Dean Enters The Gubernatorial Race

Attorney Martha Dean – Colin McEnroe calls her “old blue eyes”  – is the equivalent in Connecticut of Sarah Palin nationally, the woman from the wrong side of the political tracks who those fighting the “war against women” love to denigrate. The abhorrence is palpable, and possibly a bit misogynistic. Hartford Courant columnist Rick Green, recently departed to Vermont, way back in June 2010 referred to Ms. Dean as “a heat-seeking Republican missile” and “the blonde gunslinger.” Captivated by the color of her eyes, Mr. Green referred with disdain to the “cyborg-like quality to Dean's tractor-beam blue eyes.” The “blonde gunslinger,” it is well known, regards the U.S. Constitution with some reverence, and this appears to have excited Mr. Green’s barely concealed contempt.

The difference between Mrs. Palin and Ms. Dean is that Ms. Dean is brighter, a more accomplished rhetorician, and, according to Mr. McEnroe, a trifle dangerous: “… I know it’s not a good day when you find out you gotta run against Martha.

Ms. Dean had barely announced her run for governor whenshe was set upon by the usual crowd. Isn't this the Martha Dean who serves as a lawyer to the sort of gun groups Governor Dannel Malloy and Connecticut’s gun-phobic General Assembly had chased out of state to South Carolina? Yup, she’s the one. Isn’t she the bible thumping, constitution hugging lady who ran on her Facebook page a clip affirming that Adam Lanza’s murderous rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary school was a hoax?

No, not really. The clip did appear on Ms. Dean’s Facebook page. It served principally as an example of what may happen in the sometimes wacky conspiratorial theory community when releasable information is withheld by investigators for more than a year after the commission of a mass murder.

Some of the conspiracy theories might easily have been disproved by the early release of known data that would not have compromised a seeming endless criminal investigation. For instance, one of the conspiratorial theories involved the presence of a second shooter – actually a man discovered running near the crime scene and detained for questioning by police, who knew moments after questioning him that he was not a participant in the crime.

Another theory revolved around the notion that the rifle used by Adam Lanza was not an AR15. A grainy shot showed police removing what was misidentified as an AR15 from the trunk of a car; the rifle was a shotgun Mr. Lanza brought with him to the slaughter. Information of this kind could have been released immediately without damaging a prospective investigation. The lack of accurate data is the breeding ground of conspiracy theories, nearly all of which easily could have been dispelled at news conferences.

No, the murderer was not, as was mistakenly reported, Ryan Lanza. Yes, there was only one shooter. Yes, that shooter was Adam Lanza. Yes, first responders did not immediately enter the school, though they arrived as reports of shots fired were being beamed over police radios, a datum that did not become available for public consumption until the publication of Danbury State Attorney Steven Sedensky’s criminal report,  which was issued a year after the crime.

Facebook is used by most reporters and commentators to file items collected for future reference, or to elicit comments, and the appearance of a report on Facebook certainly does not signify assent to the report.

In an interview with Dennis House on “Face the State” almost immediately after the posting of the video, Ms. Dean said “I do not endorse it” (the video). She said that media misinformation “invited conspiracy theories.” She denounced the possibility that the assault on Sandy Hook Elementary School had not occurred, saying it was “ridiculous to raise the possibility they (the children) weren’t (murdered).” Asked, “Has there been a cover-up?” Ms. Dean replied “I have no reason to believe there was.”

All these direct quotes are readily available to any reporter or commentator with a computer who may be inclined to suggest erroneously in stories or commentary that Ms. Dean herself ever seriously entertained the notion that the assault on Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax.

Republicans On The Run

The state Democratic Party, much wealthier than the state Republican Party, is now spending some of its dollars on imported gunslingers such as James Hallinan, a political hessian hired by party central to throw mud at Republican candidates for governor, a certain sign that the election season is upon us.  Democrats in Connecticut hold all the state’s constitutional offices, have veto proof majorities in the General Assembly, and presently have in their campaign coffers 14 times more cash than Republicans.

Some of the mudslinging has backfired. Even a few liberal commentators have winced at the slops that regularly cross their news desks but, as Cardinal John Henry Newman once said, “Throw enough mud and some will stick – stick but not stain.”

Governor Dannel Malloy’s low rating in the polls, some commentators have noted, may give Republicans an opportunity to win back the governorship, last held by Jodi Rell, Mr. Malloy’s polar opposite. Mr. Malloy is a pro-union, left of center politician; Mrs. Rell, a creature of the legislature, was a moderate Republican of a kind that once held office in most of New England, the land that conservatism forgot. Barry Goldwater, the Will Rogers of the modern conservative movement, used to say, “If you cut off New England and California, you’ve got a pretty good country.”

For reasons not yet explored by any of New England’s major research institutions, the moderate Republican in New England has become something of a vanishing species. In Connecticut, the species is as extinct as the Dodo bird. All the members of Connecticut U.S. Congressional delegation are left of center progressives, some more brash than others. U.S. Senator Chris Murphy shouts his progressivism from the rooftops, but then he is likely to moderate his tone when he next faces voters in three years. U.S. Representative Jim Himes is more discreet; he travels among progressives with his ideology tucked into the breast pocket of his expensive looking suit. Hip U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro is fearless, as anyone would be in a district that has not elected a Republican to the U.S. House in more than 30 years; ditto U.S. Representative John Larson of the gerrymandered 1st District, last held by a Republican nearly 60 years ago.

Whatever may be ailing the Republican Party in Connecticut, its losses cannot be attributed to conservative incumbents. There are none, though there is little doubt that Democrats running for office in 2014 will be banging the drums loudly against fictitious conservative threats and Tea Party “extremists,” northern Republicans clinging desperately to their guns, their wallets and their bibles – that sort of thing. The 2014 Democratic campaign script, however fantastic its claims, has already been written, much of it in Washington D.C. and Chicago, where President Barack Obama’s former campaign script writers hold court. Chicago is the murder capital of the United States, and the Democratic Party War Room in Washington D.C. is party central for propaganda that will be picked up by state parties.

Political reality in Connecticut is quite different than in other parts of the country. Here in the land of steady progressive habits, the Democratic Party has almost completely routed Republicans, especially in large, one-party cities such as New Haven, which this year had the distinction of electing as mayor a Democratic Party fixture whose husband, now diseased, was the top tax scofflaw in the city over which his wife, Toni Harp, now presides.

