Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Those who are used to seeing Tom Swan – current director of Connecticut’s Citizen Action Group and past director of Ned Lamont’s failed senatorial campaign against current U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman – in his appalled mode will not be surprised to learn that he was “appalled” at the suggestion, according to a piece in the New Haven Independent , “that he and other progressives present were being used to rescue a senator [U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd] who got too cozy with financial barons and predators.” Dodd has been traveling about the state visiting liberal watering holes, with an obliging train of progressives in tow, in an attempt some would consider desperate to shore up his tattered reputation. Lately, Dodd has suggested that those in the Bush administration who had facilitated the water boarding of Kalid Sheik Mohammed should be tried in court, as were Nazi war criminals prosecuted in Nuremburg by his father. A short video clip shown on MyLeftNutmeg , a left wing blog, shows Dodd holding f...

In the first few weeks of his presidency, Barack Obama has been, true to his word, an active president. He produced a “stimulus package” that represents a massive intrusion of the federal government into the private market place, an extension of a program hastily developed during the last frenetic days of the Bush administration. He has taken steps to keep his campaign promise to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, though it is still undecided what do with “detainees” such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed , the mastermind of the 9/11 attack on New York. The President has sent former diplomatic wunderkind George Mitchell to the Middle East to broker a peace between warring factions in Israel. And he has shown that his Middle East policy prescriptions during the campaign were serious by opening an entente with the Arab World. Iran, very much a part of that world, promises to be his stone of stumbling. The US-based International Institute for Strategic Studies on Wednesday conclud...

After an avalanche of criticism, former speaker of the State House Jim Amann has decided to look elsewhere for a job. He still wants to be governor. According to the Waterbury Republican American, “Former Republican Sen. David J. Cappiello, meanwhile, is the new senior policy adviser to super minority Senate Republicans. For $103,000 a year, he will tell them whether they should lay horizontally or vertically when Democrats steamroller them.” The ever gracious Nancy Pelosi took time in her busy schedule to bid former President George Bush farewell. His leave-taking, said the lady, "was like having a 10-ton anvil lifted from my shoulders," though it may be doubted whether such a cumbersome weight could fit on her slender and graceful shoulders. The new president, she confided to Bay area reporters, “will be great for California because he “has an entrepreneurial way of thinking, a fresh way of thinking, a commitment to the environment, a push for green jobs and reversing glo...

On May 13, when leading Democrats in the US Congress were attempting to force president Bush to accept time-lines for troop withdrawals in Iraq, Iranian jihadists were hauling in and arresting American citizens, apparently without permitting them the same rights under American law that U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd would have afforded to Kalid Shiek Mohammad . Kalid Shiek Mohammad, the architect of the bombing of the U.S. Cole in the Clinton administration, the organizer of 9/11 and the beheader of American journalist Daniel Pearl, among other accomplishments, was waterboarded and spent some time in the non-combatant camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, an ordeal from which he emerged with all his digits and his head intact. Now running for president on the Cindy Sheehan ticket, Dodd said in a speech before Council on Foreign Relations last October that such as Kalid Shiek Mohammad should be afforded the same rights as American citizens. It was during this speech, just prior to his presidential bi...