Editor's Choice

With less than two weeks to go before primary day, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Peter Schiff is in the midst of an on-line drive--a "money bomb," he calls it--to raise cash to air his first televised attack ad aimed at front-runner Linda McMahon. Right now, the ad is only available online. Earlier this week, Schiff said he's not inclined to put any more of his own money into the race.

"Money is coming in." Reincarnated GOP U.S. Senate candidate Rob Simmons tells Politico he's getting financial support, although he's not actively raising funds. He's also running a private poll and considering another "public service announcement" (NOT a campaign ad) letting folks know he's on the ballot. Some supporters are ambivalent, like former U.S, Rep. Nancy Johnson: "I'm not optimistic, I'm not pessimistic. I'm kind of neutral. It's hard to predict."

For nearly 30 years, residents of a neighborhood in Haddam have been waiting for state action to clean up contamination in the groundwater that supply the wells they rely on, Nancy Eve Cohen reports on WNPR. The Department of Environmental Protection has yet to identify the source of the pollution that affects about 19 homes.

How much of an issue is Richard Blumenthal's Vietnam problem, Brian Lockhart wonders in his Hearst blog. Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon seems to think it's a winner, judging from the fact that her first mailing against her Democratic rival focuses on his misstatements about his military record. But voters of both parties at a recent Blumenthal stop in Litchfield had other things on their mind, Lockhart says.

"Q: To be clear, are you formally running again? A: Formally, informally. I'm letting people know I'm on the ballot." A day after he declared, "I am running for the U.S. Senate," that's how Rob Simmons described his status to the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire Wednesday. "Q: But do you consider yourself an active candidate for the office? A: Yeah, but without a staff." "Q: Who's staffing your campaign? A: My wife's driving the car right now..."

After back-to-back blasts from the Journal Inquirer's editorial page editor Keith Burris and managing editor Chris Powell, GOP Senate candidate Linda McMahon gets space in the JI for a 680-word rebuttal. Like Burris and Powell, McMahon pulls no punches, accusing the two of  "a smug disdain for my non-government background and career."

Rob Simmons continued to baffle the pundits Tuesday with his semi-re-entry into the GOP Senate primary campaign. This time it was Roll Call's Steve Peoples trying to sort it out. Does he want to win? Peoples asked Tuesday. "Of course. Everybody wants to win," Simmons said. So is he actively campaigning? "I am engaging in a discussion of the issues." But by the time he got to a candidate forum Tuesday night, he seemed to have made up his mind: "I am running for the U.S. Senate."

Another story about Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's quick trigger-finger when it comes to lawsuits, this one from The Day's Ted Mann. Mann reports on a 2005 lawsuit against a Stamford doctor whom Blumenthal, now running for U.S. Senate, accused of improperly billing patients; his office withdrew the suit this year after adverse court rulings. Mann never says how he learned of the case, but one interesting name does come up: In the 14th paragraph, he notes that Ross Garber, a GOP candidate to replace Blumenthal, was the doctor's defense lawyer.

GE won a round in its fight for a piece of the F-35 military fighter engine contract, The Hill reports. GE and Pratt & Whitney, both Connecticut-based companies, have been battling over the fighter engine issue for years; Pratt has the contract, but GE says it should get $450 million to develop a secondary engine. The military opposes the GE engine plan, and President Obama has threatened to veto funding for it.

Calling out The Daily Caller: The conservative online website has been wallowing in e-mails showing liberal journalists' solicitude for Barack Obama in 2008, Ted Mann reports at The Day-proof that the left-wing media is bereft of ethics. But a frequent contributor to the site, Jerry Maldonado, has written two pieces out of the 2nd Congressional District, one praising Republican candidate Janet Peckinpaugh and one criticizing Democratic incumbent Joe Courtney-without revealing a pertinent fact: He's Peckinpaugh's communications director.

Who is Vince McMahon? That's what Hearst's Brian Lockhart set out to discover in a lengthy profile. He pulls together extensive public record material on McMahon, husband of GOP Senate candidate Linda McMahon and head of the WWE, and scores a hard-to-get interview. But in the end, McMahon defines himself, as he has as a performer and businessman for years. In his blog, Lockhart talks about the difficulty in pinning McMahon down.

Another legacy bill? First there was health care reform, where he stepped in for his friend Ted Kennedy. Then came financial regulation reform. Now, Chris Dodd "says he wants to wrap up his final months in Washington with a focus on the work he's found most rewarding: helping children and families," WNPR's Diane Orson reports. At a hearing in New Haven, Dodd said he wants to National Council on Children, a "permanent body...  whose only priority are children and their families."

Six years after he resigned in disgrace from the governor's office, John Rowland is offering advice-and a few bucks-to some of this year's political candidates, the Hartford Courant's Jon Lender reports. Rowland says he's been consulted by all three Republican gubernatorial campaigns, although he's not endorsing anyone publicly. He and his family also have contributed $500 to Waterbury Mayor Michael Jarjura, who backed Rowland's appointment to a $90,000 economic development job and who is running for the Democratic nomination for comptroller.  Is Rowland trying to re-emerge on the political scene? "I'm not emerging in any way, shape or form," he says.

The top of the ticket can't agree on debates, but the Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor are scheduled to face off this morning on WNPR. Nancy Wyman and Mary Glassman, who are running with Dan Malloy and Ned Lamont respectively, will talk with John Dankosky on his "Where We Live" program at 9 a.m. Meanwhile, Malloy is still castigating Lamont for refusing to debate before the Aug. 10 primary.

For the first time in 20 years, there will be a new occupant of the attorney general's office come January, and The Day's Ted Mann looks at what changes that might bring. Although the candidates-Republicans Martha Dean and Ross Garber and Democrat George Jepsen-have different philosophies about how the office should operate, all say they expect there will be less emphasis on litigation than there has been under the incumbent, Richard Blumenthal.

The nastiest primary race in the state right now could be one for an office few people know anything about: state comptroller. Waterbury Mayor Michael Jarjura has gone to court to challenge Democratic rival Kevin Lembo's qualifications to receive public campaign financing, Christine Stuart reports at CTNewJunkie; meanwhile, Jarjura is using his own public funding to send out a mailer accusing Lembo of a series of lies. Lembo tells the New Haven Register's Mary O'Leary that the mailing, as well as a related Jarjura website, are themselves "distortions and lies." And the Courant's Colin McEnroe calls the mailer "poli-porn."

No escape: The debate debate is dogging Ned Lamont, and the Democratic gubernatorial front-runner will face the issue again this morning on WNPR's "Where We Live," host John Dankosky promises. Lamont, who has said he won't debate rival Dan Malloy again before the Aug. 10 primary, most recently turned down an invitation for a faceoff Aug. 3 sponsored by WNPR, CPTV and WFSB, Channel 3. Dankosky will ask him about it in a live interview starting at 9 a.m.

They disagree on lots of things, but U.S. Senate candidate Dick Blumenthal and Journal Inquirer managing editor Chris Powell used the same term to describe a new attack ad against Blumenthal: "stalking." The ad posted on Republican Linda McMahon's YouTube site shows clandestine video of Blumenthal walking around Vancouver, where he recently attended a fund-raiser at a lawyers' convention. Blumenthal shrugged the incident off: "If I was stalked, so be it, but I can't complain about what seems to be a feature of modern political life," he told the New Haven Independent's Melinda Tuhus. Not Powell: "Is there anything beyond decency that McMahon won't do...?" he demanded.

Sen. Joe Lieberman put a positive spin on the decision not to take up a broad energy bill before the August Congressional break, saying it "keeps the process open for negotiating a broader utilities-only energy bill, hopefully for September." But other top Democrats tell Politico that pressures of the November election make it unlikely that a measure to cut utility emissions will come up at all this year. At The Hill, cartoonist Chris Weyant has his own take on the decision to put off climate-change legislation.

