Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Biden With a wink and that sly smile for which he is known, President Joe Biden snuffed a document grab by the Democrat controlled Congressional Committee investigating the so called “insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2020, as reported by the South China Morning Post . According to a recent Associated Press  (AP) story, carried by a Hartford Paper on page 4 in its World and Nation section, “A federal appeals court ruled this month [December] against [former President Donald] Trump, and he [Trump] has filed an appeal to the Supreme Court, though the high court has yet to decide whether to take up the case. “Judge Patricia Millett, writing for the court in the Dec. 9 opinion, said Congress had a ‘uniquely vital interest’ in studying the events of Jan. 6 and Biden had made a ‘carefully reasoned’ determination that the documents were in the public interest and that executive privilege should therefore not be invoked. Trump also failed to show any harm that would occur fro

Burns The New Year, I pointed out to an acquaintance, has GOT to be better than the old year in sad, old New England. His left eyebrow shot up, a near certain sign that I had crossed some forbidden threshold into absurdity. “Why?” he asked. “Because the future is built upon the past and generally has been an improvement,” I answered. “My great grandfather had the use of an outhouse, bitterly cold in the winter. But I have modern plumbing, television, Facebook, Twitter, all the modern conveniences, in addition to an all Democrat U.S. Congressional Delegation, a Democrat dominated General Assembly, a Democrat governor – who has become, with the blessings of the General Assembly, an autocrat far more powerful than the Borgias of the Florentine Republic -- all of which seems not to have alarmed Connecticut’s vigilant left of center media. Surely, if we were headed to the poor house, they would tell us so.” The eyebrow spired up again, like the tower of a gothic cathedral. “Your son

Manchin The shakers and movers in the national Democrat Party, chiefly speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi of California and Democrat leader in the U.S. Senate Chuck Schumer of New York, knew months before a Congressional vote on President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” spending extravaganza that they did not have sufficient members in the Senate to pass the measure, which, not incidentally, would have worsened a growing national debt approaching $30 trillion and stoked the fires of a now raging inflation. Their surprise at the vote is not only surprising; it is a shameless imposture gussied up as a surprise. The Biden-Pelosi-Schumer Build Back Better plan -- indecently swollen with new spending the cost of which will be passed on to their children and grandchildren, this at a time when much of the nation is still lying prostrate under the boots of COVID-related business shutdowns -- was effectively killed, for the time being, by two moderate Democrats, U.S. Se

Blumenthal U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s inflexible position onabortion -- neither states nor the federal government shall pass ANY reasonable law regulating abortion – places him in a minority of a minority of a minority -- even in his home state. Blumenthal’s fanatical support of abortion and his fierce opposition to reasonable abortion restrictions is granular. He even voted against S.311/H.R.962, the “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which provides “If an abortion results in the live birth of an infant, the infant is a legal person for all purposes under the laws of the United States, and entitled to all the protections of such laws.” The following data points should serve as beacons of light in the gathering gloom of the oncoming pro-abortion/anti-abortion battle. Three quarters of the world’s nations, including much of Western Europe, ban abortion after two weeks, while only seven nations throughout the world currently permit abortion after twenty weeks of g

Blumenthal A few days after the publication of U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s virtual appearance at New Haven’s Communist Party Amistad Awards ceremony had appeared in several news venues, Blumenthal made himself available to questions from Hartford Courant reporter Chris Keating. Connecticut Commentary’s account of the New Haven based Communist Party Amistad Award proceedings may be found here: Blumenthal, Dancing with the Enemy? Keating’s story, “ Senator defends presence at event ”, is subtitled “Blumenthal says he was unaware of its Communist Party ties.” The lede to the story reads: “ U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal says he would not have attended a recent awards ceremony in New Haven if he knew it was tied to the Communist Party. He has been criticized by Republicans and conservative media outlets for attending.” Blumenthal has yet to be criticized by his associates in the U.S. Congress, and much of Connecticut’s media likely will be satisfied with Blumenthal’s defense. In a

Kerry Socha Americans quickly recover from disasters such as floods and tornadoes, provided one has proper insurance or may rely on the kindness of friends and strangers. But Americans grow irritable over problems easily settled that are exacerbated by stupidity, here defined as a chronic inability to accept responsibility and set a more reasonable course of action to solve the problems one has caused. Such is the masking situation in Ellington. Jennifer Dzen, Republican Chairwoman of the Ellington Board of Education, puts it this way. The panel is not opposed to vaccines, according to a  Hartford paper . “More than 72% of children between 12 and 17 in Ellington have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, and the school system held vaccine clinics for students and staff.” Given the statistics, it is safe to conclude that there are no vaccine deniers on the Board of Education. She continues, “We have been following all the guidelines.” Gubernatorial “guidelines”,

Blumenthal screenshot People’s World Amistad Awards  Just to be perfectly clear at the outset, Connecticut’s U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal is NOT a card carrying communist. However, the head of the Connecticut Communist Party, Joelle Fishman, the head of the Communist Party in Russia, Vladimir Putin, and the head of the Communist Party in China, Xi Jinping, are all card carrying communists. The seeming romance between Connecticut’s communists, anchored firmly in New Haven, and the super-rich Blumenthal, whom the high priests of communist orthodoxy undoubtedly would have sent to the Soviet Gulag, is difficult to decipher, but there are hints here and there in a brief address "surprise guest"  Blumenthal delivered  on the occasion of the Connecticut Communist Party’s annual People’s World Amistad Awards that may dispel the mystery. In a sense it is idle to speak of a local or state Communist Party, because the Communist Party is now, and ever has been, a globalist venture