Speeding her plow in a Democratic primary were the usual notables: Governor Dannel Malloy, author of the largest tax increase in Connecticut history, U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, for more than 20 years a crusading Attorney General who, in his former position, used to scowl fiercely at folk who avoided paying their fair share of taxes, and U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, the National Rifle Association’s bête noir.

In one party states, politicians working the media get to choose not only their friends but their enemies as well – and never mind that the “enemy” is largely a Potemkin Village fiction. The Tea Party in Connecticut presents a greater threat to RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) than to progressive Democrats. And for this reason, they can be safely attacked by incumbent Democrats who never met a constitutional bulwark they could not leap over. Economic conservatives among Republican campaigners become poorer than Democrats in direct proportion to their defense of rational budgets, spending cuts and appeals to the self-interests of entrepreneurial wealth producers. This is an arc that has been visible over skies in Connecticut for more than 50 years.

Is it not a wonder that only a handful of reporters, editors and commentators in the state have noticed the debt pots at each end of the progressive rainbow? When, at the end of the downward plunge, Connecticut inevitably becomes the Venezuela of New England – Crumbling Venezuela was once considered the Paris of Latin America, but not even Paris is Paris anymore – those rooted in the rubble may well ask the tribunes of the people, “Why did you not warn us of the impending disaster?”

The McEnroe Itch

Any admission from Colin McEnroe, a Courant commentator and host of his own radio show on National Public Radio, “The Colin McEnroe Show,” that he is disposed to vote Republican should be taken, as Mark Twain once said, “with a ton of salt.”

Mr. McEnroe wrote in a December 07, 2012 column, “Searching The Ballot For Worthy Republicans,” that he was “itchin' to vote for a Republican.”  And he even provided some tantalizing biographical information: Both of his parents had been Goldwater Republicans. Political obligations to one’s parents, however, rarely survive a Yale education, the fifth commandment having been seriously eroded by sophomore year. Mr. McEnroe noticed that his father had been sliding towards the Democratic heresy at the end. In his later years, his father had “taken to slipping into the voting booth and quietly voting Democrat. I could tell this was happening because he slowly stopped saying anything about politics in front of my mother.”

Around the time he wrote his column, Mr. McEnroe had two rare opportunities to scratch his itch. And so did the Hartford Courant, which multiple times claimed or strongly suggested in its editorials that the GOP should offer up to voters more moderate (read: liberal), pragmatic (read: liberal), non-ideological (read: liberal) Republicans.

Of Ross Garber, then running for attorney general in a Republican Party primary, Mr. McEnroe wrote in his column, “I also would have considered voting for Ross Garber for attorney general, even though I have no significant problems with the Democrat who won, George Jepsen. I think highly of Ross, and I would have been able to say, ‘I do NOT always vote for Democrats. As recently as 2010, I blah-blah woof-woof.’"

Mr. McEnroe was robbed of the opportunity of voting in the general election for a Republican Party attorney general who suited his taste because the Republican Party nominee for attorney general that year was attorney Martha Dean, about whom Mr. McEnroe wrote, “Just the other day I was remarking to my colleague John Dankosky that perhaps we all should have voted for Martha Dean Christian Space Warrior™, because life would have been really exciting and because the state could have written down its debt by selling action figures. But I didn't vote for her because I was afraid to roll the dice on someone who might get the state bogged down in litigation with secular humanist mole people living in tunnels on one of Jupiter's moons.”

The ghost of Mr. McEnroe’s politically active father, not to mention the ghost of his Goldwater supporting mother, could have advised Mr. McEnroe that he might easily have registered as Republican that year so as to have had the pleasure of scratching his itch by voting against the “Christian Space Warrior™” and for his preferred Republican Party candidate, Mr. Garber, in the Republican Party primary. Perhaps that route was too troublesome for Mr. McEnroe; or, as seems more likely, the itch to vote Republican was not very itchy.

Mr. Roraback that year did make it past the Republican Party primary filter to become the GOP’s nominee for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut’s 5th District. Mr. Roraback edged out three other Republican Party U.S. Congressional contestants when Mark Greenberg, since pilloried by Mr. McEnroe, pledged his support to Mr. Roraback, who was without question Mr. McEnroe’s kind of Republican.

In his most recent column, “State Republicans Shouldn't Squander Chances," Mr. McEnroe writes, “The Connecticut GOP's leprous condition leaves too much room for rich guys who don't know what they're talking about and don't seem to care. Yes, Mark Greenberg, I'm looking at you.”

Mr. Roraback was the Courant’s kind of Republican too, uber-liberal on social issues and what has been called in Connecticut a “fiscal conservative” on economic issues. Indeed, Mr. Roraback styled himself during the general campaign a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. On the social issue front, Mr. Roraback’s bona fides were unimpeachable – almost. As noted in Connecticut Commentary,  Mr.  Roraback’s cousin, Catharine Roraback, “was a civil rights attorney in Connecticut best known for representing Estelle Griswold and Dr. C. Lee Buxton in the famous 1965 Supreme Court case, Griswold v. Connecticut, which legalized the use of birth control and created the precedent of the ‘right to privacy’ later employed by an imaginative Supreme Court to rid the United States of its anti-abortion demons.”

Mr. Roraback had been praised by the Courant in previous editorials for having had a perfect attendance record in the state Senate. He never missed a vote, according to The Register Citizen Papers: ”Since beginning his service in the General Assembly on Jan. 4, 1995, Senator Roraback has cast 7,432 votes and has been present for every vote taken in his 15 legislative sessions.” Mr. Roraback’s score card on social issues was perfect, as noted by the usual left of center rating agencies. And Mr. Roraback had far more political experience under his belt than his Democratic challenger in the 5^th District, Elizabeth Esty, the wife of Governor Dannel Malloy’s Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP).

The Courant fulsomely endorsed Mr. Roraback over other challengers in the Republican Party primary, noting with some relief that ”Mr. Roraback is a fiscal conservative but not an ideologue” – i.e. not a social conservative.

Yet in the general election, the Courant endorsed Ms. Esty over Mr. Roraback, the Republican Party endorsed candidate embraced by Mr. Greenberg who, according to Mr. McEnroe, “doesn’t know what he’s talking about” and “doesn’t seem to care,” a formulation that, as it rolls off Mr. McEnroe’s tongue, may mean little more than this: “Mr. Greenberg’s political prescriptions for what ails the United States do not correspond to my own.”

The Courant’s general election endorsement of Ms. Esty over Mr. Roraback was soddened with remorse: “… it is hard not to endorse Mr. Roraback. In his 18 years in the legislature, he has been a thoughtful and productive lawmaker with a reputation for hard work and personal integrity. There's no reason to think that wouldn't continue in Washington, should he be elected.”