The suicide of Phoebe Prince after repeated episodes of bullying at her South Hadley, Mass. high school reverberated in Connecticut, just 20 miles down I-91, and across the country. It was a straightforward if harrowing storyline: Mean kids, a troubled girl, tragedy. But after covering story for months, Slate's Emily Bazelon says there's much more to it than initial accounts suggested-and serious questions to be asked about how such cases are handled.

More bad news for Dick Blumenthal. First there were the polls saying that his principal U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Linda McMahon, is narrowing the gap. Now comes word that he's dropped down in another poll: the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute's ranking of the nation's worst attorneys general. He's been at the top of the list since 2007, a position he relished. "I regard it as a huge distinction," he told The Mirror's Mark Pazniokas a month ago. But in a new report, CEI's Hans Bader puts Blumenthal at No. 3. As for the new leader, Jerry Brown of California: SFGate says he might just find the distinction helpful in his own run for governor.

As negotiations continue over the climate bill, Connecticut's Sen. Joe Lieberman, a principal backer of the measure, acknowledges that the getting it passed before the August break is iffy at best, The Hill reports. And whatever legislation does pass, Tim Dickinson says in Rolling Stone, may not be worth the effort: A comprehensive climate bill "is officially dead."

The case of Shirley Sherrod is a study in the perils of partisan pseudo-journalism, instant damage-control and the non-stop news cycle. It's now the subject of myriad blogs and commentaries; two of the best are by William Saletan at Slate and Stephen Engelberg at ProPublica.

A YouTube video titled "Reefer Rob" is stirring up the Republican fight for the 4th District Congressional nomination, Rob Varnon reports at the Greenwich Time. Candidate Rob Merkle complains that the spoof of his 2001 marijuana arrest in Florida is out of bounds, and accuses opponent Rick Torres of disseminating the video.  For his part Torres-who admits smoking marijuana in college-calls Merkle a "hypocrite" for opposing decriminalization of the drug.

GOP Senate candidate Linda McMahon frequently refers to her mid-1970s bankruptcy as proof that even though she and her husband are worth millions today, she can relate to the problems of the average voter. The Day's Dave Collins wondered just how much debt the McMahons wiped out through bankruptcy, and who didn't get paid. A clerk for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Hartford said the detailed records of that case are long gone, Collins said, and the McMahon campaign says they can't find any records either.

Three more candidates for statewide office joined the queue for public campaign funding right at the deadline Friday, CTNewJunkie's Christine Stuart reports. Among them were Democrats Jerry Garcia, Mary Glassman and Kevin Lembo,  candidates for secretary of the state, lieutenant governor and comptroller, respectively.

The two Democrats vying for their party's nomination for lieutenant governor are at odds over a campaign ad, Ted Mann reports at The Day. Nancy Wyman's campaign has filed a complaint with the State Elections Enforcement Commission over a Ned Lamont ad in which Mary Glassman, his running-mate, makes an appearance. Glassman's campaign should help pay for the spot, Wyman says. Lamont's campaign disputes that, arguing that Glassman's role was minor-she appears in the background, and her name isn't mentioned.

To serve you better-and, incidentally, to save $400,000-the Department of Motor Vehicles will stop issuing windshield registration stickers next month. "Technological changes now make stickers unnecessary because registration enforcement can be done through computer checks," the DMV said in a press release. "That's crazy," Fairfield police Lt. James Perez told the Connecticut Post's Noelle Frampton. "It's a visual aid that we depend on. You do run the risk of seeing a lot more cars unregistered on the road."

Among 40 states projecting budget deficits for the next fiscal year, Connecticut's is among the worst in terms of the size of the gap in relation to the overall budget, a new analysis says. The most recent deficit projection of $3.4 billion for the 2011-2012 fiscal year amounts to some 18 percent of the current year budget, one of the 10 highest ratios in the country, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (Table 2; the $3.8 billion Connecticut estimate used by the center has since been revised).

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Peter Schiff took his turn with WNPR's John Dankosky Monday (you can download the audio here), and The Day's Ted Mann took Schiff to task for some "revisionist history." In his blog, The Trough, Mann challenges Schiff's statement that exploitation of child labor was eliminated by capitalism, not government regulation. "That's a version of the history of child labor laws that's neither libertarian nor socialist. It's simply incorrect," Mann says.

We love green energy, but not wind turbines in Long Island Sound. That's where three top Democratic candidates for state and federal office have come down in recent days, Marcia Chambers reports at the Branford Eagle. Gubernatorial candidate Dan Malloy, U.S. Senate candidate Dick Blumenthal and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro all give different reasons, but all say putting turbines off Connecticut's shoreline is a bad idea.

Gingrich vs. Palin for the GOP presidential nomination? This week's 2012 speculation starts with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and ex-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Her PAC raised and spent more money in the second quarter of this year than it has in any three-month span since it was formed a year and a half ago-enough to launch a "sophisticated" and "top-tier" political operation, Kenneth Vogel says at Politico. And in first-caucus state Iowa, Gingrich tell AP's Mike Glover he'll make a decision on a 2012 run early next year. "I've never been this serious," Gingrich said.

"Donning bulletproof vests, dodging rockets and mortars, and avoiding IEDs became regular parts of the routine." That's how GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley's campaign website describes his time in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 as part of the Coalition Provisional Authority. But Hearst's Ken Dixon says that description is at odds with Foley's own statements, in which he "downplayed the danger, said he often traveled around Baghdad without an escort and 'never once ran into a situation that I considered hostile.'"

GOP Senate candidate Peter Schiff will talk with WNPR's John Dankosky today from 9 to 10 a.m. Dankosky says Schiff is "a guy who is very able and willing to explain his ideas about the financial collapse and government overreach, but less eager to talk about some of the other issues at hand for a U.S. Senator;" he'll try to change that.

Campaign attack ads are widely seen as evidence of the degradation of modern politics. But veteran political reporter Walter Shapiro notes that they've been around since the dawn of television, offering as evidence a 1956-vintage ad against then-vice presidential candidate Richard Nixon. What amazes him, Shapiro says in Politics Daily, is that candidates still spend more and more money chasing an increasingly fragmented television audience. Soon, he predicts, candidates will abandon TV for the Internet, and 30-second spots will become "as much of an endangered species as newspapers tossed onto the front porch by paperboys."

Twenty-somethings who share tons of personal information on-line will continue to do so as they grow older, a majority of tech experts agree. In a survey by the Pew Research Center and Elon University, 67 percent of the experts responding said the group identified by Pew as "Millennials"-18- to 28-year-olds-will maintain "their enthusiasm for widespread information sharing" even as they begin careers and families. But 29 percent disagree, including many who say they'll be too busy for all that social networking.

It's not a four-way, but there will be another debate. Today, John Dankosky of WNPR says the two Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor, Nancy S. Wyman and Mary Glassman, will debate on his show, Where We Live, at 9 a.m. on July 26. Glassman caused a minor stir the other day by suggesting a four-way, Lamont-Glassman vs. Malloy-Wyman. Alas, Ned Lamont nixed the coed, tag-team format -- or any other further debate with Dan Malloy. The Courant chides Lamont today.

We're number 9 on a scale of economically distressed states, according to statehealthfacts.org, a project of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The study is based on housing foreclosures and changes in unemployment and food stamp participation. In Connecticut, food stamp participation is up by one-third, when comparing April 2009 to April 2010.

Whose poverty stats do you believe? The Washington Independent says the government's been deliberately understating poverty for years, though the method was recently updated. Globally, 80 percent of the world's population lives on less than $10 a day.

But don't fret, ESPN is moving its magazine from NYC to Bristol, bringing 125 jobs. The Courant has this account of a story broken by Deadspin (with few details) a week ago, when ESPN starting telling its staff about the move. By next year, the sports network will have nearly 4,000 employees in Connecticut.

