Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

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Most seemingly endless U.S. Senate careers end with a whimper rather than a bang. When Dennis House, the moderator of “Face the State” on WFSB Channel 3, asked Senator Joe Lieberman how he would like to be remembered by history upon his retirement, Mr. Lieberman said the question put him in mind of Winston Churchill who, when asked a similar question, said he thought he would be well remembered because he himself intended to write the history of his time and place. Immediately, Mr. Lieberman, perhaps familiar with Mr. Churchill’s voluminous writings, said he didn’t know about writing history himself, but…

Shortly after Governor Dannel Malloy nominated his chief counsel Andrew McDonald to Connecticut’s Supreme Court, the Day of New London noted that it was “a testament of how far Connecticut has come that the least controversial fact about Andrew J. McDonald, nominated by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy on Thursday to join the state Supreme Court, is that he is openly gay.” When Mr. Malloy announced awhile back that his administration was the gayest in Connecticut history, no one bated an eyelash. Mr. McDonald was married to Charles Gray in 2009 by then Mayor of Stamford Malloy ; under Secretary for Criminal Justice Policy and Planning Michael Lawlor, the author of the problem ridden Earned Risk Reduction Credits program , is also openly gay.

It was only a matter of time before some Democratic politician high on demagoguery got around to linking the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School and Republican caution in Washington concerning President Obama's tax hikes. Here is U.S. Congressman John Larson, courtesy of the Hartford Courant , holding forth; for good measure, he managed to fold hurricane Sandy into his rhetoric as well:   U.S. Rep. John Larson, a Democrat from Connecticut’s 1st District, invokes the school massacre in Sandy Hook and the devastation of Storm Sandy in his statement asking House Republicans to get back to work. “The fast approaching fiscal cliff, now only five days away, has already created uncertainty for many and threatens to raise taxes and cut services for millions. “In Connecticut, New York and New Jersey Americans and their families wait for the relief aide that will help them rebuild following the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. “And after an unprecedented tragedy in Co...

The mass murder in Sandy Hook has spurred an effort, not always successful in the past, to bum-rush gun restriction legislation through both the U.S. Congress and Connecticut’s General Assembly. State gun control laws, as a general rule, are far less successful than national laws because the effective reach of state laws ends at the border. Criminals bent on mayhem may acquire weapons “illegal” in Connecticut by purchasing them outside the state, acquiring weapons on the black market or simply stealing them in states in which laws are less restrictive than those of Connecticut. National gun control laws would be uniform and apply in every state in the union. Connecticut’s gun control laws , the fourth most restrictive in the nation, were not successful in preventing a murderous assault by Adam Lanza on the Sandy Hook Elementary school in which 6 faculty members and 20 children were cruelly slaughtered in two classrooms by a determined murderer who apparently stole an arsenal of we...

 

Following the horrific mass murder in Sandy Hook, Connecticut – 27 people slain, 20 of them innocent children – it took but a moment for some politicians to mount their various hobby horses and, in an effort not to let this bloody crisis go to waste, call loudly for “immediate action” on gun control measures. Here is the Hartford Courant lashing the political draft horses: “Stay angry. Remember how you felt this weekend. Don't let the faces of those children go until meaningful, actual steps are taken to make this a safer and less violent country.” Any call for immediate action while the heart is bludgeoned by emotion should be politely resisted, because right action – the only kind that actually solves problems – generally follows in the train of right thought. Emotional responses, however appropriate given the circumstances, often lead to ineffective dead end streets and solutions that only solve the problems of those proposing solutions. After barrels of ink have been sp...

Gérard Depardieu, the French actor who moved to Belgium recently to escape the confiscatory 75 per cent top marginal income tax rate imposed on millionaires by newly elected French President   François Hollande, is at least as “French” as the Eiffel Tower. And his background points to a proletarian upbringing. When another of France’s sons – in fact, the richest man in the country, Bernard Arnault, the CEO and chief shareholder of the luxury behemoth LVMH – kicked the socialist dust of France from his A. Testoni Moro monk-strap shoes and moved to Belgium to escape the depredations visited upon him by M. Hollande, the first socialist President of France since François Mitterrand left office, the left wing Libération expressed its contempt for the rich in a headline on its front page: “Get lost, you rich b------.”