Mr. McEnroe’s political prescriptions for most large issues affecting the nation are, as always, amusing but amorphous.

Neither the Courant nor Mr. McEnroe will have a future opportunity to scratch their respective itches and endorse or vote for Mr. Roraback as a Republican U.S. Congressional candidate in the 5^th District, because some months ago he was appointed by Mr. Malloy as a Superior Court Judge, removing Mr. Roraback as a potential candidate for the U .S. Congress.

Both the Courant and Mr. McEnroe no doubt were pleased with the selection. It eliminated permanently a terribly inconvenient itch. 

McEnroe, A Thousand Laughs

One of the problems with columns written by humorists is that they may be taken seriously when they are intended as humor or – worse – they may be taken humorously when they are intended to be taken seriously. This was the curse that followed Mark Twain to the end of his days.

So too with Mr. McEnroe. “Give me the right guy,” he has said , “and I’ll vote GOP for once.”

Mr. McEnroe’s humor rests, like a coiled snake, in that “for once.” Has he ever voted for a Republican?

Not likely. Let the word go round at the Hartford Courant that any of its columnists voted Republican, and they would never survive the shattering laughter that would greet them when they sit down at their keyboards to advise Republicans who they ought to nominate to run against, say, U.S. Representative John Larson in the 1^st District, or Rosa DeLauro in the 3^rd District, both of whom are certain to die in office, Ms. DeLauro dressed as a 1930’s flapper, hip to the last.

Mr. McEnroe goes on to list the “wrong” guys: Tom Foley for governor; Mark Greenberg for the Congressional 5^th District; Martha Dean for…  well, anything at all.

Perhaps the Republican GOP should take Mr. McEnroe at his word and offer him an opportunity to run on the Republican ticket in the 1^st District against Mr. Larson. Mr. McEnroe, of a certainty, would be the “right guy” and someone on the GOP ticket he could vote for – “for once.”

Here is the ticklish question: Supposing Mr. McEnroe were to accept the GOP offer to run against Mr. Larson, how many votes would he garner from the editors and columnists and reporters at the Hartford Courant?

He should not be hasty in answering the question.

Years ago, when Barbara Kennelly held the seat, the sacrificial offering put up by the GOP was a very sweet, intelligent engineer who worked for Combustion Engineering, which went out of business after Connecticut became impatient with nuclear producers.

One day, the hapless GOP challenger called and lamented that he was not being covered properly by Connecticut’s left of center media, and could I do a few columns on his effort to overthrow the daughter of Connecticut’s last Democratic Party boss?

Of course I could – and did. He turned out to be a very respectable candidate. But the 1^st District was then, as it is now, an unassailable Democratic fortress. He lost. But that was not what grieved him. What busted him up was that Combustion had given more money in campaign contributions to Mrs. Kennelly than to him -- a faithful employee of Combustion.

I wrote a last commiserating column that said, “If the Democratic Party were to run a fire hydrant in the 1^st District and the GOP were to run God, the hydrant would undoubtedly win.” Ms. Kennelly’s communications’ director was not amused.

The GOP should seriously make Mr. McEnroe an offer and run him against Mr. Larson. Everyone would benefit from the arraignment: Mr. McEnroe would – "for once" – be able to vote for a Republican acceptable to him; the campaign would produce a thousand laughs, and the GOP would lose nothing in the venture they would not have lost had they run Martha Dean or God in the First District. 

The Stink War

 “The ink war.” That is how Tom Dudchik of Capitol Report styled the controversy between Chis Powell, the icon busting editor of the Journal Inquirer and, following a rebuttal editorial in the Hartford Courant, pretty much everyone else manning the barricades on the left who ever lifted a pen or pounded a keyboard in defense of the liberal view of the decline of print media.

The controversial pieces are printed here as they appeared, in chronological sequence; first, Mr. Powell’s initial column; then the Courant’s editorial rebuttal; then, an interview with Jim Romenesko; then Mr. Powell’s response to what he regards as the distortions of his critics; and finally a Courant rebuttal accusing Mr. Powell of having defended the indefensible – namely, himself. Unprinted here are a slew of editorials and commentary pieces all, more or less, bearing the same message: that Mr. Powell has attacked all single parent moms; that he is a holdover from those glorious days of yore when print media enjoyed a monopoly on dispensing information; that he has failed to understand properly the regrettable inroads made on the monopoly by the internet and the loss of advertising that has impoverished many newspapers; that he is a closet misogynist who has unjustly denigrated the poor.

The whips and scorns the left is so eager to brandish have been left out of this account for space reasons.

In the good old days of print journalism – when, for instance, George Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton were pulling each other’s hair in British papers – newspaper editors thought it proper to print in full both the newspaper’s points on some controversy of the day and hearty rebuttals written by controversialists who defended an opposing point of view.

This is no longer done. Instead, editorialists and commentators generally summarize whatever points they wish to demolish in print, running in full only their own invaluable opinions.

In a bow to old and perhaps more just journalistic processes long abandoned, the remarks of Mr. Powell and some of his critics are here published in full – without additional remarks.   

Journalism's problem may not be the Internet 

By Chris Powell

Posted: Saturday, September 28, 2013 12:15 am

Journalism is hailing the acquisition of The Washington Post by Internet retailing entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, figuring that he has both the genius and wealth to develop a new self-sustaining model of journalism. This may be a bit presumptuous.

For as much as Bezos' company, Amazon, has done remarkable things, its decisive business strategy was only sales tax evasion, an advantage that seems to be coming to an end as Congress prepares to enact legislation allowing states to collect sales taxes on Internet purchases. If the future of journalism rests with the Internet rather than with the old business models of declining profitability -- newsprint and the broadcast airwaves -- the Internet model of profitable journalism still hasn't been invented yet. And if such a model was even close at hand, the Post under its longtime owners, the Graham family, could have well afforded to undertake it without any help from Bezos.

Further, while the decline of journalism coincides with the rise of the Internet, the Internet may not be the primary cause at all.

Certainly the Internet has given journalism a powerful competitor for public attention, just as radio and then television did. The Internet is a far more powerful competitor because, unlike radio and TV, it allows people to indulge their particular interests at any hour of the day to the exclusion of everything else, to live always in the narrowest of worlds rather than in a broad one. For example, thanks to the Internet someone well might know nearly everything about the Boston Red Sox, Miley Cyrus, and sunspots and yet be unaware that an airplane had just crashed a few streets away, that the governor had just been sent to prison for corruption, and that town government had just raised property taxes again.