A federal judge in Massachusetts has struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, potentially giving married gay couples in Connecticut and elsewhere new benefits. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Malloy was quick with a statement applauding the ruling: “This is a great victory for equality. There is absolutely no reason that legally married gay couples and their families should be denied the same federal benefits as all other married couples. When individual states like Connecticut choose to recognize same sex marriages, the Federal Government simply should not be allowed to undermine that decision."

Paul  Bass of the New Haven Independent turned the tables on a campaign tracker, recording him as he was about to record Paul's interview with Dan Malloy in Bru, the cafe used by the Independent as its conference room. The Lamont campaign, which is located nearby, sent the tracker, who politely backed off when shooed away. The video is amusing, though Bass reacts more calmly than some other reporters we know have been in similar circumstances. He must drink decaf.

The Truth-O-Meter is ticking off some politicians. NPR's David Folkenflik takes a look at the spreading franchise of PolitiFact.com, the Pulitzer-winning effort to hold politicians to account.

Summer reading for a hot day? It's scary and infuriating, but you might go back and read an interview with Eric Klinenberg, who dissected the failure of officials in Chicago to care for the vulnerable during a killing heat wave in 1995. His book is called, "Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago." Meanwhile, in Toronto on Monday they were trying to explain to the visiting queen of England why the power was out, leaving 250,000 visitors and residents of Canada's largest city without air conditioning. Today, it's going to hit 40 degrees Celsius north of the border. That's about 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Closer to home, Rocky Neck State Park hit capacity by 11:45 a.m. Monday. It was one of five closed by the DEP for overcrowding. Most of Connecticut is under a heat advisory.

Just when he really needs one, Tom Foley finds a sympathetic voice in the media: Chris Powell of the Journal Inquirer of Manchester. Powell suggests there is much ado about nothing in Foley's long ago arrests. "Meanwhile he has been engaging the big issues of state government more than some of the candidates who have been in politics much longer than he has been but who have avoided nasty divorces," writes Powell. But another east-of-the-river commentator, former Republican state Sen. Kevin Rennie of South Windsor, tartly observes that Foley is not exactly being besieged with public expressions of support.

WTIC's choice of John Rowland to sub for Jim Vicevich is generating some buzz. Mark Davis dropped by to do a piece for WTNH. Colin McEnroe actually gives the former governor a good review, along with a swipe at Vicevich: "In one day, the show achieved a breeziness usually out of reach for its regular host." But Duby McDowell wonders why Rowland, who recently made something of a triumphant return to the GOP's annual fundraiser, didn't really chat much about politics. He's back on the air at 1080 on the AM dial today and tomorrow in the mid-morning slot. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Malloy is among the scheduled guests. On WNPR's Where We Live, John Dankosky has former Rowland opponent Bill Curry on after 9 this morning to chat about Rowland's radio turn.

PolitiFact gets some flak from Arianna Huffington for giving her a "Half True" rating on their Truth-o-Meter for her comments about Haliburton in a sharp exchange with Liz Cheney on ABC's This Week. "Our ratings of Half True seldom please readers," PolitiFact says. "That was the case with our rating of Half True for Arianna Huffington's statement, that Halliburton defrauded American taxpayers of 'hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraq.' " Other topics put on the meter include immigration and Elena Kagan.

Heard the news today, oh boy. It's true, Ringo Starr turns 70 tomorrow on the seventh day of the seventh month. He wants everybody to wish everyone else peace and love at noon. No word yet on plans by Oz Griebel, Michael Fedele and Tom Foley. Or Ned Lamont and Dan Malloy. Let's see their trackers get that footage.

Senate pals Joe Lieberman and John McCain, both spending the July 4th holiday in Afghanistan, took time to skewer GOP National Chairman  Michael Steele for his recent comments at a Republican fundraiser in Noank. (A Democratic "tracker" got video of Steele calling the conflict "a war of Obama's choosing" and questioning the country's ability to win it.) On ABC's "This Week," Republican McCain, who is struggling in his bid for re-election from Arizona, called Steele's remarks "wildly inaccurate" and questioned his continued ability to lead the party.  Meanwhile, Lieberman, appearing on Fox News Sunday, said Steele's remarks had a "boomerang effect," drawing "heartening" criticism from across the GOP spectrum, The Hill reports.

Continued coverage of his 1994 divorce from his first wife, Lisa, and subsequent contentions led GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley to issue an extensive statement Thursday, the Hartford Courant's Jon Lender reports. In it, he denies any abusive behavior toward Lisa. "I call on the media and my opponents to leave this private matter alone," Foley concluded. Given the eagerness with which Republican rivals Michael Fedele and Oz Griebel have seized on Foley's past marital acrimony, that seems unlikely.

Knocking Democrat Susan Bysiewicz out of the race for attorney general cost the state Republican Party $140,000, Christine Stuart reports at CTNewsJunkie. The GOP went to the state Supreme Court to argue, successfully, that Bysiewicz doesn't meet the statutory requirements for the job. "Well worth the investment," party chairman Chris Healy said.

The same old names top Siena College Research Institute's latest ranking of U.S. presidents, but there's a fresh face at the bottom. Based on a survey of 238 presidential scholars, the 2010 ranking once again puts Franklin Delano Roosevelt in first place, followed by Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. New this year: George W. Bush joins perennial losers Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding and Franklin Pierce in the bottom five.

Emma Lazarus takes a beating from two estimable but not always lyrical political writers, Ted Mann of The Day and Hearst's Ken Dixon. Both bastardize "The New Colossus," Lazarus's Statue of Liberty poem with the famous lines beginning, "Give me your tired, your poor..." to poke fun at Gov. M. Jodi Rell's invitation to hedge fund firms to move to Connecticut. It seems New York wants to increase taxes on those huddled masses of arbitrageurs.

For at least a month now, GOP gubernatorial candidate Michael Fedele's campaign has insisted he was just days away from qualifying for public financing of his campaign for governor. It's finally going to happen, Ken Dixon says: Fedele will announce today that he's raised the $250,000 in small contributions he needs to get at least $1.25 million in public money-and probably more-for the Republican primary.

More than 20 years ago, the Exxon Valdez oil spill offered a perfect opportunity for scientists to determine what, if any, long-term health dangers faced the thousands of workers needed to clean up the mess, Kyle Hopkins of McClatchy Newspapers reports. And that information would have been invaluable in reducing health risks to workers cleaning up today in the Gulf of Mexico. But the study urged by union and health care advocates in Alaska never happened, so efforts to protect Gulf workers in many ways are starting from scratch.

Another candidate has qualified for public funds, Paul Bass reports in the New Haven Independent. State Rep. Denise Merrill, the endorsed Democratic challenger for secretary of the state, says she's raised the $75,000 in donations of $100 or less to qualify for up to $1.25 million in public funding for the primary and general election campaigns. Her challenger, Jerry Garcia of New Haven, says he's raised about half the money he needs to qualify.

Charges that a national survey firm may have fabricated its results shook up the wonky world of political polling Tuesday, and caused a few ripples in Southeast Connecticut as well. The liberal blog DailyKos posted a report questioning numbers produced by the site's pollster, Research 2000. The same firm did polling in the 2004 Congressional race between then-Rep. Rob Simmons and Democratic challenger Jim Sullivan, and declared the race a "virtual dead heat" just before Election Day, The Day's Ted Mann reports; nine days later, Simmons won by 8 percentage points.

The Dodd-Frank financial regulation reform bill got a last-minute makeover Tuesday in an effort to win enough Republican support to get it through the Senate. Moderate Republicans who had previously supported the bill objected to a provision charging large banks $19 billion to cover the cost of oversight, which was added to the bill in a House-Senate conference committee last week. Reopening the conference "was slightly embarrassing for Democrats and represented a price they paid for rushing to complete the legislation," David M. Herszenhorn said in the New York Times.

