Thursday, March 9, 2023

WICC Radio Hit

My appearance yesterday on WICC-600AM with Joe Aguiar starts at 15:30. We shoot the breeze about some ill-conceived proposals I wrote about in my recent CTNewsJunkie op-eds, including rent control and mandatory voting, and what it's like to visit a cannabis store.


Tuesday, March 7, 2023

The Peter Reilly-Barbara Gibbons Murder Case: A Chronology

A grave injustice occurred in Litchfield County, Connecticut, beginning on September 28, 1973, when Peter Reilly, 18, was arrested and subsequently coerced by State Police into falsely confessing to -- and was later wrongfully convicted of -- the grisly murder of his mother, Barbara Gibbons. Below, and reproduced here as part of the historical record, is an update and timeline of events as they appeared in the Lakeville Journal on March 17, 2005:

Connecticut Commissioner of Public Safety Leonard Boyle has agreed to give Peter Reilly access to state police files that could help him discover who murdered his mother, Barbara Gibbons, after more than 30 years. For decades, Reilly himself was the prime suspect for the police – in part because, after two days of interrogation without sleep, food or an attorney, the 18-year-old youth was induced to sign a confession saying he killed and sexually assaulted his mother. Reilly was not convicted of the crime but his name was never completely cleared, either. With the help of journalist Donald Connery, a Kent resident, and The Lakeville Journal, Reilly has been able at last to get access to the police files on the case.

[Photo at left of Peter Reilly speaking in 2005 at Noble Horizons by yours truly]

Searching through those files is likely to be a time-consuming endeavor, though. In 1983, The Lakeville Journal ran a chronology of the events up to the point of the investigation. The introduction to that listing notes that, "No other criminal case in Connecticut history has been so thoroughly investigated by so many people for so long a time ... State's Attorney Dennis Santore speaks of the principal investigative file on the case as something occupying not filing cabinets but whole closets."

That 1983 special section also noted that, "In the process, however, there has been much public confusion about what happened, and who did what to whom, and why the case went on and on like an Icelandic saga ... So many were the events and so mountainous the data that even insiders and diligent observers often lost their way."

To help readers understand the scope of the investigation and trial, The Lakeville Journal offers this abbreviated version of that chronology:

Tuesday, February 28, 2023

Wednesday, February 15, 2023

CT Politics TV Hit With Joe Aguiar

My hour-long Feb. 8 appearance on CTPoliticsTV with Joe Aguiar. We talk state police, garbage, marijuana in Connecticut, wine in grocery stores and a bevy of national issues as well. Always fun.

Screenshot below. Link to video is here. You must be logged in to your LinkedIn account to view it.

Saturday, December 24, 2022

Thursday, August 11, 2022

Can Yang's Third Party Succeed? Depends On Where 'Forward' Is

My latest column for CTNewsJunkie.com:

As a lifelong unaffiliated voter unhappy with binary political choices, I've long wished for a viable third party to emerge. But at this early juncture, I find the new party started by Andrew Yang, Christine Todd Whitman and David Jolly profoundly unsatisfying.

To wit:

The "Forward Party is fighting for the American people with practical, common-sense solutions," its website announces. "While other political parties look to divide America into different camps, the Forward Party aims to bring them together."...

Presumably so as not to scare anyone away at this early juncture, Yang and company offer practically no specifics as to which policies they would pursue. In its platform, Forward offers ideas concerning elections themselves (e.g. ranked-choice voting, nonpartisan primaries, independent redistricting commissions) but next to nothing on the other policies its candidates would advocate for if elected to office.

Read more ...