Logan   It may be a trifle more difficult this coming election season for Democrats to hold on to an all Democrat U.S. Congressional Delegation. Former State Senator George Logan may be on the Republican ticket next year, and voters in Connecticut’s 5 th  District may no longer be comfortable with postmodern progressives in the U.S. Congress. Logan was the only Black member of the state Senate’s GOP caucus during his two term tenure. He is an engineer and a business man who, as CTMirror noted, “does not shrink from identity politics.” He hopes to unseat “U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5th District, a political novice in 2018 when she became the first Black woman elected to Congress from Connecticut and one of the first two in New England.” Within the past few elections, Democrats have stumbled badly in Connecticut’s 5 th U.S. Congressional District. A 2014 piece in Connecticut Commentary, Taking the Fifth , surveyed the pratfalls: “The FBI intervention began when the struggle for the 5

Weicker and Fidel "Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others "  --   Otto von Bismarck New England – most conspicuously Connecticut and Massachusetts – has been a school of hard knocks for Republicans who in the past have been liberal on social issues and conservative on fiscal issues. This brand, popular for many years in Connecticut and Massachusetts, has not sold in either state for decades. The last fiscally conservative, socially liberal U.S. Congressman in Connecticut was Chris Shays, whose politics was a mirror image of that of Republican Party destructor-elect Lowell Weicker , a maverick U.S. Senator for many years whose long run in the U.S. Congress was cut short by then Attorney General of Connecticut, Joe Lieberman. Wise heads conjectured at the time that Lieberman had bested Weicker because Lieberman was a Democrat who, like Weicker, was socially liberal and fiscally conservative – a Jack Kennedy kind of Democ

John Droney “If men were angels,” said James Madison, “no government would be necessary.” And if governors were angels, no political advisors such as John Droney, former state Democrat Party chairman and Lamont supporter, would be necessary Droney along with other angels and academics, are now offering their expertise, which is considerable, to Governor Ned Lamont, battered for the last couple of weeks for having been too opaque concerning the wicked Machiavellian way of professional politicians. Somewhat like former President Donald Trump, Lamont is not a professional politician; he is a millionaire who lives in toney Greenwich, along with other millionaires such as U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal. He makes lots of money – Greenwich is a rather high priced burg – but less than his enterprising wife, Annie Lamont. Droney is caught spilling the political beans in a Courant piece titled “ As Gov. Lamont faces questions on Annie Lamont’s investments and state contracts, critics say m

Ukraine, Holodomor, 1933   Communist Parties both in China and Russia appear to be on the move, and their moves are in large part military. According to an Associated Press story, here updated,   that appeared in Saturday’s Hartford Courant -- print edition cost, $5.50 – the U.S. intelligence behemoth has sprung a leak. U.S. officials “have determined that Russian planning is underway for a possible military offensive against Ukraine that could begin as soon as early 2022 and would include an estimated 175,000 personnel” according to an unnamed administrative official, perhaps a conscience stricken military functionary. The news that Vladimir Putin would like to reassemble the Soviet Union should come as no surprise to Western intelligence. The loss of Soviet bloc nations to the West and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Putin has often said, is the " greatest  geopolitical catastrophe of the last century." The real architect of the Soviet Union was, of course, Josep

Blumenthal   The abortion question will not be decided on theological grounds. Nor has it ever been adjudicated by any appellate court in the U.S. purely on theological grounds. It is part of our political theatre of the absurd for abortion rights activists to be arguing at this remove that  stare decisis , which obliges judges to stand by precedent, prevents the Court from revisiting two decisions that for nearly a half century have dumped political protestors, pro and contra, at the doors of the U.S. Supreme Court. The protestors are agitating politically precisely because by withdrawing the issue from state legislators and plopping it into the dark robes of the judicial department, the court itself has been forced to own what is essentially an issue that, from the very first, should have been decided by legislatures, not courts. The abortion issue, in other words, should have been decided in the court of public opinion by state legislators accountable to the people – not in

Sharpe Michael Sharpe, former Jamoke Academy charter school CEO in Hartford, Connecticut, had been hiding in plain sight for years, yet he was invisible to employment overseers in the state of Connecticut. No one saw him because no one was looking. Then too, once a criminal needle is buried in Connecticut’s public employee haystack, it is difficult to locate necessary data for purposes of hiring and firing. Sharpe was just clever enough to omit unsavory information on his hiring forms, but not clever enough to abandon his criminal activity. Even so, he had left behind himself a blood red trail of offenses that easily should have been detected in routine background searches. And what one might call for reasons of concision Sharpe’s “rap sheet” could not fail to impress any career criminal. Sharpe, first came to the notice of prosecutors when he was convicted of forgery “for falsifying documents he used to obtain a $415,000 loan from the city of Hartford to redevelop an apartment bui