Adam Lanza – and Adam Lanza ALONE – is responsible for the Sandy Hook massacre, which is to say: 1) Adam Lanza’s mother is not responsible for the crime, nor is his father or brother.   The Lanza’s were divorced. In a report from the Daily Mail of Britain , a former classmate of Adam Lanza is reported as having said, “He was a loner at school and hyper intelligent. But in recent years he disappeared off the radar. The word is that he was badly affected when his parents split and that might be what pushed him over the edge.” But divorces do not lead ineluctably to carnage of this kind. There is no necessary connection between solitude and murder.

Connecticut Commentary -- here: http://donpesci.blogspot.com/ -- is now accepting nominations for "Un-Person of the Year." Please submit the name of the un-person you will nominate and a brief, say, two line message explaining your nomination. Nominations will be posted on Connecticut Commentary (It would be nice if I could post your name along with the nomination, but non-scatological anonymous  nominations will be considered. I’m hoping the thing can be up to open the New Year, Jan 1. It's OK if you open your humor sluice gates in your nominations. 

Connecticut no longer can produce sufficient revenues necessary to pay for its improvident spending. Its revenue engines, after years of uncontrolled acceleration, are sputtering and wheezing, businesses are looking for the exit, and the ONLY remaining option – assuming the state is not interested in declaring bankruptcy as its itch to spend dooms all prospects of recovery – is real spending reform. Real reform would involve identifying spending drivers and offering solutions that cut spending permanently. Temporary and half solutions will not do. And spending reform, always painful, cannot be accomplished in the absence of a reform vanguard made up of courageous politicians and tribunes of the people who are willing to press needed spending reforms in the face of a strenuous opposition from entrenched interests.

Distressing news from CTMirror : “Gov. Dannel P. Malloy reinforced today that there's a new tradition at the Middlesex Chamber of Commerce's annual holiday breakfast: Expect a serious speech reviewing the challenges facing Connecticut, not a comedy roast. "’I don't do poems,’ Malloy said. ‘I don't do humor well.’" Complete the following sentence: An Irishman without a sense of humor is like … Please note: It would take a sense of humor to complete the sentence, and non-Irishman need not apply.

The Malloyalist tree has lost some leaves along the way as the governor approaches the end of his first term in office. The latest to depart is senior advisor Roy Occhiogrosso, said to be Governor Dannel Malloy’s “ closest confidant.” Mr. Occhiogrosso’s own reaction to his departure was uncharacteristically understated, almost blasé: “I personally think people tend to stay in these jobs too long some times. I had a great time. It's time to do something else." Sometime last January, Mr. Malloy opened the exit door a crack. He told his staff that those who did not want to remain with him as he served out the next two years of his term in office should leave then, but Mr. Occhigrosso agreed to remain for yet another year.

Searching for the real Saint Nicholas presents the usual problems. Historians in the age of the saints were not interested in removing certain doubtful accretions from their hagiographic accounts. It is very difficult, if not impossible, at this remove to separate the historical wheat from the chaff in the legends of old Saint Nick; and doing so would be inadvisable – because legends also affect history; in fact, the legend may have a more profound effect on events than what we moderns call historical facts. It does not help that the legend and hagiography of Saint Nicholas of Myra (4 th century) is in some measure intermingled with the life of Nicholas of Pharroa, monk of Sion and Bishop of Pinara (6 th century). Church records in the 6 th century were more complete than those of earlier centuries because the Christian church only began to flourish after a long period of severe persecution had ended. Nicholas of Myra (in present day Turkey) is a saint of the persecuted ch...

