Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Ben Shapiro   has come and gone. UConn alumni – students who have grown up – will be pleased to hear that there were no untoward incidents during his appearance at their university. Shapiro’s bona fides are impressive. He is a conservative political commentator, columnist, radio talk show host, lawyer, editor in chief of The Daily Wire, which he founded, and the author of Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth, a book he began writing when he was 17 years old. And he is visibly Jewish, a point that will become increasingly relevant as this column progresses.

When former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hobbled out of President Barack Obama’s cabinet, Mr. Obama found the perfect replacement in John Kerry, who believes that one cannot be both a patriotic Israeli Jew and a democrat; the reader will please note the lower case “d” in democrat. Mr. Kerry would not wish to suggest that individual Jews cannot be Democrats, because that would cost the Democratic Party of which he is a member both patronage and votes. Saying just the right thing at just the right moment is not Mr. Kerry’s strong suit, nor for that matter is diplomacy, effective in foreign policy only when it is attached to strength and honor. In this, Mr. Kerry is a chip off his chief’s block. Having failed diplomatically in Iraq, Mr. Obama withdrew American troops from the country, creating a vacuum that eventually was filled by what Mr. Obama called “a JV team.” That would be ISIS, which now has a presence in multiple countries in the Middle East and the North African...

Where to begin? Question: Mr. Blumenthal, who do you regard as being more corrupt, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or present Secretary of State John Kerry? Former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton is valiantly attempting to power through yet another stone wall, this one involving the Clinton Foundation. A short while back it was disclosed that Mrs. Clinton’s cover-up accomplices used BleachBit to permanently erase  from emails she had sent over a private, poorly secured server data that contained, according to FBI Director James Comey, top secret restricted information. The Clinton Foundation has now come under scrutiny. But Mrs. Clinton is not a lone player in the power game of using public office to advance the prospects of herself, her family or friends. John Kerry, a longtime U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and the present Secretary of State, appears to be following in his predecessor’s footsteps.

The Trump rally in the heart of still wealthy Connecticut -- Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, located in Connecticut’s uber-rich “Gold Coast” – was hot in both the literal and metaphorical sense. Five thousand supporters of Donald Trump braving the heat, 100 degrees and climbing, were packed like sardines at the University awaiting the saving word. Trump rallies are political chautauqua events. What’s a chautauqua rally without steaming hot crowds, eh? A flop, that’s what.

Shortly after U.S. Senator Chris Murphy concluded his 15 hour filibuster – which was awarded three out of four Pinocchios by the left of center Washington Post -- he received plaudits from the usual corners of the Democratic Party barracks. All seven Members of Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional Delegation heaped praise upon Mr. Murphy, which must have come as a relief to the Senator, because it released him of the embarrassing necessity of praising himself. For a while there it was nip and tuck. A meeting of the minds between Republicans, who control both houses of Congress, and Democrats was a distinct possibility.  Before Mr. Murphy’s filibuster, Senate Republicans had proposed an amendment to a background check measure offer by Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. The Republican amendment was, according to a story in the Hartford Courant , a compromise attempt designed to correct what many felt was a defect in the watch-list measure supported by virtually a...

Readers of this page may be surprised to learn that the U.S. Congress still prays. Convocations during opening sessions are common among Congressmen even today when, largely because of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, open displays of religious expression are discouraged. In what may be his most famous inaugural address, President Abe Lincoln said, “Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-men’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’”

ISIS, the Islamic terrorist network, may have gone too far this time. On Saturday, as reported by The Gateway Pundit , “an Islamist extremist [Omar Mateen]   murdered 20 people at a ‘Pulse’ gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.” Fifty people are now reported dead. Gays have long been a targeted group for Islamic terrorists.

Never letting a crisis go to waste, Democrats who favor national restrictions on guns have turned the assault in San Bernardino in the direction of gun control laws they favor. If U.S. Senator Chris Murphy is not leading the pack, he is barking loudly with the other hounds. A day after the terrorist attack in California, Mr. Murphy tweeted to the world, “ Your ‘thoughts’ should be about steps to take to stop this carnage. Your ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness if you do nothing - again.” The Murphy tweet produced others chastising the Senator for devaluing prayer. But Mr. Murphy’s tweet was not so much an assault on the efficacy of prayer as it was a case of purposeful campaign posturing; tweeting brings out the worst in many of us. If people are unwilling to do something to stop the carnage, Mr. Murphy seemed to be saying, “their ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness.” Mr. Murphy did not say in his initial tweet who should be forgiven or why (Baathist tyrants in Syria? Isla...