That is, traditional journalism, especially newspaper journalism, remains indispensable for conveying local and state news and providing some understanding of public policy, there being few exclusively Internet-based sources of information about those things. But do local and state news and some understanding of public policy remain indispensable to most people?

Even in a supposedly prosperous and well-educated state like Connecticut, how strong can demand for those things be now that half the children are being raised without two parents at home and thus acquiring developmental handicaps; 70 percent of community college and state university freshmen have not mastered what used to be considered basic high school skills; poverty has risen steadily even as government appropriations in the name of remediating poverty have risen steadily; and democracy has sunk so much that half the eligible population isn't voting in presidential elections, 65 percent isn't voting in state elections, and 85 percent isn't voting in municipal elections?

This social disintegration and decline in civic engagement coincide with the decline of traditional journalism just as much as the rise of the Internet does.

Indeed, newspapers still can sell themselves to traditional households -- two-parent families involved with their children, schools, churches, sports, civic groups, and such. But newspapers cannot sell themselves to households headed by single women who have several children by different fathers, survive on welfare stipends, can hardly speak or read English, move every few months to cheat their landlords, barely know what town they're living in, and couldn't afford a newspaper subscription even if they could read. And such households constitute a rising share of the population.

These days in Connecticut if you want to know what's happening in your geographic community -- your town and your state -- rather than just your virtual community, the Internet is of little help; you still have to read newspapers or their Internet sites.

If you don't want to know or couldn't care less, that's your right, but then the problem is much bigger than journalism.

  

Chris Powell Can't Pin Newspaper Woes On Welfare Moms

Editorial, The Hartford Courant

6:07 p.m. EDT, October 2, 2013

It is no secret that print journalism faces enormous challenges today, but we don't think these challenges were brought about by welfare moms. That puts us at odds with the Manchester Journal Inquirer's managing editor, Chris Powell.

Many students of the industry ascribe the decline in print journalism to the rise of the Internet and the migration of classified advertising to sites like Craigslist. In a column that's getting a lot of attention online, Mr. Powell instead proposes that the real villain is a breakdown of the social fabric, epitomized by rent-cheating, barely literate welfare mothers.

Mr. Powell says, and here we agree, that newspapers are still indispensable for conveying local and state news and providing understanding of public policy. But he seems to think many people cannot comprehend this information "now that half the children are being raised without two parents at home and thus acquiring developmental handicaps." He's wrong: Nearly 70 percent of Connecticut children live with two married parents and have since 2008, according to the Census Bureau. We couldn't substantiate his claim about developmental handicaps.

He says newspapers can still market themselves to "traditional households — two-parent families involved with their children." But newspapers "cannot sell themselves to households headed by single women who have several children by different fathers, survive on welfare stipends, can hardly speak or read English, move every few months to cheat their landlords, barely know what town they're living in, and couldn't afford a newspaper subscription even if they could read."

Aside from his stereotyping, and general nastiness, newspapers never relied on people who couldn't afford to buy the paper, and fortunately there aren't many such people. Mr. Powell says such families are increasing, but the numbers say otherwise. There are 28 percent fewer households getting welfare today than a decade ago. Many of them are headed by grandparents, not single women, and many recipients are working, according to the state Department of Social Services.

And journalism readership is greater than ever. More readers saw Mr. Powell's column online than in print, and that includes caring single moms.

The challenge for the industry is to create a business model that supports quality journalism, however delivered. We're working on it.

The challenge is also to chronicle and change with the times, not hearken back to supposed good old days. Journalism needs to evolve, be dynamic, embrace the future, not run to a mythic past, while insulting people and getting facts wrong to boot.

The media's job is to portray the world as it is, not as Ronald Reagan might have seen it. Mr. Powell often is an effective provocateur and commentator, but this rant is unworthy of responsible journalism. 

Controversial Journal Inquirer Editor: “If My Opinion Is So Wacky, Why Bother With It?

From, JimRomenesko.com

October 4, 2013

Manchester (Conn.) Journal Inquirer managing editor Chris Powell was blasted earlier this week after he wrote that “newspapers cannot sell themselves to households headed by single women who have several children by different fathers, survive on welfare stipends, can hardly speak or read English, move every few months to cheat their landlords, barely know what town they’re living in, and couldn’t afford a newspaper subscription even if they could read.”

The Hartford Courant said “this rant is unworthy of responsible journalism.” It’s “off-base on many levels,” added Matt DeRienzo.

Will Bunch put Powell down “as Exhibit A for exactly how NOT to save newsrooms.”

Kirsten Lambertsen ‏nominated the managing editor “for @WhiteWhine of the month. Make that, the year.”

What does Powell have to say about his critics and the online reaction to his column?

“Well, for starters, I was surprised to find myself becoming so important,” he tells Romenesko readers. “After all, the world is full of opinions, including wacky ones, so what makes the opinion of an editor in Connecticut who is of no particular renown so deserving of criticism nationally? If my opinion is so wacky, why bother with it? Hell, the federal government has just been incapacitated. Aren’t there a few more important things to upset commentators?”

He says he never blamed welfare mothers for the decline of the newspaper business.

Rather, I correlated the decline of the newspaper business — the decline of the news business generally, really — with the social disintegration all around us, and cited quite a few examples, including the collapse of public education and participation in elections. The disintegration represented by childbearing outside marriage, a frequent topic in my writing, was a prominent example because it underlies so much of the social disintegration generally, as it is child abuse and neglect. Even the liberal-originating social science has been confirming this lately.

Many single mothers took the now-infamous paragraph of criticism about welfare mothers as an attack on them, but the paragraph criticized only WELFARE mothers in some VERY SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES.

Powell says he’s not surprised by the “abusive” emails and calls that the Journal Inquirer received after his column went viral. “That’s always the case when there’s controversy and when people don’t have to identify themselves,” he writes in an email. “More disappointing to me is the continuing general refusal to recognize the social disintegration.”

Will he address his critics in a future column?

There’s a possibility, he says, “but I can live with letting the column speak for itself. ….Besides, while criticism can sting, my 15 minutes of fame will be up today or tomorrow.”

So social disintegration isn't a problem for news?

By Chris Powell

Posted: Monday, October 7, 2013 1:30 am | Updated: 6:24 am, Mon Oct 7, 2013.

