The word is that a snow storm is coming. Stay inside. Enjoy the Hillary vs Obama fireworks.

Note:Posting will be very light next week.

Last year, Governor M. Jodi Rell vetoed the bill that would have given the children of illegal immigrants in-state tuition to attend UCONN and CSUS schools. She vetoed the bill, saying at the time, “I understand these students are not responsible for their undocumented status, having come to the United States with their parents,” Governor Rell said. “The fact remains, however, that these students and their parents are here illegally and neither sympathy nor good intentions can ameliorate that fact”.

Democrat State Rep. Felipe Reinoso of Bridgeport re-introduced the bill this year and are going to be pushing aggressively for the measure. We need Speaker Jim Amann, who controls what legislation comes to the floor of the House, to keep the bill from coming up for a vote. Sign the petition and write a letter to your legislators now - in-state tuition for illegal immigrants is just wrong.

Critics will come back with the tired old retort that they always use - “Racism!”  But the Party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan has always stood for civil rights and equality.  The Republican Party has also always stood for the rule of law in our society - and rewarding illegal activity cannot be the standard that we set in this State.

Sign the petition now by visiting CTGOP!

Planning for the Republican National Convention is already underway, as you might imagine.  The 2008 Convention in Minneapolis promises to be the most environmentally friendly, tech savvy Convention in history.  Convention planners announced yesterday the intersection between the two as they introduced their newly updated website.  You can check it out by visiting www.gopconvention.com.

The new site features a wealth of information for those that are interested - including bloggers.  There is an entire page dedicated to information about blogging the Convention, including how to get credentials.

 You would do yourself well to check it out.

It is difficult for many to grasp the impact William F. Buckley had on the modern conservative movement and the political discourse of this country for the last 50 years.

Bill Buckley was the intellectual driving force that propelled Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and then, Newt Gingrich. He gave many young conservatives and Republicans, like my father and his generation, the ability to stand up in a crowded room and say “yes, we are proud of what this country is and can be,” and then took that emotion into elective politics at every level.

When he began his magazine, The National Review, in the mid 1950’s, there was little conservative discourse in the halls of power or academia. Much of the Establishment viewed conservatives as lunatics, incapable of understanding the issues of the day or offering coherent solutions to them. Buckley changed all of that through persistence and a true belief in the power of freedom and individual initiative.

He was a writer of letters up to the time of his death, and his use of the English language was without peer. Buckley took on postwar liberalism and in a very short time, brought Conservative thought into practical application. Others can comment better on how it changed the course of human events.

Conservative principles brought this country back from the big government management model to the unlimited potential of the free market and roll back of the New Deal and Great Society. His uncompromising stands against totalitarian regimes and their appeasement led to an end to Communism. He defended Joe McCarthy when no one would, supported giving the Panama Canal to the Panamanians when the right thought him daft and threatened to take Gore Vidal to the parking lot at the 1968 convention.

Bill Buckley also became a writer of great spy novels and a chronicler of sailing, which he did with courage and grace. There was nothing he didn’t do well. His sense of humour and loyalty to friends of all political stripes endured throughout his life.

He was above all, a true American, comfortable in his own class and not afraid to challenge the high priests of established conventional thought. As his son, Christopher said, “he died with his boots on,” working on another column.

Like Reagan and Goldwater, there was no one like him but he maintain through it all a sense of humility and style that propels others to answer the call to action for years to come.

Noted online Republican activist Patrick Ruffini has a terrific post up today about the need for the Republican Party to change its fundraising model.  (h/t Jonathan Martin):

The Bush campaign did not invent the idea of bundling, but by marketing it better (Pioneers) and introducing public rewards and incentives, they tapped into a level of giving that had not been seen before in Presidential politics. This is what happens when the best minds in politics think outside the box and refuse to be bound by old conventional thinking.

. . .

The campaigns of John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani all went into 2008 with the same goal in mind: capture as much of the Bush Ranger & Pioneer establishment as possible and raise $100 million in 2007. The spirit of 1999 lived on. Unfortunately for the campaigns, it was more like the spirit of the 1999-era stock bubble. Virtually nobody questioned the assumption that the high dollar fundraising boom would go on forever, considering the storm clouds of a closely divided field with no heir apparent (people like to invest in a sure thing) and a demoralized base.

So says Capitol Watch.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell shared a table with President Bush at a White House dinner for the National Governor’s Association.The sports-minded commander-in-chief asked whose state had the best basketball team.

Rell, recently returned from the NGA meeting, said today she immediately raised her hand.

“He said, ‘I meant men,’ ” Rell said.

At least he knew the women’s team was ranked first.

– Mark Pazniokas

Conservative icon William F. Buckley has passed away.  He was 82.  The Hartford Courant story features a classic Buckley quote that summarizes his life and times:

“I am, I fully grant, a phenomenon, but not because of any speed in composition,” he wrote in The New York Times Book Review in 1986. “I asked myself the other day, `Who else, on so many issues, has been so right so much of the time?’ I couldn’t think of anyone.”