Columnist On Sept. 7, 2016, Donald Trump made a specific promise to an audience at the Philadelphia shipyards: “to build a Navy of 350 surface ships and submarines.” On March 2, Trump, now president, added to the specificity of that…
Posted: 26 May 2017 [08:15 PM] Posted: 26 May 2017 [08:15 PM] Columnist One of the lucky things about being rich is that you automatically become handsome, your jokes are hilarious, and politicians treat you with fawning deference. On the other hand, the unlucky thing about being poor is that … well,…
Posted: 22 May 2017 [09:45 PM] Something very beneficial for us parents to learn early on is that as parents we are our own bosses. Yup. Believe it or not, we really are our own bosses. Cool, huh? You see, in some ways we actually get…
Posted: 20 May 2017 [08:11 PM] Columnist Governor Malloy says negotiations over the state budget, which began this week, have a long way to go, but after wobbling on taxes he has accomplished something remarkable. He has pushed his party’s majority in the General Assembly, the…
Posted: 20 May 2017 [08:11 PM] Columnist If I were Donald Trump’s chief of staff, I’d just break his thumbs. That’s what Reince Priebus should do - and then maybe buy a roll of duct tape. From Day One of his administration, President Trump has hurt…
Posted: 20 May 2017 [08:09 PM] Columnist She was a virgin when he raped her, impregnated her, and then beat her. She miscarried. A devout Catholic, she mourned her own pain less than that lost life. No amount of comfort from the priest made her tears…
Posted: 20 May 2017 [08:05 PM] Columnist Which best describes your view of America? Everyone pays an equal share? Or, everyone pays his fair share? Both sound reasonable. One hinges on equality, the other on fairness - two principles we generally embrace. But as I wrote…
Posted: 19 May 2017 [09:27 PM] THE Washington Post Donald Trump’s political career arguably began with the full-page advertisements he purchased in The Post and several other newspapers in September 1987 in order to denounce Saudi Arabia, along with Japan, for “taking…
Posted: 19 May 2017 [09:26 PM] Columnist The choice of the next FBI director generated bitter political debate only 48 hours ago. Now, with the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel, it’s almost beside the point. Mueller, a much-respected former director of the bureau, was…
Posted: 14 May 2017 [09:04 PM] This political cycle has gone to the stage of social entertainment. The Republican house delegation had a triumphal procession after they voted down Obamacare and got their version of the Affordable Care Act voted into law. This is phase…
Posted: 13 May 2017 [08:44 PM] Columnist WASHINGTON - For those lately bereft of leadership, the past few days have provided both a respite and a reason for hope. Make that two reasons - two women - Sally Yates and Condoleezza Rice. It’s likely that neither…
Posted: 13 May 2017 [08:42 PM] Columnist WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is one of the shrewdest politicians of his generation. But by speaking Wednesday on the Senate floor in defense of President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, McConnell made what is…
Posted: 13 May 2017 [08:39 PM] Columnist I wish every child could be blessed to have a mother like mine. When my five sisters and I were babies in her womb, she never took so much as an aspirin for a headache - never ingested anything…
Posted: 13 May 2017 [08:38 PM] Columnist Despite imposing during the last six years Connecticut’s two largest tax increases, state government is running its third straight big annual deficit, this week causing Governor Malloy to spend the emergency reserve and to suspend some financial aid to…
Posted: 13 May 2017 [08:33 PM] Columnist A half-dollar hardly counts as money these days - it won’t even buy a cup of coffee. But pssssst… here’s an amazing half-dollar bargain for you: A first-class postage stamp. For 50 cents, you get the stamp, 3 cents…
Posted: 12 May 2017 [08:19 PM] Columnist I give up. Ten minutes after I started watching the Senate intelligence committee hearings Thursday morning, I got so frustrated I started looking for a good cartoon show. What’s so aggravating about these staged Congressional hearings is that you…
Posted: 12 May 2017 [08:16 PM] THE Washington Post The FBI is in trouble and must be protected - from the White House, first and foremost. Last year’s Hillary Clinton email investigation put the agency in the middle of a political fight. President Donald Trump…
