“Oh, Dannel Boy, your lips they move so sweetly;
They sing soft lies,
The sort that kill.
Oh, Dannel Boy, your lips seduced our SEBAC;
And now our blood,
It boils o’er today.”
Thus the chorus will be heard throughout the state from disgruntled members of state unions. When Governor Dannel Malloy submitted his proposal for union give backs to the state’s unions last month, the plan was rejected. So the governor went ahead with plans to begin laying folks off and closing nonessential state services to narrow the state’s...
July 23, 2011
Welcome to the new Connecticut, a land of haves, and have nots. The new class struggle is evident now even among the ranks of state employees. Older workers want the unions to reject any concessions or give backs called for by the governor -- folks have worked a lifetime to earn pensions and benefits. These workers view concessions as a violation of a contract the state made with them decades ago.
Younger workers, with young families, and long years of employment ahead of them, are less wedded to the status quo. If the old-timers have to kick in more for health care or get their...
July 21, 2011
Clarence Darrow is the sort of icon whose status guarantees that new biographies will be produced about him from time to time. Although dead now some 73 years, his presence lingers. He is on anyone’s short list as one of the nation’s greatest trial lawyers. Andrew Kersten’s, Clarence Darrow: American Iconoclast, is a welcome addition to the burgeoning literature on Darrow.
Kersten is an historian without legal training, and his work can therefore be maddeningly vague. A lodestar guiding Darrow throughout his career was a commitment to liberty, justice and...
July 19, 2011
It is, I suppose, the very best of times, and the very worst of times. Two worlds live in uneasy juxtaposition, great wealth side-by-side with jarring poverty. On the front page of the newspaper, stories of famine, chaos and corruption. Turn the page, and forget your troubles: why you can purchase a $2,500 handbag from Chanel, or blow almost $1,000 on a pair of designer high heels. And if you are truly wealthy, why you can buy your own truly rare copy of the Declaration of Independence for $1.6 million; there’s a full-page advertisement for it on the back page of one of the...
July 16, 2011
July 14, 2011
Does anyone really care whether major league baseball players use steroids? Isn’t that sort of like carping about breast implants at a strip...
July 14, 2011
News that 57 Connecticut state troopers and hundreds of Department of Corrections workers received lay-off notices this month compels the following...
July 11, 2011
One need not be guilty of a crime to assert the right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This testimonial...
July 11, 2011
If I could recommend one book to the lay reader about what is going in our courts, sadly, it would not be my own: It would be David K....
July 7, 2011
Live long enough and the line between reality and farce becomes blurred: If we can imagine something happening, reality has a way of overtaking our...
July 6, 2011
How did Jose Baez, the lawyer for Casey Anthony, win this most difficult of trials? The chattering class wants to know. Pundits from one end of the...