Charming how Connecticut, whenever the state dips its toes into a budget crisis, tends to cook the books. During his first gubernatorial campaign in 2010, Governor Dannel Malloy campaigned on a platform to adopt real world accounting measures so that the accounting sins of preceding governors – two of them Republicans and the third a “Maverick” Republican – would not be visited on Mr. Malloy or succeeding governors, yea, even to the third generation. That was what Generally Accepted Accounting Procedures (GAAP) was all about. Connecticut’s modified cash basis system, an accounting method full of blue smoke and mirrors, had played havoc with state budgets, the governor and his Malloyalists said. Adopting GAAP would end what one reporter at the time called “an array of accounting gimmicks that have pushed current expenses into future years.” No more budgetary sleight of hand, the governor strongly implied in his public statements.

The first shots of the 2014 gubernatorial campaign were fired by Malloyalist pit bull Roy Occhiogrosso and state Democratic Party Chairwoman Nancy DiNardo shortly after former Ambassador to Ireland Tom Foley announced at the end of November his availability for the Republican nomination for governor. Asked by a reporter to comment on Mr. Foley’s early entrance into the gubernatorial arena, Mr. Occhiogrosso sniffed, “We don’t comment on Tom Foley’s political ambitions. He lost one race. He’s more than welcome to lose another.” Ms. DiNardo, coloring within the lines of Mr. Occhiogrosso’s curt dismissal, said in a media release, “Tom Foley just doesn’t get it. Like Mitt Romney, he doesn’t understand the challenges that average hardworking people face. He is just another out-of-touch vulture capitalist who sees the average resident as something less. It’s a toxic world view that the voters of this country rejected just a few weeks ago. And if ambassador Foley runs again, he’ll find...

A business reporter for a Hartford newspaper writes in an above the fold, front page story , “ In An Era of Fiscal Crisis, Malloy Has Few Places To Run ,” that “Malloy's budget chief issued a firm statement in writing: ‘The Governor will NOT propose tax increases as a solution to these challenges.’" The “challenges” are a budget deficit in Governor Dannel Malloy’s first budget of $362 million, a figure that will escalate in coming weeks, and a future projected deficit of $960 million per year in each of the next three years. Connecticut’s total state debt – including pension fund debt of $60 billion and $20 billion in bonded debt – is the third highest debt per capita in the United States and represents about 40 percent of the state’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

“The Republicans have had their chance at ruining the country, and now it’s the Democrat’s turn. I’m sure they’ll do a better job of it.” “A better job of what?” “Ruining the country.”

Such are the parallels between the Malloy and Obama administrations that it might almost be said President Barack Obama is now replicating on a national scale The Malloy Way, with one important exception. When Governor Dannel Malloy first came into office, Connecticut was facing a daunting deficit of about $3 billion in a biennial budget of about $20 billion. Hoisting the flag of “shared sacrifice,” Mr. Malloy raised taxes, imposing on Connecticut the largest tax increase in state history. Mr. Obama’s most recent gambit is to raise taxes immediately on the country’s malefactors of great wealth in a special session of the congress, saving until tomorrow – “which creeps in this petty pace to the last annals of recorded time” -- any strategy to reduce spending.   

Governor Malloy has told the Appropriations and Finance, Revenue & Bonding committees through his Office of Policy and Management Secretary Ben Barnes that he will not resort to tax increases to backfill what Mr. Malloy calls a $365 million “shortfall” in his budget. Mr. Malloy has been less assertive concerning “a deficit of as much as $1.2 billion projected for the coming fiscal year -- a shortfall of 6 percent -- saying only that he has ‘no intention of raising taxes,’" according to a story in CTMirror .

Joe Markley gives his usual update on the state of the state http://www.youtube.com/ctsenaterepublicans , continually growing worse. Put the kids to bed and watch it; wouldn’t want to frighten the poor tikes. Markley: “The only way to solve (these continual budget ‘shortfalls’) is to reduce spending.”

Democrats, far more than Republicans in Connecticut, have shown themselves to be prisoners of their ideological convictions. Some of these persuasions are mentioned in a recent column by Chris Powell, Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer and a political columnist for the paper, who is often mistaken by politicians he has gored over the years as a conservative, an error Linda McMahon is not likely to make.

