Crime and punishment have a complicated relationship, as many states have come to learn. From 2010 to 2015, 31 states experienced tandem declines in crime rates and incarceration rates. In the 10 states with the largest reductions in imprisonment,…
Posted: 11 December 2018 [08:31 PM] Posted: 11 December 2018 [08:29 PM] Connecticut’s state college and university system claims to have discovered perpetual motion and is mobilizing it in defense of its budget. The claim was made last week in a report detailing the $11 billion contribution the system says it makes…
Posted: 11 December 2018 [08:28 PM] The Washington Post WASHINGTON -- Especially after last week’s court filings in the ongoing investigations of President Trump, his critics have good reason to focus on the threats he poses to democracy and the rule of law. But the president…
Posted: 11 December 2018 [08:26 PM] Britain took a step deeper into political turmoil Monday when Prime Minister Theresa May, facing certain defeat, postponed a parliamentary vote on the plan for Britain’s departure from the European Union that she had painstakingly negotiated with EU leaders. May…
Posted: 10 December 2018 [08:54 PM] Warm The Children, a charity in part sponsored by The Herald, has been collecting funds to provide warm clothing to youngsters in the New Britain area for 15 years. Donations start to trickle in as the weather turns colder and…
Posted: 09 December 2018 [07:14 PM] Editorial Did acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker examine the memo that special counsel Robert Mueller III released Tuesday? Has he seen the material that Mueller redacted from the document? Has he sought the advice of Justice Department ethics experts on…
Posted: 07 December 2018 [08:21 PM] The trade truce this past weekend between the United States and China gave U.S. business a dose of confidence - which President Donald Trump undid Tuesday with a series of Twitter messages suggesting he is still “a tariff man” whose…
Posted: 07 December 2018 [08:19 PM] Today, we tackle expanded gaming in Kentucky. We do so after Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear called for expanding gaming to help fund Kentucky’s pension crisis. Beshear said in a press release issued earlier that expanded gaming would “create a…
Posted: 07 December 2018 [08:19 PM] Lawmakers in the United Kingdom on Wednesday released a trove of Facebook documents that provide an intriguing glimpse inside the company - and obliterate any remaining notions of its chief executive officer as an innocent babe in the woods. As…
Posted: 07 December 2018 [08:18 PM] By• Robert Gebelhoff There’s something uncomfortably sterile about life-expectancy rates. When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that average American life expectancy shortened by a tenth of a year, as it did last year, it’s…
Posted: 06 December 2018 [08:50 PM] Some Google employees still seem to believe in the slogan their company dropped from the top of its code of conduct this year: Don’t be evil. The Intercept reported last week that leaders at Google tried to push Project Dragonfly,…
Posted: 06 December 2018 [08:47 PM] Almost any issue will do when Connecticut U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal craves attention, so the other day he joined some pediatricians at the state Capitol to warn the world about computer games that contain advertising aimed at young children. Blumenthal…
Posted: 06 December 2018 [08:45 PM] The big takeaway from special counsel Robert Mueller’s new sentencing memo for Michael Flynn is that it underscores how little we know about what Mueller has learned. It says President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser has provided “substantial assistance”…
Posted: 06 December 2018 [08:43 PM] In Cambridge, earlier this month, a man allegedly yelled anti-Semitic slurs at a 66-year-old woman and pushed her against a wall. In Reading, racist graffiti and swastikas have repeatedly appeared in bathroom stalls and benches at Reading Memorial High School.…
Posted: 05 December 2018 [09:06 PM] Central Connecticut State University has had its share of problems this year. Questionable and allegedly inappropriate or illegal behavior by three staff members put the university in the spotlight. The Herald and The Bristol Press reported university records showed that…
Posted: 05 December 2018 [09:05 PM] Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature sprinted Tuesday to pass a hastily drafted package of bills that would strip power from the governor and state attorney general. Michigan Republicans are trying a similar maneuver. The reason: Democrats won elections last month, and Republican…
