Newtown, Who Knew?

Danbury State’s Attorney Stephen Sedensky has been keeping information concerning the mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School close to his vest, and state police spokesman Lieutenant Paul Vance has countless times told everyone in Connecticut why: “There is an ongoing investigation.”

The criminal investigation has been ongoing ever since Adam Lanza, armed to the teeth with weapons he appropriated from his mother, shot his way into the school and murdered 20 young children and 6 staff members. Mr. Lanza also murdered his mother before leaving on his murderous mission.

Right from the get-go, the General Assembly was bum rushed by Governor Dannel Malloyand Democratic legislative leaders into producing a gun restriction bill in the absence of vital information then in the possession of Mr. Sedensky. And whenever Connecticut reporters were so bold as to ask Mr. Vance for information concerning the slayings, they were told they would have to wait for the criminal report because “the criminal investigation was ongoing.”

And ongoing… and ongoing… and ongoing…

After the General Assembly had signed off on a gun bill said to be among the most restrictive in the nation, and after a promised criminal report release date of mid-March had passed, and after a promised release date of mid-June had passed, and after state police had spilled some of the Sandy Hook beans at a conference in New Orleans, grievously disappointing Mr. Malloy, and after Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional Delegation had failed to persuade Majority Leader Harry Reid to bring up a much watered down gun restriction bill in the U.S. Senate, and after an arrest warrant was finally teased from the holders of the Sandy Hook secrets, and, most recently, after a crime squad leader in the criminal investigation  appeared in conferences across the fruited plains -- but, significantly, not in Connecticut -- disgorging information that can only be considered compromising to an ongoing investigation, after all this bilge has passed under the noses of Connecticut’s media, some folk in the mainstream media are now beginning to get just a touch antsy.

Why can’t state criminal investigators share with the people in Connecticut – and Sandy Hook – the information they have disclosed in, among other places, Maine, Michigan, Nashville, Tennessee, Dallas Texas and Billings, Montana?

This is more than sad. It is more than an insult to the parents of victims in Sandy Hook.

Governor Malloy wants Newtown to distribute victim funds held in reserve for future contingencies to the parents of children slain in Sandy Hook and close out the funding account. Newtown officials, from the very first, wanted to leave some money in reserve for, as Newtown resident Maryann Murtha put it in a recent letter imploring Mr. Malloy not to disturb decisions made about funding at the local level, “short and long term community needs.”

“And now, at the 11th hour,” Ms. Murtha wrote, “U.S. Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal have jumped on the bandwagon, even though their jurisdiction is questionable at best.

“At this point, more than two-thirds of the $11.7 million is going directly to the families of those who died, the two injured and the 12 first-graders who survived the attack on their classrooms. The governor wants the ‘account closed.’ Is this for political gain? How does he know what the timeline should be?”

This is a governor who knows how to get what he wants. And Mr. Malloy does not want the criminal investigation closed, so long as an open investigation remains politically useful.

Danbury State Attorney Sedensky should congratulate himself on his ability to parse words.

Way back in March, attempting to staunch leaks in the media that might have compromised his continuing investigation, Mr. Sedensky issued instructions “that any and all such presentations involving evidence in the criminal investigation be ceased while the investigation is pending and my report is still outstanding.”

Mr. Sedensky has previewed the police presentations given out in several states and is certain that presenters “are not talking about the investigation. They will be talking about logistics and victim control, which is different than talking about details of the investigation.'' And Mr. Malloy has given his imprimatur to the state police: “All they are doing is sharing some of the procedural lessons that were learned that terrible day.”

Neither Mr. Sedensky nor Mr. Malloy has indicated when a similar presentation will be scheduled at the conference center in Hartford. 

Mr. Sedensky and Mr. Malloy, both lawyers, might have come in handy during the High Middle Ages, when theologians were discussing how many angels could fit on the head of a pin.

The legislation inspired by the assault on those poor school children should have followed a complete criminal investigation. A précis of the criminal report could have been made available to the relevant committee chairmen in camera when the General assembly sat, months after the bloody assault in Sandy Hook, to construct legislation designed to prevent such school invasions in the future. But the General Assembly was in a rush to get the cart improperly placed before the horse. During this process, neither God nor all the angels in Heaven were permitted to interfere with the political chest puffing of Connecticut’s two U.S. Senators, the governor, Mr. Sedensky or the state police – some of whom, one hopes, were drafted as unwilling accomplices in the vastly entertaining political show.

