Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Donald Trump, the Attila the Hun of GOP politics, is not everyone’s cup of tea, and much has been said about him in what he might call, disdainfully, the Main Stream Media. Mr. Trump’s notion that libel laws should be “loosened up” likely did not go down well with the editorial board of the New York Times. Here in Connecticut, Democrats chomping at the bit are anxious to drape The Donald around the necks of newly nominated Republican hopefuls. Doubtless they will be assisted in this endeavor by the state’s left of center media . The prospect of Mr. Trump as a national Republican Party bellwether in the upcoming elections is, as Queen Elizabeth was reported to have said after Windsor Castle had been ravaged by fire, “awkward.”

Documents, e-mails and the like that usually provide a backdrop to political campaigns generally are not made public, unless they are subpoenaed by an aggrieved party. Following a complaint made by Republican Party Chairman Jerry Labriola, Connecticut’s State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC) has subpoenaed documents and communications involving Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and several of his top aides, according to story broken by George Coli of NBC Connecticut News Live . Mr. Labriola charged in his March 2014 complaint that Democrats illegally circumvented the state's ban on contractor contributions during the last gubernatorial campaign by laundering money through a federal account used to pay for mass mailings benefiting Mr. Malloy.

Only a few days after ABC News celebrity George Stephanopoulos got himself stuck in the ubiquitous Clinton goo, apparently an occupational hazard for friends of Bill and Hillary, Sidney Blumenthal – not to be confused with U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, also a dear friend of the Clintons – found himself stretched on the journalistic rack. Mr. Blumenthal was first outed by a hacker known as “Guccifer,” who posted on-line four memos Mr. Blumenthal had written to Mrs. Clinton, the probable Democratic nominee for president. The e-mails were hacked from Mrs. Clintons’s private, unauthorized server. “Guccifer” apparently has done what all the Republican horses and all the Republican men thus far have been incapable of doing – prying from Mrs. Clinton’s clenched fist some e-mails touching on Benghazi she thought to keep private by operating from a private, and possibly illegal, server.

Dick Blumenthal, the nation’s first full time consumer protection senator, has now weighed in on merchants who “may be selling lower quality items produced specifically for outlet stores without properly informing consumers,” according to a Philadelphia television station . The Senator has asked the Federal Trade Commission to examine claims that merchants have misled consumers in their ads. “There’s a lot of evidence,” Blumenthal breathlessly told the television consumer protection watchdog in Philadelphia, “that people shopping at outlet malls or at outlet establishments have no idea that goods and merchandise are made specifically for outlet malls.”

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...