By CHRIS POWELL
The most recent politically correct charade of Connecticut’s nullifiers — including Governor Lamont, Attorney General William Tong, and the Democratic majority in the General Assembly — has been quickly exposed. It’s the new state law, enacted with the governor’s signature a month ago, purporting to prohibit federal immigration agents from wearing masks while on duty in the state. It’s a fraud.
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News organizations have reported video recordings of masked immigration agents being challenged about the law by bystanders in Hartford and Danbury, with the agents telling the bystanders, in effect, to drop dead. One agent replies: “Who’s going to arrest me?” Another says: “We’re federal. We’re over state. Go back to social studies.”
The Trump administration is suing in federal court for an injunction against the new law and in the meantime the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is openly defying it.
Despite supporting the legislation, Governor Lamont has not ordered the state police to try enforcing it. Chest-thumpers among the nullifiers, like state Attorney General Tong, are nowhere to be seen amid the defiance. If the nullifiers really thought the law was legitimate, they’d be demonstrating a little physical courage on its behalf or at least be erecting barricades to keep immigration agents out of Connecticut.
So was the law just a scheme to please the far-lefties who control Connecticut’s Democratic Party and keep them riled up in an election year? That’s one of many fair political questions about illegal immigration that won’t be answered because it won’t be asked.
Of course this doesn’t mean that federal agents shouldn’t be unmasked and identified by name and badge number whenever they make arrests, just as state and municipal police officers are. That is basic accountability and public safety. You’re entitled to resist arrest if you don’t know who is arresting you. But this is for Congress and the president to legislate. Democrats in Connecticut won’t comply voluntarily with the Constitution’s supremacy clause until their party regains power in Washington.
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Two years ago many Democrats purported to be unable to understand how some sane, decent, and politically moderate people could support Donald Trump for president over the incumbent, Joe Biden, and then, when Biden’s senility exploded on national television and he was compelled to withdraw, how they would not support his cackling airhead of a vice president, Kamala Harris. After all, many of those sane, decent, and politically moderate people have acknowledged Trump’s repulsiveness.
Maybe the U.S. Senate campaign in Maine will help those Democrats understand.
For the party in Maine has just nominated a faux populist, Graham Platner, who had himself tattooed with a Nazi SS death’s head, who purported not to know what it stood for, who has called himself a communist, and who has abused a number of women. So what used to be the party of “believe all women” has just discovered an exception. Women now may be disbelieved or disrespected if believing or respecting them might cost the party control of the Senate.
This is fair enough if one thinks, as was thought by some of those sane, decent, and moderate people who reluctantly voted for Trump two years ago, that certain policy issues — like illegal immigration, late-term abortion, and the erasure of gender differences in restrooms, sports, and prisons — outweigh a candidate’s character defects. Two years ago many of those sane, decent, and moderate people thought that stopping illegal immigration, late-term abortion, and erasure of gender differences in law and policy were more important than preventing Trump’s return to the White House. They thought awful Trump was right on the biggest issues.
Now, with Platner’s candidacy, many Democrats think that continuing to facilitate illegal immigration, late-term abortion, and erasure of gender differences in law and policy is more important than keeping a proto-Nazi, Communist, and abuser of women out of the Senate — as long as he will vote with Democrats to organize the chamber and help thwart Trump.
Fair enough as well. Clarity often results when the jackboot is put on the other foot.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell column 