Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

A few weeks ago, Governor Dannel Malloy said that people in Connecticut would have to wait until May to discover whether he would run again as governor. He then surprised everyone by tossing his hat into the ring during a recent bond hearing meeting. In fact, the campaign had begun much earlier; the cake was baked even though it lacked the cherry on top. Before his official declaration, Mr. Malloy had said he was much too busy running the state to engage prematurely in a political campaign. He told one reporter that it would be inopportune for him to engage in a political campaign before Republican gubernatorial aspirants had an opportunity to beat up on each other? The pretense was a great tease, strategically necessary but still an obvious imposture. The Republican gubernatorial field has now been fully fleshed out. Martha Dean, who previously had engaged in campaigns for the Attorney General, was a little late, but she got in before the door closed.

Attorney  Martha Dean – Colin McEnroe calls her “old blue eyes”   – is the equivalent in Connecticut of Sarah Palin nationally, the woman from the wrong side of the political tracks who those fighting the “war against women” love to denigrate. The abhorrence is palpable, and possibly a bit misogynistic. Hartford Courant columnist Rick Green, recently departed to Vermont, way back in June 2010 referred to Ms. Dean as “a heat-seeking Republican missile” and “the blonde gunslinger.” Captivated by the color of her eyes, Mr. Green referred with disdain to the “cyborg-like quality to Dean's tractor-beam blue eyes.” The “blonde gunslinger,” it is well known, regards the U.S. Constitution with some reverence, and this appears to have excited Mr. Green’s barely concealed contempt . The difference between Mrs. Palin and Ms. Dean is that Ms. Dean is brighter, a more accomplished rhetorician, and, according to Mr. McEnroe, a trifle dangerous: “… I know it’s not a good...

One of the problems with columns written by humorists is that they may be taken seriously when they are intended as humor or – worse – they may be taken humorously when they are intended to be taken seriously. This was the curse that followed Mark Twain to the end of his days. So too with Mr. McEnroe . “Give me the right guy,” he has said ,   “and I’ll vote GOP for once.” Mr. McEnroe’s humor rests, like a coiled snake, in that “for once.” Has he ever voted for a Republican? Not likely. Let the word go round at the Hartford Courant that any of its columnists voted Republican, and they would never survive the shattering laughter that would greet them when they sit down at their keyboards to advise Republicans who they ought to nominate to run against, say, U.S. Representative John Larson in the 1 st District, or Rosa DeLauro in the 3 rd District, both of whom are certain to die in office, Ms. DeLauro dressed as a 1930’s flapper, hip to the last.

Very quietly – much too quietly – Attorney General George Jepsen has closed “513 of the 699 whistleblower cases he inherited from his predecessor, former Attorney general Richard Blumenthal, according to a story circulated by The Associated Press (AP) and published in the Washington Post. During his campaign for Attorney General, Mr. Jepsen was pressed by Republican candidate for attorney general Martha Dean to quickly dispose of cases handled by Mr. Blumenthal during his 20 year tenure. Mrs. Dean ran for Attorney General  twice, once against the popular Mr. Blumenthal in 2002 and again in 2010. In the course of the Jepsen-Dean debates, Mr. Jepsen seemed particularly sensitive to delays in resolving such cases, and Mrs. Dean was insistent that, should she be selected as attorney general, she would immediately institute a review of Mr. Blumenthal’s crippling backlog and questionable  cases that never should have been prosecuted, tendering apologies to those of Mr. Blumenth...

Superior Court judge James Graham today dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Roger Sherman Liberty Center that challenged the state budget on Constitutional grounds. The state Constitution requires a balanced budget. The center argued since expenditures exceeded revenue outlays when the budget was adopted by the general assembly, Governor Malloy’s Plan A budget was not in balance and therefore unconstitutional. It was the kind of judicial decision that attempts to square a circle. Only in a court of law is such an exercise not doomed to fail. There is no one in the state of Connecticut who can with any degree of certitude assert that the state budget is in balance – no one. When Associate Attorney General Perry Zinn-Rowthorn insisted during oral argument that the budget was in balance at its passage, he was simply doing his job. The budget is not in balance now; it was not in balance when the liberty center brought a suit calling upon the court to declare that the budget was not in...

