Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Governor Dannel Malloy’s Nominee for Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, Justice Andrew McDonald, was sent to the General Assembly with a negative recommendation. The nomination  passed in the House by one vote, where Democrats have a six member edge over Republicans, and is now headed towards the Senate, which is split 18-18 among Democrats and Republicans. The Republican leader in the Senate, Len Fasano, said on a radio talk show recently that he is inclined to vote down the nomination.  After viewing all McDonald's opinions -- and also interviewing McDonald -- Fasano feels that McDonald is prone to affirming a possibly flawed decision if the decision contains a partial narrative that supports his apriori views. For instance, McDonald believes that the death penalty may be racist because it falls disproportionately on blacks, a doubtful datum. If a decision to abolish the death penalty supported that view, McDonald would be inclined to support it. That mo...

We have long been accustomed to believe that science is absolutely truthful. In little more than half a century, that is changed. As everyone knows, a hacker broke into the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and distributed thousands of e-mails indicating blatant attempts by the Global Warming professors to cook the books. There’s more. We learn that 5,428 Global Warming articles in Wikipedia have been rewritten. (Click on Lawrence Solomon; read his article, “ How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles ," published originally in the Financial Post of December 19, 2009.) That’s not all. Another 500 articles were deleted, reports Solomon. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) activists were involved. There was a Medieval Warm Period around 1000 AD to 1400 AD, which was warmer than today. It was not caused by humans. The existence of that Medieval Warm Period is fatal to the Global Warming activists, such that they have been indu...

The Episcopal dust-up between Bishop Andrew Smith and half a dozen Connecticut pastors, better known as the “Connecticut Six,” is but the tip of a volcano; the eruption is portentous because it points to a profound and long lasting split in the world-wide Anglican Church over the issue of gay pastors and, in this case, gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson, recently installed in New Hampshire. The fissure in the Anglican Church began at the moment of Robinson’s consecration, the battle lines at that point forming around theological issues. Robinson’s installation was the tap of the jeweler’s hammer that split the Anglican diamond, some scholars now predict, into two world-wide provinces: a conservative contingent that opposes admission of gays to the clergy on doctrinal grounds, and a liberal contingent that favors such admissions and an allegorical reading of sacred texts. Having threatened to depose the Connecticut Six, Bishop Smith now has “inhibited” – Episcopal-speak for “fired” – the Rev. ...