Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Secretary of State John Kerry has released a statement  on the use of chemical weapons on civilians in Bashir Assad’s Syria: "What we saw in Syria last week should shock the conscience of the world," said Kerry. "It defies any code of morality. Let me be clear: The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity. By any standard, it is inexcusable. And despite the excuses and equivocations that some have manufactured, it is undeniable."

On the political stump in Dover, New Hampshire, US Sen. Chris Dodd , running for the presidency, declined to give a stump speech and instead took questions from the crowd. Concerning President Bush’s terms in office, Dodd said, “"We've been on six years of on-the-job training and look where we are." And later he asked rhetorically, “How are we losing a public relations battle with Hugo Chavez?" Dodd gave no hint to the largely admiring crowd what he would do as president to win the public relations battle with Venezuela’s increasingly leftist dictator. Following a path well worn by the ailing Fidel Castro, Chavez recently warned his opposition in Venezuela that he plans to nationalize the oil industry. While Bush slept, Daniel Ortega, running on a non-progressive pro-Catholic platform, became president of Nicaragua. As previously noted here and elsewhere , Dodd has had valuable experience negotiating with the Ortega brothers in that war swept country. When a voter a...

The bipartisan legislative working group formed two months ago to resolve differences between Democrats and Republicans in the matter of campaign finance reform is a signal failure. In order to understand the failure, it helps to remember that “bipartisan” working groups are not non-partisan working groups. According to one news report, the working group concluded its business by agreeing on a “broad framework” for a voluntary system of public financing; the group also agreed to apply campaign restrictions to lobbyists, state contractors and political action committees. Un-huh. The “broad framework” recalls the infamous “framework for peace” Viet Cong and U.S. negotiators struggled to bring about during the Vietnam War. The groups that sat down together to resolve matters of war and peace ended up spending months deciding what shape the negotiating table should be. The perpetual meeting provided an illusion of conciliation, but peace escaped the negotiators, and eventually the war was ...

“The White House insists that all is going swimmingly in Iraq,” according to the editorial page editor of a local paper. No one in the White House ever has made such a claim. Polls show “popular disgust at the continued killings of civilians” in Iraq, and “an inability to suppress the insurgency in Iraq is finally beginning to disturb members of the U.S. Congress.” The word “finally” suggests the editorial writer had been disgusted long before congress tardily came to its senses. But disgust is a double edged sword: It moves some people to increase their resolve, especially when faced by the horrific crimes against humanity committed by what the writer is pleased to call "the insurgency." Others lose courage. The “insurgents," many of them Saudis, are surging into Iraq from outside the country. The border between Iraq and Syria is particularly porous. “Growing talk” among supporters of the president – Connecticut Rep. John Larson is not one of them -- that Bush needs “an...