Posted: 05 December 2018 [09:03 PM] Between now and spring 2019 you’re going to see plenty of polling of 2020 Democratic presidential contenders. You’ll hear from lots of supposedly plugged-in operatives. Iowans will be poked and prodded. (How meaningless a survey, especially in December 2018, could…
Posted: 05 December 2018 [09:02 PM] At a time when government ethics violations by the president, his aides or his Cabinet appointees seem to make the news every week, it’s easy to forget that ethics officials sometimes go too far in restricting government employees. That is…
Posted: 04 December 2018 [08:57 PM] Most small New England cities have downtowns that have seen better days. Gone are the bustling city centers with Main Streets featuring busy shops. Some keen business observers blame the decline of downtowns on the popularity of shopping malls. According…
Posted: 04 December 2018 [08:55 PM] The National Football League was scandalized four years ago when a security video went viral showing then-Baltimore Ravens player Ray Rice knocking his then- fiancee and now-wife unconscious and dragging her from a hotel elevator. Outside review concluded that…
Posted: 04 December 2018 [08:54 PM] In 1973, as President Richard Nixon escalated an unauthorized bombing campaign in Cambodia, Sen. William Fulbright, D-Ark., asked, “Does the President assert - as kings of old - that as Commander in Chief he can order American forces anywhere for…
Posted: 03 December 2018 [05:54 PM] Editorial The death of the 41st president will be much mourned this week, his passing serving as a memorial to a seemingly vanished era of temperance and civility in Washington. His “kinder and gentler” style of politics stands in unavoidable…
Posted: 02 December 2018 [07:32 PM] Editorial In its general outline, Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal looked misguided. As the costs become clearer, it’s starting to look indefensible. A new study by an academic think tank has tabulated the economic effects of the proposed deal,…
Posted: 02 December 2018 [07:30 PM] Editorial Last week brought tantalizing hints about special counsel Robert Mueller III’s Russia investigation, prompting rampant speculation about the inquiry’s direction. It remains unclear whether these revelations will add up to a case that President Donald Trump colluded with the…
Posted: 30 November 2018 [10:37 PM] Politically, our country is divided into four camps, not two. Only one of these, largely rooted in rural America and bolstered by ideological conservatives, supports President Trump. Two of them, urban progressives and suburban moderates, strongly oppose him. The last…
Posted: 30 November 2018 [10:37 PM] The claim by a Chinese scientist that he successfully edited the genetic makeup of a human embryo followed by live births is a moment for serious worry. Rapid advances in gene editing have been pointing toward this for a…
Posted: 30 November 2018 [10:35 PM] There are ethical standards at Fox News, we’re told. But just what they are, or how they’re enforced, is an enduring mystery. When Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro appeared on stage with President Donald Trump at a Missouri campaign rally,…
Posted: 29 November 2018 [08:36 PM] If you knew what you were doing, would you sign a contract allowing a company to sue you and take your money whenever it wanted, with no proof, warning or legal recourse? Bizarre as it may seem, aggressive lenders are…
Posted: 29 November 2018 [08:33 PM] A recent decision makes it clear who has the authority to remove a Confederate plaque and its misinformation from the Texas Capitol, and Gov. Greg Abbott needs to stop passing the buck and order it taken down. For a year…
Posted: 29 November 2018 [08:31 PM] Those in the reality-based discussion about immigration have pointed out for years that the “crisis” of illegal immigration isn’t a crisis at all and, in fact, that the outflow of people along the southern border has topped the inflow. Pew…
Posted: 29 November 2018 [08:30 PM] President Donald Trump can’t say he wasn’t warned about General Motors. In June, GM said that the various tariffs that Trump had either already imposed or was considering could “lead to less investment, fewer jobs, and lower wages for our…
Posted: 28 November 2018 [08:42 PM] Connecticut residents may be paying a little less at the gas pump, but some could see that savings wiped out with a hike in utility bills. Eversource announced it would increase electric rates again in 2019. The increase was approved…
Posted: 28 November 2018 [08:35 PM] On Tuesday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told the White House press corps that she’s was “unaware” of any conversations about a pardon for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, whose plea deal broke down Monday amid claims by…