Journalists from Bangor to Salt Lake City and from Philadelphia to Miami have launched themselves into smug ridicule in recent days, their headlines proclaiming that an editor in Connecticut had blamed single mothers for the decline of the newspaper industry. It seems to be the national journalistic pile-on of the month, overshadowing even the shutdown of the federal government.

It is also a distortion.

Rather, that editor -- this writer -- wrote in a column that the decline of newspapers and the news business generally may correlate less with the rise of the Internet than with social disintegration, as represented by the collapse of public education and voter participation, the failure of government to alleviate poverty, and the growth in welfare-dependent households, particularly those headed by unmarried, unskilled, and largely illiterate women who have several children by different men.

It was the latter example that set everyone off.

It was said to be an attack on all single women, all single women with children, and all households with unconventional parenting. But the column criticized an entirely different group.

It was said to be "misogynist," as if in the era of women's equality certain women are not to be held responsible for their anti-social behavior.

It was said to be "racist," as if the inability of much of the population to speak and read the national language does not impugn immigration policy and risk disunity.

Some critics disputed the column's assertion that half the children in Connecticut are being raised in households without two parents. The figure is arguable but the Washington-based research group Child Trends reported last year that more than half of children nationally born to women under 30 are now born outside marriage. Meanwhile the fatherlessness rate approaches 90 percent in Connecticut's cities and exceeds 50 percent in many public schools in inner suburbs, dragging education down.

So why argue the exact percentage if not to suggest that this phenomenon is not a problem? And if it is not a problem, why is Connecticut spending $800 million a year on its Department of Children and Families?

For many years now even the liberal social science research has reported that childbearing outside marriage is far more than a problem -- that it is a society-wide catastrophe.

Poverty and the ignorance it imposes are not environments for selling newspapers or any news -- nor for preserving democracy.

Disputing the column, the Hartford Courant said welfare rolls are down. But food stamps, government disability benefits rolls, and earned income tax credits are way up. Indeed, as National Public Radio reported in March, disability is the new welfare.

The Courant's dismissal of the relevance of all this to civic life and journalism is refuted by the newspaper's own circulation figures, its long having had more home-delivered subscribers in suburban West Hartford than in Hartford itself though Hartford has a far larger population -- one far more dependent on welfare.

The Courant also faulted the column for "general nastiness," as if the newspaper's own premier columnists, Colin McEnroe, Kevin Rennie, and Jim Shea, have achieved their audiences with a devotion to subtlety.

The challenge to the news industry, the Courant says, "is to create a business model that supports quality journalism, however delivered." But there can be no such model if society keeps impoverishing itself.

The news industry, the Courant adds, should "embrace the future, not run to a mythic past." But of course for the Courant's parent company, Tribune, which is selling its newspapers, the future is television -- a future without any need for literacy. And there was nothing mythic about a past where Americans were educated, read, participated, and voted.

Chris Powell Doubles Down On Blaming Poor Moms

Editorial, The Hartford Courant

Journal Inquirer Editor Bemoans 'Distortion' Of Earlier Column, But Message Seems The Same

5:57 p.m. EDT, October 7, 2013

Chris Powell, managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, seems intent on finding a fall girl for the woes of newspapers. Once again he's blaming women.

He wrote in a Sept. 28 column, "Journalism's Problem May Not Be The Internet," that newspapers' real problem was "single women who have several children by different fathers, survive on welfare stipends, can hardly speak or read English, move every few months to cheat their landlords, barely know what town they're living in, and couldn't afford a newspaper subscription even if they could read."

This bizarre theory was trounced nationwide. We'd hoped it had been put to rest.

But now it comes again.

In his latest column, Mr. Powell accuses critics of "distortion." He says he was really saying the culprit for newspaper woes is "social disintegration," as represented by a host of ills, including "the growth in welfare-dependent households, particularly those headed by unmarried, unskilled, and largely illiterate women who have several children by different men."

Sounds like the same argument.

There are some worrying socioeconomic trends in the U.S. But unwed and welfare-dependent mothers aren't responsible for newspapers' fate. The rise of online journalism is. Rather than bemoan this, journalists have to jump on the jet.

Mr. Powell has been a zealous advocate for open government and other worthy causes. If only he could harness that energy toward engaging in the future of the news industry rather than blaming the blameless.

Sandy Hook Adieu

You know it’s over when all the notable politicians have taken their bows, this time draped in the winding cloth of Sandy Hook’s victims. On Sunday, a week after Christians, some of them, went to their churches to memorialize the resurrection of the Christ, and 15 weeks after Adam Lanza shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School armed to the teeth with weapons owned by his mother, whom he murdered with a still legal 22 caliber rifle, there slaughtering six heroic staff members of the school and twenty innocent children, the Hartford Courant ran on its Opinion page a series of columns surmounted by the eye catching headline, “Will This Stop More Newtowns?”

By “this” the Courant intended to indicate the anti-gun legislation newly passed by Connecticut’s General Assembly.

The mercifully short but emotionally inconvenient answer to the question is – “No.”

Possibly the most thoughtful column among the three featured on the paper’s Opinion front page was written by Colin McEnroe, who struggled manfully with the usual heart-mind dichotomy.

“He could not afford, also,” Mr. McEnroe wrote of emotionally overcome Republican leader John McKinney, “to lose the Battle of Who Cares More.”

Mr. McEnroe has been around the legislative block a few times in the course of his writing career and knows, as most of us do, that the chief battle – sometimes the onlybattle – that will secure a legislative victory is won by those who are most able to appeal to raw emotion -- and Sandy Hook has rubbed every emotion raw.

“The problem with most people,” said a philosopher full of years and wisdom (my mother, in fact) is that they think with their hearts and feel with their heads.”

I once brought her C.S. Lewis’ essay “Men Without Chests” to read. The point of the essay was that a heart properly belongs in the chest and not on the sleeve, where it might readily be shown by social deciders to those unpersuadable few as an incontrovertible ipsi dixit.

If only humankind, Mr. Lewis sighed, could manage to negotiate the perilous abyss between the heart and mind that is sometimes opened by the jagged and sharp events of life. Mr. Lewis thought, some think credulously, that Christianity might provide a bridge. So did Saint Augustine, the bishop of Hippo in Africa who argued against pagan Rome but wept when Rome fell. The human heart, Augustine knew, was rootless, in perpetual motion, and could find rest only through a sometimes treacherous return home: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."

It is doubtful that the 20 year-old Mr. Lanza read much of Augustine or Lewis. His spiritual template was drawn from the murderous acts of Anders Breivik, who slaughtered more than 77 people in Norway. Did Mr. Breivik also wear his heart, such as it was, on his sleeve? Is there a pill one might take to move the heart and head where they belong?