Posted: 12 May 2017 [08:12 PM] Bloomberg View The early returns are in, and they’re bad news for the Republican gamble to pass a flawed health-care alternative to Obamacare. Democratic candidates are on the attack, and Republicans are dissembling. In a couple of special congressional elections,…
Journeys With Jim: How to protect against, and deal with, ticks Posted: 10 May 2017 [10:13 PM] COLUMNIST With all the time I spent in the deer woods last fall, I can scarcely remember a day that I found…
Posted: 08 May 2017 [09:43 PM] Doesn’t it look like the Germans are good at everything? It even appears the Germans are even pretty good at parenting too. For example, somehow German parents have figured out a way to consistently have their 15-year-old children score well…
Posted: 07 May 2017 [09:42 PM] The first hundred days of the Trump administration have come and gone, and we all are still here, the world seems to still be orbiting the sun, and God is still in his heaven. What we have seen is a…
Posted: 06 May 2017 [08:02 PM] Columnist WASHINGTON - It should have been obvious, but I missed it: Steve Bannon has been banished and Dennis Rodman is whispering in the president’s ear. OK, maybe not, but it could explain Donald Trump’s sudden admiration for North…
Posted: 06 May 2017 [08:01 PM] Columnist WASHINGTON - If words could bring legal actions, “populism” would sue for aggravated abuse. And President Trump would be a co-defendant. In a season of dispiriting tidings, few habits have been more infuriating than the ease with which political…
Posted: 06 May 2017 [07:59 PM] Columnist As state government’s finances collapsed this week, House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz said the mood of the House Democratic majority caucus was approaching “depression.” But what took them so long? The performance of state government has depressed the public for…
Posted: 06 May 2017 [07:57 PM] Columnist Remember when late-night TV used to be entertaining - and actually funny? You used to be able to turn off the tube and go to bed with a smile on your face. Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin, Joan…
Posted: 01 May 2017 [09:33 PM] Parents, we always try to tell our kids to do the right thing and choose wisely, don’t we? And don’t we also try with all of our might, energy and heart to get our children to become good citizens who…
Posted: 29 April 2017 [10:20 PM] Editorial As we said a month ago when this idea was first proposed, we don’t want to see anyone lose their jobs but if cuts have to be made; and they do; the first consideration should be to protect student…
Posted: 29 April 2017 [10:15 PM] Columnist Governor Malloy’s objective with education this year was doubly revolutionary. First, he sought to slash state financial aid to most school systems and transfer it to city school systems, partly as a response to the latest court decision that…
Posted: 29 April 2017 [10:15 PM] Columnist I admit I clearly was not born with the patience gene. As a kid my mother was always saying to me, “Patience, patience, patience.” Today my wife Colleen is always saying the same thing: “Mike. Patience, patience.” It’s no…
Posted: 29 April 2017 [10:12 PM] Columnist WASHINGTON - In the outpouring of commentary on President Trump’s first 100 days in office, his greatest single achievement is almost never mentioned, which is itself a sign of what a major triumph it is: We are not talking…
Posted: 29 April 2017 [10:01 PM] One hundred days into the Donald Trump presidency, we have neither achieved the nirvana he promised nor entered the dystopia critics, including us, feared. Since nirvana was never likely, it may be more productive to examine why we have, so…
Posted: 28 April 2017 [08:12 PM] Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Thursday that the House would consider a new Obamacare replacement bill “when we have the votes.” Given the legislation that’s being drafted, that ought to be never. Any politician who pledged to protect people with…
Posted: 28 April 2017 [08:09 PM] Washington Post Sea change. An enormous one. That’s the only way to understand President Donald Trump’s first 100 days - as a breaking from and often a breaking of the Obama presidency, one every bit as turbulent as what’s encountered…