Posted: 28 November 2018 [08:34 PM] Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., are making an effort to lay out their priorities ahead of the 116th Congress. Given that Sanders is a top contender for the presidential nomination in 2020, and Ocasio-Cortez is the…
Posted: 26 November 2018 [08:21 PM] A striking political alignment has occurred. Some of the Senate’s most conservative members and some of its most liberal support the First Step Act, a bill that would make the criminal-justice system a little bit more fair. Right-wing activists…
Posted: 25 November 2018 [08:07 PM] Editorial It has been two weeks since President Donald Trump booted Jeff Sessions from the top office in the Justice Department because the president disliked Sessions’ ethical commitments. Yet Trump has not announced a permanent replacement, and his pick to…
Posted: 23 November 2018 [08:06 PM] With the midterm elections behind him, President Donald Trump has dropped his dark warnings of an “invasion” of undocumented migrant caravans, even as thousands of those migrants arrive at the border. For the president, the migrants, many of them…
Posted: 22 November 2018 [04:11 PM] Attention Connecticut lawmakers: Massachusetts is enjoying the high life after the first two recreational pot shops on the East Coast opened there on Tuesday. The shops opened in Leicester and Northampton, just a one-hour car ride from New Britain and…
Posted: 22 November 2018 [04:03 PM] The Washington Post: President Trump on Tuesday confirmed what his administration has been signaling all along: It will stand behind Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman even if he ordered the brutal murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.…
Posted: 21 November 2018 [06:20 PM] Interpol, the international police clearinghouse, has tried in recent years to stop authoritarian regimes from misusing its global network to seize dissidents and critics. It launched promising reforms, but they need more time and commitment. That is why the organization…
Posted: 20 November 2018 [08:15 PM] Gov.-elect Ned Lamont is hoping to take a page from a neighboring state’s playbook by imposing tolls on trucks in Connecticut. Rhode Island built toll gantries on Interstate 95 on its border with Connecticut and began charging truckers $3.50 per…
Posted: 19 November 2018 [07:46 PM] A new report warns Congress that the U.S. could struggle to win, or might even lose, a war against China or Russia, because America’s military has “failed to keep pace with changing security challenges.” Why? One reason, according to the…
Posted: 18 November 2018 [06:30 PM] Editorial More than five years into the opioid epidemic, it’s frustrating to see people arguing about the concept of harm reduction. That’s the notion that people with substance use disorder will not be able to do the hard work of…
Posted: 18 November 2018 [06:28 PM] The Washington Post Editorial His election wasn’t close and his campaign didn’t get much attention in Washington, but Mitt Romney coming to the U.S. Senate is a big deal. John McCain’s death created a vacuum in the Republican Party. The…
Posted: 16 November 2018 [08:13 PM] This year may be remembered for last week’s anti-Trump voter revolt or the advance of the #MeToo movement. But in California, 2018 might be remembered for its monster wildfires. The Camp Fire north of Sacramento is the deadliest wildfire in…
Posted: 16 November 2018 [08:12 PM] Melania Trump really does care, after all. The president tweets his rogue declarations; his wife takes another route and issues official statements. On Monday, there was a huffing and puffing response from Melania Trump’s spokeswoman to Michelle Obama’s remark that…
Posted: 16 November 2018 [08:12 PM] REPUBLICAN REGISTRAR OF VOTERS AND DEMOCRATIC REGISTRAR OF VOTERS In Bristol, unofficial results were entered into the Secretary of the State’s Election Management System and posted on our website on election night and therefore candidates and the public all knew…
Posted: 16 November 2018 [08:12 PM] Democrats’ renewed control over the House of Representatives will offer an opportunity for bipartisan consensus on one of the country’s most pressing topics - and no, it is not infrastructure this time. The past year has seen an unprecedented…
Posted: 15 November 2018 [08:04 PM] School bus drivers must watch in shock, fear and anger as motorists ignore flashing red lights and extended stop sign arms to pass buses. It happens frequently, despite law enforcement agencies’ focused attempts to stop it. That puts children at…
Posted: 14 November 2018 [09:05 PM] The one year anniversary of New Britain’s fatal police involved shooting is coming up next month. The department completed its non-binding review in February and found “no egregious violations” of police policy occurred on the night five officers shot three…
