Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

  Andy Thibault has written a moving tribute to Larry Cohen, the longtime libertarian commentator who had a regular column in the Hartford Courant. All of us, whatever our political persuasions, used to thrill to Larry’s commentary. In deep blue Connecticut, Larry was a fish out of water, and even seeing a conservative piece scarring the usual uniform commentary pages of the Courant – a rarity beyond belief – invariably sent a thrill up the leg of conservatives and libertarians, and never more so than when Larry, pitchfork in hands, took off after one or another slovenly liberal, some of whom signed his pay checks. For conservatives and libertarians, reading a Cohen column in this setting was like hearing a stone speak: You were just struck dumb.

Sonia Sotomayor has flunked the First Amendment sniff test with Andy Thibault, the proprietor of The Cool Justice Report. Sotomayor is President Barack Obama’s choice to fill a vacancy on the U.S Supreme Court left by the impending retirement of Justice David Souter. With permission, Tibault’s take on Sotomayor is printed here: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 Sotomayor, Enemy Of Free Speech, Pushed For Supremes My Take On This Fundamentally Flawed Selection … Sotomayor was clubbed on the head with a crystal-clear free speech violation and she said, in effect, 'That's nice, I'll sign off on it.' When a citizen seeks a redress of a grievance and is punished for lobbying the community, that's OK with Sotomayor. Nevermind the fabrication of disruption or potential disruption long after the fact by the douche bag school bosses: Sotomayor flunks due diligence, a reading of her own Second Circuit on the standard of offensiveness and most importantly, her duty to uphold the Bill of...

The Avery Doninger case has now reached the courts, which means that it likely will be settled on legal grounds. But, as we all know, legal settlements are not always compatible with common sense. Common sense would have settled this issue long ago. Doninger is the student – now famous or infamous, depending on one’s point of view – who called the arrogant administrators in her school “douchbags,” not the politest of terms. But she had, as the lawyers might say, cause. The precipitating cause of Doninger’s outburst, in an e-mail message to her friends, was frustration; it happens to the best of us. Those details are described at considerable length, and in luminous prose, by Jon Schoenhorn in his brief on Doninger’s behalf and in a series of posts written by Andy Thibault , who maintains a site called, modestly enough, The Cool Justice Report, the nearest thing we have in the state to Nat Hentoff’s hard hitting reportage. Tibault is the natural born enemy of pomposity wherever it show...