Seniority equals clout in the U.S. Congress. New Senators and House members entering the portals of the U.S. Capitol are expected to be seen and not heard for their first year or so in office. Both Connecticut’s U.S. Senators are new arrivals. Senator Richard Blumenthal, who appears to be having a problem shedding his past as Connecticut’s Attorney General, the state’s litigator-in-chief and consumer advocate, passed his first year blinking as the world slid chaotically by. With a couple of years in the Senate under his belt, Mr. Blumenthal may now be prepared to open his beak and sing a song. Political watchers in his state are hoping the melody will not be freighted with bills he wished he had been able to enact as attorney general. The state’s soon to be Senior Senator, after a scant two years in Congress, has not favored his favorite newspapers with exhaustive opinions on a raft of recent nettlesome issues, including the destruction of the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, the murd...

Ann made pies, not for a living; it was a passion and an avocation for her. And   seemingly everyone in Windsor Locks -- a small town lying in peace and obscurity on the Connecticut River – knew that Ann made pies. As a boy, I swam in the canal that runs parallel to the river after which the town, resplendent with locks that used to carry shipping cargo past the treacherous falls in Enfield, was named. Ann made pies, took care of the social needs of Saint Mary’s Church and loved her husband, Buzzy. Her daughter married my brother, and from that moment our two families were folded together. Windsor Locks was so small, Mark Twain might have said, that it had room in it for only one pie maker. True, Twain said this of drunks, not pie makers, but it applies to both. Once you tasted one of Ann’s pies, you were instantly transported to bakery heaven.

You know when an election in Connecticut is over when virtually all incumbent Democrats are re-elected to office, after having been fulsomely endorsed by much of the state’s left of center media, and when, several days after the election, bad news headlines begin to appear in Connecticut’s only state-wide newspaper : “State’s Medicaid Costs Soar, Projected Budget Deficit Attributed In Part to Expanded Coverage.” That headline appeared in a Hartford paper as a front page above the fold story a little less than two weeks after the election. According to the story, we discover that the state’s $365 million budget deficit “dates, in part, to two years ago when Connecticut became the first state to expand medical coverage to low-income adults as an early adopter of federal health care reform .” The federal health care reform program is Obamacare. The architects of Obamacare were careful to front load the program with alluring benefits; payments for the alluring benefits were deferred u...

Here is the bottom line of a serious and splendid analysis of our economic paralysis done by Reid Holloway, a consultant, specializing in strategic development and a hedge manager for private clients who developed The RLH Volatility Model, a proprietary mathematical model for assessing and managing equity portfolio risk, and Robert Eramo an actuarial genius, author of Money, Credit and Federal Reserve Policy Changes ”: “We believe there is the possibility we may even have a “soft landing,” but that doesn’t mean the crosswinds approaching the runway won’t be without some turbulence.   If during this time frame the congress manages to come together on a plan for spending and tax reform—even if that includes a protracted government shutdown—we could resume the trajectory of slow economic growth we’ve been on for some time, with probable implications of flattening unemployment-rate trends at about the levels we’re experiencing now.” The report, well worth consulting, may be...

To a certain degree, all utopianists are eternal optimists – Panglossian optimists. The world may be crumbling about them, but their lively imaginations lift them above the debris. Realists will agree that the future does not seem sparkling for Europe just now. The latest news is that ALL of Europe, with the possible exception of stout Germany, has entered a second, double dip recession . In Greece, Spain and perhaps Italy a depression has sunk its teeth into Europe’s soft underbelly. Greece, the home of democracy, bid democracy goodbye as it tumbled into a depression, overloaded with accumulative debt and unsustainable social programs.   Euro-technocrats now direct its future. In Italy, Spain and perhaps France, the same stern number crunchers are waiting in the wings for the inevitable collapse of European Social Democracy. Here in the United States, voters from sea to shining sea have just reelected as president the most progressive, European oriented chief exe...

