Senator Richard Blumenthal reminded a Stamford audience that the mind bogglingly rich often live in another world, especially when they had to spend no time making their fortune. Other people’s names can be a terrible inconvenience to them. The New York Post published an item yesterday on Sergeant Blumenthal botching the name of popular cultural staple, Oscar winner Liza Minnelli at a Stamford event Friday night. She sang the song about her name and he still got it wrong.

Not the first time. Many veterans who served with Blumenthal during his long tenure as attorney general in Connecticut suspected he had no clue what their names were. He proved it during a 2005 Second Circuit argument over the federal government’s proposal to close the Navy’s submarine base in New London, Connecticut. The government’s lead lawyer introduced those assisting him to the court. Blumenthal, making one of those high profile appearances he craves, decided to do the same. Trouble was he know remember their names. Insiders recall that the government’s lawyer later asked Blumenthal if he’d like him to introduce Dick to his own staff.

Republican congressional hopeful Lisa Wilson-Foley sought an assist from felonious former Governor John G. Rowland in the closing days of the 3rd quarter financial reporting period, according to a Facebook invitation posted by Rowland loyalist Christine Dreher Corey. The event took place at the Palace Theater in Waterbury last Thursday evening.

A different invitation for the invent included Rowland’s wife Patty as a co-spronsor but not the former governor who resigned from office in the midst of an enveloping bribery scandal in 2004 that sent him to federal prison the next year. Corey and her husband gained notoriety when Rowland confessed as the scandal built that they had provided him and his wife a hot tub at their Litchfield County lakeside retreat. Both Coreys were state employees at the time. It was a sordid and embarrassing era for Connecticut, caused by Rowland’s wild sense of entitlement.

Here are photos from a September fundraiser for Wilson-Foley that also featured the one-time federal inmate.

Rowland is known to do little for free and Wilson-Foley is said to be vigorous in finding ways outside her campaign to spread around some of her private fortune. The fundraising alliance will prompt other campaigns in the crowded to race to pose questions and raise eyebrows.

It’s be a day of emails from spouses, parents, children and friends asking marks to hand over some dough to a favorite candidate. You know the approach. “My husband John will celebrate his birthday in 6 months, won’t you send $187 to his historic campaign? There’s never been a more important election in our lifetime.” Oy. That’s the sort of thing that will get the web regulated.

For contrast on all that earnestness, have a look at the magnificent Catherine Tate’s comic creation and serial fundraiser, Geordie Georgie. Please note that our Catherine, who you may recognize from Dr. Who, takes advantage of looser British television standards on the use of certain worlds.
 

Pullman & Comley had more than a good friend in the room when the Connecticut Airport Authority rejected considerably lower bids from two other firms and hired the Bridgeport-based law firm to serve as its counsel. It had a former client in authority member Charles Gray, spouse of Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s legal counsel and former Pullman & Comley lawyer Andrew McDonald.

Pullman & Comley represented Gray in a 2005 claim against Cosi, Inc. The case was tried in 2008, with a jury verdict for Gray. The verdict was appealed. The appeal was withdrawn on May 1, 2009. less than two years after Gray supported Pullman & Comley in the authority’s legal counsel selection subcommittee and the committee at large.

Gray will likely face questions about the details of his relationship with Pullman & Comley when he appears before the Executive and Legislative Nominations Committee on Thursday at noon to his nomination to the CAA.

Hartford police insist they relocated a sobriety checkpoint Friday afternoon from its planned location near the site of the annual state Democratic fundraising dinner to the impoverished Park Street neighborhood based on intelligence about possible gun violence on Park Street. The checkpoint near the Convention Center was announced Wednesday, March 23rd. The move away from State Street was revealed on Friday afternoon.

Sobriety checkpoints are an intrusion on our right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure, so they are permitted under narrow guidelines. One of them is that they are not to be used as a pretext for other police operations. Common sense and prudence tell us that the police ought not create a situation that adds to the number of people who will be in a danger zone, but that’s what the Hartford police did on Friday night.

Here are the names and addresses of the seven people arrested for DUI at the checkpoint on Friday night, according to HPD. Each will have a very good defense against the charges they face.

#1.  RAFAEL MACHADO, 7/9/1972, 898 PARK STREET, HTFD, CT.

DUI- 14-227a, OPERATING W/O A LICENSE-14-36a

#2.  CARLOS GUADALUPE, 1/20/1986, 268 PARK TERRACE, HTFD, CT.

DISOBEYING OFFICER’S SIGNAL-14-223a, EVADING RESPONSIBILITY-14-224, F/T OBEY CONTROL SIGNAL-14-299, DUI-14-227a, OPERATING UNDER SUSPENSION-14-215

#3.  JOAQUIN ROSADO, 7/8/1976, 266 MAPLE AVENUE, HTFD, CT.

DUI-14-227a, OPERATING UNDER SUSPENSION-14-215

#4.  KIMDUYEN TRAN, 8/9/1993, 36 MOHAWK DRIVE, EAST HARTFORD, CT.

DUI-14-227a

#5.  HECTOR ALAMO, 5/22/1962, 121 ZION STREET, HTFD, CT.

DUI-14-227a

#6.  ROBERTO DIAZ, 80 BANNISTER STREET, HTFD, CT.