There is something nearly pagan, certainly pre-Christian that hovers like a black halo around mass murder crimes and their consequences.

In the Golden Bough, Sir James Frazier recounts an Athenian sacrifice known as “the murder of the ox” or bouphonia. An ox is slaughtered with a knife to propitiate the gods of the harvest. The slaughtering instruments, axes and knives, are first washed in pure water by maidens, then sharpened on whetstones by men, after which they are given to the butchers who slaughter the ox. Following the ceremony, a trial is held by the king-judge to affix blame on behalf of the murdered ox. Ritualistically, all are accused: The water carriers shift blame to those who have sharpened the weapon; these point to the butchers as the guilty parties. And finally, the butchers lay blame upon the axes and the knives – which“accordingly are found guilty, condemned and cast into the sea.”

The pagan ritual – every bit detailed and precise as the seemingly endless political folderol following the murders in Sandy Hook – provide an example of homeopathic magic, during which human guilt is ascribed to inanimate objects such as, in the deliberations of our post-pagan General Assembly, a blameless rifle, found guilty and metaphorically cast into the sea.

Albert Jay Nock, one of the early influences on Bill Buckley, wondered in “Memoirs of a Superfluous Man” how a modern living in the 20^th century would know if the world were descending into a new Dark Age.

The mercifully brief answer to that question is – by the signs of the times.

McMahon, Republican!!!

Polls showing that Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate Linda McMahon had overcome a vote advantage once held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy have the left among Connecticut commentators – pretty much all commentators in the state – in a furious snit, best typified by a flare sent airborne by Colin McEnroe, the host of The Colin McEnroe Show on Connecticut Public Radio (WNPR). In addition to hosting his own program at WNPR, Mr. McEnroe is a Hartford Courant columnist:

“When all else fails, hit her with the dirtiest smear: Constantly mention that she's a Republican. She could tip the Senate into Republican control. Republican means you don't get the Medicare you've been paying for all these years. It means pre-existing conditions are back on the list of Gigantic Worries, and your 24-year-old can be kicked off your policy. It means your taxes go up and LeBron James' don't (sic). I am fond of many Republicans, but I wouldn't want to run as one in Connecticut in 2012. So: She's a Republican. (This is something she keeps on the down-low.) Republican! Republican!”

No Comics on the Right

It would be difficult for anyone other than politicians on the right, often the butt of his jokes, to disdain Colin McEnroe. We in the land of Mark Twain do love and forgive our humorists their hyperbole, and Mr. McEnroe is the closest thing Connecticut has to, say, Aristophanes, the famous Greek comic playwright of the 4^thcentury BC.

Time, as we know, is the enemy of sound scholarship. The ruin of Greece has left huge gaps in our understanding of, among other things, Greek comic playwrights. Only eleven of Aristophanes’ 40 plays survive virtually complete. Modern scholarship, which relies on multiple disciplines –archeology, for instance -- to fill in the gaps, shows us an Aristophanes who was an arch political critic, though he wore many masks.

In his plays, Aristophanes mercilessly and subversively routed by means of humor the larger and more offensive pretentions of his day. Plato’s beef against Aristophanes was that his play “The Clouds” slandered Socrates and so led to the philosopher’s trial and execution, perhaps an over-reaction on the part of a shameless Socratic groupie.

Greek politicians, one may imagine, were none too pleased with him. Cleon, represented in “The Knights” as a political opportunist, a sharpie and a demagogue, felt his spurs. A populist leader of the pro-war faction in Athens, Cleon was a prime target of Aristophanes’ early plays, and the inevitable suit for slander brought by Cleon against Aristophanes, only served to further inflame the playwright against him.

Aristophanes was approached one day by one of the butts of his jokes, possibly a politician held up to ridicule in one of the lost plays, who demanded whether he took ANYTHING seriously.

“Of course,” said Aristophanes, “I take comedy seriously.”

So should modern politicians. Humor is dynamite. It entices populist sensibilities and focuses them on inconvenient moments that, having raised a laugh, stick in the memory.
Mark Twain, no slouch when it came to political invective, put in the mouth of his Young Satan the following fierce defense of humor:

“Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them -- and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon-- laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution--these can lift at a colossal humbug -- push it a little -- crowd it a little -- weaken it a little, century by century: But only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand."

Mr. McEnroe is a serious student of Twain’s persuasion, and he’s very good at what he does, which is to create word cartoons of politicians and their foibles, all seen from a leftist point of view. But leftists, as we all know, are not inclined to blow leftists to rags and atoms. There are no moderates or rightists, for instance, in Connecticut’s Congressional delegation,a point underscored by Mr. McEnroe:

“As a political humor writer, I am very nervous about having [Chris] Murphy and Richard Blumenthal as our senators. They're bad for business. Murphy has not been funny since Lee Whitnum barked‘Whore!!’ at him in a debate, and you can't count on that kind of thing happening very often.” Where Mr. McEnroe sees a comic wasteland, a conservative writer would see an Elysian field abloom with comic possibilities, especially in respect of Mr. Blumenthal, the political manikin.

Pity there are no comics on the right writing for Connecticut’s media, overstocked as always with liberals like Mr. McEnroe. Is there anything more depressing than an old comic in a dry month? The number of cartoonists and political comics on the right in a state that used to pride itself on its political moderation – no longer, alas – is no greater than the number of Republican politicians among its Congressional delegation, which is none, and this is very curious.

As in most other states at the beginning of the 21^stcentury, Connecticut’s two major parties have been sacked and conquered by conservatives on the right and progressives on the left, which is another way of saying that political ideas in the postmodern period have become serious. Since comedy by its nature is conservative and journalism by its nature is contrarian, one would suppose there would arise in Connecticut, chock-a-block with enthroned liberals and sans-culottes progressives, a contingent of conservative writers, commentators and journalists to kick at the progressive pricks.

This has not happened. The resistance to conservative ideas, in many other states a failure, has held in the Northeast. But moderation in both parties has been the first casualty of the 21^st century war of ideas.

On the left, the old liberals have been routed by bushy-tailed progressives; on the right, moderate Republicans have been driven out of New England by a conservative resurgence that had not yet ebbed. The last of the moderate Republicans in New England, former U.S. Representative Chris Shays, this year is running for the U.S. Senate as moderate in conservative clothing.

