WASHINGTON–Leave it to Congress to churn out a back-from-the-dead thriller, with a ghostly jet engine in the lead role. The House Armed Services Committee voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to allow continued production of the alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter. The committee’s vote comes less than a month after Congress officially killed the engine program–and […]

Two senators opposed to capital punishment said Wednesday they are refusing to vote to repeal the death penalty this year at the request of Dr. William A. Petit, sole survivor of a home invasion that left his wife and two daughters dead. Their switch ends the repeal effort for 2011. Sen. Edith G. Prague, D-Columbia, […]

WASHINGTON–If Sen. Richard Blumenthal was waiting for the right moment to strut his Attorney General stuff, a pair of high-profile Judiciary Committee hearings this week gave him a tailor-made walkway. Take the first setting: a Senate hearing room jammed with high-tech lobbyists in high-priced suits, all clicking away at their BlackBerries and iPhones. The subject: […]

Dannel P. Malloy’s been governor for only four months, but he might never again see the opportunity he has now to achieve a top priority of permanently shrinking two long-term labor costs: pensions and retiree health care. If concession talks end without a deal, Malloy has no obvious leverage to force state employees back to […]

More than 15,000 Aetna customers could see their health insurance premiums drop by between 5 and 19.5 percent later this year, reflecting, at least in part, a new federal requirement that limits how much insurance companies can spend on nonmedical costs. The proposed rate cuts would affect state residents covered by Aetna individual health plans […]

Sen. Joseph Lieberman will get a glimpse of the photos of a deceased Osama bin Laden, according to this Politico report. The Connecticut independent, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was among those invited by the Obama Administration to look at the pictures.

While the ongoing fiscal crisis may necessitate some governmental streamlining, the current structure of the proposed Office of Governmental Accountability does this at too high a cost for the citizens of Connecticut. The Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC) is one of Connecticut’s most effective and widely-modeled agency structures. Its external appeals model-which allows parties to […]

A sweeping package of high school reforms approved in 2010 seems likely to be delayed for at least two years after the legislative committee responsible for deciding how they will be funded voted overwhelmingly to postpone the issue. “We don’t have the money to implement these,” said Sen. Toni N. Harp, the Appropriations Committee co-chairwoman […]

Negotiators for Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and state employees talked into the early hours Tuesday without reaching a deal to lower the state’s labor and retirement costs, leading the administration to begin to issuing layoff notices. But both sides said they remain optimistic about reaching a deal. Spokesmen for Malloy and the unions told reporters […]

Jennifer Mitchell has been a foster parent to almost 200 children over the last three decades, but she’s finally thinking of quitting. “If I was getting the services my kids needed then I probably wouldn’t have to give up,” the mother from Milford said. Mitchell estimates only half of the children she has fostered in […]

In a tough budget year, some agencies might win praise for underspending their budgets–but not the Department of Social Services, which is nearing the end of the fiscal year with large surpluses in programs for a range of vulnerable populations. “What it does, it exemplifies that we have holes in our services all around the […]

Sen. Joseph Lieberman seems to revel in forging an odd-bedfellows alliances and taking stances that burnish his maverick image. So perhaps it’s no surprise that he is now teaming up with one of Congress’s biggest Tea Party stars, Marco Rubio. Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent, and Rubio, a Republican from Florida, will hold a joint press conference […]

Connecticut would lose billions of dollars in federal health funds for the poor under the House Republican budget blueprint, according to a new analysis by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser researchers examined the GOP plan’s impact nationally and at the state level, concluding that it would likely push millions of low-income patients off the […]