States should balance their own budgets by cutting services or raising taxes rather than rely on more federal aid, a large majority of Americans say. But few have much enthusiasm for paying higher taxes to their own states, or for cuts in items that consume a large chunk of state budgets, including education and health care, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.

Connecticut's ban on assault-style weapons could be vulnerable to legal attack following Monday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling limiting states' ability to control gun ownership, Ken Dixon says in The Connecticut Post. Or maybe not. Sen. Andrew J. McDonald, D-Stamford, co-chairman of the legislative Judiciary Committee said the legislature should review the law in light of the ruling, which he described as "a broad attack on states' rights." But the other Judiciary co-chairman, Rep. Michael P. Lawlor, D-East Haven, said the current state law probably will pass muster under the new ruling.

The Supreme Court ruling comes at a time when Americans are evenly divided on which is more important: controlling gun ownership or protecting the right to own guns, according to a recent Pew Survey. After nearly 15 years during which support for gun control far outweighed support for gun ownership, the gap began to close in 2008.  (Telephone  survey of 1,500 adults; MOE +/- 3 percentage points.)

No sooner did Dan Malloy get his first television ad on the air than Democratic gubernatorial rival Ned Lamont's campaign demanded he take it down, Christine Stuart reports at CTNewsJunkie. Citing an article in the Hartford Courant, Lamont said Malloy is exaggerating when he claims to have created 5,000 new jobs as Stamford's mayor. The 5,000 jobs is "an indisputable fact," Malloy retorted.

The two top U.S. Senate candidates are using the state's Freedom of Information Act to keep tabs on each other, Paul Hughes reports in the Republican-American. Republican Linda McMahon routinely uses FOIA to get the official schedule of the Democratic nominee, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, Hughes says. Meanwhile, Blumenthal's campaign has filed FOIA requests with his office seeking copies of any request for information from McMahon, reporters or anyone else. Betraying his familiarity with MAD Magazine, Hughes calls it "Spy vs. Spy: On the Campaign Trail."

Americans are increasingly likely to describe their political leanings as conservative, Gallup reports.  The proportion of people describing their views as conservative rose from 37 percent in 2008 to 42 percent in the first half of this year. Those describing themselves as moderate or liberal have decline slightly in the same period, to 35 percent and 20 percent respectively. The increase in self-described conservatives is due largely to a shift among independents, from 30 percent to 36 percent from 2008 to 2010. (Eight telephone survey totaling 8,027 adults; MOE +/- 1 percentage point.)

The most educated women still are among the most likely never to have had a child, Pew Research says in a new report. But while childlessness has risen for all racial and ethnic groups and most education levels since the 1970s, it has fallen over the past decade for women with advanced degrees. In 2008, according to the study based on Census data, 24% of women ages 40-44 with a master's, doctoral or professional degree had not had children, a decline from 31% in 1994.

Connecticut is a net exporter of governors: While 21 of the state's post-colonial governors were born elsewhere, 46 Connecticut natives have moved on to become chief elected officials of other states, according to Smart Politics, the blog of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. That's just one fewer than the number of Nutmeggers who have risen to the top at home. What are the odds of evening the score? Of the five major-party gubernatorial candidates, only Democrat Dan Malloy was born in Connecticut.

(Smart Politics says 45 Connecticut natives have become its governor, based on a National Governors Association roster that omits Connecticut-born Jonathan Trumbull and Matthew Griswold; including them, it's 47.)

A stealth slam by Simmons? Rob Simmons says he's suspended his bid for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination, but endorsed candidate Linda Simmons has seen skullduggery in the ring before. "It's hard to imagine why he's left his name on the ballot," the former wrestling executive said in an interview with The Hotline. "I think he's hoping that I will fail, and that there are some -- that there would be some opportunity for him to reenergize his campaign and get back in."

Undersea explorer Robert Ballard says the Gulf oil spill shouldn't halt the search for more deep-water deposits, WNPR's Harriet Jones reports. "It could be like a Three Mile Island that turned us away from nuclear power - we lost a generation. Are we going to turn our backs on deep sea oil exploration, which I think would be a mistake." But he said the spill should also prompt more vigorous efforts to find alternative energy sources. "It shows the need for a Manhattan Project in getting off of fossil fuels."

The state Department of Children and Families has yet to comply with a 2007 court settlement in which it agreed to spend $5 million to help mentally-ill youth transition from institutions into the community, a new lawsuit says.  The suit claims DCF has spent only about $1.74 million of the $5 million, Caitlin Emma reports at CTNewsJunkie; a department spokesman said the correct figure is more than $3 million.

Another challenge to a petition candidacy, this time in the 5th Congressional District. The Courant's Daniela Altimari reports that a lawyer acting on behalf of endorsed Republican candidate Sam Caligiuri has filed a complaint with the state Elections Enforcement Commission regarding petitions that won challenger Mark Greenberg  a place on the Aug. 10 primary ballot. The EEC already is reviewing a challenge to the petitions that got Peter Schiff on the Republican ballot to challenge endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon.

Americans remain optimistic about the long-term future for themselves and for the country-but to a markedly lesser extent than 11 year ago, a new Pew survey says. Compared with 1999, fewer Americans say they are optimistic about the future for themselves and their families (81 percent in 1999 vs. 64 percent in 2010), the country (70 percent vs. 61 percent) and the economy (64 percent vs. 56 percent). More think health care will become more affordable (36 percent in 1999 vs. 50 percent in 2010), but fewer think public education will improve (66 percent vs. 49 percent). (2010 results based on telephone survey of 1,546 adults; MOE +/- 3 percentage points).

The McMahon-Simmons Senate contest may be over-or at least in abeyance-but it's still managing to stir up hard feelings among Republicans, Ted Mann of The Day reports in his blog, The Trough.

Gay employees now have the same right under federal law to take family leave to care for a same-sex partner's sick or newborn child as their heterosexual colleagues have had since 1993. This week's announcement of the policy change prompted journalists to look at other ways in which the Obama administration has quietly expanded the rights of gay and lesbian Americans while avoiding Congressional confrontations, including Robert Pear in The New York Times and Michael Shear in The Washington Post.

Nine in 10 Americans--including large majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents--think U.S. energy policy needs to be drastically overhauled, a new CBS/ New York Times poll shows. They are more divided on the idea of increase gasoline taxes to pay for development of alternative energy, with 45 percent in favor and 51 percent opposed. (Telephone survey of 1,259 adults, MOE +/- 3 percentage points.

Democratic gubernatorial candidates Dan Malloy and Ned Lamont will meet tonight in their first televised debate since the party's state convention one month ago. The face-off is scheduled for 7 p.m. at NBC 30. Before the debate, The Connecticut Mirror's Mark Pazniokas is scheduled to discuss the race on the 5:30 news program.

News coverage of the health care reform bill enacted earlier this year focused far more on tactics and strategies of the measure's supporters and opponents than on the reform proposals themselves or on the underlying issue of how the current health care system performs, a new report says. A study of more than 5,500 health care stories in the mainstream media from June 2009 through March 2010 by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 41 percent of the coverage dealt with tactics and strategy, 23 percent with the actually proposals and only 9 percent with the system itself.

More than two-thirds of Americans say the national economy is in "bad, very bad or terrible shape," a new American Research Group survey says, but almost as many describe their own household finances in more positive terms. Thirty-eight percent say they expect the national economy will be better in a year, but only a quarter say the same of their own finances. (Telephone survey of 1,100 adults; MOE +/- 2.6 percentage points.)

His record as an urban mayor is a big part of Dan Malloy's pitch to potential voters in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, but rival Ned Lamont isn't ceding the city vote.  Malloy touts Stamford's economic growth during his 14 years as mayor, and certainly other city leaders "would be glad to see a Gov. Malloy sprinkle some of that fairy dust on their communities," Paul Choiniere notes in The Day. But what worked in Stamford, the first city along the Connecticut Turnpike from New York, won't necessarily work elsewhere, Lamont says, and he has leaders from Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport backing him.

