Dick Morris just compared Sarah Palin to Ronald Reagan.

Tamath Rossi, the Deputy Mayor of Naugatuck who is challenging Democrat Sen. Joe Crisco for the 17th State Senate seat, was escorted off the premises of Crisco’s Senior Fair in Ansonia today by a police officer after Crisco protested her presence.

The incident began when Rossi arrived at the event and began distributing campaign-branded canvas bags to the event attendees.  Senator Crisco took offense to Rossi’s actions and demanded that she leave the area while beginning to collect the bags from seniors who had taken them.  When she refused, Crisco had a uniformed officer force her out of the public venue.

The act of ordering a peaceful member of the public off of public property and away from a taxpayer-funded event is nothing short of outrageous.  The people of the 17th Senate District, to say nothing of the rest of us, should be roused to anger at the thought of an elected official using the police to deter their political opponents. 

Beyond the egregiousness of turning the police on a political opponent, there is a broader point here: this is what happens to people who have wielded power without challenge, and Joe Crisco has been a prime example of that.  He submitted his paperwork to participate in the Citizens’ Election Program - that is, to receive $85,000 from the State to operate his campaign - and turned in a legal document that he knew to have a forged signature on it.  Then, when confronted with the crime, he sent the Senate Democrats Caucus lawyer to represent him in front of the State Elections Enforcement Commission.

The State Elections Enforcement folks eventually rejected his application with prejudice - basically telling Crisco that the Commission did not trust him with the taxpayers’ dollars, and would not do so for the rest of the campaign.  The taxpayers in the 17th State Senate District should take their cue from the Commission.

The taxpayer-funded Senior Fair is a thinly-veiled campaign event for Crisco, as well as the several other Democratic Senators who host similar events across the State.  Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro and Senator Crisco (talk about your good reasons for term limits) spent an afternoon with 1,000 likely voters glorifying each other and bragging about their accomplishments at taxpayer expense while the police kept opponents at bay.  How much further into the wrong can you get? 

Joe Crisco should do the State of Connecticut a couple of big favors.  First, he should reimburse the state for his taxpayer funded campaign event, since the taxpayers have already decided that he can’t be trusted with our money.  Then, he should publicly apologize to the Ansonia Police Department for getting them in the middle of things.  And lastly - and most importantly - he should publicly apologize to Tamath Rossi.  We deserve far better from a sitting State Senator.

Connecticut’s senior Senator Chris Dodd gets the (new) Hartford Courant treatment today with a very strange looking illustration on the front page and a big article about the failing and/or now-defunct financial institutions that invested heavily in Dodd’s campaigns.  Kevin Rennie did the honors to Dodd yesterday with a damning piece that included, among other barbs, this:

During the last two weeks of unsettling events, the same people who had a hand in creating the mess have expected the public to believe they can find the way out. Any candid analysis of the road to this parlous state implicates officials in Washington and their cozy relationships. Public records show, for example, that Dodd, chairman of the Senate banking committee, received more campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac employees than any other member of Congress. He is third on the list of Bank of America-related donations after Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

After only 109 days of obscuring the truth when it comes to his own mortgages, it is unsurprising that there is strong skepticism out there about how the Senator is handling the mortgage crisis for everyone else.  But the real problem here is that Senator Dodd’s rhetoric about fixing the mortgage crisis belies the underlying truth - he, along with his fellow Democrats, advocated and voted for the federal policies that created the problem in the first place.

The popular video that is making its way through the conservative blogsophere and around e-mail chains highlights the role of the “Community Reinvestment Act”.  Senator Dodd’s actions - along with those of Representative Barney Frank and others - played a key role in creating the housing crisis we current face.  Dodd’s official website also claims co-authorship credit for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which has become a bane of existence for many public companies.

The profile in sum for Senator Dodd is of a man whose senior Statesman image contrasts with the decidedly human failings he possesses: pursuit of wrongheaded policies and an overdeveloped coziness with the titans of industry he is supposed to oversee.  And the Dodd Watch clock ticks on.

Businessweek announced the top 10 towns to be seriously affected by the credit crises on Wall Street. Not surprisingly, Darien, CT tops the list, with Wethersfield at number nine, the latter due to its heavy reliance on real estate values to sustain its economy.