For Mr. McEnroe, politics has suddenly become complex. Ordinarily, a leftist with a conscience would drift toward the Democratic nominee for congress in the 5^th District Chris Donovan, Connecticut’s progressive LeonTrotsky. But alas, the shadow of the prison has fallen upon him, and Mr. McEnroe has spent too much of his career pillorying corrupt politicians – mostly Republicans– to support Donovan:

"I really should support Donovan, but I can’t. For about two decades I have trumpeted the ideals of clean government and clean elections. I have made a point of holding elected officials and candidates responsible for the actions of their subordinates. I considered Rell responsible for Lisa Moody and Rowland responsible for Peter Ellef. I hold Lisa Wilson-Foley responsible for whoever set up the deal with Rowland, even if that wasn’t her."

Here and there in Connecticut, one finds a lonely editorial voice crying out in an empty theatre that the vital center must be preserved, as one preserves in a museum the dusty artifacts of the past. Epicenters have become centers. And even these lonely voices are fierce partisans, mostly progressives – wolves, in the memorable phrase of Winston Churchill, dressed in wolves’ clothing.

Real comic possibilities would present themselves to a conservative comic writer in Connecticut – since virtually all the fish in the political pond are museum styled liberals or Eugene Debs like progressives. But it is pointless to expect a political conversion from Mr. McEnroe at this late date. He is too emotionally committed to waggery on the left.

Aristophanes, the comic writer who said he took comedy seriously, would have converted.

Progressive Educational Reform

Governor Dannel Malloy is attempting valiantly to upgrade Connecticut’s ancient union encrusted educational establishment. Naturally, he ran into problems with those in the state who defend the status quo, Connecticut’s powerful teacher’s union among them. In a politics of narrow interests, settled opinion is king, because those who have secured their interests, sometimes at the expense of the general good, are understandably reluctant to surrender the golden favors showered upon them by a bought government. God help the man who unsettles settled opinion.

Mr. Malloy has proposed to attach teacher tenure to measurable performance, according to Zach Janowski. As in most businesses, including the sports arena, those who do not measure up will be let go. Among those ardently defending the status quo is once radical Big Thinker Jonathan Pelto, whose associations with teacher unions are warm and cordial. These days, whenever Mr. Pelto attempts to throw his two cents into the conversational ring, he is vigorously assaulted by one or another fervid Malloyalist.

Most recently, gubernatorial Senior Advisor Roy Occhigrosso, dubbed by humorist Colin McEnroe “The Hammer”, took off after the inoffensive Mr. Pelto following a critical piece Mr. Pelto had written on his blog, “Wait, What?” Concerning one of Mr. Pelto’s recent productions, Mr. Occhiogrosso responded, “Jonathan’s screeds have become increasingly delusional as time has gone on. He’s an unstable individual, who’s bitter that he didn’t land a job in the Administration. Although I’m hard pressed to see why anyone would hire him to do anything, he does describe himself as a ‘consultant.’ Is someone paying him to peddle information that’s not true?” One detects in Mr. Occhigrosso’s snake spittle the venom of a competitor. Mr. Pelto and his “screeds” have been rattling around in Democratic politics for about thirty years, during which time he has managed to sound like the choral leader of the Chorus of Crying State Unions (CCSU). But if during this time he had exhibited signs of instability, delusion and bitterness, someone other than Mr. Occhiogrosso would have noticed and perhaps had him committed, as Mr. Occhiogrosso evidently is, to the Malloy administration.

Upon joining the Malloy administration as a senior adviser, Mr. Occhiogrosso resigned as partner in charge of the Hartford office of the Global Strategy Group, a national polling and communication strategy group with a stable of political, corporate and non-profit clients.

Mr. McEnroe, unfailingly effervescent, noted that while Mr. Occhiogrosso’s boss, Mr. Malloy, was “an edgy guy himself… Occhiogrosso — and I say this with love — is proof of the maxim that when you're holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Roy isn't holding a hammer. He is one. It's as if Newt Gingrich went looking for someone to soften his angry, aggressive side and hired Bill O'Reilly.”

Oddly enough, Mr. Pelto and Mr. Occhigrosso started their political lives on the same side of the progressive barricade. In one of his earlier incarnations, Mr. Occhiogrosso was associated with a UConn Health Center union. His ideological nursemaid was Leo Canty, the Second Vice President of the American Federation of Teachers in Connecticut and a member of AFT Local 3837, University Health Professionals. Mr. Canty, also the Vice President of the Hartford Labor Council, described himself in his campaign literature when he ran for state Representative in the 15th district as “a strong progressive politics activist.”

The real difference between Mr. Pelto and Mr. Occhiogrosso lies in who rather than what they serve. The cleavage apparent between them turns on two questions: Should tenure be used to protect incompetence, and to what extent should some of the functions of public education be privatized?

The partial privatization of a sclerotic public education fiefdom is the great bugaboo of those who would preserve the status quo, however harmful its effects on the public good. In this regard, Mr. Pelto is determined that no progress in this direction should be made. Mr. Occhiogrosso and Mr. Malloy presently appear undecided how they may best exploit the possibility of a partial, carefully controlled privatization of the public education behemoth. Teacher tenure appears to be on the ropes, but Connecticut’s powerful teacher unions have friends inside important General Assembly committees. In the past, it may be recalled, unions have been adept at rope-a-dope feints and surprising recoveries.

The Unpleasantness At The Bridgeport Club

There has been some mild grumbling from Connecticut’s status quo media over the Bridgeport vote count.

The Day of New London, pointing to “the debacle in Bridgeport,” said it was an inauspicious beginning to the Malloy administration. Malloy’s “rush to Hartford to declare himself the next governor before any official result was inappropriate and smacked of a power grab.”

George Washington Plunkitt, the Tammany Hall boss, would have prospered in Connecticut’s modern day Democratic Party. If the old boy, honest to a fault, were writing editorials, he might say, “What’s the beef? The Democrats stole the election fair and square.”

The Day’s editorial answered its own objection: “Yet as votes continued to trickle in from New Haven and Bridgeport on Thursday, it became increasingly apparent that the Democrat would emerge from the process with a narrow lead over Republican opponent Tom Foley.”

What we have here is a political indelicacy, anxious Democrats perhaps too ready to rule, bad manners at worse. It will all disappear after Dan goes to Hartford. Tomorrow or the next day or the day after, we’ll all look back on this unfortunate incident and laugh. And there will be plenty of editorialists in the state, the majority of whom write for papers that endorsed Malloy, to make sure the laugh is on Bridgeport. In any case, the right people got in. And that’s what matters isn’t it?