It’s extremely important for politicians to hide horrors before elections. One shudders to think how voting in Connecticut for the General Assembly might have changed if Connecticut’s eminently dupable citizens had known before they entered the polling booths that their state was running a deficit of $365-million. The admission that Connecticut was running a deficit large enough to require Governor Dannel Malloy to submit a deficit mitigation plan to the General Assembly came nine days after votes were tallied in Connecticut. State law requires the governor to submit to the General Assembly a deficit mitigation plan whenever a budget deficit reaches 1 percent of general fund spending. State statute requires Mr. Malloy to submit to State Comptroller Kevin Lembo a deficit mitigation plan. After Mr. Lembo certifies the deficit on December 1, the governor is required to present his plan to the Democratic dominated General Assembly. Members of the General Assembly no doubt were – ...

Newly re-elected U.S. Representative Jim Himes, a moderate Democrat operating out of Connecticut’s 4 th District, has said concerning the nation’s so called fiscal cliff, “Washington understands how severe the consequences of the fiscal cliff are. When I saw House Speaker (John) Boehner speak two days ago, I thought he was conciliatory and traced the outlines of a deal." Of course, the perceived severity of fiscal cliffs depends to some extent on one’s political vulnerability. Not all severity is created equal, and Democrats ensconced in Connecticut’s safe districts, such as U.S. Representatives John Larson and Rosa DeLauro, are apt to confront the fiscal cliff with less trepidation than Mr. Himes. A recent study conducted by the Defense Technology Initiative should serve the members of Connecticut’s all Democratic Congressional delegation as a splash of cold water in the face. The study presents a sobering picture of Connecticut’s own fiscal cliff that should...

The lede in a Daily Mail story covering the affair CIA chief General David Petraeus had with Paula Broadwell was carefully fashioned:   “President Obama faced allegations of a major political cover-up last night over the resignation of CIA chief General David Petraeus, who had an affair with a married woman. “Congress is expected to investigate claims that the affair was hushed up to protect Obama’s re-election campaign.” The “cover-up” is a two’fer: Congress is now investigating both the failure of the White House to extract ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens from a compound under siege by terrorists and the Petraeus affair. Both Petraeus and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have declined to make an appearance before a congressional committee investigating the terrorist raid on the consulate in Benghazi, and in both cases a White House cover-up has been intimated . Neither of the two Democrats newly elected to Connecticut’s all Democrat Congressional dele...

So, the elections are over -- for a too brief interlude. The grumps who have been complaining all along that there is no longer a breathing space between elections are right. Forward! as they say in the progressive Beltway. In our time, politics itself has become a form of electioneering. That’s what is wrong with it. President John Kennedy governed ; President Barack Obama campaigns. Campaign finance reform was supposed to settle some of these problems.

Some people spend their whole live wondering if they’ve made a difference. The Marines don’t have that problem -- Ronald Reagan There are only two kinds of people that understand Marines: Marines and the enemy. Everyone else has a second-hand opinion -- Gen. William Thornson, U.S. Army The bended knee is not a tradition of our Corps -- General Alexander A. Vandergrift, USMC to the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, 5 May 1946 By their victory, the 3rd, 4th and 5th Marine Divisions and other units of the Fifth Amphibious Corps have made an accounting to their country which only history will be able to value fully. Among the Americans who served on Iwo Island, uncommon valor was a common virtue -- Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, U.S. Navy I am convinced that there is no smarter, handier, or more adaptable body of troops in the world -- Prime Minister of Britain, Sir Winston Churchill A Ship without Marines is like a garment without buttons -- Adm. David Dixon Porte...

The following Blog was written by Bob MacGuffie of Right Principles . Mr. MacGuffie is associated with Connecticut’s burgeoning Tea Party Movement In the wake of our national ticket's loss I've heard some erratic and erroneous criticisms and suggestions from Republicans, which if followed would be injurious to the conservative movement. Too many are buying into the deception propagated by Liberal commentators - that Obama's election represents an historic strategic shift in the electorate founded in a fundamental demographic change. Make no mistake, this was only a tactical win . When the campaign itself credits acres of its paid telemarketers in Chicago calling every conceivable ethnic, racial, and gender niche in only nine states, promising whatever each marketing niche desires, you are tactical, and not strategic.

