Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders has been puttering in politics only four years longer than U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, and the two may have more in common than most suppose. Both were born in New York and entered politics about the same time, Sanders in 1981 as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and Blumenthal in 1985 as a member of Connecticut’s State House of Representatives. Neither political career has been marred by service in the private marketplace. Both are East Coast, secularized, cultural Jews. That is, they are Jews who have shaken the dust of orthodoxy from their feet. Religious discipline is too confining for either, and their attitude toward heterodoxy parallels that of Ahab in Melville’s Moby Dick: “Speak not to me of blasphemy, man. I’d strike the sun if it dared insult me.” Blumenthal, in particular is well known as a champion of abortion provider Planned Parenthood. An orthodox Jewish Rabbi once was asked what the position of cultural Jews on abortion was. “...

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...

When the convention that gave birth to the U.S. Constitution had finished its work, the great charter of liberties was left on a table so that the founders of the Republic might, if they wished, sign their names to it. Ben Franklin had earlier warned his band of revolutionary brothers that if they did not hang together they would of a certainty “hang separately.” And he was not playing with metaphors. Had the agents of King George captured George Washington or any of those who had signed the Declaration of Independence, the father of our country most certainly would have been hanged, even as Nathan Hale, Connecticut’s Hero and one of Mr. Washington’s spies in New York, was hanged without benefit of trial. Mr. Hale, a school teacher, repented that he had but one life to give for his country. John Hancock’s large and audacious signature, a defy that resounds through the years like a great shout of joy, leaps out of the Declaration of Independence five years before Lord Cornwallis sur...

There have been very few unexpected endorsements from Connecticut’s media, and the almost universal endorsements of Attorney General Richard Blumenthal by the state’s opinion makers were entirely predictable. The status quo media likes status quo candidates. The status quo candidate will always stress his experience over that of his opponent who, of course, may have little direct experience in politics. Such was the case with Ann Brickley, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate running against Sen. John Larson, a Beltway familiar. The proposition that voters should choose experience in office over inexperience is, of course, fatal to good government. The very existence of an election process argues against cradle to grave politicians. But the settled opinion among many editorial writers in the state is that political experience should be determinative. For this reason it was a little unsettling, in a positive sense, to read the Register Citizen’s endorsement of Brickley over ...

No doubt about it, the antics of the co-chairmen of the Judiciary Committee, Rep. Michael Lawlor and Sen. Andrew McDonald, are enough to drive a saint to drink or, at the very least, to intemperate language. Radio host and blogger Hal Turner clearly went over the edge when he said about the two, "It is our intent to foment direct action against these individuals personally. These beastly government officials should be made an example of as a warning to others in government: Obey the Constitution or die." Exclamation point! "Or die?" a Hartford paper remarks in an editorial. "Turner defends his passionate beliefs not with a copy of the Constitution, but with the promise of ‘bullets.’” “That would be wrong at any time, but especially now, when hate speech, mostly from the far right, and incitements to violence are so prevalent.” To these reasonable objections, one can only reply "Here, here" -- and then proceed to quibble with some minor reservations. T...

A blog entrée written by Ghengis Conn, the proprietor of Connecticut Local Politics, noted in a piece in the Journal Inquirer written by reporter Don Michak , caught the attention of no less an eminence than Attorney General Richard Blumenthal who, properly chastened, vowed he would use his considerable influence to persuade the legislature to alter, if necessary, a bill involving minors and internet predators. The legislative bill, according to Michak, would require social internet sites such as MySpace and Facebook to obtain “written consent from the minor’s parent or guardian and giving the latter access to the profile page at all times.” The legislation also “would require the sites to use independently obtainable information to confirm the accuracy of personal information collected from site members, parents and guardians when registering.” These safety valves alarmed Ghengis, who wrote on his own site, “…there’s no way I and the other moderators (on Connecticut Local Politics) ca...

T’is the season to be secular – and litigious. In Kirkland, Washington, a high school principal this year refused to allow a production of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” because Tiny Tim, the character in the tale who melts the stony heart of Scrooge, was incautious enough to pray, “God Bless everyone.” The “G” word rarely has been in favor among secularist censors, and this year was no different. On most occasions, one may expect an eruption of righteous anger when books are banned by school systems that object to ribald language or offensive messages. When Huckleberry Finn was dumped from libraries by timid administrators unnerved by the “N” word, a tortured cry went up from defenders of the First Amendment. But not this time. Florida and New Jersey school districts have banned Christmas carols altogether, perhaps fearing the litigious American Civil Liberty Union lawyer hiding under the school nurse’s bed. In Somerville Massachusetts, the mayor formally apologized to those o...

It is not at all surprising that former senator and governor Lowell Weicker, the prime mover in the enactment of an income tax that has doubled state expenditures, should now be spending his twilight years in retirement bemoaning – high taxes. Weicker’s entire public life has been wasted in attempts to pound square pegs in round holes. In addition to high taxes, Weicker also is troubled by what he perceives as a dangerous and possibly unconstitutional religious resurgence in America, an alarming turn towards faith that apparently has not affected public education administrators in Maryland who, eyes cocked in the direction of mischievous suits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, have developed curricula pointedly not mentioning that the Puritans were preeminently a religious people who often thanked God for their good fortune – as was the case during Thanksgiving. “Too many Americans,” Weicker writes in Northeast magazine, a Hartford Courant publication, “have the view that...