Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

When he was Attorney General, current U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal kept in his office a couple of dozen pit bulls, more commonly known as lawyers, who used to harass companies and people with the threat of interminable lawsuits, after which many of them would cough up settlement dollars -- the terms of such settlements not to be publically disclosed -- that would allow Mr. Blumenthal to boast that his office “pays for itself.” Cases taken up by the Attorney General’s office are not necessarily won on the merits. They are endurance races. Often, a defendant’s material resources give out before the merits of the case can be decided. Mr. Blumenthal was “earning” millions of dollars for the state, he was greasing the publicity skids that eventually would carry him into the U.S. Senate, and companies that did not want to see their profits diminish over the years because of prolonged litigation were contributing their “fair share” to Connecticut’s burgeoning state government. I...

The 2,319 page Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, commonly called the Dodd-Frank bill -- named after its architects, former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, now a Hollywood millionaire mogul, and U.S. Rep. Barney Frank – was supposed to insure that big banks could fail, obviating the need for expensive taxpayer bailouts. A ban on bailouts is written into the legislation. Among the tools in the bill’s toolbox is a provision that provides for an orderly winding down of bankrupt firms. The bill includes a proposal that the Federal Reserve (the "Fed") receive authorization from the Treasury for extensions of credit in "unusual or exigent circumstances"; The ban on bailouts, which removes the principal protection that spurred those inept business practices that gave rise to the effective bankruptcy of major banks in the United States considered “too big to fail,” has not persuaded rating agencies to downgrade the banks. Why not? If the federal umb...

The Washington Times is reporting that “Honduran officials are investigating allegations that President Manuel Zelaya and his chief of staff stole millions of dollars from the central bank before the military ousted Mr. Zelaya last month, according to a senior Honduran official, government documents and other evidence.” The report include a bank security video showing officials of the ousted Zelaya administration “entering the bank June 24 and withdrawing large amounts of Honduran currency.” The money, about $2.2 million was taken, “was driven to the office of Mr. Zelaya's chief of staff, Enrique Flores Lanza, according to depositions by three witnesses to Honduran prosecutors.” It is thought that Zelaya intended to use the cash in connection with an unconstitutional referendum that, had it been successful, would have allowed Zelaya to serve a second term as president. Honduras’ constitution limits presidents to a single term. The ousted Zelaya government is represented in the Ho...

The Washington Times , citing a Gallup April poll, is reporting that only one other president, Bill Clinton, is less popular after his 100 days in office than Barack Obama. “Mr. Obama's popularity after 100 days,” the Washington Times editorializes, “is the second-lowest for a simple reason: He is more partisan and divisive than his predecessors - including Richard Nixon” and George Bush.

If newspapers were musical compositions, Chris Powell of the Journal Inquirer, a publication that for years has been following U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd’s entangling alliances with Big Business, might very well be Bach. Consider the lede line on Powell’s most recent column, “Anyone can beat Dodd – why not Blumenthal": “Now that the latest Quinnipiac Universality poll has found that any Republican who has not worked for AIG could defeat U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd by a mile…” Powell points to a story in The Washington Times in which a top executive from AIG “whose derivative instruments ruined the company and the world financial system, Joseph Cassano, conducted a political fund raising operation at the company for Dodd just after the 2006 election, as Dodd ascended to the chairman of the senate Banking Committee, whereupon Dodd continued to help insure that Cassano’s deadly inventions escaped government regulation.” Some Democrats, frightened that Dodd might lose his seat to Republicans when...

Actor Benicio del Toro, who plays Che Guevara in an upcoming film called “Che,” walked out on reporters who questioned him a little too closely on the real Che. "I'm getting uncomfortable," Benicio del Toro said after fielding a question about his new movie's portrayal of the Bolivian and Cuban revolutions. "I'm done. I'm done, I hope you write whatever you want. I don't give a damn,” The Washington Times reports. The reviews in Castro’s Cuba were more soothing: “'Del Toro is spectacular in the role of Che, not only in his physical resemblance but also in his brilliant interpretation,' wrote Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party. 'After more than five hours of screening, the Cuban public gave its endorsement with a strong ovation.'” The good news is that Che – the actor, not the real McCoy – executed no reporters. Che's preference -- the real Che, not the actor -- was a bullet to the back of the head, a grace...

At the time president Bill Clinton pardoned a wealthy contributor to his campaigns, Mark Rich, Attorney General-designate Eric Holder was the number 2 man in the Justice Department. Clinton had fired all the US attorneys connected with the previous administration and appointed new faces in the department. At the time of the pardon, Rich was the largest tax defrauder in the United States. In sworn testimoney before Congress, Holder claimed he had “only a passing familiarity" with the case against Rich. The Washington Times is now reporting: “Correspondence with the Justice Department and testimony secured by Congress from other witnesses show that 15 months before the pardon, Mr. Holder met privately with Mr. Rich's attorney and received a presentation about what Mr. Rich's defense believed were flaws in the government's case. "Mr. Holder, then serving as the No. 2 official in the Clinton Justice Department, later took the rare step of contacting federal prosecut...

According to the Washington Times , two of the suspects in the attempted bombings in Britain had eyes on the United States. David Hanson , the author of “A War Like No Other,” an account of the Peloponnesian War, sees the West sliding back into Carterville. But, not to worry: Madonna has saved the planet. And Colin McEnroe , once a religious writer for the Hartford Courant, planned to hobnob over the weekend with some Muslims, at least one of whom is a shady character, though not quite so abhorrent to the new left as Sen. Joe Lieberman . In view of the barrage let loose by leftist bloggers on Lieberman, the most amusing line in McEnroe’s piece is this one: “It's no accomplishment at all to hate somebody you've been told to hate. It is quite an achievement to get past those instructions and see the real people.”

This from the Washington Post, not a bastion of conservative thought, as quoted in the Washington Times , a bastion of conservative thought: “In an editorial last week, The Washington Post observed that 'It now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.'"