Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

A blog entrée written by Ghengis Conn, the proprietor of Connecticut Local Politics, noted in a piece in the Journal Inquirer written by reporter Don Michak , caught the attention of no less an eminence than Attorney General Richard Blumenthal who, properly chastened, vowed he would use his considerable influence to persuade the legislature to alter, if necessary, a bill involving minors and internet predators. The legislative bill, according to Michak, would require social internet sites such as MySpace and Facebook to obtain “written consent from the minor’s parent or guardian and giving the latter access to the profile page at all times.” The legislation also “would require the sites to use independently obtainable information to confirm the accuracy of personal information collected from site members, parents and guardians when registering.” These safety valves alarmed Ghengis, who wrote on his own site, “…there’s no way I and the other moderators (on Connecticut Local Politics) ca...

D. Dowd Muska was kind enough to invite me to speak to the Yankee Institute on blogging. This is the result: I’d like to thank Mr. Muska for inviting me here today to talk to you about blogging. And if it’s possible to thank an institution, I’d also like to thank the Yankee Institute for having provided to me over the years the live ammo I’ve used in political columns and blogs. You, the keepers of the right data, have been and are an invaluable resource. In this talk, if I am successful, I’d like to set blogging in its proper place in the political firmament, and then offer some words of encouragement. About a month ago, I was engaging in political fisticuffs on a blog not my own, Connecticut Local Politics, run by a gent who calls himself Ghengis CONN – that’s C-O-N-N – when I was rudely interrupted by a pest who styles himself Connecticut Keith. CtKeith said this: “Perhaps Mr. Pesci will consider moving his remarks to his own blog – where no one will ever read them.” That’s the sor...

No one said during a recent Hartford Courant’s seminar on blogging that the activity was pretty much like a masked ball on the Pequod; masked because most of the commentators on ship operate under pseudonyms, and the Pequod because that fair ship was, among other things, Melville’s metaphor for a jostling, multicultural world. Most of the usual arguments against gay marriage having been answered sufficiently by proponents of gay marriage, I was wondering whether the same defenses used by gays may also be used to check what appears to be a troglodyte resistance to polygamy. So I proposed the question during a blog session at Connecticut Local Politics, one of the most active sites in Connecticut’s burgeoning blog community. A blogger, ctkeith, helpfully suggested that I move the dialogue to my own blog, “where it will never be read”. If it is never read, I see no harm in this. What follows below is the resulting thread on the question proposed. I’ve edited out other comments that do no...