Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

A Connecticut political commentator noted on his blog that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave a trifling gift of $250,000 to Planned Parenthood in the wake of its jihad to force the Susan G. Komen Foundation to reconsider its momentary pledge to cut its own grants to the nation’s premier abortion provider. Not to be too obvious, but Mr. Bloomberg is multimillionaire Democratic POLITICIAN, and supporting Planned Parenthood is advantageous politics for liberals and progressives. Planned Parenthood is not new to politics. The commentator pointed out that the politically muscular abortion provider “jumped into the 2010 Connecticut U.S. Senate campaign against pro-choice Republican Linda McMahon. Democratic candidate Richard Blumenthal’s press staff member Marcy Stech sent an October 22, 2010 email to seven others seeking ‘mysoginistic photos of women and WWE. Planned Parenthood wants to hit LM hard on it. What do we got?’ Stech was doing the bidding of Democratic consultant Andrew ...

The separation of church and state – an expression first found in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to Baptists in Danbury and not in the U.S. Constitution – is one of those secular pieties rigidly observed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others, except when it is not religiously observed. The Rev. LeRoy Bailey, who had opened First Cathedral church in Bloomfield to students graduating from High Schools within reasonable distance of the cathedral, was set upon by the ever vigilant – except when it is not being vigilant – ACLU, which persuaded a court that the reverend had overstepped putative constitutional strictures. The court shut down the operation, apparently because it felt that students gathering in a church building to celebrate a secular event in the absence of masses and ministers would somehow infect the assembled students with impermissible religious doctrines. One political observer, myself, speculated that the court perhaps believed in homeopathic ma...

The reversal of fortunes is too dramatic not to notice. After the 1990 elections, Democrats held a 267-seat majority in the U.S. House and a 56-seat majority in the senate. These majorities dwindled and vanished during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and today they are nearly reversed. In the post election congress, Republicans will have a 231 or 200 majority in the U.S. House and a 55 or 44 majority in the senate. In addition, Republicans have moved into the majority in state legislature and governorships. The Democrats were unable to carry a single state in the South, Western Plains or Mountain States, the fortress of Republican electoral power. Some Democrat Party stalwarts have suggested the trouble lies with the messenger. Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Steve Grossman said, “We cannot afford to make the perfect the enemy of the good. We have to broaden our base and not have everyone agree with every principle of the party platform. We have to broaden our appeal without v...