The Permanent Opposition

On April 5^th, a year after Connecticut’s predominantly Democratic General Assembly had passed into law the most restrictive gun legislation in the nation, opponents of the legislation rallied on the North side of the Capitol in Hartford.

The event was well attended: Capitol police estimated the crowd at 3,000; those hosting the event, the Connecticut Citizens Defense League (CCDL), placed the figure at 5,000. None of those present at the rally had been called upon by the General Assembly to offer testimony on the final bill, which itself was billed as an adequate and necessary response to a mass slaying at the Newtown Sandy Hook Elementary School. The final bill was passed without a public hearing by a legislature operating in the absence of information contained in a much too delayed criminal investigation.

Governor Dannel Malloy – once a prosecutor who, Mr. Malloy has often said, had tried criminal cases – declared at the time that the data contained in the criminal report was quite unnecessary; Mr. Malloy and the legislature knew enough about the events surrounding the massacre at Sandy Hook to write legislation that would in the future serve to prevent such occurrences everywhere in the state. The gun regulation bill would advance the public safety, the public was assured, public safety being the primary responsibility of both national and state governments.

That was not all the governor said. Early on, Mr. Malloy, the complete politician from head to toe, seemed to understand, almost intuitively, that gun regulation might be a useful prop in the coming political campaign. Indeed, Mr. Malloy’s campaign howitzer was pointed directly at the National Rifle Association (NRA), what he regards as unreasonable defenders of the U.S. Constitution’s 2^nd Amendment, Tea Party zanies and -- a bit surprising for the head of a state that has produced few jobs since 1991 -- gun manufacturers in what had been called since the American Revolution “the provision state.” Not only gun manufacturers but large corporations such as Pratt&Whitney still provide the U.S. government with war material. Even now, Connecticut is, to turn a phrase coined by Mr. Malloy, “still revolutionary.”

And yet here was the governor of a still revolutionary state telling gun manufacturers that they cared only for profits. “What this is about,” Mr. Malloy said on one of his frequent national television appearances, “is the ability of the gun industry to sell as many guns to as many people as possible -- even if they are deranged, even if they are mentally ill, even if they have a criminal background. They don’t care. They want to sell guns” -- meaning the flinty hearts of gun manufacturers did not bleed for the innocent victims of a mass murder in Sandy Hook. These sub-humans were interested only in filthy lucre.

Compassion for the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre, the people of Connecticut were to understand, was a rare and tender emotion cherished only by politicians such as Mr. Malloy and U.S. Senators Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, all of whom were determined to blunt the outsized influence of the NRA. To date, more than a year after the slayings, Connecticut Senators Blumenthal and Murphy have not been successful in persuading U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to bring a gun restriction bill before the Democratic controlled Senate. We are given to understand that Mr. Reid is not uncompassionate; he simply lacks votes in the Democratic controlled chamber to pass a measure mirroring Connecticut’s highly restrictive gun law.

It is the insulting obduracy of Mr. Malloy and Mr. Murphy in particular  – Mr. Blumenthal has been slightly more cautious in his language – that has created what is now a permanent political opposition Connecticut. The trick in politics always is to slide your proposals, particularly pointless ones, past the noses of those deleteriously affected by them, not to bash them with inept demagoguery. Mr. Murphy and Mr. Malloy have made it impossible for their most virulent opponents to shrug off their persistent attacks as political posturing, the principal aim of which is to attract votes.

The CCDL rally in Harford, four months in the making, was by any measure a success. The large crowd -- rallying around the U.S. and State Constitutions, the flag and what they consider misguided legislation -- were animated and goal directed: Their goal, of course, was to flush anti-constitutional demons from the building they faced and to prevent further legislative encroachments on liberties hard won by the architects of the American Republic. The statues of the founders of Connecticut looked down upon them from the heights of the building. Quotes from Jefferson and Madison adorned their signs. There were scores of women and children in the crowd -- and out of state participants from New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Mississippi, West Virginia, about a dozen states in total, according to CCDL organizers. Most of the speakers mentioned, in one way or another, the bountiful fruits of a politics of limits: Governments were not created to put men in chains, but rather to permit men and women to guard with their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor the God given fruits of liberty heralded in the founding documents.

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.

Malloy’s One Percenter Crony Capitalist Campaign Contributors

When Northeast Utilities CEO Thomas May talks campaign donations, his managers listen. But then, Governor Dannel Malloy’s crony capitalist friends tend to be effusive in their praise of their benefactor. "While he has accomplished much, there is more to do," Mr. May wrote in an e-mail to 50 of his managers. "Please join me in providing support to continue the work begun, providing new opportunities, and securing the leadership to make it happen."

Of battling Dannel, Mr. May enthused, “he battled through issues of historic proportions — from nature's wrath to one man's horrific actions," a reference to Adam Lanza’s slaughter of children in Sandy Hook Elementary School. Storm Sandy, of course, stood no chance when confronted with battling Dannel. And mention of Mr. Lanza by politicians in campaign modes cannot help but generate among the voting public a thumbs up for the politician and a thumbs down for Mr. Lanza.

Mr. May provided in his e-mail to his managers the nexus that tied Mr. Malloy to Northeast Utilities. The governor “has clear energy goals that align with our corporate mission and initiatives. He wants clean, reliable and affordable energy — so do we. He brought all appropriate stakeholders together to develop the state's first comprehensive energy policy. He understands the value of and is supportive of expanding access to natural gas… He is supportive of bringing clean, affordable and carbon neutral large scale hydro power into New England. And, he has been a supportive partner in our system hardening efforts and storm preparation initiatives."

Following these effusions, came the hard sell: “"Please make contributions payable to: CT Democratic State Central Committee — Federal."

Convinced by Mr. May’s irrefutable proofs of Mr. Malloy’s leadership and boundless energy in “continuing the work begun,” Mr. May’s employees ponied up. Campaign cash in return for political favors delivered is the heart and soul of crony capitalism.  The exchange, it should be noted, benefits both the crony capitalist suck-ups, who receive from the politician favors that tend to give them an advantage over his competition, and the politician, who magically creates the favorable impression that he is rescuing his state from the penury he himself has brought upon it through high taxes, union friendly agitation, which drives up the cost of labor, and excessive regulation, all of which tend to impact unfavorably smaller capitalist operations that do not have available to them the sycophantic resources of large corporations and quasi-public enterprises. 

NU contributors made their checks payable not to Mr. Malloy, the subject of Mr. May’s sycophantic appeal, but to “CT Democratic State Central Committee – Federal,” according toa copyrighted story in the Hartford Courant. And the managers were generous too. Campaign finance records show that $46,500 in contributions have been made by more than 20 NU executives in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the Connecticut Democratic Party following Mr. May’s appeal for funds on behalf of the heroic Mr. Malloy.