DUI-14-227a

#7.  THOMAS COOK, 4/12/1983, 34 ENFIELD STREET, HTFD, CT.

DUI-14-227a

I will take  chance and offer some speculation. I bet none of those seven drivers was on his way home from the Jefferson Jackson Bailey dinner at the Connecticut Convention Center.

You have to admire United States Senator Olympia Snowe for not wanting to stay in politics until she’s in her dotage. We’ll miss her instinct for reason and solving problems. There’s much to be said for sensible leaders who are not prisoners of a narrow ideology. She’d make an excellent member of a Republican cabinet.

She speaks to Jonathan Karl.

Why should supporters of the 2010 federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act worry about being knocked about at arguments before the Supreme Court today? As Attorney General, Senator Richard Blumenthal declared in June 18, 2010  press release that a court challenge to the Act “would have virtually no chance of success….” How could the famous fantasist get it wrong?

With customary disregard for opposing points of view, the Blumenthal press release continued, “The thrust of these pending legal challenges by other state attorneys general is that the Act–particularly the individual mandate to purchase health insurance–exceeds congressional power. Under clear and longstanding principles of constitutional law set forth by the United State Supreme Court, Blumenthal said the Act falls well within Congress’ power and is therefore constitutional. Such confidence in the unlimited power of government. Sounds like a majority of the Supreme Court failed to read the Blumenthal pronouncement. Perhaps he should have held  a press conference in his seat at Monday’s argument to let the justices know they were wasting their time on a meritless claim. The seat in the courtroom was provided to him by Senator Patrick Leahy, for whom Blumenthal appeared at a $5,000 a ticket fundraiser last week.

A person puts something on his Facebook page for others to see. I understand that an errant post of a link to a story may not reflect a point of view. A series of posts on an incendiary topic, however, becomes a revealing pattern. Take a look at Senate Republican staffer Chris Diorio’s Facebook page. He is aggrieved by the attention paid to the shooting of Trayvon Martin. Somehow that attention it has garnered, Diorio seems to feel, diminishes the killings of others. He highlights the gruesome killing of a Kentucky couple. The perpetrators were brought to justice. Next up is the shooting of a Mississippi State University student on campus Saturday night. The student appears to have been near a drug deal gone bad. Two of three suspects have been arrested and charged with capital felonies.

In Kentucky, the guilty were black, the victims white. In Mississippi, the victim was white and the suspects black. They have nothing to do with Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. For many reasons, crimes garner different levels of attention and interest. Law enforcement in those two cases, it ought to be noted, pursued the perpetrators with the vigor we expect. No one could say that of the Martin case. When three members of the Petit family of Cheshire were murdered in a home invasion in the summer of 2007, some malignant observers complained that that crime received national attention because the victims were white. They were wrong.Those, like Senate Republican staffer Diorio, who are in a frenzy because the nation has turned its eyes on Sanford, Florida seem angry not because a young man was killed but because much of the nation is wants to see justice done in the death of a Florida black man.

When you feature your Senate Republican colleagues and other political candidates on your Facebook page, readers will begin to assume that they share some of your ugly prism on the world. They ought to find ways to make it clear that they do not.

The Hartford Police Department’s explanation of its last minute change Friday of a  DUI checkpoint from State Street near the state Democrats’ annual fundraising dinner to high crime Park Street grew more convoluted this afternoon. Veteran department public information officer Nancy Mulroy caviled over a headline of CTCapitolReport.com that included Mayor Pedro Segarra in it’s link.

Mulroy wrote, “I noticed your link entitled:  ’Why did Segarra move the Hartford DUI roadblocks in front of the JJB?…’ which directs the reader to Kevin Rennie’s blog.  As the PIO for the HPD I did want to clarify for you that Mayor Segarra had no knowledge of or input into the decision to relocate Friday night’s DUI Enforcement Checkpoint.  That decision is and was solely Hartford Police Chief James C. Rovella’s, and was based on the potential for gun violence in the area they were redeployed and another area of the city.” That’s right, the Hartford Police Department’s explanation for moving the DUI checkpoint is that it wanted to create a line of motorists in a neighborhood where it believed an outbreak of gun violence was likely to occur. That’s stunningly irresponsible on its face. If the police expected violence on Park Street Friday night, the last thing they should have done was set up a checkpoint that would cause a traffic jam of innocent motorists in the zone of maximum danger.

It’s also a tortured distortion of the purpose of a DUI checkpoint. Drivers are not to be used as decoys under the guise of a sobriety checkpoint. The outrage in the Park Street neighborhood out to begin to make itself felt.

It won’t be long. State Representative William Tong’s longshot bid for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate has shed 4 staffers, Daily Ructions can report. The Stamford Democrat will have to recapture the American dream without the support of his deputy campaign manager, Max Gigle. With five days to go in the 2nd quarter finance period, Tong’s lost campaign fundraising assistant Julia Weyland. His deputy campaign manager resigned today. Tong’s driver has also departed the campaign as the party nominating convention approaches.

The three term legislator and corporate lawyer’s campaign has failed to take flight among party activists, delegates or general membership. Only 4% of Democrats supported Tong in the latest Quinnipiac survey of the contest, far behind frontrunner U.S. Representative Christopher Murphy and former Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz.