Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

John Lender of the Hartford Courant is reporting that Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, a partisan Democrat who was mentioned in a focus group discussion conducted by soon to be disgraced professor Ken Dautrich of UConn, is progressing quite nicely with his “investigation” of Republican governor Jodi Rell. Apparently, Blumenthal possesses indeterminate powers that allows his office to to seize the assets and property of the victims he plunders through the misuse of fatally flawed affidavits. G-d only knows what other extraordinary powers this man commands. Blumenthal told Lender, “"We do have a game plan.” Blumenthal has not-exactly-subpoenaed “scores of documents in an investigation of whether a University of Connecticut professor's $223,000, taxpayer-funded study on government efficiency was misused to provide political advice to Gov. M. Jodi Rell.” Instead, the intensely partisan attorney general has sent out what is called “a demand letter” to Rell. It is sup...

Some people in Connecticut, not a few of whom would be pleased to see their friends and acquaintances occupy Governor Jodi Rell's position, already have decided, perhaps prematurely, that it would be perfectly proper to haul the governor off to jail without observing the usual niceties. “First the verdict,” says the Queen of Hearts in Alice’s Wonderland, “then the trial.” Most reasonable people would agree that the Queen of Hearts got it backwards. Very quick out of the shoot was Kevin Rennie , a Hartford Courant columnist who first congratulated Ted Mann of the New London Day for having performed a public service “by reporting on documents related to a polling deal dressed up as public policy that smelled so bad it put Snow White in a foul mood.” Snow White is former Democratic House Speaker Jim Amman’s sobriquet for the governor. Then Rennie plunged the sword in up to the hilt: “Even John Rowland, who went to prison for corruption, did not engage in the dirty enterprise t...

Attorney General Dick Blumenthal, the closest thing Connecticut has to a Delphic oracle, has said that the 90 per cent tax Democrats want to levy against AIG bonuses is constitutional. Now, helpfully, a law professor at Quinnipiac, William Dunlap, has written a piece in the Hartford Courant [“ There’s Nothing Illegal About Tax to Take Back Bonuses ”] that asks and answers the question, “Is confiscatory taxation constitutional?” Short (honest) answer: It’s okay, if Democrats do it.” Another professor, Ken Dautrich in the Department of Public Policy at UConn, asks a question dear to the heart of every Democrat, “Is Dodd Beatable?” Short answer: Maybe yes, maybe no. On the plus side, Dodd has money, fame and the good will of much of Connecticut’s liberal press. On the downside, there is Kevin Rennie. “Is Mrs. Rell ‘Dishonest?’” asked the authoritorial Hartford Courant in one of its editorial epistles. Short answer: We just don’t know. Is the state budget deficit $7.4 billion, Mrs. Rell’...