal proposes to address ten years down the road.

That problem cannot be addressed as other than a deficit issue. Mr. Blumenthal, suer in chief as attorney general in Connecticut, would have known this if he were a business executive used to handing budgets. Alas, he is no Linda McMahon, the Republican Mr. Blumenthal defeated on his march to immortality as Connecticut’s soon to be senior U.S. Senator, an event that will occur, one hopes, before the social security system goes belly up.

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Casey Chadwick’s Uneasy Life after Death

Casey and her mother Wendy "I just started grief counseling. I'm always sad. I'm sad and in pain and I miss her." Wendy Hartling Hartling is the mother of Casey Chadwick, murdered in 2015 by Jean Jacques , an illegal Haitian immigrant. Jacques was convicted of the murder of Chadwick in a New London Superior Court jury trial and sentenced by Judge Barbara Bailey Jongbloed to a 60 year term in prison. Since Jacques is 44 years of age, the sentence was, in effect, a life sentence. Connecticut Commentary coverage of the Chadwick murder may be found here , and here and here . Jacques could not have been sentenced to death because Connecticut’s Democrat dominated General Assembly, under pressure from the state Supreme Court, had abolished Connecticut’s death penalty law in 2012 . The slaughter of Chadwick was particularly brutal. Her body had been found by a friend who, opening a door to a closet, discovered Chadwick stuffed in a dark corner drenched in blo...

Understanding North Korea Through Dramaturgy

The U.S. military is sending the Vinson Strike Group, including the carrier and two guided-missile destroyers, to operate in the Western Pacific Ocean in response to Pyongyang’s recent missile tests. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, asked about the strike force, issued a terse statement: “The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment.” Is this a post-Syrian bombing mission? Will the US take out North Korea’s missile launching sites, possibly with the unspoken concurrence of China? Never let a bombing go to waste. There are some in the United States who think any such incident should be used to rid North Korea of that runty little totalitarian cock-of-the-walk who keeps his countrymen starved, in fear and at his knees. Since we only have one chance, they say, go for the clean sweep -- no more Kims. Connecticut Commentary is reprinting an earlier piece about the Kims here. Best read with a glass of port.

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

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