Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

If a Christian is one who turns his slapped cheek to the slapper for more roughhouse, the American male is no Christian. We are more like Lafcadio Wluiki, the hero of Andree Gide’s novel, “Lafcadio’s Adventures.”   Lafcadio keeps a small knife handy, and whenever he is insulted, he stabs himself in the thigh to memorialize the insult. Forgetting is forgiving. We are not braggarts. An Ahmadinejad here would be laughed to scorn. But we know how to nourish scorpions in our hearts. That we do well. And when the time is ripe, BANG goes the stinger.

Plan B, held out to unions then in negotiations with the Malloy administration as a spook on a stick, was a thing of shark’s teeth and vampire fangs. Senator Edith Prague, almost always friendly to unions, warned the rank and file members who ultimately rejected the plan that brimstone would fall from the sky should Plan A be rejected and, when the plan was rejected, Ms. Prague suffered what can only be described as a political breakdown; she said union members were mad to reject a plan described by a private union leader as an offer to die for. Jonathan Pelto, the voice of unionism in Connecticut’s left leaning press, writhed in indignation and bit his fingernails to the cuticles. The leader of the Democratic caucus in the House, Speaker Chris Donovan, up to this point a declared disinterested observer in the negotiations taking place between the Malloy administration and union leaders, put off plans to announce his candidacy for U.S. Rep. in the 5th District and pledged his service...