Loyal audience, I'll leave a few links, but I'm going away to San Fran for a week, so don't expect any new words of wisdom.

 

Although, some doubt the quality of such sentences spewing forth on this site. I got an email from "Gabe Kaplan" - email don't worry about it @ aol.com - last night who said:

 

"How does it feel to be more and more of an outsider. You soon won't have the backing for anybody in office to even blink when your around. And next time you have your camara, your lawyer might look the other way. But great picture, like your about to clap. Or maybe about to take handcuffs..."

 

Well Gabe, thanks for the words of advice. And to answer your question, sometimes it feels crappy to be an outsider, sometimes it feels great to look in and say, Thank God I am not part of that mess.

 

Yeah, life in the ivory tower of legal academia sure is cozy. I've finished my final exams. I'm heading away for a week. In the meantime, amuse yourselves thusly:

 

Chill Will has the BeatBikeBlog kickin' over here.

 

Trent Reznor is giving away Nine Inch Nails newest album for free. Free. I love NIN, Trent, and free music. Here.

 

The Hartford Advocate dumped Alistair (Hooray!), but word on the street is that they are not replacing him (Boo!). Cost cutting. Car columnist Jim Motavelli is apparently a new roving editor, hitting Advocate properties (NH, Ffield and HFD) on alternate days. He's in the Beat a few days a week only.

 

But, already, the Advocate is turning out better news than when Alistair was there. Or is just coincidence? But this piece on Rowland is good.

 

And I've never linked to the West Hartford Blog before, but they regularly feature quality material.

 

One more thing - everybody's got an analogue for this election, 1948, 1972, 1988. Lots of people seem to compare him to McGovern. But I say throw all comparisons out the window. We are experiencing a first in American history: we have an African-American on the verge of being leader of the free world. It is a new world.

Link...

 

Good governance is good balance. Politicians, bureaucrats, and citizens all make trade-offs, both under the table and overtly.

 

So on balance, Ed Vargas is a good candidate for First Senate District in .  He speaks of policy, particularly education, with rare fluency. Vargas’ flaws go down a lot smoother than do those of his opponent, his one-time ally, Sen. John Fonfara.

 

First time I met Vargas a decade ago, I was a Hartford newbie reporting for the Advocate. I encountered Vargas at the head of the teachers’ union picket line behind 10 Prospect Avenue, leading a protest about an aspect of society’s general disrespect for education.

 

When I met him Tuesday morning May 6 at First and Last Bakery and Café on Maple Avenue for an egg sandwich and a cup of coffee, he’s a new incarnation of himself.

 

His deep voice still exudes a gravely confidence. He's shaved his beard. And he's retired from teaching. He's cut back the time he puts into the union. He is focusing his energy on the campaign.

Link...

 

Gov. M. Jodi Rell can make all the promises she wants about reforming the Connecticut Department of Transportation.

 

She can call for a commission to study the traffic problems. She and her chief of staff Lisa Moody can offer Arizona transit exec Joseph F. Marie as ConnDOT commissioner.

 

Rell can promise to cleave the agency into two new agencies. She can hire 200 new DOT staffers. But nothing will change as long as the DOT lives on the Berlin Turnpike.

 

If Connecticut Department of Transportation employees could walk, bike, bus, train or drive to work, they would think differently about highways. The building you inhabit shapes your thoughts. Architecture is mental structure.

 

Italians lounge in stucco villas to bask in the Mediterranean sun. Eskimos huddle in igloos to hide from Artic winters. ConnDOT paves highways to drive to work across rolling Connecticut farmland.

 

Therefore, the best way to turn ConnDOT around is to sell or raze its headquarters on the Berlin Turnpike and move ConnDOT HQ to downtown Hartford and have its staffers move with it.

Link...

 

You can send a check to the Charter Oak chapter of the Red Cross, said the Governor to morning deejay today, urging citizens to contribute to the relief fund for the home fire that knocked 150 people out of 120 apartments in Norwich this weekend.

 

Can't somebody do something about this traffic, gasped the Congressman trapped on the Merritt Parkway to the morning jock about the price of gas and the situation on the highways.

 

Ain't nothing we can't handle, said the man pushing the broom to his friend as they stood under the grocery store awning, under the raining gray sky.