Robert Thorson is a professor of geology at the University of Connecticut's Liberal Arts and Sciences and a member of The Hartford Courant's Place Board of Contributors. His columns appear frequently on the paper’s op-ed pages. The Liberal Arts at UConn are, as elsewhere in academia, very liberal. Mr. Thorson is certain he knows how the rest of us will know when gas prices are “high enough.” The attentive reader will notice that Mr. Thorson did not write “too high” but used the formulation “high enough.” That is because Mr. Thorson ardently believes that gas prices in Connecticut, now cresting above $4 and heading towards $5, are not as high as they should be. The price of gas will be high enough, Mr. Thorson advised in a column published on May 5, 2011 , when: “… drive-through lanes at fast-food restaurants and doughnut shops would not be lined with mostly oversized vehicles carrying mostly oversized people toward food energy. “…the carpool lanes on local interstate...

Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer Chris Powell has noticed that liberals in Connecticut quietly have embarked on a course of nullification. The issue of nullification arose nationally when “crazy conservatives,” Mr. Powell noted in a recent column , attempted to enact legislation “to prevent enforcement of the new federal medical insurance law, reviving state's rights in the name of ‘nullification’ of federal statutes.” Here in Connecticut, the log of nullification begins to weigh heavily in the eyes of some over-excitable liberals who, during an attorney general’s race, accused Mrs. Martha Dean of promoting the antiquated doctrine. Yours truly wrote about the issue when it was raised at the time: “And when Mrs. Dean mentioned nullification in a historical context, it was roundly hinted by some commentators that nullification might lead -- gasp! -- to a new civil war. In pre-Civil War New England, the fires of nullification began to smolder over the Fugitive Slave Act....

I have been asked to “like” a page on Facebook that seeks to draft Martha Dean for the U.S. Senate. Without question, I think Mrs. Dean would make a fine senator, a necessary balance in the congress to a left of center New England contingent. However, it will not do to over look hurdles before attemptiung to overleap them. If principled conservatives and libertarians are to become serious about winning office, they cannot continue to will the end without willing the means. Many of them, standing on principle, have declined to accept public financing of campaigns; their Democratic opponents, the servants of other principles, have no such scruples. Money is the means of winning campaigns; more than that, it is the means to transport a message to people who may be confused by possibly false messages relayed to voters by opponents and a sometimes hostile media. Let’s suppose the end a principled conservative or libertarian has in mind is this: to end the public financing of campaigns...

After the election, when it was finally safe to explore some ideas put forward by Martha Dean in her attorney's general race against Democrat George Jepsen, Courant columnist and NPR radio host Colin McEnroe invited Mrs. Dean on his show to bury the hatchet. Mr. McEnroe had indicated during the campaign that Mrs. Dean ideas were somewhat off the beaten track. He may have picked up this patter from some of his comrades at the paper. What left of center commentators consider outrageous – insulting even -- others who do not share their ideas and prejudices may regard as unconventional, the conventional wisdom among political writers in the Connecticut being liberal to progressive. None of the issues discussed by Mrs., Dean and Mr. McEnroe during his recent program were new in any sense. At the outset of her campaign, Mrs. Dean did not choose to hide her light under a bushel basket. Her first political statement, made upon entering the race, was fairly comprehensive. No sooner did co...

The Hartford Courant, where ink stained wretch Colin McEnroe parks his pen mightier than the sword, spiked his Sunday column on Martha Dean . McEnroe understands completely. The Courant bars opinion pieces that appear after the first Sunday before an election, mostly for reasons of fairness. A target of an opinion printed a mere two days before election, in this case Dean, would not have sufficient time to answer any manifestly unjust criticisms within such a short time frame. While McEnroe missed the bell, other political writers at the Courant, not one of whom has during the entire campaign written a commentary that might be considered favorable to Dean, were not so unfortunate, and there are some, Dean among them, who have reason to suspect that all opinions pouring fourth from the Courant concerning Dean are manifestly partisan. In any case, McEnroe’s column very likely would have been redundant: The Courant already had endorsed Dean’s opponent, George Jepsen, and launche...