Larson, Do You Know Where Your Congressman Is?

U.S. Rep. John Larson, firmly entrenched for 12 years in a U.S. congressional seat held previously for 16 years by Barbara Kennelly, the daughter of Connecticut’s last Democratic Party boss John Bailey, is what used to be called way back in the Middle Ages “a hale fellow well met,” a gregarious, back slapping, sociable politician who likely will remember your name the second time he meets you at the Manchester Peach Festival.

The old U.S. congress of the Dodds, father and son, used to be full of such convivial good-old-boys. Sen. Chris Dodd, in a recent exit interview with MSNBC, sadly mourned the passing of such amiable deal brokers, reminding young up-and-comers that the U.S. Senate is, after all, a political brokerage house where, in order to get things done, one must get along with opposition party members, giving a little here, taking a little there, in order to push the sausage through the legislative grinder.

Larson is heir to this tradition. He also is something of a partisan pit bull, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Dodd believes a senator can compromise without compromising himself but acknowledges that fruitful compromise is less likely in the more raucous House.

Only a few months ago, Dodd, Larson and their confreres in the congress spurned the sort of compromise Dodd praised during his exit interview, passing two complex and expensive bills, largely unread, heartily opposed for reasons of principle by the loyal opposition. The Democrats in the congress were able to pass a massive health care bill and an equally massive economic regulations bill because they had the votes, Dodd and Larson leading the charge in the Senate and House, and a righteous wind named President Barrack Obama at their back. Heedless of the warning “be careful what you wish for,” Democrats got what they wished for, and they shall have to live with the consequence of these bills – together, an absurd effort to make the world over – throughout the coming election campaign.

Larson has been loud in his approval of the Democrats’ uncompromising legislative sausage links, but polls taken several weeks before the election have marred the brows of some Democrats with worry lines. President Obama’s poll ratings are but a shadow of what they were when he was perceived in his campaign for the presidency as tolerably moderate. Recent polls show a precipitous decline in his popularity, and some commentators, a bit slow on the uptake, now are beginning to entertain the thought that his precipitous decline may have something or other to do with those expensive entrepreneurial killing bills, the fervent partisanship of Democrats, and the Democratic controlled congress, so un-Dodd like in its indisposition to forge cross-party coalitions. The righteous wind, it would seem, has had some wind kicked out of it.

Disputes about the economy this election season likely will center upon the flow of money between states and the federal government, a dispute as old as the republic itself. Some conservatives, unable to shed the view of virtually all the founders, still cling to antique notions expressed most persuasively by Bill Buckley, who thought that “stimulus” funds, tax dollars used to boost the economy, are best kept in the hands of productive entrepreneurs, who are perfectly able to stimulate business activity without – thank you very much – yielding abjectly to the demands made upon them by ear-markers in Washington such as the late Rep. John Murtha, a pustule of corruption famous for shuttling tax dollars to his political patrons.

It was pointless, Buckley insisted, for taxpayers in Connecticut to send to Washington a tax dollar while receiving back from the horn of plenty sixty nine cents on the dollar. The sixty nine cents meant that Connecticut was 31 cents and more behind some other states in the begging queue. Federal spending in Pennsylvania, Murtha’s old hang out is $1.07 on the dollar; Maine $1.49. Catch-up, under these circumstances, is a futile exercise. How much money in stimulus funds or ear-marks must Connecticut beg from Washington to level this pitched playing field?

Murtha, once cited as a co-conspirator in the infamous ABSCAM sting, was a political shakedown artist of great accomplishment, but those, like Larson in Connecticut, who seek to emulate his artistry, have sent themselves an impossible task. It’s not that Larson is not an artful beggar. But the huge gap between the dollar sent to Washington and the pittance received by Connecticut from Washington is, relatively speaking, too wide to bridge.

However, there’s no harm in asking. When tax rich Obama, showed up in Stamford on the 16^th, there were hosts of Democrats in attendance, begging bowls in hand, crying out, like some poor wretched Oliver Twist, “Please sir, I want some more.”

Republicans steered clear, as did Rep. Jim Hines, who is trying to put some ideological distance between himself and the once popular president. And Connecticut’s congressional delegation was missing, one supposes, with leave. No where to be seen in public with Obama was Larson, ever the hale fellow well met, the protégé of Murtha, convinced that a little moral uplift, backslapping and a gerrymandered district will preserve his status in this the season of our discontent.