Nationally, most Republican election analysts called it wrong.   Moments following the election, Dick Morris repented in sackcloth and ashes . He had missed something that one might call the New Democratic Majority, which is on the order of missing Gibraltar while sailing the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula: “By the time you finish with the various demographic groups the Democrats win, you almost have a majority in their corner. Count them: Blacks cast 13% of the vote and Obama won them 12-1. Latinos cast 10% and Obama carried them by 7-3. Under 30 voters cast 19% of the vote and Obama swept them by 12-7. Single white women cast 18% of the total vote and Obama won them by 12-6. There is some overlap among these groups, of course, but without allowing for any, Obama won 43-17 before the first married white woman or man over 30 cast their vote. (Lets guess that if we eliminate duplication, the Obama margin would be 35-13) Having conceded these votes, Romney would have had...

It looks as if Republicans, once again, did not bring home the bacon in Connecticut. Campaign analysts are asking why. This is an easy one. Republicans are outnumbered in the state roughly by a ratio of two to one, a very steep hill to climb. And, considering the historic nature of journalism in Connecticut, they cannot expect a leg up from the state’s left of center media. The Hartford Courant’s election eve endorsement editorial for instance looked as if it had been dictated to the paper’s publisher and editorial board by David Axelrod, and the paper’s endorsement of Democrat Elizabeth Esty over moderate Republican Andrew Roraback was particularly self-serving .

Political comedy really should reach across the ideological barricades. Poor Gary Trudeau keeps getting snagged in the razor wire that surrounds Doonesbury. Bubble 1) Sorry. You’re toast. Goodbye. Bubble 2) You know, it just amazes me that only a few years after the economy was brought to its knees by a gang of predatory Wall Street plutocrats… Bubble 3) That the GOP would nominate a predatory Wall Street plutocrat. Bubble 4) Do they think we don’t remember who screwed us over and hollowed out the middle class? People just like Romney! Without the cartoon characters, the text would make a letter perfect New York Times Obama endorsement. And, has anyone noticed that Bill Maher’s boilerplate comedy is getting tiresome? Maher: "So, I should just say for anyone thinking about voting for Mitt Romney, if that’s who you are, I would like to make this one plea: Black people know who you are, and they will come after you. I’m kidding. Oh, I’m kidding. What I meant ...

President Barack Obama’s critics have a point when they say that Mr. Obama is having some difficulty defending the practical consequences of his policies. An unemployment rate of 7.8 percent four years after Mr. Obama said his progressive policies would result in an unemployment rate of 5.6 percent is certainly an economic bummer. We are very far from normalcy. To date, Mr. Obama has shucked off the non-performing economy on former President George Bush, but the dodge of responsibility for an economy in cardiac arrest is beginning to annoy the unemployed. Such laggard numbers suggests the opposite of progress and gives weight to the charge made by Mr. Obama’s critics that, at least in economic matters, the president for his entire term has been marching to the wrong drummer. The right course, Republican Vice President Nominee Paul Ryan attempted to suggest in his first and only debate with Vice President Joe Biden, was outlined by President John Kennedy in a 1963 speech to th...

It would be a disgrace to journalism in Connecticut if questions concerning the murder of a U.S. ambassador attached to the consulate in Benghazi were not put to all the members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation, preferably before Connecticut voters march to the polls to decide who among the candidates for Congress this year are best fitted to represent them.

The last of the Hartford Courant’s increasingly irrelevant U.S. Congressional delegation endorsements appeared in the paper on Friday. The Courant -- shocking the entire state – endorsed U.S. Representative Chris Murphy over former soft-porn WWE impresario Linda McMahon who, in the course of her run for Joe Lieberman’s soon to be vacant seat, snubbed Connecticut’s left of center media. Courant endorsements are “conservative” in the bad sense. Connecticut’s congressional delegation is non-diverse; all the members of the delegation are Democrats, and it is clear, following the paper’s endorsement of Elizabeth Esty over moderate Republican Andrew Roraback, that the publisher of the paper and its editorial board members prefer it this way. Adding its endorsement of Democrat Elizabeth Esty’s to that of former Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi, the Hartford Courant in its editorial, “Democrat's positions edge Andrew Roraback's bona fides,” tipped its hat to moderate...