Since Mr. Malloy was the only person mentioned prominently in Mr. May’s appeal to his managers for campaign donations, one investigative reporter wondered, why were the checks to be made payable to the federal wing of Connecticut’s Democratic Party?

State campaign laws do not permit these kinds of campaign contributions. However, where there is a will, there is a way. Under federal campaign laws, more lax than the state campaign laws under which both Mr. Malloy and Mr. May are compelled to operate, a state party may appropriate and spend funds deposited in a federal account, provided the funds are used to support “get-out-the-vote activities” in connection with an election where a candidate for federal office is on the ballot, and never mind that such appropriations and expenditures also assist party candidates running for state office. The “federal option” is one of those campaign finance loopholes large enough to accommodate Santa Claus and his sleigh, outrigged with jingling cow bells and eight beefy and determined reindeer.

A brief consultation with NU lawyers confirmed that the company was operating within the confines of the law, according to NU spokeswoman Caroline Pretyman. Crony Capitalist Tom, Ms. Pretyman said, “consulted our internal legislative and legal affairs experts to determine where to direct any funds. There are rules and regulations that govern where donations can be directed when individuals do business with the state and the federal account is one that all NU individuals are lawfully permitted to participate in." Ms. Pretyman assured doubtful reporters that fatwas would not be issued against non-compliant managers.

Republican opponents of the governor, scandalized by such a blatant violation of the spirit of campaign regulations, might have responded to Ms. Pretyman in the accents of Mr. Bumble, a character in Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist,” Told that the law supposed that Mr. Bumble’s wife was acting under his direction, Mr. Bumble responded, “If the law supposes that, the law is a ass — a idiot". And if the law supposes that slippery politicians will not take advantage of loopholes engineered into the law by other slippery politicians, we may say, along with the practical minded and astute Mr. Bumble,” If the law supposes that, the law is an ass – an idiot.”  

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.

Release the Criminal Report and Lanza’s Medical Records

State police spokesman Lt. Paul Vance, the keeper of the Sandy Hook secrets, condemned leaks in the investigation of the mass murder of Newtown students, ‘but won’t say they’re acting to root them out,” according to a story in the Journal Inquirer.

“If that law enforcement source does not attribute their name to that information,” Mr. Vance said of an unnamed source in a Hartford Courant story that references the medical records of Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza, “then that information is suspect.” Indeed, most of the information that has seen its way into print from sources other than Mr. Vance has been questionable, to say the least.

It has fallen to Mr. Vance to make certain that none of the authoritative information included in a twice delayed criminal report comes to light anytime soon.

In the absence of the criminal report, Governor Dannel Malloy and the General Assembly managed to pass a gun regulation bill supported by highly speculative data, although Mr. Vance to date has been careful not to label the legislation “suspect.”

Mr. Vance is nothing if not thorough in the execution of his duties, which no doubt pleases Stephen Sedensky, the state’s attorney for the Danbury Judicial District and the prosecutor in charge of the investigation.

In the absence of definitive information supplied by Mr. Vance and Mr. Sedensky, it is not clear precisely who is being investigated or what criminal charges can possibly be brought against anyone involved in the case: The shooter, Adam Lanza, is dead; so is his mother; so too are all the students who came under fire by the shooter. Criminal investigations in mass murder crimes usually involve the prospect of a trial, which prospect justifies the withholding of information from the general public on the grounds that the premature release of information may jeopardize convictions.

Mr. Sedensky told the JI, “I am concerned any time there’s an unauthorized release or leak of information concerning an investigation. It impedes the investigation and makes it harder for the investigators to do their job, especially if the information may be inaccurate.”

It is astonishing that Mr. Sedensky – in possession of data denied even to legislators writing bills that reasonably should rely upon that information – feels that a report in a newspaper could possibly upset his investigatory applecart.  How would supposed “inaccurate” information in a news story upset investigators who have in their possession objectively verifiable data?

The drip, drip of information from “authorized” sources has been highly selective. Mr. Sedensky and Mr. Vance have custody of objectively verifiable data that may be used to tamp down speculative data in news stories.     

Mr. Sedensky has said his report has been delayed, possibly until the Fall, because police investigators are working on other cases and have other responsibilities. It is unlikely that anyone will the charged in the shooting, Mr. Sedensky said in the JI story.

The Sandy Hook data ought to have been released long ago to legislators who needed it to produce a reasonable gun restriction bill.

That data fund may put some literate reporters in mind of Miss Havisham’s wedding cake. Miss Havisham, a grim old spinster in Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations,” hangs on to her yellowing moth eaten wedding dress and her moldy wedding cake years after the possible profitable use of both has passed. The wedding had passed her by, but the cake remains, an awful testimony to the endurance of shattered expectations.

 

It is not at all unreasonable to demand the release of both the criminal and the medical report – right now. Indeed, some of the parents in Sandy Hook have been demanding the release of both for a long while. It appears that only those demands of the stricken parents that advance the political ambitions of pushy politicians will be acceded to.

 

A Freedom of Information request filed some time ago by AbleChild may possibly bring the Vance-Sedensky wedding cake into public view – provided that the forces of darkness in the Malloy administration are not successful in squelching the eminently reasonable request, a copy of which is provided below.

 

The freedom of information statue, which asserts the right of the people to public information, places on the state the burden of showing that it is in the public’s interest to drop an iron curtain down on information that should readily be made available, and the excuses used to keep public information private in the Adam Lanza case are wearing very thin.

 

 HAND DELIVERY

H. Wayne Carver II, M.D.
Chief Medical Examiner

Office of the Chief Medical Examiner

 11 Shuttle Road

 Farmington, Connecticut 06032

 Re: Request for release of the autopsy, toxicology, and prescription drug history records of

 Adam Lanza

 March 5, 2013

 Dear Dr. Carver:

 Pursuant to Connecticut General Statute Sections § 19a-411 and § 1-200, and § 1-210; Article I, Sections 4 and 5 of the Constitution of the State of Connecticut, Conn. Const. art. I, § 4, § 5; and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, USCA CONST Amend. I, AbleChild, on behalf of itself and petitioners from Newtown, Connecticut (see attached) (hereinafter collectively “the Parties”), respectfully request the immediate release of the complete autopsy report, toxicology report, and prescription drug history possessed by your office for and concerning the decedent Adam Lanza.

