Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

The pity of it is there is no one on God’s side to answer Christopher Hitchens , the author of “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” the latest and best in a long series of books recently published by ardent atheists. One thinks, almost involuntarily, of the cartoonish marginalia of William Blake’s poems, showing a long like of kings ending in a turd. Standing at the end of the line of distinguished atheist authors is the insufferably haughty Richard Dawkins, author of " The God Delusion ," who has suggested that atheists denominate themselves “brights,” so as to distinguish themselves from such "non-bright" thinkers as Blaise Pascal and Thomas Aquinas. “What an asshole,” Mark Warren commented on Dawkins in a review of Hitchens’ book in Esquire magazine. Brevity really is the soul of wit. Pass over Dawkins and “the wishfully thinking " The End of Faith ," by Sam Harris,” an atheist neuroscientist, Warren advises, but do not deny yourself the...

Amann Among The Lilliputians “I acknowledge that you can't keep an organization together without patronage. Men ain't in politics for nothin'. They want to get somethin' out of it” – George Washington Plunkitt Jim Amann, the powerful Speaker of the state House of Representatives, has come under fire for behavior that turn of the century Tammany Hall boss William Jefferson Plunkitt would have considered praiseworthy. In his day job, Amann raises funds for the Greater Connecticut Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, which pays him a yearly salary of $67,5oo. By tapping the shoulders of lobbyists for contributions to the charity, newspapers have said, Amann has created for himself, if not a conflict of interest, then the “appearance” of a conflict of interest. Are the lobbyists turning out their pockets for the charity because they are charitable or because they wish to curry favor with the speaker? Would they have given as avidly to, say, Mother Teresa, wh...