According to Capitol Report, ex-Republican senator and Independent Governor Lowell Weicker has favored us with a comment:

“Weicker says Bysiewicz, Malloy wrong

'No matter what ensues, it's an affront to our Democratic principles and to the State of Connecticut that a Democratic Secretary of State declared an unofficial winner, only to have that unofficial winner enter the State Capitol announcing his Governorship and staff.

p.s. I did not vote for Tom Foley.'”

P.P.S. Go away.

So distraught was Weicker, who did not vote for Tom Foley (Translation: He voted for Malloy) that he rang up his friend Colin McEnroe, the humorist, and thundered in his ear, “I never thought I'd see the day when a candidate who hadn't been officially elected would show up at the State Capitol and claim he had the job!"

P.P.P.S. Please, go away.

Connecticut’s only state-wide newspaper, The Hartford Courant, groused, “… there sure has been a lot of uncharacteristic bumbling by officials in the Land of Steady Habits this election season.”

Yup. Sure enough.

Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz bumbled herself out of a gubernatorial slot because she wanted to be attorney general – which is to Connecticut politics what bling is to high fashion – then she bumbled herself out of that spot into the state supreme court, which ruled she didn’t have enough court experience to be attorney general. But before leaving office, Bysiewicz managed to perform one last service for her party by blinking while some cretin shorted Bridgeport of ballots. On orders from an obliging judge – the same overruled judge, it happens, who found Bysiewicz fit to be attorney general -- the polling doors in Bridgeport were left open in certain sections of the city so that Democratic Party operatives could quickly harvest just enough votes to swing the election to Malloy, who no doubt will be grateful as governor and give Bysiewicz a buss on the cheek and a refrigerated spot in state government until she is ready to decide what she wants to do with the rest of her political life.

Mark Pazniokas of CTMirror presented a straight faced account of the Bridgeport bumbles that put Malloy over the top.
 
Dennis House of WFSB has shown a video inside a Bridgeport polling place that captures the chaos, along with a spot featuring Mayor Jason McCoy of Vernon who was present at the polling place.. McCoy detailed several irregularities – multiple ballots given out to voters, bags of ballots left unattended -- every one of which should have triggered a recount and a thorough investigation by authorities unconnected with status quo politics in Connecticut.

In the meantime, some Republicans have compiled an unofficial count of all the commentators in the state of steady Democratic habits who voted in their editorials for Malloy and who, like Weicker, did not vote for Foley.

Foley: 3

Malloy: Everyone else.

These quibbles aside, the main thing is – the right guy stole the election fair and square. The only people who have a problem with that are not in office and not affiliated with members of the state's status quo media, most of whom would not be able to find Al Capone if he were hiding under their beds.

Dean vs. Courant

The Hartford Courant, where ink stained wretch Colin McEnroe parks his pen mightier than the sword, spiked his Sunday column on Martha Dean.

McEnroe understands completely. The Courant bars opinion pieces that appear after the first Sunday before an election, mostly for reasons of fairness. A target of an opinion printed a mere two days before election, in this case Dean, would not have sufficient time to answer any manifestly unjust criticisms within such a short time frame.

While McEnroe missed the bell, other political writers at the Courant, not one of whom has during the entire campaign written a commentary that might be considered favorable to Dean, were not so unfortunate, and there are some, Dean among them, who have reason to suspect that all opinions pouring fourth from the Courant concerning Dean are manifestly partisan.

In any case, McEnroe’s column very likely would have been redundant: The Courant already had endorsed Dean’s opponent, George Jepsen, and launched a broadside against a matter of some moment: A few days ago, after the Supreme Court had issued its written opinion on Susan Bysiewicz’s eligibility for the office of attorney general, Dean had filed a motion with the court contesting the eligibility of Jepsen.

Before I proceed, I must insert here a brief confession. I have written columns and blogs myself protesting the Bysiewicz decision. Connecticut’s Supreme Court may have been wrong when it ruled in the Bysiewicz case that a statute requiring prospective attorneys general to be an "attorney at law of at least ten years' active practice at the bar of this state" trumps the state constitution itself, which provides only an age qualification for the position. But the court has ruled, and that’s that.

The court in its recently published decision interpreted the statute, which specifies that prospective attorneys general must be “attorneys at law of at least ten years active practice at the bar of this state,” as indicating that the attorneys mentioned in the statute should be attorneys “with at least some experience litigating cases in court.” This line of interpretation alone is unclear on two points: The decision does not tell us how much experience is “some” nor what kind of experience would qualify a lawyer to be attorney general. The Bysiewicz ruling is fuzzy around the edges and soft in the middle – which means, the court and Connecticut could only benefit by yet another suit forcing it to clarify the inherent ambiguities in its decision.

Such a suit is precisely the one brought by Dean. And for that reason the suit should have been welcomed by all friends of justice who think laws and Supreme Court rulings should be general, clear and fair. The Hartford Courant, to judge by its editorial reproving Dean for bringing the suit, falls outside this category.

“Ms. Dean says Mr. Jepsen lacks experience as a litigator. She has asked that his name be removed from the ballot and that the secretary of the state be prohibited from certifying the attorney general's race until her lawsuit is resolved.” The editorial, printed four days before election and therefore within its own parameters, asks “Does she [Dean] have a case or is her lawsuit a desperate 11th-hour stunt?” And the paper, much before a decision is due from the court, precipitately decides that the suit is an 11th hour stunt.

McEnroe, incidentally, disagreed with the obiter dictum of his paper in an earlier blog post, placing much of the blame for Dean’s “precipitous” suit on the court: “I agree, by the way, that much of the fault lies with the Connecticut Supreme Court. The Court ruled from the bench in May in the case of Bysiewicz v. Dinardo. Then it waited an inexplicable five months to issue a full decision, which finally came Oct. 22, less than two weeks before the election. Come on, guys, get your homework in on time! The decision itself was so muddy as to make it at least understandable that Dean saw it as a potential wedge to game into Jepsen's candidacy.”

The paper raises two easily answered objections: 1) Dean was precipitate in bringing the suit so close to the election (see McEnroe above); 2) By so doing she has revealed herself as being motivated principally by politics.

It is impossible to shake this last charge. Both Dean and Jepsen are engaged in a political campaign, and it is at least reasonable to suppose that politicians so engaged do things for political reasons – in addition to other perhaps more compelling reasons. But the question opinion makers should be considering is not “Do politicians do things for political reasons,” but rather, “Is Dean’s suit necessary?

It is.