 On information and belief, Mr. Lanza’s birthdate is April 22, 1992, and his place of death was Newtown, CT. In particular, the Parties seek all public records and files, as those terms are defined in Conn. Gen. Stat. Ann. § 1-200, concerning or relating to the presence of drugs in Mr. Lanza’s serum and organs and concerning or relating to drugs prescribed to Mr. Lanza. For any tests performed on Mr. Lanza’s body for which results have not yet been produced by the testing entity, the Parties respectfully request that those results be supplied to them when they are produced to your office. The Parties will pay for copies of the requested reports, records and files.

 The Parties have a legitimate interest in the information sought. AbleChild is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that represents and advocates the interests of parents, caregivers, and children. Incorporated in New York in 2003, AbleChild aims to ensure the safety of caregivers when those for whom they give care are diagnosed as mentally ill and are prescribed drug treatments that may induce adverse events that include thoughts of murder, homicide, or suicide.

In fulfillment of its mission within Newtown, Connecticut, and in Connecticut and the nation generally, AbleChild has a legitimate interest in accessing the autopsy, toxicology, and prescription drug records of Adam Lanza so that an evaluation may be made to determine if those drugs contain agents that have been associated with increased thoughts of murder, homicide, and suicide and to determine if such drugs may have contributed in whole or part to his commission of murder and his suicide. The information, professional assessments of it, and 2 resulting recommendations from it shall then be published by AbleChild to parents, caregivers, and the public nationwide, thus better enabling them to work with health care professionals in choosing the best therapies for the treatment of mental problems and to promote more informed debate on measures to stem future incidents of this kind.

Under Connecticut law, requests for autopsy, toxicology, and prescription drug records are obtainable by members of the general public and the media upon a demonstration of “legitimate interest.” Conn. Agencies Regs. § 19a-401-12. Based on the foregoing, there is undoubtedly a legitimate interest for this organization to obtain the requested information. Ablechild functions as public interest group and as a media resource organization. It has a keen interest in discovering evidence of the association between use of psychoactive drug agents and incidents of violence, aggression suicide and murder. It has a keen interest in publishing findings concerning Mr. Lanza’s use of psychoactive drugs, if any, and whether agents in those drugs have been linked to increased thoughts of hostility, aggression, suicidality and murder. Ablechild anticipates that publications of the kind they intend will help improve public awareness and foster more informed public debate and political decision-making concerning how best to stem future incidents of this kind.
 

In Connecticut, “there is an ‘overarching policy’ underlying the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) favoring the disclosure of public records.” Superintendent of Police of City of Bridgeport v. Freedom of Info. Comm'n, 609 A.2d 998, 1000 (Conn. 1992). “[I]t is only in the exceptional case that inspection should be denied.” Meriden Record Co. v. Browning, 6 Conn. Cir. Ct. 633, 637, 294 A.2d 646, 649 (1971) (citing State ex rel. Youmans v. Owens, 137 N.W.2d 470, 475, 139 N.W.2d 241). Such exceptions to disclosure “must be narrowly construed.” Meriden at 626.
 

The party claiming the privilege has the burden of proving the exception's applicability. Wilson v. Freedom of Info. Comm'n, 435 A.2d 353, 357 (Conn. 1980).
 

A legitimate government interest is even more likely to be found for matters that concern serious events of public concern. See Meriden at 636 (citing Rome Sentinel Co. v. Boustedt, 252 N.Y.S.2d 10, 12 (Sup. Ct. 1964)) (finding that, “The public's right to know and be informed on the activities of public figures is practically absolute unless commercialization may be shown.
 

Even the ordinary citizen may be newsworthy under certain circumstances. Whether the event be a calamity or an honor, it may be one in which his neighbors have a legitimate interest”) (internal citations omitted).
 

Likewise, under Article I, Sections 4 and 5 of the Connecticut Constitution there is a right to know indispensable to the public’s ability to question actions of public officials (here, those in government responsible for authorizing distribution and use of drugs that may include hazardous psychoactive agents) that trumps administrative convenience, particularly in contexts where there is no compelling need for confidentiality. See Conn. Const. art. I, § 4 (“Every citizen may freely speak, write and publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty”); Conn. Const. art. I, § 5 (“No law shall ever be passed to curtail or restrain the liberty of speech or of the press”); see Maher v. Freedom of Info. Comm'n, 472 A.2d 321, 325 (Conn. 1984) (emphasizing that § 1-210 first reflects “the public’s right to know what its agencies are doing”); see also Woodcock v. Journal Pub. Co., Inc., 230 Conn. 525, 549, 646 A.2d 92, 103 (1994) (finding that while public criticism “can be hard on public officials, it is 3 simply the price that must be paid in order to protect our democracy”); Dow v. New Haven Indep., Inc., 549 A.2d 683, 689 (Super. Ct. 1987) (emphasizing the “profound commitment to freedom of the press,” the court espoused that, “The right to discuss public matters stands in parton the necessity of that right to the operation of a government by the people....It must be kept in mind that criticism of those responsible for government operations must be free, lest criticism of government itself be penalized”) (citing Rosenblatt v. Baer, 383 U.S. 75, 85, 86 S.Ct. 669, [676] (1966).” Brown v. K.N.D. Corporation, 529 A.2d 1292 (Conn. 1987)). State v. McKee, 46 A. 409, 414 (Conn. 1900) (noting that, “The general right to disseminate opinions on all subjects was probably specified mainly to emphasize the strong necessity to a free government of criticism of pu blic men and measures”).
 

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, made applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1, also prohibits state action that bars public and media access to information necessary for the effective public evaluation of acts taken by public officials. The Parties have a right to access the autopsy, toxicological, and prescription drug records of Mr. Lanza as members of the press, for each intend to aid the public in comprehending potential causes of Mr. Lanza’s murders and suicide. New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713, 717, 91 S. Ct. 2140, 2143 (1971) (J. Black concurring) (holding that, “The First Amendment…gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy…The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government”); Id. at 724 (J. Douglas concurring) (reminding that, “It is common knowledge that the First Amendment was adopted against the widespread use of the common law of seditious libel to punish the dissemination of material that is embarrassing to the powersthat- be”); Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Comm'n on Human Relations, 413 U.S. 376, 382, 93 S. Ct. 2553, 2557 (1973) (citing New York Times Co. v. United States, and noting that, “The durability of our system of self-government hinges upon the preservation of these freedoms”).
 

