Aaron Goode

With the retirement of Kevin Kane, Connecticut is hiring a new chief state’s attorney — the top prosecutor in the state — for the first time in 13 years. The state’s Criminal Justice Commission, who will select Kane’s replacement in the next few months, will be seeking someone with a passion for justice, a commitment to fairness and an understanding of the need for conscientious decarceration and criminal justice reform. Here’s another criterion the Criminal Justice Commission should be looking for: a seriousness about enforcing traffic laws to stem the epidemic of traffic violence and pedestrian fatalities on our streets, a crisis that state and local governments, and prosecutors, have been too slow to address.

A “quagmire” describes an extraordinarily distressing situation that all of the options for extraction would probably just make worse. The term aptly describes both falling into quicksand and last November’s election for the 140th Connecticut House of Representatives district in Stratford, where an egregious error by elections officials resulted in 70 votes being cast in the wrong voting district, in an election where the margin of victory (for Democratic incumbent Phil Young) was 14 votes.

I suppose that congratulations are in order to fringe candidate Roque “Rocky” de la Fuente on ‘winning’ a random drawing for the top ballot position in the Democratic primary for president taking place on April 26. It is a stroke of luck which will perhaps net the California businessman a few hundred additional votes due to a phenomenon social scientists refer to as the “primacy effect” or “serial position effect.” Rocky has met all the statutory requirements for appearing on the ballot and seems like a decent person, but he does not deserve this unearned advantage. Neither does Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders or any other candidate.