Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

We all know that criminal laws have a disparate impact on cities. The famous bank robber Willie Sutton, once asked why he robbed banks, replied with disarming honesty “because that’s where the money is.” Likewise, asked why drug prosecutions are more prevalent in Hartford than they are in, say, tony Greenwich, an honest prosecutor, if there is such an animal, might reply “because that’s where the drug dealers are." The answer to the question why are there more drug runners in Hartford than Greenwich is a little more complex.

For thirty years and more, Republicans in Connecticut have been fleeing with their pants on fire what the Democrats call “social issues,” a flight from the political battlefield – and reality – that has abandoned all the social turf to progressives, some of whom are radical social engineers with knives in their brains. It is a serious mistake to suppose that President Barrack Obama has twice won office because his economic vision was superior to that of his Republican opponents, John McCain and Mitt Romney. Mr. Obama’s two elections were won on social issues, largely because Republicans refuse to engage Democrats on matters other than the domestic economy.

U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal is at it again . Earlier in the Congressional session, Mr. Blumenthal proposed a gun restriction bill that U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid nixed. Mr. Reid is a Democrat who, unlike Mr. Blumenthal, occasionally concerns himself with the political well-being of fellow Democrats, and so the Speaker made sure the bill never came up for a vote. The proposed gun bill championed by Mr. Blumenthal and his compatriot in the Senate, Chris Murphy, easily could have passed the scrutiny of dominant Democrats in Connecticut’s General Assembly, but the Blumenthal-Murphy war on the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution caused major agita among many Democrats looking down the barrel of upcoming elections. Never mind, Mr. Reid was there to wipe every Democrat’s tear, and any prospect of a gun restriction bill was aborted at its fetal stage. Today, the Blumenthal-Murphy effort is useful only as a campaign prop in the Northeast and California.

Partial birth abortion, a medical procedure in which a doctor partially withdraws a late term fetus from a woman and kills it, is the left’s AK15, a semi-automatic rifle banned in Connecticut following a murderous assault on a school in Sandy Hook Connecticut . U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy have taken a leading role in an attempt to push through a reluctant Senate a bill that would require background checks for weapons purchases. A Grand Jury that returned an indictment against late term abortion provider Kermit Gosnell also issued in January 2011 a report on Mr. Gosnell’s abortion clinic that begins, “the medical practice by which [Kermit Gosnell] carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels and, on at least two occasions, caused their death.”

“He just calmly watched and occasionally took notes with a vague hint of a smile on his face from time to time.” Thus did a reporter describe Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s demeanor in court at his trial. The imperturbable Mr. Gosnell was referred to trial by a grand jury after law enforcement officers had raided his office on a complaint that the doctor had engaged in drug dealing, and what the officers found on arrival shocked them. More than forty fetal bodies were stuffed in “bags, milk jugs, orange juice cartons, and even cat food containers.” Some were found frozen in an office refrigerator, and Mr. Gosnell maintained “rows of jars” containing several baby feet.

Blumenthal U.S. Sen. Dick Blumenthal, recently appointed to the Veteran’s Affairs Committee , may have had yet another Zelig moment when, resisting efforts to regulate abortion, he declared, “I'm new to the Senate but I'm not new to this battle. Since the days of Roe v. Wade, when I clerked for Justice Blackmun, as a state legislator, as attorney general, I have fought this battle.” Following Mr. Blumenthal’s remark, a CTMirror reporter commented, “the problem is, Blumenthal clerked for Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun in 1974, the year after Blackmun wrote the Roe v. Wade decision,” causing Mr. Blumenthal’s chief of staff, Laurie Rubiner, to erupt indignantly, “This is a very unfair route you are going down. We'll remember this." In a previous incarnation, Ms. Rubiner was the Vice President for Public Policy for Planned Parenthood, described in Ms. Rubiner’s Planned Parenthood biography as the “nation’s leading sexual and reproductive health care advocate and ...