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s latest media release announcing his plans to lead an investigation into “allegedly defective legal documents filed by banks in thousands of foreclosures nationwide” is written, as usual, in the heroic mode. Although the legal documents are “allegedly” defective, the banks, according to Mr. Blumenthal, “broke the law, papering the courts with defective documents to railroad consumers into fast, possibly fraudulent foreclosures.” Mr. Blumenthal’s summary judgment – the banks broke the law – precedes a careful investigation that may or may not support his prejudgment. According to the press release, Mr. Blumenthal’s “powerful multi-state investigation will hold big banks accountable, determining how and why they broke the law.” There is a certain dissonance in Mr. Blumenthal’s media releases that those in the media who receive them – this one was sent to over 40 recipients and media outlets – have grown used to over the years. If the investigati...

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is the sort of Household Word who might sue death itself when, after a long life of litigation and writing media releases, the grim reaper finally comes for him. He surely has enough tricks up his sleeve to postpone the unfortunate incident for at least half a dozen years, perhaps more. Ms. Pricilla Dickman’s case has been in litigation at least that long. She is both a whistle blower – the University of Connecticut’s Health Center being the institution whistled at – and the subject of Mr. Blumenthal’s attention these past few tortuous years. Mr. Blumenthal’s office defends both whistleblowers and state institutions. Sometimes when the two lock legal horns, conflicts of interest arise. If one tries to imagine a lawyer in a case involving two antagonistic parties who is charged with representing BOTH in a civil proceeding, a few difficulties will suggest themselves. The latest turn in the 6 year old Dickman case involves an assistant attorney gene...

Martha Dean, the Republican nominee for attorney general, made a fruitless plea to Courant reporter Mathew Kauffman at the end of his front page story, “Martha Dean Embroiled In Custody Battle: Experts In The Case Say It Has Taken A Toll On Martha Dean's Son,” a heartfelt cry into the belly of the beast: "’You're straying into territory that involves a 12-year-old boy and somebody who has lied profusely,’ she said, repeating a frequent assertion she has made in court about her ex-husband. ‘This is serious stuff. Do not go there. This is not appropriate for journalism. It has nothing to do with running for attorney general. It's just the luck that I got stuck with, in having married somebody like this, and we're trying to do the best we can to get through this.’" But go there Kauffman did. At the center of Kauffman’s story is a psychological evaluation of Dean plucked from Superior Court documents that trace a messy divorce. Messy divorces, almost always ...

It appears that 2010 may be the “year of the woman” in Connecticut politics -- and not only in Connecticut. Pretty much across the United States, markedly in the Republican Party, women seem to be coming out of the woodwork to run for office, and their backgrounds, mostly in business, are not shallow. Genus feminae , of course, has been making steady progress in politics for some time. Women hold 90 or 16.8% of the 535 seats in the 111th US Congress, 17% of the 100 seats in the Senate and 16.8% of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. Connecticut can point to bumper crop of women vying for political positions this year. One of them, Martha Dean, running for attorney general, was the highest vote getter in the recently concluded Republican primaries. Ann Brickley, running against Democratic pit bull Rep. John Larson – New England’s answer to Ear Mark King John Murtha, diseased -- has a stunning background in business. It seems that Republican women, having tasted some su...

A chameleon will change its color, depending upon the place in which it finds itself, so as to make itself invisible to predators. Large animals have powerful toothy, bone splitting jaws to see them past precarious moments. Small animals have their wits. I saw my first chameleon when my wife and I were visiting Savannah, Georgia. I had taken my coffee out to a brick enclosed courtyard and from the corner of my eye perceived a motion in the plush ivy. I froze when I saw the chameleon because, never having seen one before at close range, I wished to observe it moving stealthily not a foot from the cup. Rotating its pin-hole of an eye, it passed from brick to ivy, changing color in its course from brick red to ivy green. When I made a sudden movement, it was up and over the wall like a marine at boot camp. Some politicians are like chameleons, others not. Martha Dean, the Republican nominee for attorney general this year, opened her campaign last March with all flags flying. Her o...