Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Christmas is approaching, not the discordant commercial enterprise we see all around us at this time of year, but the real Christmas – a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, the sovereign lord of the Christian heart. Atheists, those who do not believe in God or religion, have been in the habit of seizing the occasion to celebrate an obverse Christmas by spreading ashes on the joys of the Christian heart and obliterating the season through the application of free and equal graffiti. In Bethel, Connecticut, atheists are especially interested this year in ridding the town’s P. T. Barnum Square of its nativity scene. For the benefit of those atheists who do not always follow the niceties of Christianity, it should be noted that the bones of Barnum’s family are buried in the quiet graveyard abutting the Congressional church not a stone’s throw from Barnum Square., and the name "Bethel" means "the house of God." The atheists have not yet been so bold as to peti...

Every time President-Elect Trump bashes the media, his popularity pops upward. Why? The feeling on the street is that however many lumps President-Elect Donald Trump delivers to the media, just or unjust, they deserve it. The approval rating of the media among americana  ordinarius   is on a par with that of Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy, hovering as I write around 24 percent. Approval ratings may not matter all that much. Both Mr. Trump and his Democratic Presidential opponent, the vanquished Hillary Clinton, were, according to fallible polls, highly unpopular. The polls themselves, this time around, were highly unreliable. In the post-election period, one imagines pollsters lying on psychiatrist couches, the psychiatrists digging deeply into their psyches in an attempt to salvage their sanity.

Apart from being friendly to each other in the past, what do Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic Party presidential candidate, and Donald Trump, Hillary’s counterpart in the Republican Party, have in common? Both are leading in the polls, and both are flawed candidates; Mr. Trump because he’s a shallow thinker, however entertaining, and Mrs. Clinton because both her distant and recent past are pockmarked with irregularities.

Buddy Cianci – the once, and perhaps once again, Prince of Providence – is, to mix metaphors, the Pete Rose of Rhode Island politics. We all know what Mr. Cianci did in office. When he was good, he was very good; when he was bad, he was very bad. A typical view of former jail bird and radio talk show host Cianci, may be found, following an announcement by Mr. Cianci that he is considering another run for Mayor, on the Linkedin site .

Governor Malloy appeared in Bethel to defend his educational reform proposals, and the going was not quite as rough as Mr. Malloy’s past appearances. At Wilber Cross High School, the heckling, mostly from teachers, was blistering. Towards the end of the meeting in New Haven, union president David Cicarella conceded, according to one press report, “It doesn't do any good hooting and hollering at the guy.” Teacher unions have not conceded much to Mr. Malloy concerning his proposals to remake education in Connecticut. Rhetorical grapeshot was fired in Bethel, but Mr. Malloy easily deflected it, perhaps because Bethel Superintendent Kevin Smith had advised the crowd to be on their best behavior, but possibly, as I like to think, because Bethelites are unusually cordial. My wife and I lived in Bethel – the name means “house of God” – for eight peaceful and fruitful years, not very far from the brilliant white church where P.T. Barnum’s father, Philo, and his mother, Irena, rest...

Liberal journalists don’t quite know how to undermine the candidacy of Peter Schiff, who is running against Sen. Chris Dodd as a Republican, but in time they’ll figure it out. On Dennis House’s “Face the State,” two liberal commentators, Rick Green of the Hartford Courant and Brian Lockhart of the Stamford Advocate tossed Schiff around on their horns for awhile. It was difficult to tell who was having more fun. A libertarian economist, Schiff tends to reserve his fire for autocratic governments that distort private transactions through either unsupportable taxes or regulations or both. In fact, if you have a moment, he would be happy to explain to you that all regulations and business taxes are impositions on wages, because businesses pass along these charges to their customers. An unfettered private market, according to Schiff’s view, distributes goods and services more efficiently and less expensively than over-taxed, over-regulated economies. Schiff prefers consumption taxes to ...