State legislators will be back in Hartford today to consider overriding seven of Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell's nine vetoes, Christine Stuart reports at CTNewsJunkie. Most of the seven, ranging from a measure to expand off-track betting to a bill that would bar the state from asking job applicants about their criminal backgrounds in most cases until a final phase of the hiring process were passed by veto proof majorities.

Adults are no smarter than teens when it comes to texting while driving, the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project reports. Although fewer adults 18 and over use text messaging, a higher proportion of those who do-nearly half-said they had sent or read texts while driving.  Just over a third of texting teens age 16 and 17 said they had done the same. (Telephone survey of 2,252 adults age 18 and over; MOE for entire sample +/- 2.4 percentage points. Telephone survey of 800 teens ages 12-17; MOE for entire sample +/- 3.8 percentage points.)

As campaign season heats up, the Washington Post profiles controversial pollster Scott Rasmussen, whose mixed-message surveys of Connecticut's U.S. Senate race on May 19 and June 3 have already stirred the political waters here. Fun fact: Rasmussen was a co-founder of Bristol-based ESPN.

The petition campaign of would-be Republican U.S. Senate candidate Peter Schiff is still up in the air: The secretary of the state's office says it needs more time to determine if he has the 8,268 valid signatures he needs to challenge GOP nominee Linda McMahon in an Aug. 10 primary, Hearst's Neil Vigdor reports. Meanwhile, the Hartford Courant's Daniela Altimari says, it appears that three Republicans have qualified for Congressional primaries.

Barack Obama is viewed more favorably in many countries in Western Europe and Asia than he is at home, a new Pew Research Center survey says. Ninety percent of Germans say the have some or a lot of confidence in Obama, as do a large proportion of those in France (87 percent), Britain (84 percent), Japan (76 percent) South Korea (75 percent) and India (73 percent). In the U.S., 65 percent express some level of confidence in the president.  The results are from Pew surveys in 22 countries aimed at assessing global attitudes toward a variety of issues.

Petition problems: Easton First Selectman Tom Herrmann has conceded defeat in his effort to petition his way onto the Republican primary ballot to challenge 4th District Congressman Jim Himes, Robert Koch reports in The Hour. Some of his petition signatures have been alleged to be forgeries. And Peter Schiff, trying to force a GOP primary for the U.S. Senate nomination against Linda McMahon, may fall short of having the 8,268 valid signatures he needs, says blogger Kevin Rennie, who has been tracking the petition tallies. Even if it turns out he made it, "his campaign has made this a lot closer than it needed to be," Rennie says.

Affluent households are leaving Hartford and Middlesex counties in greater numbers than they're arriving, a new Forbes analysis of IRS data says. To determine where the wealthy were moving to and from, the magazine sorted data from 2008 tax returns, focusing on counties where the per capita income of arriving or departing taxpayers was $35,000 or more, or $140,000-plus for a family of four. The two Connecticut counties were among 12 net losers by Forbes' criteria; the good news is, top destinations for departing households were elsewhere in the state. The story includes this interactive map of all counties in the U.S.

"The recession-era boom in the size of freshman classes at four-year colleges, community colleges and trade schools has been driven largely by a sharp increase in minority student enrollment," a new Pew Research Center report says. Pew's analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Education says overall enrollment at the nation's 6,100 post-secondary institutions rose by 6 percent overall the fall of 2007 to the fall of 2008, led by a 15 percent increase in the number of Hispanic students. Enrollment of black students increased 8 percent, the study says.

Connecticut's three metropolitan areas rank in the middle to lower ranges among 100 largest US metros in recovering from the recession, a new Brookings Institute report says. Looking at factors relating to housing, employment and economic performance, Brookings puts the Hartford region in the middle 20 metropolitan areas and the New Haven and Bridgeport areas in the second-weakest 20.

Officials from Connecticut and Puerto Rico reached out to the state's 82,000 island-born Puerto Ricans in an effort to bring some clarity to the process of applying for new birth certificates, Christine Stuart reports at CTNewsJunkie. "There's a lot of misinformation out there," Rep. Minnie Gonzalez, D-Hartford, said Tuesday at a Capitol press conference. The new birth certificates won't be available until July 1. They can be obtained on line or by mail.

The National Rifle Association could get a pass on the new campaign finance bill aimed at rolling back the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling. Politico's John Bresnahan says the NRA's objections to the bill were keeping some "moderate, pro-gun Democrats" from supporting it. The bill is an effort to impose some regulations on political spending by corporations, unions and other interest groups after the Supreme Court ruled that banning such expenditures was unconstitutional. The language exempting the NRA also would apply to large non-profits including AARP and the Human Society, supporters said.

Not all the debates over debates are taking place in the Democratic gubernatorial race. The Day's Ted Mann reports that 2nd District Republican Congressional challenger Janet Peckinpaugh has backed out of a debate scheduled for Wednesday in Norwich. Her campaign says that's because the debate organizers, a group called Free Norwich, are biased against her and "cannot be fair and balanced"

Influential members of Congress have millions of dollars invested in industries that their committees oversee, according to The Washington Post. Conflict of interest rules regarding personal holdings are much looser for lawmakers than for federal judges and executive branch employees, Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Dan Keating report. Among those included in the Post's tally are Connecticut Sens. Chris Dodd, chairman of a subcommittee of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, who reports up to $107,000 invested in the health industry; and Joe Lieberman, a member of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, with up to $50,000 in communications/electronics investments.

A growing number of Americans see the Democratic Party as being too liberal, while those who see Republicans as too conservative has stayed about the same, a new Gallup poll says. Forty-nine percent regard the Democrats as too liberal; that's 10 points higher than in 2008 and close to the 50 percent who thought the party was too liberal in 1994, when Republicans took control of the House of Representatives. Forty percent say the Republicans are too conservative, compared with 43 percent 2008. (Telephone survey of 1,049 adults; MOE +/- 4 percentage points.)

Opposition to Connecticut's public campaign finance law got a boost from last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling against a similar law in Arizona, Christine Stuart reports at CT News Junkie. The Arizona law, like Connecticut's, provides for supplemental payments to candidates facing a high-spending self-funder; a lower court ruled that the supplemental payments effectively limit a self-funder's free speech rights. "There's no question" that the Arizona case is "troubling," said Beth Rotman, executive director of the Citizens' Election Program.

Where are all the reporters? Walter Shapiro wonders at Politics Daily. Fresh off high-profile campaigns in South Carolina and Kentucky, the veteran reporter says the scarcity of local reporters at campaign events is evidence of "the slow death of traditional statewide campaign journalism." Not all the old-time local political reporters were stars, Shapiro acknowledges, and their coverage "could be lazy and stenographic." But "even pedestrian newspaper campaign coverage is preferable to the rumor-mongering of blogs and the unchecked claims of TV spots."

Some analysts thought passage of Arizona's tough immigration law could push more Hispanic voters into the Democratic camp, but that hasn't happened so far, the Gallup Poll reports. Hispanic voters' preference for the Democratic Congressional candidate in their district over the Republican candidate was 61 percent to 32 percent after passage of the law, virtually unchanged from the margin before the law. (Telephone survey of 548 Hispanic registered voters; MOE +/- 5 percentage points.)

Ending the way it began: Just minutes into final negotiations over the financial regulatory reform bill Thursday, Sens. Chris Dodd and Richard Shelby were engaged in partisan sniping, Silla Brush reports at The Hill. Republicans “can be as relevant as they choose,” said Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Shelby, an Alabama Republican, said the talks were off to a “rocky start” and were on the road to “political theater.” Democrats hope to wrap up negotiations on the 1,974-page bill and send it President Obama’s desk by the July 4 recess.

