Rep. Rosa DeLauro, already reeling from this weekend’s shooting of her congressional colleague, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, got more terrible news on Monday. Her former chief of staff, Ashley Turton, a longtime Capitol Hill aide turned lobbyist, was found dead in her car on Monday morning. She was apparently involved in a low-speed crash that resulted […]

After a tragedy like the attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords last week, the immediate impulse to is figure out why it happened, says Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com. Was Jared Lee Loughner fired by political rhetoric? To what degree was mental illness a factor? Was he liberal or conservative? Was he influenced by the Tea Party? […]

WASHINGTON-There was no extra security at the Milford Senior Center this morning when Rep. Rosa DeLauro spoke to a small crowd about the Republican effort to repeal health reform. Similarly, Sen. Richard Blumenthal hasn’t altered the arrangements for his two-week “listening tour” across Connecticut. And Rep. Chris Murphy hopes to hold one of his usual […]

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s transition team presented more than 1,800 pages worth of policy recommendations Monday, including sweeping proposals to overhaul education funding, institute universal pre-kindergarten, find new transportation revenues and end the regional tourism district system. And while Malloy thanked his team’s Policy Committee for developing a report that offers guidance his administration will use […]

WASHINGTON–As House Republicans make their first run at the health care reform law, Democrats say the GOP is doing the bidding of big insurance. “Why are they engaged in this effort?” asked Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District. “Because, quite frankly, I believe it’s what the insurance companies want.” It just ain’t so, comes the response […]

Advocates for the poor came to the State Capitol today to resuscitate an idea for a discounted residential utility rate that was buried in the sweeping electric regulation bill vetoed last year by Gov. M. Jodi Rell. The concept is one adopted by every northeast state other than Connecticut: authorize utilities to charge the poor […]

The State of Washington has wiped out funding for early childhood education. Arizona no longer covers the cost of organ transplants for low-income residents. Some public defender offices in Missouri won’t take new cases because they are overworked and understaffed. “From Oregon to Rhode Island, state governments today are smaller, stingier versions of what they […]

For obvious reasons, the attack on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., is horrifying to her fellow members of Congress. But the location of the shooting will cast a special chill for many congressmen, inluding Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who advises politically vulnerable Democrats like Giffords. Giffords was shot outside a supermarket performing one of the […]

One 13-year-old girl came from distant Bethel to get Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s signature on a petition. A neighborhood cobbler came looking for business. Others simply wanted a moment with the new governor without the expense of going to an inaugural ball. For two hours on a snowy Saturday, Malloy and Lt. Gov. Nancy S. […]

The state’s new chief elections officer says she plans to promote changes to ensure that the Election Day fiasco of 2010, when polling places in Bridgeport and a half dozen other communities ran out of ballots on Election Day, doesn’t happen again. “There are some common sense solutions,” Secretary of the State Denise W. Merrill […]

HARTFORD — Gov. Dannel P. Malloy warned businesses Friday they will face sacrifices to help close the state budget deficit, but added that a new emphasis on smart investments and cooperative government offers light at the end of Connecticut’s dark economic tunnel. “There is no cavalry — except us,” Malloy told nearly 600 business leaders […]

The Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate is seen as a bulwark against Republican efforts to undo health care reform, but Sen. Joseph Lieberman says that he is going into the debate with an “open mind” about what changes, if any, would make sense. Lieberman said he does not favor repealing the entire law, but he wants to […]

Special elections were scheduled today for Tuesday, Feb. 22 to fill vacancies left by the resignations of nine Democratic legislators, three in the Senate and six in the House. Six legislators resigned to take positions in the administration of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, while two others quit to take other government jobs. The ninth, Sen. […]