Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Here is a little back-and-forth between two anonymous bloggers, ctkeith and Genghis Conn, on a popular Connecticut blog . ctkeith said... GC Wrote, “What's interesting about this is that in the past, Rell has been able to make compromises break her way. Stem cells, civil unions, public funding of campaigns and even the recent transportation bill have somehow ended up making the governor look good.” Can you tell me which one of those issues made REPUBLICANS happy? 11:56 PM, April 29, 2006 Genghis Conn said... To Republican partisans and social conservatives? None of them. In fact, most of the Republicans in the legislature didn't support those initiatives. Legislative Republicans are irrelevant, and Rell doesn't really care what social conservatives think. This leaves her trying to pass her own agenda all by herself. She may be most effective when she's proposing compromises to Democratic plans. That exchange pretty much says everything needful about Rell, compromi...

The nomination of Judge Peter Zarella as Chief Justice of Connecticut’s Supreme Court was seriously compromised when retiring Chief Justice William Sullivan held up the publication of a decision the release of which, Sullivan apparently thought, might harm Zarella’s prospects. The case itself meandered through the usual judicial maze before the Supreme Court rendered an en-banc decision that some case information should not be made available to the media through Freedom of Information petitions. It should be noted that the media does have a dog in this fight. The champions of open government cannot be expected to approve final court decisions that authorize the withholding of information. In calling upon Governor Jodi Rell to nominate someone else – anyone else but Judge Zarella -- for the post of Chief Justice, a Hartford newspaper advised that the governor should promote someone who “has an unwavering commitment to open government.” This is an argument for degrading all the justice...

“While I cannot comment directly on Judge Zarella’s qualifications to serve as State Supreme Chief Justice – it is clear that Gov. Rell should not re-nominate him and that former Chief Justice Sullivan’s actions have irrevocably harmed the confirmation process. Additionally, the sudden resignation of Chief Justice Sullivan and Gov. Rell’s immediate nomination of Judge Zarella to replace him, have already been troubling. Those concerns were immediately compounded yesterday as it is now clear that Judge Sullivan’s acted to protect Judge Zarella’s nomination at a point in time prior to Gov. Rell even saying she knew there was a vacancy. Either Judge Sullivan or Gov. Rell don’t have their stories straight, either way this harkens back to a way of doing business that Connecticut residents thought they put behind them. They deserve better.” This little missive is from gubernatorial hopeful John DeStefano , and it suggests that Democrats are fully prepared to turn the nominating process for J...

“Seeking to create more Connecticut jobs, “the lead line ran, “the state Senate voted unanimously Friday night for tax cuts for manufacturers and incentives for movie-production companies.” The tax cuts for manufacturers and incentives for movie production companies, senators reasoned unanimously, were necessary because businesses in Connecticut are going south – no pun intended – and start struck legislators have realized that the best way to encourage start-up industries is to create a climate in which industries do not feel preyed upon by rapacious state governments. For Connecticut, this is a revolutionary perception and a significant admission. Practically speaking, it means that the proclivity of our state legislature to tax everything that breaths is, as the film stars might say, a real drag: Less taxes good, more taxes bad. Economists who graduate from one of our state’s ivory league colleges might put it this way, “Whatever you tax tends to disappear” – including state busine...

Judge Peter Zarella, nominated by Governor Jodi Rell to be the next Chief Justice of Connecticut’s Supreme Court, begins his masterful disquisition on the separation of powers doctrine, printed in the Connecticut Bar Journal under the title “ Judicial Independence at a Crossroad ,” with a quote from Robert Frost: “Good fences make good neighbors.” Frost, like Walt Whitman before him, first gorged himself on all things American before spewing out his poetic pearls; and with either poet it may truly be said that little from sea to shining sea was beyond their ken. Some of Frost’s poems are shockingly political; others, like “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors,” are allegories that outline the central truths of the American experience. One has the same feeling reading Zarella’s “Judicial Independence at the Crossroad.” Everything American and familiar is here: Montesquieu on the laws; John Locke, the tutor of the founders who established our tri-partite form of government and thereby destroy...

When is a compromise not a compromise? There are two answers to this question: 1) When the Hartford Courant says it is a compromise; and 2) when compromise is impossible. Examples of the impossibility of compromise abound. For instance, if the Courant were compelled by a judge to reveal a source of information whose testimony was sought at trial, the paper would resist the order as a matter of principle. No compromise would be possible. The Courant would not yield to the variety of forces that could be brought to bear against it. Papers that cannot provide anonymity to their sources are not long for this world. The Catholic Church regards abortion as a moral disorder and a crime against canon law. Any attempt to compel the church to allow abortion in any of its facilities would be resisted, and compromise on the point would be impossible. So, when the Courant editorialized recently, “We had hoped Roman Catholic hospitals would find a way to provide emergency contraception known as Pla...

The beef about U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman is that he is out of touch with his constituents concerning the war in Iraq. The beefing comes mostly from bloggers who support Ned Lamont’s attempt to oust Lieberman in a Democrat primary, a few Democrat town committees that have drafted official rebukes, and a sizable chunk of Connecticut voters. President George Bush’s flagging poll numbers in Connecticut suggest a broad dissatisfaction with the Iraq war. The anti-Iraq war contingent received an assist from an unlikely quarter recently when the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported that Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the House that progressives love to hate, leapt off the burning deck, telling students at the University of South Dakota, "It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003. We have to pull back, and we have to recognize it." Gingrich did not suggest a time table for the rug pull. Fox news, the TV station progressives love to...