President of Planned Parenthood Cecile Richards announced recently her intention to campaign for President Barack Obama FULL TIME, and no wonder. Planned Parenthood -- the largest abortion provider on the planet, with the possible exception of China’s pro-abortion fascist state controlled facilities – is big business. Every single day, Planned Parenthood receives more than $1.34 million public tax dollars. Abortion procedures account for 46% of all Planned Parenthood clinic revenue. Ms. Richards last year pulled in a sumptuous $400,000 paycheck as her business systematically aborted over 320,000 children each year. Here in Connecticut, the Democratic Party from Chicago has managed to tag as “extremists” politicians and potential politicians whose views on abortion fall short of those of Planned Parenthood.

Linda McMahon may or may not win her campaign to replace Senator Joe Lieberman in the U.S. Congress. Everyone agrees that her race with media favorite Chris Murphy is a close one. Although it is a presidential election year, Barack Obama appears to have lost some of his luster since his last election, his coattails having been clipped by four years in office during which the recovery promised by the president has yet to surface. The latest Gallup poll shows the president trailing Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney by seven points , not a propitious sign. If Mrs. McMahon is elected to the U.S. Senate, her critics in Connecticut – pretty nearly every commentator in the state – will put down her win to dollars spent. In this regard, Mrs. McMahon is the exception in Connecticut.

Apparently Edith Prague’s recent stroke has not affected her political prejudices. Here is Prague on Republican Chris Coutu,” who is running for the state Senate in the 19 th District: “He’s referred to by some colleagues in the House as cuckoo Coutu,’’ Prague said. “His votes clearly indicate he is not thinking through on the issues. … Certainly I would want somebody in my seat who has some of the same values that I have. Chris voted against the budget, and there were some very good programs in the budget. His voting record is very questionable.’’ Concerning Coutu’s positions, Prague said, “Pro-gun. Oh, man alive. God help us.’’ She added, “I’m very sorry that I’m not running for my seat. The doctor said don’t get yourself in a stressful situation. The job is not that stressful. It’s the campaigning. It would have been a very tough campaign. I didn’t want to take the chance of a second stroke, but I’m miserable not to be running. I love my job. I love being in the Senate...

Americans used to wait a decent interval before they set about re-writing history. An example of a recent re-write may be found in an op-ed written by Mark Bowen, who writes for the New Republic. The piece is a glowing review of Ben Affleck’s new film “Argo.” In the course of his review, Mr. Bowen punctures what he understands to be two grave misunderstandings: 1) that former President Jimmy Carter was too weak to foresee and prevent the Iranian hostage crisis; “in fact, he prepared and launched one of the boldest covert military efforts in American history,” and 2) that President Ronald Reagan “proved to be a lot more willing to deal with the mullahs than Carter ever was.” In other pieces written by Mr. Bowen ,   the author of “ "Guests of the Ayatollah" is constrained to mention in passing some similarities between the Iranian crisis and recent difficulties in Benghazi, the site of the murder by terrorists of American Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Ame...

One of Linda McMahon’s most insistent critics, Chris Powell of the Journal Inquirer, noted in a post-debate column that Mrs. McMahon’s view on abortion was … ahem … “more nuanced” than that of Chris Murphy. The views of President Barack Obama on abortion are, if possible, more extreme than those of Mr. Murphy. There are no circumstances in which the president would disallow an abortion. As an Illinois state senator, Mr. Obama had fulsomely supported legislation permitting abortion on demand, which would include the kind of sex selection abortion practiced in China and – this may surprise pro-abortion proponents – abortions condemned by the early church fathers in the late Roman Empire. The paterfamilias of a family in Rome at the time St. Augustine of Hippo was fulminating against the practice held life and death powers over his children, born and unborn. While infanticide was rare, in the Clintonian sense, during the reign of the Caesars, a father could not be punished under Roma...