Disclosure is sought without delay. The information is indispensable to political decision making and public debate related to a continuing series of school shootings and acts of mass violence across the country: Dec. 14, 2012, Sandy Hook Elementary School; April 2, 2012, Oikos University; February 27, 2012, Chardon High School; May 10, 2011, San Jose State University; January 5, 2011, Millard South High School; April 10, 2009, Henry Ford Community College; April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech University; Oct. 2, 2006, Amish School Shooting (PA); April 20, 1999, Columbine High School; Mar. 24, 1998, Westside Middle School (AR); February 19, 1997, Bethel High School (AK). Many of those and other shootings have been committed by individuals who were medicated with psychoactive drugs. The pattern, potentially repeated here, invites serious inquiry into whether those drugs are in whole or part responsible for affecting changes in perception that may have led to increased thoughts of hostility, aggression, suicidality and murder in the people committing the crimes. Exercise of any check by the public through their elected representatives on actions to be taken will depend very heavily on the extent to which the public is fully informed of the potential causes for these murders.
 

This office may have waived objections for disclosure through communication with the media shortly after the autopsy was performed on Mr. Lanza’s body. In the January 11, 2013 online edition of the Connecticut Post, reporter Michael P. Mayko authored, “M.E.: Lanza’s brain 4 appeared normal.” The article lists several quotes from your office. Specifically, Mr. Mayko quotes you as stating that Mr. Lanza’s brain showed "no tumor ... no gross deformity,” and that, “We measured his head and it fell in the normal range." (This was in response to a question based on suspicions that, based on published photos, Mr. Lanza might have suffered from “Fragile X syndrome” [the most common known genetic cause of autism or autism spectrum disorders], which results in a large forehead or big face).1 Another report of the same interview noted that you mentioned that the results of toxicology tests might provide “potential information” into “the motives of the deadly shooter.” 2 For the foregoing reasons, the Parties respectfully ask that the documents requested be released at the earliest possible moment and in no event later than March 10, 2013, the statutory deadline for response. Conn. Gen. Stat. Ann. § 1-206(a) (“Any denial of the right to inspect or copy records provided for under section 1-210 shall be made to the person requesting such right by the public agency official who has custody or control of the public record, in writing, within four business days of such request”).

Please send the complete autopsy report, toxicology report, and prescription drug histories requested herein for Mr. Lanza to the Parties at the following address:
 

AbleChild
 

Attn: Sheila Matthews-Gallo

19 Washington Avenue
 

Westport, CT 06880

Thank you.
 

Sincerely,
 

Sheila Matthews - Gallo
 

Co-Founder, AbleChild

 

Sandy Hook And The Data Trap Updated

This is a self interview

Q: I’ve now read everything you’ve written about the Sandy Hook mass murders, quite a lot [Here sorted by date]. I’ve noticed two things: You have not weighed in on what some people might consider the central legislative issues, the “should” questions – should certain weapons be banned, that sort of thing; and throughout your commentary, you manage to sound like a Jeremiah on what some grey heads in the journalism business use to call “freedom of information.” Is that a right reading of the main thrust of your commentary on Sandy Hook?

A: It’s a fair reading, yes.

Q: Why the emphases on the free flow of information?

A: Because what one does will always depend upon what one knows. It would be more accurate to say “the full and accurate flow of information.” Can I pick a bone with you on Jeremiah?

Q: Sure.

A: Jeremiah was repetitive because he had a positive genius for getting quickly to the decisive point and, of course, repeating it, much to the distress of the hypocritical whitened sepulchers in his audience. Someone – I think it might have been me – once said that journalism was 20 percent thought and 80 percent repetition. That is the nature of journalistic reporting and commentary. Some themes are dearer to you, because they are more important to you, than others, and so you inflict upon your readers the burden of repetition. I’d like to try out on you an answer to the second part of your question.

Q: Okay.

A: Legislators in the General Assembly are now finished with their gun restriction bills. Remarking on the missing data that should have driven their efforts, I said in one of the columns, all of which may be found on a site called “Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes From A Blue State,” that the bills were premature because the criminal investigation report was not due to be completed until June, a date that has since been advanced. The General Assembly produced its bill – a bipartisan measure, we were reminded often enough by its architects – in the first week of April, about a month before the criminal investigation report was due to be completed. I think I quoted the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carol’s “Through the Looking Glass” in the course of that blog and column: “First the verdict,” said the imperious Queen, “then the trial.”

Q: Well yes, but people were impatient to get something done.

A: And their impatience had been stoked by politicians and others interested mostly in bum-rushing legislation in advance of the data upon which that legislation should have rested. Why is that?

Q: You had the families of the 26 victims in Sandy Hook waiting patiently for legislation that would…

A: … insure that the slaughter at Sandy Hook would not be repeated. There are so many assurances on this point from state and national politicians, Democrats mostly, that it would be unnecessarily tedious to repeat them here. The two U.S. Senators in Connecticut most voluble on this point were Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy. 

Q: Okay.

A: And how can you write such bills if you do not know what happened at Sandy Hook? To be sure, there were reports in the media, many of which relied upon heavily edited information from sources that may or may not have been accurate. Some of the information in the polluted media stream was partial or inaccurate enough to give credence to absurd conspiracy theories. Very little of the information could be described as authoritative -- because much of the information was in the custody of criminal investigators who were determined to draw about the data an impenetrable iron curtain. Every time you approached a data master with a question, you were told, “Sorry Bud, that information is not available because of an ongoing criminal investigation.” To some commentators, myself among them, the criminal investigation might have been competed earlier, since the two people who might have been charged criminally, Adam Lanza and the mother he murdered, were both dead, as were most of the witnesses to the mass murder. And even if it had not been completed, the General Assembly was poised to write a bill that would affect every gun owner in the state. If the General Assembly needs information to write effective bills, it should be given the information. Finally, as the General Assembly was on the point of emitting bills, the carefully guarded bucket sprang a leak. A New York Daily News reporter loosed upon the public some quarantined details that came to him from a source who had attended a police convention in New Orleans, after which it was decided to release police arrest warrants – be it noted, a full month or more before the final criminal report was due.

Q: Which means what?

A: It means that the data in the arrest warrant could have been release long before to legislators charged with shaping bills. Now, I may say – without, I hope, drifting into the bog of conspiracy theory – that, as a general rule, a political sequence occurs because politicians want things to happen in a certain sequence. Even the data included in the arrest warrant was by no means complete and definitive. Arrest warrants reveal only what police are looking for and what they have found at the beginning of an investigation. The General Assembly should have insisted, right from the get go, that all information in the custody of investigators pertinent to the bill or bills the legislators were constructing be made available to the relevant heads of legislative committees – in camera, if necessary. That did not happen. Connecticut’s very robust Freedom of Information [FOI] law means, if it means anything at all, that the only thing the general public need fear about the release of information is that information necessary to a well ordered Republic will NOT be released. But what happened in this instance goes far beyond FOI laws.