November 16, 2015 Paris will learn soon enough what we have known for some time: that President Barack Obama, shrouded in the fog of unknowing, is not a reliable friend, which is to say – he is not a fraternal friend, as the French understand fraternity. I wonder if that expression will surprise you. You are a student of history and, as such, you owe it to yourself to drive all false but comforting thoughts from your mind, particularly now that Paris, “the city of light,” has gone dark. It is important at such moments to embrace lucidity, so that we should not go dark as well. I may point out that of the two, comforting and discomforting thoughts, comforting thoughts are the more dangerous; they lull us to sleep, when we ought to be fully awake. We are always alert to danger, unless we are put to sleep by soothing words.

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy has released in USA Today a manifesto   that details his view on U.S. foreign policy and  ISIS, the Islamic terrorist state that has gobbled up large chunks of Iraq and Syria, in the process creating the “orphans and widows” President Barack Obama hopes to house, among other places and with the concurrence of Governor Dannel Malloy, in Connecticut. Following the ISIS inspired attack in Paris, France, jihadi websites proclaimed that the warriors of Muhammed, blessings be upon him, would similarly attack the United States. “The American blood is best,” some boasted, “ and we will taste it soon .” Islamic scholars in India strongly condemned the attack .     

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy’s immediate reaction to the mass murder of innocent civilians in France by ISIS inspired terrorists was remarkably on-script and unemotional, unlike his earlier reaction to a Ted Cruz inspired video  in which Senator Cruz, a Republican now running for President, boasts that he stood up for Second Amendment rights following the Sandy Hook mass murder. The video, Mr. Murphy said, “makes me want to throw up.” Mr. Murphy’s Democratic partner in politics from Connecticut, Dick Blumenthal, also denounced the PAC video, ineptly inserting himself into the Sandy Hook drama . In that smarmy way oleaginous politicians have of placing themselves center-stage at important events, Mr. Blumenthal strongly suggested he was present when Governor Dannel Malloy told the parents of murdered students and teachers at the firehouse near Sandy Hook Elementary School that their children and teachers would not be coming home again. In truth, Mr. Blumenthal arrived after the anno...

Catholics will recognize the caption above – “Is The Pope Catholic?” – as a joke punchline. Some non-Catholics, and even some laypeople who self-identify as Catholics, must wonder, on reading some encyclicals with which they heartily disagree, “Should the Pope be just a trifle less Catholic?” It would suit progressives, for instance, if the Pope would be so good as to repeal thousands of years of Catholic teaching on abortion. No matter the Pope of the moment, this will happen only when Hell freezes over. But progressives welcome the present Pope’s views on climate change and capital punishment, while on the right, such views are anathema. Pope Francis’ antipathy toward raw capitalism cheers such as socialist Bernie Sanders, who is running for President this year, as well as President Barack Obama who, during welcoming ceremonies at the White House, extravagantly praised the Pope on his resemblance to himself. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but, however flatteri...

US Senator Chris Murphy might have said simply that the US invasion of Iraq in March, 2003 radicalized enemies of “the Great Satan” – that’s us. At best, this was a half-truth. There is some discussion afoot as to whether George Bush’s largely successful overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime during a three month war radicalized ISIS. Perhaps ISIS has been radicalized by something else. Some people, staring at Mr. Murphy from across the political barricades,  assert that the premature withdrawal of American troops from Iraq following the war was the precipitating event that gave birth to ISIS’ largely successful advance from Syria to northern Iraq. ISIS, according to this reading of events, simply exploited a military and political weakness issued from President Barack Obama’s “lead from behind” Middle East strategy: When the cat’s away, Islamic terrorists will play. The propriety of the war to dislodge Saddam Hussein has become an  political briar patch so thick and tho...

US Senator Chris Murphy, who has been in the Senate only a little more than  two years and two weeks, is now “Desperately Seeking A Progressive Foreign Policy,” the tile of a column the senator wrote on his new blog . According to Mr. Murphy, the modern progressive movement is still in its swaddling clothes. The new movement was “founded on foreign policy” after Democrats had spent a couple of decades "in the wilderness during the era of the Democratic Leadership Council… in the early days of the Iraq war.”

For thirty years and more, Republicans in Connecticut have been fleeing with their pants on fire what the Democrats call “social issues,” a flight from the political battlefield – and reality – that has abandoned all the social turf to progressives, some of whom are radical social engineers with knives in their brains. It is a serious mistake to suppose that President Barrack Obama has twice won office because his economic vision was superior to that of his Republican opponents, John McCain and Mitt Romney. Mr. Obama’s two elections were won on social issues, largely because Republicans refuse to engage Democrats on matters other than the domestic economy.