 

Of all the conversations I heard today, I like the man pushing the broom the best.

 

I was ready to pull out my hair by the time I was done listening to Chaz and AJ and Billy and Megan Dahl hang out with Governor M. Jodi Rell and Congressman Chris Murphy this morning on WPLR.

 

And that was after I missed the beginning of their conversation while channel surfing down I-91, on my way to a property law exam from Hartford to Hamden, by car, of course.

 

What little I heard, though, at first sounded like Governor Rell being extremely gracious and patient to the seventh graders at PLR's PeeWee's playhouse. As she seriously tried to tell the listening audience how to help those made homeless by the fire, Chaz and AJ made bad jokes.

Link...

 

First, read Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis and contemplate the Rule Against Perpetuities for at least three consecutive hours.

You've copied Holmes' dissent in INS v. AP into your book, like "A person is not excluded from using any combination of words merely because someone has used it before, even if it took labor and genius to make it."

 

And then you move onto Justice Brandeis, "At common law, as under the copryright acts, the element in intellectual productions which secures such protection is not the knowledge, truths, ideas or emotions which the composition expresses, but the form or sequence in which they are expressed - that is, some new collection of visible or audible points of lines, colors, sounds or words."

 

But wait, stop your eyes from falling out. He's talking about protecting creative self-expression. So, celebrate. Take a break. Turn up the speakers and hit it. Dance a goofy dance.

 

Then get back to business.

Editor's Note: This column ran in print in March, 2006, and I am just getting around to posting it now. Luckily (or not, depending on your point of view), the city moves slowly, and the foreclosing precedings on the house are still in process, and this opinion still holds water.

 

Foreclosure proceedings on the historic Wright and Barnes houses at 140 Retreat Avenue have begun, according to Hartford tax collector Don LeFevre.

This is the first step for A Methadone Proposal. The next steps go like this:

• The Hartford Dispensary buys, renovates and expands the Wright and Barnes Greek Revivals.
• The Dispensary moves into a medical region where it belongs and sells its land on Main and Buckingham to a developer.
• The developer builds a mixed-use four-story brownstone to match the Linden, with a grocery on the first floor and apartments and offices above.

Seems simple and beneficial to everyone, but getting parties to agree is the problem.

Link...

 

Love him, hate him, Ralph Nader is a presidential candidate running for an immediate end the war in Iraq. More than I can say for Barack or Hillary.

 

And if for nothing else than that, seat belts and air bags, the Harvard Law grad deserves a listen. So, mosey to the intersection of filth and slime, the Brass City:

 

Sunday, April 27, 6 pm, 193 Grand Street, Waterbury, across from City Hall.

 

Mr. Nader will speak on ending the war in Iraq and making the actions of government and corporations accountable to citizens.

For more info, call Pete at 203-435-1577

There is free parking on street and in public garage on Bank Street.

Why Waterbury? It looks like Ralph is trying to build an alliance with the Independent Party, which has a few city council-level elected officials in Waterbury, Winsted, East Hartford and maybe one or two more places I'm missing.

With the CT Greens solidly behind Cynthia McKinney, (although their ability to run a state-wide petition drive is questionable), Ralph, too, will need help petitioning onto the ballot.

I helped him in '04, I'm not sure what I am going to do this year. Unfortunately, I won't be able to go see him speak Sunday because I am studying for law school exams. But, hey, if you've never seen Ralph, go give him a chance. He's a fellow Nutmegger.

Link...

 

Life is change. We can embrace it. We can ignore it to our detriment. Or we can question it in the hopes that we can alter its inevitable march.

 

When pondering the changes proposed by the Quinnipiac University administration for the Chronicle, I want to see the proposals as fruitful and courageous, but I see the changes more as an abdication of duty.

 

The University has proffered a seemingly rational plan to cut the Chronicle free of its institutional support. This way, the Chronicle can finance itself and join as a full-fledged member the venerable Fourth Estate, with all the obligations attendant the First Amendment.

 

The exact funding mechanism is a bit of a mystery, but the University is giving itself more than a year to confront the budgetary concerns and logistics of the divorce.

 

QU won't send the Chronicle out into the big bad world by itself. If QU severs all fiduciary ties with the Chronicle, and then this 79-year-old student paper fails, the Bobcat will wear egg on its face.

Link...