Q: You are not saying that people intentionally edited the data you think necessary so that bills could be constructed as they wished, are you?

A: Well, I do think there is a well-documented tendency among politicians to use available laws and processes to advance a preferred end. That’s politics. If the end they have in view is defective, or if the process leads ineluctably to an end the consequences of which are destructive, you must adjust the laws and processes. Politics, at its best, is the legislative art that conveys us to an end result that increases liberty and justice for all.

Q: But how much of what happened was purposeful?

A: All of it -- I hope. To suppose otherwise would be to suppose that our legislators are either stupid or mad. You would have to go to a different planet to find a convocation of reporters and commentators who did NOT think that Democratic lawmakers and some Republicans wanted gun restrictions, whatever the data suggested. The data trap in Connecticut eased their way. But bad or sequestered data makes for bad laws. If Republicans in Connecticut were not a bunch of obliging go-alongs hanging by their torn fingernails to increasingly disappearing legislative seats, they would insist on bills that break down Berlin Walls intended to prevent the liberating and free flow of data. But look what happened: As a result of Sandy Hook, a bill was produced in the General Assembly to restrict information on death certificates. Why? Because some legislators wished to spare the stricken parents of young children murdered in Sandy Hook the resulting publicity that might occur should FOI laws be rigorously enforced. Really? Death certificates, available for centuries to the public, contain only general information. The certificate requires a review of the cause of death by a medical examiner to determine the presence or absence of foul play indicating that a murder may have been committed.  How can the general public know that authorities responsible for apprehending and convicting murderers are doing a proper job if information of this kind is not made available to them? Who are the political beneficiaries of such a bill? Why, dear me, can’t we say it plainly? The bill would largely benefit propagandist politicians whose efforts would be furthered by any restriction that data-traps inconvenient truths and prevents the free flow of information. You control the messenger – there are still in Connecticut some alert reporters, a few brave Jonahs who have managed to escape the maw of Leviathan – by controlling data. Throughout history, the upward progress of politicians has been paved by the careful editing of information. In constitutional republics, some subtlety that veils naked political purposes may be necessary to sell such anti-democratic measures to an increasingly marginalized public. We cannot wish to further wound stricken victims, can we? How could we be so heartless? This is how the liberties of free men disappear, not through honest battles waged on an open field but with a flick of the serpent’s tongue.

Q: Are you satisfied with the final bill signed into law by Mr. Malloy?

A: No. the legislative product was shamelessly oversold by demagogues. The passage of the bill here in Connecticut marked the boundary of overheated rhetoric. Before passage, Connecticut politicians, mostly Democrats driven by a script that bore the watermark of Washington D.C., were telling us that the measures they preferred would make school children across the state safe from the Adam Lanzas of the world. Suffering parents in Sandy Hook, perhaps traumatized by the slaughter of their children, were used to prop up an improbable theory: namely, that restrictions imposed on certain weapons – indeed, the most popular and bestselling long rifle in the United States, the AR15 – would render schoolchildren safe from attack. Even town administrators in Newtown spurned that theory when the town fathers voted to appropriate money to place armed guards in all their schools, including the three private schools in town [Sandy Hook is a section of Newtown]. They knew from direct experience that unarmed interveners however brave, could not stop a determined shooter. The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School stopped when armed first responders appeared in the school. After the bill in Connecticut had passed, U.S. Senators Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy and Governor Dannel Malloy took their show to Washington D.C., where a national gun bill, much more pallid that the Connecticut version, was up for consideration. Here at home, legislators who had championed “the toughest gun laws in the nation,” perhaps with a cautious eye focused on reality, began a tactical retreat from their overblown rhetoric: True, the bill wasn’t perfect, but we should never allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. Vice President Joe Biden said at one point that if national gun legislation saved but one life, it would be worth it, which is simply another way of saying that Mr. Biden regards human life as precious. Well, of course he does. All the old canards were trotted out and dangled before an aroused but doubtful public. A rhetorical mountain had been made of a mole hill, and now politicians were concerned with reducing their overinflated mountain of promises so that, when lives once again were lost in what should properly be regarded for purposes of punishment as a terrorist act, politicians who had overpromised in their legislation would not be held to account. Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Murphy both come from a state that had recently abolished a death penalty following a horrific multiple murder in Cheshire committed by two newly released prisoners on parole. Their crime was spectacularly heinous. They broke into a house, beat the male householder with a bat, tied him up in the basement, assaulted three women in the house upstairs, forced a mother to go to a bank and withdraw money, raped two daughters and set fire to the house, killing all the women. That incident sparked massive purchases of guns in Connecticut -- most especially in rural areas, where the response time from police is necessarily longer. Now, if Adam Lanza had survived his attack on Sandy Hook Elementary school, he could not have been executed in Connecticut for having murdered his mother, 20 children and 6 brave faculty members of the school because, largely owing to politicians like Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Murphy, the state, for humane reasons, had deprived itself of a punishment tool. Had Mr. Lanza survived, the political play we are now witnessing would not be the same. We have to begin to focus on the criminal misuse of weapons. In the week prior to passage of the gun restriction law in Connecticut, Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer Chris Powell noted in one of his columns, there were three handgun murders in Hartford alone. “Some of the shots fired there,” Mr. Powell wrote, “may have been audible from the Capitol grounds, at least with those with ears to hear. No one in authority seems to know what to do about such murders, and over the course of a year, such murders in Connecticut’s disintegrating cities will be far more numerous than the murders in Newtown, but nobody has to know or even pretend to know because that part of Connecticut – the part where mayhem is ordinary and daily, not a freak event such as Newtown – can be written off politically. Murder victims in the cities long ago ceased being cute.” Unfortunately, not as many people are like to have read Mr. Powell’s column as those who read Mr. Murphy’s maiden speech in the U.S. Senate on gun violence in the course of which Mr. Murphy pointed out, quite correctly, that guns in the hands of criminals are more lethal than knives. He might have done better had he read Mr. Powell’s column into the legislative record.

Q: In an interview following passage of the gun restriction bill, Senator Dick Blumenthal doubted that the bill would drive gun manufacturers out of the state. He was quoted by the Business Insider as having said, "Gun manufacturers are like other businesses in looking for the highest quality workforce, the best business environment in terms of transportation and taxes and other features unrelated to any regulatory action. Their markets are national. What happens in Connecticut affects only purchases here."

