Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Tong Republican leader in a General Assembly disproportionally controlled by Democrats, State  Senator Stephen Harding of Brookfield, and six other Republicans have signed a letter addressed to Governor Ned Lamont demanding the resignation of associates of former Chairwoman of Connecticut’s  Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) Marissa Gillett, who recently surrendered her office.   The six Republican senators, the Hartford Courant tells us, “are asking if two of her [Gillett’s] subordinates will also leave their jobs, along with an assistant attorney general who represented the agency.   “In light of the recent stories regarding public confessions of the intentional misleading of a Connecticut Superior Court judge, have the following individuals been asked to turn in their resignations?” the senators asked Gov. Ned Lamont and Attorney General William Tong in a letter. Those mentioned thus far were “PURA’s General Counsel and Legal Director Scott Mus...

Tong The bottom line is this: Once a political matter moves from the political to the judicial arena, political pretentions crumble because Connecticut’s court system is not supposed to be a creature at the beck and call of a one-party state executive department. Even in a one-party authoritarian apparat, Connecticut’s independent and separate judiciary serves constitutionally as a buffer that blunts executive overreach. The judiciary operates according to judicial rules, not executive fiat, and its constitutional independence depends wholly upon the just judgment of judges.   In Judge Matthew J. Budzik’s New Britain Superior Court, prior claims made by PURA collided with a judicial stone wall.   According to a Hartford Courant report, “CT judge learns ex-state official [Gillett] misled court on records that were erased,” a Gillett defense lawyer from Attorney General William Tong’s office admitted in court, following the resignation of Marisa Gillett as the chairman o...

Schumer An electrician is talking to his comrade at an East Hartford Diner, while munching on eggs-over-easy, rye toast, home fries and bacon. The subject of minority leader in the U.S. Senate Chuck Schumer arises and the electrician whispers somewhat dejectedly into his coffee cup, “I feel sorry for him, very weepy these days.”   We know that, at some point during his presidency, perhaps earlier, Joe Biden had entered a sort of political second childhood dominated by the itch to make the world over anew. Is Schumer now following the same path?   Schumer, still sharp as a pin, has not taken leave of his senses. But the senator, once a reliable mainstay of the Democrat Party, a modest John F. Kennedy liberal Democrat, is permitting the socialist tail in New York to wag the Democrat dog. Some say he has done so to curry favor with the far left wing of his party, anchored in the Northeast corridor by U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and socialist Senator Bernie Sa...

Larson In its Saturday, October 10, 2025 edition, front page, top of the fold, The Hartford Courant blared, “ Thousands expected at ‘No Kings’ rallies .” The rallies, across the nation and in Connecticut, were put together by an anti-President Donald Trump group called “Indivisible,” a play on the well-turned phrase taken from “The pledge of Allegiance”… “one nation, indivisible, “ the first version of which was penned in 1885 by Captain George Thatcher Balch, a Union army officer in the Civil War who later authored a book on how to teach patriotism to children in public schools.   Some may wonder whether Indivisible would permit patriotism – as it has been passed down to us traditionally from George Washington to the present day – to be taught in schools. Indivisible’s funding is invisible, according to  Factually : “Indivisible’s public-facing history and mission documents explain tactics and scope but stop short of listing funders, creating a transparent gap between dol...

In a minute there is time/ For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse – T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”   Connecticut’s U.S Senator Chris Murphy’s unprincipled references to Israel and Gaza over the years are a meandering mess of warmed over platitudes.   The following media citations and stories trace the drift of the platitudes.   On October 7, 2023, Murphy issued a Statement on Hamas Attacks on Israel : ““The shocking attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas terrorists on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War are unconscionable. The U.S. stands firmly with the Israeli people and supports the government of Israel’s right to defend itself from this horrific violence. Many innocent people on both sides will suffer as a result of Hamas’s orchestrated attacks, which will only cause more chaos and misery. My every thought is with the grieving families and the wounded, and I am continuing to closely monitor developments on the grou...

Blumenthal Here are some pieces on Blumenthal taken from the Connecticut Commentary archive -- by no means the whole load -- that relate to U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s “lies” concerning his falsely claimed service as a U.S. Marine in Vietnam recently mentioned by US. Attorney General Pam Bondi.   Stolen Valor November 11, 2010 On this Veteran’s Day, it will be well to remind ourselves that there are those among us who steal valor and suck the honor from the marrow of the nation’s heroic bones. A few months ago, the Australian Broadcasting System (ABC) put together a documentary called “Stolen Valor.”   https://donpesci.blogspot.com/search?q=Blumenthal+%2Bstolen+valor   Stolen Valor Fraud February 20, 2012   The “Stolen Valor Act” punishes with a prison sentence up to six months to a year those who “falsely represent” that they have received any “military decoration or medal.”   The bill has an enviable parentage: In a 1782 military order...

Those of us who are economically literate already know how to solve the problem of high energy costs in Connecticut.   The cost of any product or service is high when supply is low. Energy prices in Connecticut could instantly be reduced if the largely Democrat General Assembly, in the grip for the last few decades of neo-progressive economic nostrums, were to align public policy with the laws of supply and demand.   The law of supply and demand, incidentally, is centuries older than state Senator Martin Looney, 77 years young and considered a neo-progressive fantasist. It is older even than the U.S. Constitution, sometimes referred to as “the law of the land,” a document considered sacrosanct by the U.S. Supreme Court and most political practitioners in Connecticut. It is, in fact, centuries older than Zohran Kwame Mamdani, (born October 18, 1991), the future Democrat governor of New York City, according to recent polls. For the past few weeks, Mamdani has been g...

Lamont and Gillett A Hartford paper reports, “UI’s [United Illuminating’s] continuing, harsh criticism of [PURA chairwoman Marissa] Gillett at the hearing and an energetic defense by Attorney General William Tong’s office suggest the contention between PURA and the utility industry that has grown during Gillett’s five years in office did not disappear with her decision a week ago to resign.”   Gillett’s resignation from her post on September 19 likely will not put a period to an ongoing suit between Connecticut’s energy suppliers and PURA because the legal claims at issue are beyond the reach Governor Ned Lamont, a supporter of Gillett, and other advocates of price controls – which, we all know, have never worked in the long run to reduce prices.   The contested issues can only be settled by a court. Gillett has magnanimously agreed to abstain from any decision made by PURA affecting the as yet unresolved suit until she leaves office on October 10.   Gillett’s “d...

Murphy Connecticut Democrat U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, NBC tells us, “is donating $100,000 from his political fund to the progressive organizing group Indivisible — the latest in a series of donations he says total nearly $1 million to grassroots groups across the country taking on the Trump administration.  Among the “grassroots” agitprop groups Murphy is financing from his overflowing campaign donations are leftist agitators such as Indivisible,  “the progressive-aligned nonprofit group that has been holding ‘No Kings’ rallies across the country to protest Trump,” according to NBC.   So then, why is Murphy diverting his own excess campaign funds to such groups? Murphy ‘splained himself to NBC reporters Julie Tsirkin and Ben Kamisar.   Murphy “declared in an interview that the usual way politicians raise money — stockpiling assets in the years before they’re on the ballot again — doesn’t meet the moment for the Democratic Party, which is trying to mobil...