Posted: 24 April 2017 [10:43 PM] Over the years that I have been a teacher, I have told parents not to give up because their kids really are listening to them. They really are the most important people in their children’s lives, regardless of what their…
Posted: 23 April 2017 [09:25 PM] The tragedy we have witnessed as a state with the story of Aaron Hernandez is a tale Shakespeare couldn’t have engineered. The youngster from Bristol was the athlete from another planet. He was the best in his city, the…
Posted: 22 April 2017 [08:22 PM] Columnist Sixty years ago with enactment of its law allowing towns to provide bus transportation to church schools, legislation that was contested almost as bitterly as a holy war, Connecticut began its transformation from a Yankee, Protestant, and Republican state…
Posted: 22 April 2017 [08:20 PM] Columnist Dear Mr. President. I have some more friendly but important advice for you. It’s not about your itchy twitter finger or your golf game. I’ll take the great Ernie Els’ word for it that you don’t need any golf…
Posted: 22 April 2017 [08:18 PM] Columnist WASHINGTON - The Facebook video of a homicide was surely inevitable. This isn’t the same as saying that video murders soon will become all the rage, but it was more likely to happen eventually than not. Forget…
Posted: 22 April 2017 [08:17 PM] Columnist WASHINGTON - Two issues are paramount in American politics. The first is whether President Trump will get away with his arrogant dismissal of the public’s right to a transparent government free of corrupting conflicts of interest. The second is…
Posted: 21 April 2017 [08:03 PM] The Nation In January 1970, the organizers of the first Earth Day published a full-page ad in The New York Times. A few months ahead of thousands of demonstrations and teach-ins across the United States, they declared that Earth Day…
Posted: 21 April 2017 [07:59 PM] Column Shut it down and close it up. That seems to be the default reaction of the Secret Service to any problem or failing - including its own - in protecting Washington, D.C., buildings. The bunker mentality has turned the…
Posted: 20 April 2017 [08:51 PM] Columnist Gretchen Carlson filed suit against Roger Ailes last summer - and started an avalanche. Less than 10 months later, two of the most powerful men in media, Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly, have been knocked off lofty perches at…
Posted: 19 April 2017 [07:49 PM] Column The Trump administration is more than halfway through the 120-day review of financial regulation that the president ordered on Feb. 3. Time flies! And the hot new idea is, well, an old idea: the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law…
Posted: 19 April 2017 [07:45 PM] Columnist President Donald Trump and his advisers are rightly concerned about Syria and North Korea. These rogue states, guilty of human rights atrocities, pose the risk of wider violence and destabilization. Syria’s civil war has already created millions of refugees,…
Posted: 18 April 2017 [07:24 PM] Columnist One great misunderstanding about the financial crisis is the role that repealing the Glass-Steagall Act played. This is newly relevant, as there has been interest from White House economic adviser Gary Cohn in restoring the Depression-era legislation. President…
Posted: 17 April 2017 [09:47 PM] Wiring our children’s brains for success is a race against time! The early years of childhood are easy. They are eager to learn how to see, walk, talk, eat, play, run and all the other stuff they do. Our kids…
Posted: 16 April 2017 [09:20 PM] Okay, the holy days are over, and we are on the clock of the real world. I am upset, as many Americans are, that Syria was attacked at the president’s orders, and that we are looking at a faceoff with…
Posted: 15 April 2017 [08:17 PM] Columnist While the General Assembly has yet to come close to devising a budget in the face of state government’s insolvency, some legislators are advocating a major extension of the nanny state. They want to impose a special tax on…
Posted: 15 April 2017 [08:15 PM] Columnist Sometime this month I hope our rabid anti-Trump media find a little time to cover a subject that has been very important to me since I was eight - child sexual abuse. Child abuse of all kinds is an…
Posted: 15 April 2017 [08:13 PM] Columnist WASHINGTON - Despite recent revelations that Fox News and anchor Bill O’Reilly had settled five complaints of sexual harassment against him to the tune of millions - his ratings went up. A few days later, a United AirIines…