A: Mr. Blumenthal was warned, both before and after passage of the bill, that some manufacturers in his state – called “the constitution state” because Connecticut operated under the New World’s first constitution, the so call “Fundamental Orders,” and the “Provision State” because, since the American Revolution onwards, Connecticut had provided war material and provisions to the federal government – had their eyes cocked on the exit signs. Gun manufacturers were treated shamelessly by the state. Their input on a bill chiefly affecting their business was spurned by a Democratic controlled General Assembly that wanted to add restrictions to gun laws already considered among the strongest in the nation. It was politically convenient for Democrats, as well as the Republicans who joined them in supporting the final product, to come down on the side of gun restrictions. When in doubt, put the gun on public trial. Mr. Blumenthal was wrong. In mid-June, the rumbustious Governor of Texas Rick Perry visited the state, hoping to convince gun manufacturers, among other businesses, to move to no tax regulatory light Texas. But it was South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley who scooped up PTR, a Bristol-based semi-automatic weapons manufacturer. Most of the younger machinists who work for PTR will relocate to South Carolina, a shattering disappointment no doubt to Mr. Blumenthal. Gun manufacturers in the state had been able to submit gun designs to the state police for approval prior to the manufacture of a specific model. After the gun restriction bill had been passed, this business friendly process was rescinded: In the future, gun manufacturers must produce their product and then, AFTER PRODUCTION, the state police will declare the weapon legal or illegal. This is a forthright invitation to gun manufacturers to quit the state. If Mr. Blumenthal does not know this, he should not be serving in the greatest deliberative body in the modern world. Connecticut’s state police will themselves be burdened with the task of enforcing the new sometimes confusing regulations. Even before the bill had been passed, there was a backlog of gun permit cases waiting approval. Enforcement of gun regulations – assuming the new law was not intended merely as a campaign ploy – is labor intensive. It is not certain at this point that the same General Assembly that added the new labor processes will also finance the increased regulation by hiring new state troopers to oversee the execution of the terms of the bill, and state troopers who will in the future be expending their efforts to regulate non-criminal gun owners will have less time to chase down criminals who use weapons purchased on the black market.

Q: At the end of June, some of Adam Lanza’s medical reports and school records fell into the hands of reporters at the Hartford Courant. The documents, which include a medical summary of a visit by Lanza and his mother to Danbury Hospital, “span Lanza’s life from birth to age 18,” according to the exclusive report.

A: … exclusive because no one but the Courant – including the legislators who wrote the gun regulation bill – had the advantage of considering the information in the acquired reports.

Q: And that troubles you?

A: Of course it does.  Listen, everybody who pushed that bill did so because – as numerous political actors said, numerous times – they wished to prevent such mass murders as had occurred at Sandy Hook. Writing such a bill without knowing the medical history of Lanza is comparable to writing a history of the Elizabethan age in England without once mentioning Queen Elizabeth. The information provided by the Courant suggests that Adam Lanza had few problems in school, was not bullied and was not separated out from other pupils for special classes. The paper said it was in receipt of medical information that covered a period in Lanza life from age 8 to 18. Nothing in the information it acquired suggests he was taking psychotropic drugs and, apart from a sensory problem, his performance in school was more than adequate. The legislation produced by the General Assembly was driven by the supposition that Lanza was mentally defective. That may not be true. No information necessary to the creation of legislation should be withheld FOR ANY REASON from legislators creating a bill that advances the public good. This means that exceptions must be made in, say, HIPAA regulations -- or any regulations and procedures that prevent the free flow of information to legislators creating bills such as the gun restriction measure passed by Connecticut’s General Assembly. Legislative committees can receive and consider information in camera. Connecticut’s General Assembly needed information from a much delayed criminal investigation report and health records to write a comprehensive bill that would fulfill the stated intent of those leaders in the General Assembly who were pushing for a quick response to the mass murder of school children in Sandy Hook – and that information should have been made available to appropriate committees in the General Assembly before the bill was finalized. The final bill should have been subjected to a public hearing. It was smuggled through the legislature by means of a questionable emergency certification process, which was blasted by the Connecticut Law Tribune, among others. Gun manufacturers should have been used as a proper resource in the construction of the final bill. Breast beating politicians in the state should have been far more modest in their ambitions. Recently – one supposes through fatigue – Newtown’s First Selectman Patricia Llodra publically called for an end to outside intervention in her town: “the Town will respectfully decline any further special events not currently scheduled by the Town or currently being planned for July/August … We are hopeful that everyone understands the need for us to move into a quieter period.” People in Newtown – harried by reporters, hustled to Washington D.C. by Connecticut’s Congressional Delegation to promote national gun restriction legislation that Majority Leader of the Senate Harry Reid twice failed to deliver, still wracked with private sorrows – should be afforded a private space in which time and silent prayer may help to close their open wounds. She is right.

 

Murphy Among the Lilliputians

Seasoned members of the U.S. Senate may be forgiven if they think U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, elected to the Senate only five months ago, is a bit of an upstart. It is an unwritten rule in that august body that newly arrived Senators should be seen but not heard until they’ve paid their dues for a year.

In the past two years, Connecticut lost two Senators of longstanding, Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman, who were replaced by Democrats Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, both of whom in the last six months have been vigorously pressuring their brethren to vote into law a much watered down version of Connecticut’s recently adopted gun law.

These efforts, so far, have been unavailing.  Two months have passed since Speaker of the U.S. Senate Harry Reid announced that he declined to bring up for a vote in the Democratic controlled Senate a bill that would require background checks for gun purchasers.

In response to the horrific mass murder of children and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut’s General Assembly quickly passed a gun bill widely regarded as the most restrictive in the nation, possibly outflanking Chicago, the murder capital of the Republic.

There is some reason to believe that the final gun bill in Connecticut was speedily passed -- far in advance of the completion of a criminal report on the Sandy Hook mass murder and without benefit of a final public hearing on the measure – so that the Connecticut legislation might be showcased in Washington D.C. prior to a pending vote on a national gun bill.

If so, the effort failed. Mr. Reid, convinced he could not marshal sufficient votes in the Senate to pass a bill infinitely less restrictive than the Connecticut legislation, recently declined to bring the bill before the Senate for a vote.

Governor Dannel Malloy -- who said concerning his state’s gun manufacturers as Connecticut’s gun restriction bill was being forced through the General Assembly’s sausage making machine, "What this is about is the ability of the gun industry to sell as many guns to as many people as possible, even if they're deranged, even if they're mentally ill, even if they have a criminal record. They don't care” – was of course disappointed that a much weaker national gun restriction bill had failed to pass muster in the Democratic controlled U.S. Senate. And Connecticut’s two cloutless U.S.Senators were sorely frustrated. Both Mr. Blumenthal, now the state’s senior senator, and Mr. Murphy publically lashed out at the National Rifle Association (NRA) and their weak-kneed comrades in the Senate whom they understood to be hanging limply from puppet strings attaching them to NRA campaign contributions.

