Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

First, God created the idiot; this was for practice. Then he created the school board -- Mark Twain Over in Manchester, two students, apparently thugs with prior police records, beat up a third student. This attracted the attention of Chris Powell, the no-nonsense Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer, who wrote a column about it, which in turn attracted the attention of Margarett H. Hackett, chairwoman of the Manchester Board of Education. In his column , Mr. Powell, noted that two months had elapsed since the Manchester student was “beaten so badly that he required brain surgery.” The paper discovered from court proceedings that “the two students charged in the beating already had felony convictions. One of them had a pending plea bargain for assault conspiracy that was about to send him to prison.” Since state law requires police to notify school superintendents when students in they systems are arrested, Mr. Powell reasoned, it was likely that “Manchester's school administrat...