As if student loans weren't burden enough, many colleges and universities have entered into lucrative contracts with credit card companies giving them names and addresses of students and alumni and access to school events, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund has found. Ben Protess and Jeannette Neumann report that profits to the schools and their alumni associations increase the more the credit cards are used. In a related story, Rob Varnon of the Connecticut Post says Yale University and UConn's Alumni Association both have credit card deals; both say they market to alumni, not students.

The chat over the backyard fence is still the primary means of communication between neighbors, Pew Research reports, but growing numbers of Americans rely on electronic communications to stay current on community events and activities. A poll conducted late last year found that 22 percent of adults had signed up during the preceding 12 months to receive email or text messages about local issues. (Telephone survey of 2,258 adults; MOE +/- 2.4 percentage points).

In a switch on the usual election-year dance, a gubernatorial candidate courting urban support acknowledged that there may not be more money for municipal aid-and city officials said that's OK, we understand, Paul Bass reports at the New Haven Independent. The gubernatorial candidate was Democratic primary challenger Ned Lamont, and the city officials were New Haven Mayor John DeStefano and Hartford City Council President Pedro Segarra. Later Tuesday, endorsed Democrat Dan Malloy issued a statement citing his own experience as mayor of Stamford for 14 years.

As oil gushes into the Gulf of Mexico, what America really needs is for President Obama to get mad. Or sad. Or something. That seems to be the consensus among many television news anchors and commentators, anyway: Obama isn't showing enough emotion. Ben Craw and Jason Linkins have compiled a video of on-air pleas for more presidential pathos, along with some evidence that viewers don't necessarily agree.

On a visit to Latin America last week, Sen. Chris Dodd weighed in on the side of Peru in the fight over Incan artifacts taken from Machu Picchu and now in a collection at Yale University, WNPR's Diane Orson reports. In an interview published on the Spanish-language website Peru.com, Dodd told the Peruvian newspaper Correo that he will work during the time remaining in his term to reach an agreement for return of the antiquities, which were taken from the site nearly a century ago. Peru filed suit to reclaim the artifacts three years ago; Yale says the materials were removed legally with the permission of the then-government of Peru.

On a visit to Latin America last week, Sen. Chris Dodd weighed in on the side of Peru in the fight over Incan artifacts taken from Machu Picchu and now in a collection at Yale University, WNPR's Diane Orson reports. In an interview published on the Spanish-language website Peru.com, Dodd told the Peruvian newspaper Correo that he will work during the time remaining in his term to reach an agreement for return of the antiquities, which were taken from the site nearly a century ago. Peru filed suit to reclaim the artifacts three years ago; Yale says the materials were removed legally with the permission of the then-government of Peru.

Senior BP managers were warned by their own in-house investigators that the company "repeatedly disregarded safety and environmental rules and risked a serious accident if it did not change its ways," Pro Publica says. A new report by Abrahm Lustgarten and Ryan Knutson says the company looked into a series of problems at BP facilities in Alaska and found that managers flouted safety to reduce production costs. Those findings and other documents obtained by the non-profit investigative web site "portray a company that systemically ignored its own safety policies" in operations all over North America.

Hispanics' approval of President Obama's job performance has slipped from 69 percent in January to 57 percent last month, the Gallup Poll reports. Meanwhile, the assessment of his performance by black and white Americans was largely unchanged. Gallup links the decline in Obama's standing among Hispanics to his failure to press ahead with immigration reform, especially in the face of Arizona's controversial new immigration law. (Monthly telephone surveys including about 950 Hispanic respondents each month; MOE +/- 4 percentage points for subgroup.)

Prognosis for the Gulf of Mexico: "Ecosystems can survive and eventually recover from very large oil spills," Joel Achenbach and David Brown report in The Washington Post, but the effects linger for years. Achenbach and Brown survey old oil spills from the Gulf to Cape Cod, and find that decades later researchers still see marked changes in sea life and the marine environment.

Terrorism, the federal debt, health care costs and unemployment are the most worrisome issues to Americans, a new Gallup Poll says, with at least 79 percent saying they are "extremely" or "very" serious threats to the county's future well-being. Four in 10 say terrorism and the debt are "extremely serious," with health care costs (37 percent) and unemployment (33 percent) right behind. Republicans tend to worry most about terrorism (53 percent "extremely serious") and the debt (50 percent); Democrats are most concerned about terrorism (34 percent), health care costs (37 percent) and the environment/global warming (34 percent). (Telephone survey of 1,029 adults; MOE +/- 4 percentage points.)

Nearly one in seven new marriages in 2008 were between spouses of difference racial or ethnic backgrounds, a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census data finds. That's about six times the intermarriage rate in 1960 and more than double the rate in 1980, Pew says. More than 40 percent of the interracial or interethnic marriages in 2008 were between white and Hispanic spouses.

Connecticut's U.S. Senate race is the most expensive in the country so far, according a review of campaign finance reports by the Center for Responsive Politics, largely because of former wrestling executive Linda McMahon's spending of $14.6 million of her own money to win the Republican nomination. Fellow Republicans Rob Simmons, who has dropped out of the race, and Peter Schiff, who is trying to petition his way onto a primary ballot, have spent $1.7 million and $2 million respectively. Meanwhile, Democrat Richard Blumenthal, the lone Democrat, has spent just over $500,000. Most of the other big-money races in the country "feature embattled incumbents raising money furiously in an attempt to overcome the country's anti-incumbent mood," Emily Schultheis reports at Politico.

Older Americans are the most anti-incumbent of all, a new Pew Research report says. People 50 and older have a more negative view of congressional incumbents than do younger people, and nearly a third of those 65 and up say they would be more likely to vote for a congressional candidate who has never held elective office -- the highest percentage of any age group. They're hard-liners, too: While majorities or pluralities of those in younger age groups say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who is willing to make compromises, only 29 percent of those over 64 agree. About as many-32 percent-- would be less likely to vote for a candidate willing to compromise. (Telephone survey of 1,002 adults; MOE +/- 4 percentage points for the entire sample.)

The financial services sector has deployed at least 1,447 former federal employees to lobby Congress and federal agencies since the beginning of 2009, according to a joint analysis of federal disclosure records and other data released by Public Citizen and the Center for Responsive Politics. This small army of registered financial services sector lobbyists includes at least 73 former members of Congress, of whom 17 served on the banking committees of either the U.S. House of Representatives or the Senate. At least 66 industry lobbyists worked for these committees as staffers, while 82 additional lobbyists once worked for congressional members who currently serve on these key committees.

Some Democratic leaders-including the party's first openly gay candidate for statewide office-are criticizing party chairwoman Nancy DiNardo's plans to accept an award at a fund-raising event for the Boy Scouts in Bridgeport because of the groups' refusal to accept gay leaders. The New Haven Independent's Melissa Bailey reports that New Haven Democratic Town Committee chairwoman Susie Voigt and state health care advocate Kevin Lembo objected to DiNardo's involvement in the event. Lembo, the party's endorsed candidate for comptroller and a gay man, said, "I prefer, obviously, that she not participate in the event, but that's not my event." DiNardo defended her decision, saying, "I have supported gay rights and I still do. It doesn't mean that I don't want to help Bridgeport."

Arizona's governor is suddenly caught up in a war-record imbroglio with marked similarities to Richard Blumenthal's Vietnam difficulties. In Republican Gov. Jan Brewer's case, though, it involves a statement about her father's service, Dennis Welch reports in The Arizona Guardian. In a recent interview, Brewer said she is hurt by references to Hitler in criticism of her for signing Arizona's tough immigration bill, especially because "my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany." In fact he died in 1955 from lung disease, possibly stemming from his civilian job in a munitions plant during World War II. Like Blumenthal, a stateside Marine Reservist caught saying he had served "in Vietnam," Brewer's office has denied any intent to deceive. And like Blumenthal, she has repeatedly given accurate accounts of the circumstances in the past. To misquote a former president, it all depends on what your definition of "in" is.

