Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

It is not likely that Joshua Komisarjevsky, one of the two alleged murderers in the Pettit case, need fear a cell invasion. But the lawyers for his partner in mayhem, Steven Hayes, who along with Komisarjevsky is accused of invading Dr. William Petit’s home and murdering his wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and her two daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11, now are seeking an arrest warrant for Komisarjevsky. Hayes’ lawyers claim that Komisarjevsky has committed “criminal contempt of court” for having disregarded a judge’s gag order. Principles in the case are under a judge’s instruction not to chat it up before trial for fear the court may not be able to empanel a dispassionate jury. It is supposed by some defense attorneys that if a jury member has read about the events at issue in trial, the juror will be “tainted” and thus unable to render a just verdict. Good judges dispose of the worry by instructing jurors that in their deliberations they may only consider evidence pres...

Governor of Alaska and Republican Vice President nominee Sarah Palin’s daughter is pregnant and unmarried. True. She and the father of the child expect to be enjoying wedded bliss in the near future. Mrs. Palin’s unaborted Down Syndrome baby was actually her daughter’s baby. Not true. This is medically impossible since the daughter is pregnant with her future husband’s baby. In a similar case, one of the reasons why John Edwards, once considered by Sen. Barack Obama as a Vice Presidential possibility, was not able to marry the woman he putatively impregnated was because he was already married to his cancer stricken wife. Otherwise, like Mrs. Palin's future son-in-law, he would have done the honorable thing and married the mother of his reputed child, if it was indeed his child. Determining the parentage of the child has been made difficult because while Edwards, who claims he is not the father, boasted he would be willing to take a DNA test to validate his claim, the woman he may h...

"She's being two-faced," said pediatrician Dr. Cindy Grossman-Green of Oprah Winfrey . “She initially had Obama on her show, but now that she's decided [to support him] she won't have any other political candidates on." Is Madonna biased? A wild guess would be "Yes."