Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Enough! This is the way a woman described her  rape assault to Connecticut Commentary  in 2014: “James had assaulted me many years ago and was sentenced to one year, I believe. He served six months. A protective order was put in place. Approximately six months after his release…  He broke into my house and waited for me to return home. He beat me for hours using anything at his disposal: the china cabinet, the TV, stereo, speakers, his fists, the phone. I sustained extensive serious physical and mental trauma. I had escaped the house twice, but he dragged me back and continued beating me. The third time I escaped the house, a snow plow truck driver saw me on the side of the road in a pool of blood, interceded and saved my life.”

According to Jonathan Pelto ,  who ran out of money in his short-lived gubernatorial bid before he could seriously challenge Governor Dannel Malloy, Governor Dannel Malloy’s promise of a tax reduction was “a hoax.” It’s difficult to disagree with him. Three days prior to Mr. Malloy’s budget address before the General Assembly, the governor appeared on WFSB’s  "Face the State” and told moderator Dennis House he would be cutting the sales tax rate from 6.35 percent to 6.20 percent on Nov. 1, and to 5.95 percent more than two years from now, in April of 2017. The governor who had imposed on Connecticut the largest tax increase in its history had become, in the twinkling of an eye, a tax cutter, a miraculous transformation.

There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea -- T.S. Elliot Kevin Rennie, a Harford Courant columnist, is regarded by some in politics as the Torquemada of Connecticut commentators – especially in matters of what one might call political ethics. Many politicians have felt his bite and winced.

It should be stipulated up front that Dennis House is one of the better interviewers in Connecticut. House is the moderator, chief cook and bottle washer of the popular program “Face the State,” which airs every Sunday on WFSB Channel 3. In a prelude to his program, House provides on "The Hartfordite" tasty little tidbits of shows before they air. In the teaser for a show on Sunday featuring the surprisingly elusive Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate Richard Blumenthal, House noted that the public figure before him on Sunday was a notably different character that the self assured attorney general whom he had often interviewed on “Face the State.” “Blumenthal,” House reported, “used to the be the most accessible public official in our land of steady habits, offering reporters his personal cell phone number and granting interviews at a moment’s notice. His eager willingness to go on camera was a running joke among his staff, journalists, columnists and radio disc j...