Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

In choosing to embrace proportional rather than winner take all primaries, the Democrat Party, true to its nature, was being democratic. But, in fact, proportional primaries, in which delegates are assigned in proportion to the votes cast, this year have elongated the primary season. For Republicans, the primary season was closed at the beginning of March. Democrats have miles to go before they sleep. The long Democrat primary season virtually assures a brokered convention, bruised egos and a disappointed Democrat electorate. This is simply another way of saying that Democrats have shortened the time they may devote to the general election. Whether or not a shortened general election will prove to be a bust or boom for Democrats is very much an open question. There are two schools of thought: One holds that the incessant squabbling between senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the duration of the Democrat primary will keep the two in the news, while Republican Sen. John McCa...

The "blanket bit" in this interview with Christopher Hitchens is hilarious and helps to explain why there will always be an England. Bitterly critical of the CIA, it is also a manual in how get yourself a file in the CIA, the FBI and whatever comgressional committee is charged with overseeing international sleuthery. Australian Broadcasting Corporation Broadcast: 11/09/2006 Reporter: Tony Jones Tony Jones speaks with the prolific writer and outspoken commentator Christopher Hitchens about the New York attacks and their implications. TONY JONES: Well just a year after September 11, the prolific writer and outspoken commentator Christopher Hitchens joined me on the roof of a building overlooking Ground Zero to talk about the New York attacks and their implications. Now, five years after the event that changed the world, we invited him to join us again - this time from our Washington studio. Christopher Hitchens thanks for being there. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Thanks for having me...

Over at Slate magazine , not a conservative publication, Christopher Hitchens, not a disreputable neo-con, speculates that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the target of two 500 pound bombs, was not an innocent bystander in the war against the West being prosecuted by Islamic Salafists. The guy who sawed off the heads of two American prisoners, Hitchens writes, …contributed enormously to the wrecking of Iraq's experiment in democratic federalism. He was able to help ensure that the Iraqi people did not have one single day of respite between 35 years of war and fascism, and the last three-and-a-half years of misery and sabotage. He chose his targets with an almost diabolical cunning, destroying the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad (and murdering the heroic envoy Sérgio Vieira de Melo) almost before it could begin operations, and killing the leading Shiite Ayatollah Hakim outside his place of worship in Najaf. His decision to declare a jihad against the Shiite population in general, in a document o...

The usual sleuths are snooping around the corpse in an attempt to find out who done it. An Associated Press report indicates that “Tips from within al-Zarqawi's own terror network helped the U.S. locate and bomb a safe house where the al-Qaida leader was meeting in secret with top associates.” Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser told a reporter from the New York Times , “"We have managed to infiltrate this organization,” but the tight-lipped security advisor declined to elaborate. An unnamed Jordanian official told the Times – which also tends to be tight-lipped concerning its sources – “the mission that killed Mr. Zarqawi was a joint operation conducted by the Americans and Jordanian intelligence. The source inside Mr. Zarqawi's group, the Jordanian official said, had been cultivated at least in part by Jordanian intelligence agents. ‘There was a man from Zarqawi's group who handed over the information,’ the Jordanian official said.” The good new...

Al-Qaida’s man in Iraq, al-Zarqawi, is now being attended by scores of virgins in heaven. He was reduced to his present estate, according to recent reports, as a result “of intelligence reports provided to Iraqi security forces by residents in the area” and Jordanian assistance. According to an Associated Press report, A Jordanian official said that Jordan also provided the U.S. military with information that helped in tracking al-Zarqawi down. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was addressing intelligence issues, would not elaborate, but Jordan is known to have intelligence agents operating in Iraq to hunt down Islamic militants. Some of the information came from Jordan's sources inside Iraq and led the U.S. military to the area of Baqouba, the official said. Baqouba has in recent weeks seen a spike in sectarian violence, including the discovery of 17 severed heads in fruit boxes. It was also near the site of a sectarian atrocity last week in which masked...