Either of Connecticut’s now departed U.S. Senators might have told the two novice senators that such public intimations are no way to win friends and influence comrades in what some have called the world’s greatest deliberative body. Are Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Murphy prepared to argue that Harry Reid, the Democratic Speaker of the Senate, is a mindless puppet of the NRA?

Well, are they?

Mr. Murphy in particular moves from rashness to rashness the way a flitting pollen collecting bee moves briskly from flower to flower. Along with U.S. Senator Jon Tester, Mr. Murphy – having danced a public jig over the grave of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment – has now proposed to add to the Constitution an amendment that would, according to some Constitutional scholars, “authorize Congress, states, and local governments to, for instance, restrict what most newspapers publish, restrict what most advocacy groups, such as the ACLU, the Sierra Club, and the NRA say, restrict what is said and done by most churches, and seize the property of corporations without just compensation.”

Here is Mr. Murphy’s proposed amendment:

Section 1. We the people who ordain and establish this Constitution intend the rights protected by this constitution to be the rights of natural persons.

Section 2. The words people, person, or citizen as used in this Constitution do not include corporations, limited liability companies or other corporate entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state, and such corporate entities are subject to such regulation as the people, through their elected State and Federal representatives, deem reasonable and are otherwise consistent with the powers of Congress and the States under this Constitution.

 

Section 3. Nothing contained herein shall be construed to limit the people’s rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free exercise of religion, freedom of association and all such other rights of the people, which rights are unalienable

The Murphy amendment is a thoughtless and juvenile reaction to a Supreme Court holding that the rights and immunities of the U.S. Constitution should continue to apply to corporate entities. Mr. Murphy’s own state, one of the 13 original colonies, was founded as a royal chartered corporation. Constitutional scholar Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, noted that “corporate entities,” include most media companies, nonprofit groups, and religious organizations. “Under the proposed amendment, all these groups—as well as ordinary businesses—would lose all their constitutional rights.”

Connecticut’s junior U.S. Senator appears to be determinedly working his way through the Bill of Rights in an attempt to purge it of its ancient excrescences. One can almost hear him ticking off the list: Second Amendment, done; First Amendment, done. For progressive utopianists unwilling to acknowledge a politics of limits, not even the rational limits imposed by constitutions, the sky is always the limit.

Blumenthal: Hey Bud, Can You Spare A Dime?

The New Haven Register did NOT say in its editorial that U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal ought not to be raising campaign funds from atop the bodies of 20 slain school children; this would have been irregular and, perhaps worst, impolite.

The editorial said that U.S. Representative Chris Murphy and Governor Dannel Malloy were “helping give voice to the victims’ families” in Washington D.C. preceding a vote on a gun regulation bill, necessary efforts on an important issue.

An Interview With Don Pesci: Sandy Hook And The Data Trap

Q: I’ve now read everything you’ve written about the Sandy Hook mass murders, quite a lot. I’ve noticed two things: You have not weighed in on what some people might consider the central legislative issues, the “should”questions – should certain weapons be banned, that sort of thing; and throughout your commentary, you manage to sound like a Jeremiah on what some grey heads in the journalism business use to call “freedom of information.” Is that a right reading of the main thrust of your commentary on Sandy Hook?

A: It’s a fair reading, yes.

Q: Why the emphases on the free flow of information?

A: Because what one does will always depend upon what one knows. It would be more accurate to say “the full and accurate flow of information.” Can I pick a bone with you on Jeremiah?

Q: Sure.

A: Jeremiah was repetitive because he had a positive genius for getting quickly to the decisive point and, of course, repeating it, much to the distress of the hypocritical whitened sepulchers in his audience. Someone –I think it might have been me – once said that journalism was 20 percent thought and 80 percent repetition. That is the nature of journalistic reporting and commentary. Some themes are dearer to you, because they are more important to you, than others, and so you inflict upon your readers the burden of repetition. I’d like to try out on you an answer to the second part of your question.

Q: Okay.

A: Legislators in the General Assembly are pretty much finished with their bills. [This interview occurred on Wednesday, April 10, 2013. Governor Dannel Malloy signed into law on Thursday, April 4, 2013 a bill containing, according to a New York Times report,“… sweeping new restrictions on weapons and ammunition magazines similar to the ones used by the man who fatally shot 20 children and 6 educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.”] Remarking on the missing data that should have driven their efforts, I said in one of the columns, all of which may be found on a site called “Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes From A Blue State,” [Here sorted by date] that the bills were premature because the criminal investigation report was not due to be completed until June. The General Assembly produced its bill – a bipartisan measure, we are reminded often enough by its architects – in the first week of April, about a month before the criminal investigation report was due to be completed. I think I quoted the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carol’s “Through the Looking Glass” in the course of that blog and column: “First the verdict,” said the imperious Queen, “then the trial.”

Q: Well yes, but people were impatient to get something done.

A: And their impatience had been stoked by politicians and others interested mostly in bum-rushing legislation before the data upon which that legislation should have rested was available. Why is that?

Q: You had the families of the 26 victims in Sandy Hook waiting patiently for legislation that would…

A: … insure that the slaughter at Sandy Hook would not be repeated. There are so many assurances on this point from state and national politicians, Democrats mostly, that it would be unnecessarily tedious to repeat them here. The two U.S. Senators in Connecticut most voluble on this point are Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy.

Q: Okay.

A: And how can you write such bills if you do not know what happened at Sandy Hook? To be sure, there were reports in the media, many of which relied upon heavily edited information from sources that may or may not have been accurate. Some of the information in the polluted media stream was partial or inaccurate enough to give credence to absurd conspiracy theories. Very little of the information could be described as authoritative -- because much of the information was in the custody of criminal investigators who were determined to draw about the data an impenetrable iron curtain. Every time you approached a data master with a question, you were told, “Sorry Bud, that information is not available because of an ongoing criminal investigation.” To some commentators, myself among them, the criminal investigation seemed overblown, since the two people who might have been charged criminally, Adam Lanza and the mother he murdered, were both dead, as were most of the witnesses to the mass murder. Finally, as the General Assembly was on the point of emitting bills, the carefully guarded bucket sprung a leak. A New York Daily News reporter loosed upon the public some quarantined details that came to him from a source who had attended a police convention in New Orleans, after which it was decided to release police arrest warrants – be it noted, a full month or more before the final criminal report was due.

Q: Which means what?