This past week, House and Senate Republicans held an informative hearing on the coming hit to the state’s finances. In what could be termed historic, the Office of Policy and Management and the Office of Fiscal Analysis actually agreed on immediate deficit number - $300 million. That is merely a prelude to bigger deficits to come - if we continue to reelect Democrats to the State Capitol. Democrats can barely wait untl January when they can unroll their “Tax Fairness Act” seeking to soak what is left of the taxpaying public and those who create wealth and prosperity.

Republicans, on the other hand, have properly drawn the line and said taxes are off the table - period. To paraphrase the late  Paul Newman, “what we have here is a failure to stop spending.”

The day before, seeking to grab the spotlight, the Jim and Don Show held a press conference where they should Outstanding Leadership in a Supporting Role, by calling for an audit of the Department of Social Services. No, we are not kidding. Turns out this audit will be done by the non-partial Office of State Comptroller Nancy Wyman for at least $100,000. But the real impartial Office of State Auditor just completed an audit of DSS six months ago. Copies are available for free.

“We cannot audit our way of this,” said Senate Republican Leader John McKinney. Amen.

The Governor is turning a few heads as word slips out that she, in fact, supports holding a constitutional convention (h/t CTLP).  It seems clear that the usual conglomeration of special interest groups that have spent a considerable amount of time and money to put the Legislature completely under their thumb don’t want to risk losing their power.  You can see the list of characters here - they could have saved time and space by simply writing, “the Connecticut Democratic Party”.

Of course, these are the same folks that have delivered us to nearly two decades of economic stagnation and smothering costs of living - a highlight of which now includes an impending diaspora of Connecticut doctors, as we learned this week.

But it was still a bit of a surprise to learn that the Governor wants to take off the cover and tinker with the Ship of State’s engine.

Yes, I actually do,” Rell said. “But I also think that we should have some type of controls on a Constitutional Convention so that we don’t have an excess, if you will, of a number of types of frivolous types of amendments being offered year after year.”

The Constitutional Convention presents Nutmeggers with a key opportunity to make changes to how government works in Connecticut.  As previously suggested here, legislative and executive branch reforms would improve accountability, save money, and make the governing process much more effective.  Direct initiative could be an instrument for finally breaking up the crushing power of those groups listed in opposition to the convention.  In a place that needs a heavy dose of change, it would be welcome.

Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama spent more than 90 minutes taking rhetorical punches at one another last night at the first Presidential debate of the 2008 campaign.  Perhaps the most striking difference between this debate and those from four years ago between President Bush and Sen. Kerry was how free flowing it was by comparison.  The Senators engaged each other - including eight moments wherein Obama conceded his agreement with Senator McCain and at least eight instances where McCain challenged Sen. Obama’s inexperience.

Amid news that the Iraqis have agreed to a key election law while Iranians do the “Death to Israel” routine, Obama seemed more interested in rehashing the decisions of 2003 instead of considering the problems of 2008.  His repeated return to the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power glazed over how completely wrong he was on the 2007 surge as well as his assessment of the current geopolitical landscape there.  McCain hammered Sen. Obama on this point in what was perhaps his strongest portion of the debate.

On the economic crisis, neither man seemed particularly interested in connecting the turmoil in the financial markets to global security conditions.  The powerful context of that argument should not be implicit: the greatest bulwark against international chaos over the past two decades has been a strong America.  This line of reasoning did reveal itself though in the differences of approach on Russia - and it outlined the broad decision that Americans must make on Election Day.

Senator Obama’s approach to Russia’s attack on Georgia was to call for restraint on both sides while McCain called out the Russians for their naked aggression - and this point is key.  For Sen. Obama, American power is most ably demonstrated when the polls begin to reveal a rebound in our international image.  Global approval will, in his mind, cause allies to be more cooperative and allow coalitions of nations to turn their ire on rogue states.

For McCain, power is best projected when we make clear our principles, define the lines that cannot be crossed, and then muster the resolve to remain committed to both.  Security is best attained when the United States and the rest of the global community stands together on principle and in opposition to the ills we see.

If debates are suppose to reveal differences of philosophy, then this debate was a success if for nothing else that single point.  Neither candidate scored a major telling point against the other nor did they commit an irreversible mistake.  There were no Ronald Reagan moments and there was no Kennedy/Nixon effect.  Instead, the two American candidates for President of the United States stood opposite one another and had an exchange of ideas that people could be proud of, for once.  That’s a win.