Huge excitement online as George W. Bush launched a Facebook page and a Twitter account Wednesday. Not that there weren't plenty of "W's" out there already, but they were fakes; these are the real deal, the ex-president's people confirm. The Atlantic Wire's Heather Horn compiled a sampling of reactions to the event, including this: "Welcome Mr. President. If the secret service can figure out how to set the security settings on your Face Book account correctly please pass it on to the rest of us."

Connecticut has almost as many ex-Congressmen lobbying in Washington as it does active members legislating, a new TPM report says. In all, the on-line politics and government website counts 172 former members of Congress currently working on behalf of private interests in Washington-"a vast army of what might be called uber-lobbyists" that equals nearly a third the number of current members of Congress. Among them are former Connecticut Reps. Nancy Johnson, a Republican, and Toby Moffett, Bruce Morrison and William Ratchford, all Democrats.

A website that targets "conservative misinformation" in the news media says Richard Blumenthal's Vietnam misstatements got much more scrutiny from CNN and Fox News than Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk's false claim about receiving a military award. Media Matters says Fox News' Special Report spent 3 minutes and 13 seconds on Blumenthal the day after the New York Times reported his incorrect statements that he had served "in Vietnam," but just 21 seconds on Kirk after the Washington Post said he had wrongly claimed an award. Meanwhile, CNN ran the Blumenthal story in 11 segments the day after the Times report, but ran nothing on Kirk after his story broke, the website says.

Arizona's immigration law gets support from 51 percent of American registered voters in a new Quinnipiac University poll, and 48 percent say they'd like their own states to pass a similar measure.  Voters support the law despite the fact that a plurality thinks it will result in discrimination against Hispanics. In terms of immigration reform, voters favor enforcement over integration across all political, gender and race lines except Hispanics, who favor integration 47 to 44 percent, and self-described liberals, 52 to 42 percent. (Telephone survey of 1,914 registered voters; MOE +/- 2.2 percentage points.)

Memorial Day Weekend, and time to barbecue Dick Blumenthal again for misrepresenting his military service. Not enough that he was a handy target for commentators from The Boston Globe to The Washington Post to The Atlantic; this also was the weekend that the Post reported GOP Senate candidate Mark Kirk of Illinois had made false claims about a military award, leading dozens of outlets following the story to reference Blumenthal's troubles as well. TPM even used Kirk and Blumenthal as a hook for a look back at politicians of the past who embellished their military records.

Locally, Ray Hackett, editorial page editor for the Norwich Bulletin and a Vietnam veteran, noted, "I have sat through more Blumenthal speeches in 20 years than any one human being should ever be forced to endure. I've never heard him misrepresent his military service."

The ranks of the state's environmental conservation police force - "the khaki green-uniformed officers who stop speeding boaters and investigate boating accidents, tranquilize nuisance bears, check the catches of fishermen and hunters, arrest drunks fighting in state park campgrounds, make sure shellfish are being taken from clean waters and chase after errant ATVs" - have fallen to their lowest level in 30 years, Judy Benson reports in The Day. Funding cuts and early retirements have reduced the force from 64 full-time officers in 2001 to 47 today. The head of the force says that means officers will spend less time on routine preventive patrols and more responding to problems.

A major East Coast homebuilder knew four years ago that Chinese-made drywall it had used in some Florida homes was emitting foul odors, but never disclosed the problem to most of its customers or to state or federal authorities, an investigation by ProPublica and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reveals. It wasn't until late 2008 that emissions from the drywall-which can cause respiratory problems and damage wiring and electrical appliances-became widely known. Most of the 3,300 complaints received so far by the Consumer Product Safety Commission have come from Florida and Louisiana, but homeowners in 35 other states-including two from Connecticut-have reported problems as well.

After two weeks in which Democratic Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal saw: Joe Lieberman flirt again with endorsing Linda McMahon; Joe Biden tell a Blumenthal joke to a veterans' group; and Chris Shays unload to the New York Times about Blumenthal's evolving embellishment of his military record, the beleaguered attorney general finally caught a break, Colin McEnroe says. A new Q-poll gave him high favorables, low negatives and a 25-point lead over McMahon. "Fortunately for Blumenthal, few of the people responding to the poll were his friends," McEnroe concludes.

Sign on the line: Peter Schiff's campaign has hired a contactor to help collect the thousands of signatures Schiff needs to get on the primary ballot for the Republican Senate nomination, the Hartford Courant's Daniela Altimari reports, and is paying volunteers a reported $2.25 a name. It doesn't appear to be illegal, but it's curious, Altimari say, given Schiff's criticism of an earlier plan by endorsed candidate Linda McMahon to pay UConn students $5 a head for registering new GOP voters. Schiff needs about 8,500 signatures to qualify for a primary, but wants twice that to ward off challenges. At $2.25 each, that's about $42,750-a bargain, considering McMahon had spent $14.6 million and Schiff $2 million just getting to the Republican nominating convention.

Outgoing Southern Connecticut State University president Cheryl Norton presided over her last commencement at the New Haven campus, sitting just a few chairs away from the man who ousted her, Connecticut State University System Chancellor David Carter. Neither mentioned the awkward situation, the New Haven Independent's Melissa Bailey reports, but Norton quietly teared up during the ceremony. "It's just sad," she said later. "You always have a little bit of a regret for what you feel you have lost, even though you're looking forward to where you're going."

Welcome to the Senate. You have the right to remain silent. Sen. Orrin Hatch-one of the people Richard Blumenthal wants to hang out with in Washington-has introduced a proposal that would make it a crime to make inaccurate statements about one's military service, Elyse Siegel says in Huffington Port. The Utah Republican didn't refer to Blumenthal directly, but he issued a statement saying, "It appears to me that individuals make these false claims in order to obtain honorariums, employment, elected office or other positions of authority."

If there was any doubt, Rob Simmons really, really doesn't like Linda McMahon. He does not think McMahon can beat Richard Blumenthal for the U.S. Senate, Simmons tells Ropbert Costs at National Review Online, and if she asks for his help, he'll tell her he's "preoccupied." Although Blumenthal's misstatements about his military service "exposed a character flaw," Simmons says, McMahon has much more serious liabilities: The former World Wrestling Entertainment executive, who beat Simmons for the GOP nomination at last week's convention, has "countless entertainment products that she'll have to defend, especially when Democrats make them known to the public in coming months."

Update: Simmons apparently has second thoughts: “That was a little harsh, I probably shouldn’t have said what I said,” he tells Shira Toeplitz ar Politico. “I talked too much and I’m sorry.”

Who was the wealthiest president? John F. Kennedy? One of the Roosevelts? Actually, it may well have been George Washington, according to the investment website 24/7 Wall St. The man whose face is on the humble $1 bill was worth more some $525 million in 2010 dollars, the website estimates.  Next on the list is Thomas Jefferson, whose net worth at its peak is estimated at $212 million, although he died in debt.

Americans generally agree about the morality behaviors or social policies that sometimes spark public controversy, with sizable majorities saying each is either "morally acceptable" or "morally wrong." But on four issues--physician-assisted suicide, gay and lesbian relations, abortion, and having a baby outside of marriage-the public is more closely divided, a new Gallup Poll says. Not surprisingly, Democrats are more likely to say those behaviors are morally acceptable than Republicans, but on some issues, particularly those involving animal rights, the gender gap is bigger than the divide between parties. (Telephone survey of 1,029 adults; MOE +/- 4 percentage points.)