A: It means that the data in the arrest warrant could have been release long before to legislators charged with shaping bills. Now, I may say – without, I hope, drifting into the bog of conspiracy theory – that, as a general rule, a political sequence occurs because politicians want things to happen in a certain sequence. Even the data included in the arrest warrant was by no means complete and definitive. Arrest warrants reveal only what police are looking for and what they have found at the beginning of an investigation. The General Assembly should have insisted, right from the get go, that all information in the custody of investigators pertinent to the bill or bills the legislators were constructing be made available to the relevant heads of legislative committees – in camera, if necessary. That did not happen. Connecticut’s very robust Freedom of Information [FOI] law means, if it means anything at all, that the only thing the general public need fear about the release of information is that information necessary to a well ordered Republic will NOT be released. But what happened in this instance goes far beyond FOI laws.

Q: You are not saying that people intentionally edited the data you think necessary so that bills could be constructed as they wished, are you?

A: Well, I do think there is a well-documented tendency among politicians to use available laws and processes to advance a preferred end. That’s politics. If the end they have in view is defective, or if the process leads ineluctably to an end the consequences of which are destructive, you must adjust the laws and processes. Politics, at its best, is the legislative art that conveys us to an end result that increases liberty and justice for all.

Q: But how much of what happened was purposeful?

A: All of it -- I hope. To suppose otherwise would be to suppose that our legislators are either stupid or mad. You would have to go to a different planet to find a convocation of reporters and commentators who did NOT think that Democratic lawmakers and some Republicans wanted gun restrictions, whatever the data suggested. The data trap in Connecticut eased their way. But bad data – or, worse, sequestered data – makes for bad laws. If Republicans in Connecticut were not a bunch of spineless go-alongs hanging by their torn fingernails to increasingly disappearing legislative seats, they would insist on bills that break down Berlin Walls intended to prevent the liberating and free flow of data. But look what is happening: As a result of Sandy Hook, we now have before the General Assembly a bill that would restrict information on death certificates. Why? Because we wish to spare the stricken parents of young children murdered in Sandy Hook the resulting publicity that might occur should FOI laws be rigorously enforced. Really? Death certificates, available for centuries to the public, contain only general information. The certificate requires a review of the cause of death by a medical examiner to determine the presence or absence of foul play indicating that a murder may have been committed. How can the general public know that authorities responsible for apprehending and convicting murderers are doing a proper job if information of this kind is not made available to them? Who are the political beneficiaries of such a bill? Why, dear me, can’t we say it plainly? The bill would largely benefit propagandist politicians whose efforts would be furthered any restriction that data-traps inconvenient truths and prevents the free flow of information. You control the messenger – there are still in Connecticut some alert reporters, a few brave Jonahs who have managed to escape the maw of Leviathan – by controlling data. In history, the upward progress of politicians has always been paved by the careful editing of information. In constitutional republics, some subtlety that veils naked political purposes may be necessary to sell such anti-democratic measures to an increasingly apathetic public. Do we wish to further wound stricken victims? How could we be so heartless? This is how the liberties of free men disappear, not through honest battles waged on an open field but with a flick of the serpent’s tongue.

Q: Are you satisfied with the final bill [recently signed into law by Mr. Malloy]?

A: No. the legislative product was shamelessly oversold by demagogues. The passage of the bill here in Connecticut marked the boundary of overheated rhetoric. Before passage, Connecticut politicians, mostly Democrats driven by a script that bore the watermark of Washington D.C., were telling us that the measures they preferred would make school children across the state safe from the Adam Lanzas of the world. Suffering parents in Sandy Hook, perhaps traumatized by the slaughter of their children, were used to prop up an improbable theory: namely, that restrictions imposed on certain weapons –indeed, the most popular and bestselling long rifle in the United States, the AR15 – would render schoolchildren safe from attack. Even town administrators in Newtown dramatically spurned that theory when the town fathers voted to appropriate money to place armed guards in all their schools, including the three private schools in town [Sandy Hook is a section of Newtown]. They knew from direct experience that unarmed interveners, however brave, could not stop a determined shooter. The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School stopped when armed first responders appeared in the school. After the bill in Connecticut had passed, U.S. Senators Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy and Governor Dannel Malloy took their show to Washington D.C., where a national gun bill, much more pallid that the Connecticut version, was up for consideration. Here at home, legislators who had championed “the toughest gun laws in the nation,”perhaps with a cautious eye focused on reality, began a tactical retreat from their overblown rhetoric: True, the bill wasn’t perfect, but we should never allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. Vice President Joe Biden said at one point that if national gun legislation saved but one life, it would be worth it, which is simply another way of saying that Mr. Biden regards human life as precious. Well, of course he does. All the old canards were trotted out and dangled before an aroused but doubtful public. A rhetorical mountain had been made of a mole hill, and now politicians were concerned with reducing their overinflated mountain of promises so that, when lives once again were lost in what should properly be regarded for purposes of punishment as a terrorist act, politicians who had overpromised in their legislation would not be held to account. Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Murphy both come from a state that had recently abolished a death penalty following a horrific multiple murder in Cheshire committed by two newly released prisoners on parole. Their crime was spectacularly heinous. They broke into a house, beat the male householder with a bat, tied him up in the basement, assaulted three women in the house upstairs, forced a mother to go to a bank and withdraw money, raped two daughters and set fire to the house, killing all the women. That incident sparked massive purchases of guns in Connecticut, especially in rural areas, where the response time from police is necessarily longer. Now, if Adam Lanza had survived his attack on Sandy Hook Elementary school, he could not have been executed in Connecticut for having murdered his mother, 20 children and 6 brave faculty members of the school because – largely owing to politicians like Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Murphy – the state, for humane reasons, had deprived itself of a punishment tool. Had Mr. Lanza survived, the political play we are now witnessing would not be the same. We have to begin to focus on the criminal misuse of weapons. In the week prior to passage of the gun restriction law in Connecticut, Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer Chris Powell noted in one of his columns, there were three handgun murders in Hartford alone. “Some of the shots fired there,” Mr. Powell wrote, “may have been audible from the Capitol grounds, at least with those with ears to hear. No one in authority seems to know what to do about such murders, and over the course of a year, such murders in Connecticut’s disintegrating cities will be far more numerous than the murders in Newtown, but nobody has to know or even pretendto know because that part of Connecticut – the part where mayhem is ordinary and daily, not a freak event such as Newtown – can be written off politically. Murder victims in the cities long ago ceased being cute.” Unfortunately, not as many people are like to have read Mr. Powell’s column as those who read Mr. Murphy’s maiden speech in the U.S. Senate on gun violence in the course of which Mr. Murphy pointed out, quite correctly, that guns in the hands of criminals are more lethal than knives. He might have done a valuable service for his constituents had he read Mr. Powell’s column into the legislative record.