Candidates whose hopes survived the weekend's conventions now have a new challenge: raising the money to run their campaigns. For those with super-sized bank balances, that's not a problem; most other candidates are scrambling. One with an innovative idea is New Haven Democrat Gerry Garcia, who qualified to run a primary challenge for the party's nomination for secretary of the state. He plans to sell tie-dyed T-shirts capitalizing on the similarity of his name with that of the late, legendary Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, Thomas McMillan reports in the New Haven Independent. Will hordes of shaggy devotees in VW buses start following him around the state?

Members of Congress are increasingly likely to invest in the stock market, including speculative bets on options, hedge funds and the like, The Washington Post reports. And their investments are subject to far fewer rules than "Congress has required for other government officials and private-sector executives." Using data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, reporters Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Dan Keating found that the number of members of the House of Representatives investing in stocks--not including mutual funds--has tripled since 2001. And many of them invest in "industries that are overseen by Congress or have received billions in bailout and stimulus funding."

Nearly half of Americans say they are less likely to vote in November for candidates who supported the federal bailout of banks and financial institutions, a new Pew Research Center/National Journal poll says. Health care reform is a wash among voters, with roughly equal proportions saying they would by more likely or less likely to vote for a candidate who supported the bill. Republicans are more likely than Democrats or independents to look unfavorably on candidates who support either the bailout or health reform measures, and they also are less likely to vote for a candidate who is willing to compromise with people who hold differing views. (Telephone survey of 1,002 adults; MOE +/- 4 percentage points.)

Repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," the official military policy on gay servicemen and women, may be headed for approval after a compromise was reached late Monday. The Obama administration notified Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman and other proponents of repeal that it supports a deal that could call for immediate passage of repeal, but give the military time to study and implement the change. The Associated Press reports.

Senators who voted against the sweeping financial regulatory reform bill Thursday have received about 16 percent more money on average from the finance, insurance and real estate sector over their careers than senators who supported the measure, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis. But CRP's figures also show that the top recipients of contributions from the sector this year voted for and against the bill in equal numbers.

Although opponents of legalizing same-sex marriage continue to outnumber supporters, the gap is narrower than it has been since 2007, a new Gallup Poll shows. Nationally 53 percent say they oppose same-sex marriage and 44 percent support it. Since 1996, support for same-sax marriage has increased among all major political and ideological subgroups, although conservatives and Republicans remain strongly opposed. There also are marked differences by region, with 53 percent in the East and West favoring legalization and 40 percent or more in the Midwest and South opposing. (Telephone survey of 1,029 adults; MOE +/- 4 percentage points.)

The controversy over Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's representation of his military record isn't going away. Even as he was endorsed by acclamation over the weekend as the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, the "public editor" of the New York Times defended the paper's report saying Blumenthal falsely described himself as having served in Vietnam. "Were there flaws in the story? Yes," Clark Hoyt said. "It is true that Blumenthal often correctly described his military experience. But he has sometimes flatly misrepresented it...  and that matters. How much, the voters of Connecticut will decide. The Times was right to give them the information."

Connecticut newspapers also continued to pound on the issue over the weekend. Blumenthal's statement of regret for "misspeaking" about his service-he was a stateside member of the Marine Reserve in the early 1970s-isn't enough, say James H. Smith, editor of the New Britain Herald and Bristol Press, and the Hartford Courant editorial board. He needs to say, "I'm sorry."

And a frequent critic of the attorney general, the Republican-American editorial board, has taken to referring to him as "Richard 'Rambo' Blumenthal" and offers a round-up of national reaction to the issue.

Careful observers of the state Democratic convention last weekend may have noticed folks with small video cameras trailing candidates around the floor. They're a fairly recent addition to the Connecticut political scene, say Melissa Bailey and Thomas MacMillan at the New Haven Independent: trackers, who work for political campaigns and follow rival candidates around trying to catch them in an unfavorable light. The candidates seem to live with it, but reporters tend not to like having their interviews recorded by trackers.

With things sewn up at the Democratic convention for Dick Blumenthal, New York Times or no, state bloggers focused on Friday's GOP Senate race.

Rick Green noted Linda McMahon's victory fist-pump: "Republicans -- loudly, clearly and perhaps in the end regrettably -- want the brazen fist pump this year," he wrote. To the Rob Simmons, who promises to primary for the nomination: "Perhaps now he will take the dorky teabag out of his pocket and campaign on who he really is, a moderate with integrity."

Brian Lockhart says a number of Simmons' supporters are less than enthusiastic about his determination to press ahead. State House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero, for one, said he wants to focus on winning more seats in the General Assembly, and fears a tough primary to detract from that effort.

But there's still a lot of concern about McMahon, and particularly her family business, World Wrestling Entertainment, says Ted Mann.  One is Cathy Cook of Mystic, a former legislator and mother of a son who is mentally retarded, who objects to WWE's onetime use of a mentally disabled character named Eugene.

Polls that leave out cell phone users can produce results that differ significantly from surveys that include both cell and landline users, a new Pew Research Center report says. Comparing the responses to 72 questions by landline only and combined cell and landline groups, the study found statistically significant differences on 29 of the questions. Those findings-which elaborate on an earlier Pew study-present a quandary for pollsters, because including cell users in surveys markedly increases the cost and complexity.

The flap over Richard Blumenthal's military record took a few strange turns Thursday. First Republican State Party chairman Chris Healy posted an entry on the conservative MakeBlueRed blog defending the New York Times-rarely mentioned in some conservative circles without the descriptor "left-wing"-- against the skepticism of "the liberal media" of Connecticut. Then Blumenthal got some cover from a secondary allegation in the Times article-that he has been described in print as captain of the Harvard swim team when he in fact was never on the team-from Fergus Cullen, director of the conservative Yankee Institute for Public Policy. The institute posted a yearbook photo of Blumenthal as a member of the team on its Facebook page, and Cullen alerted reporters by email.

Polls that leave out cell phone users can produce results that differ significantly from surveys that include both cell and landline users, a new Pew Research Center report says. Comparing the responses to 72 questions by landline only and combined cell and landline groups, the study found statistically significant differences on 29 of the questions. Those findings-which elaborate on an earlier Pew study-present a quandary for pollsters, because including cell users in surveys markedly increases the cost and complexity.

From evolution to swine flu: Why do so many people refuse to accept scientific evidence, New Scientist magazine wonders. In a special report, the magazine examines what some call "denialism," its causes, effects, and the best way for science to respond.

After an initial pounding by political pundits, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal caught a break when the AP's Sue Haigh revealed that the "smoking gun" video supposedly proving that he misrepresented his military career was only part of the story: The entire video begins with him accurately stating that he was in the Marines "during the Vietnam era." Now some state and national commentators are turning a critical eye on the New York Times and reporter Raymond Hernandez. A sample:

"Even if you don't think this longer video is exculpatory in any way, the larger context it shows definitely deserves to be part of the discussion. (Greg Sargent, Washington Post)

"Blumenthal's presentation is messy here, meaning that the Times has a story. But they're doing everyone a disservice by over-selling it." (Clint Hendler, Columbia Journalism Review)

"Whatever mistakes (Connecticut journalists) may have made, those are trumped by the overreaching by Raymond Hernandez and the New York Times." (Colin McEnroe, Hartford Courant)

"Including the earlier comment would have provided the option of allowing readers to determine if he was being misleading or had fumbled with his speaking... As more reporting trickles in, the answer seems to be edging closer to the latter." (Sam Stein, Huffington Post)

"Did the Times not even try to look at the entire video or double- or triple-check the matter with people in attendance? I'm not alleging that... But something seems to have gone wrong here." (Michael Tomasky, The Guardian)

With all the attention on Blumenthal, Connecticut opinionators have largely ignored Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz. She was ejected from her race for attorney general Tuesday when the Supreme Court said she doesn't have the requisite experience, and later said she hasn't ruled out running for something else at the Democratic state convention this weekend. The Courant's Bob Englehart picks up the slack.