Eideard

A four-year-old U.S. boy who announced to his teacher at school snack time that he wanted to share pulled nine bags of marijuana out of his jacket pocket…Police in Meriden, Connecticut were called to Hanover Elementary School Tuesday afternoon after the young special needs student displayed the drugs, authorities said.

Meriden police said the nine individually wrapped bags of marijuana appeared prepared for sale…

“What’s so disheartening is this is really an adult issue and problem and adult behavior put a student at risk,” Meriden schools superintendent Mark Benigni told Reuters.

“This student had no idea what he brought to school or what the substance was,” he added.

Authorities are not releasing the names of the student or parents and police said there is a possibility for arrests pending the outcome of the investigation.

The coppers should smack daddy on the wrist for being extra dumb about hiding his retail stash. Unless he was more than extra dumb and just wanted his kiddie to build up his business with free samples?

One of my favorite parkway bridges down in Stamford

A mountain lion killed on a Connecticut highway in June was a wild animal from South Dakota that prowled more than 1,500 miles eastward before meeting his death 70 miles from New York City, genetic tests confirmed this week.

The big cat with a long tail and an even longer tale was determined to have travelled through Minnesota and Wisconsin in late 2009 and 2010 before arriving in the posh suburb of Greenwich, Connecticut, according to DNA testing of the animal and his scat.

The cougar was struck and killed on a commuter roadway, the Wilbur Cross Parkway, on June 11.

“I think it’s staggering that he was able to go 1,500 miles but also travel through those areas without being detected or killed,” said Mark Dowling, a director at the Cougar Network.

“Moving through the Midwest and Northeast, it’s a gauntlet of potential detection — roads, highways, rivers and dogs to get through,” he said.

The cross-country trek is one of the longest movements on record for a land mammal and nearly doubles any known distance traveled by a mountain lion, according to Connecticut environmental officials. It’s also the first recorded confirmation of a wild mountain lion in Connecticut in more than 100 years, officials said…

But DNA tests on the 140-pound animal, believed to be two to five years old, matched the genetic structure of the mountain lion population in the Black Hills region of South Dakota, officials said.

Other signs that he was a wild animal included the fact he was not declawed, neutered or implanted with a microchip but did have porcupine quills embedded in his tissues.

I know the area well where his life was ended. My family lived for years right next to the parkway, just over from Milford – it’s called the Merritt Parkway or the Wilbur Cross Parkway depending on whether you’re east or west of the Housatonic River.. It was one of the first limited access, dual lane highways with a median – built starting back in 1934.

Not that any of that impressed Mr. Mountain Lion. Our loss.

Cristina and Monica

An immigration judge has agreed to delay the deportation of a Queens woman until the legal status of the Defense of Marriage Act becomes clearer.

Monica Alcota faced return to Argentina even though she’s married to an American citizen, Cristina Ojeda – because the feds don’t give immigration benefits to gay couples.

President Obama announced last month that the White House won’t defend the 1996 law that bars recognition of same-sex marriages. That gave Ojeda and Alcota new hope that Alcota, who overstayed a tourist visa, might be approved to stay in the U.S.

Judge Terry Bain put a hold on her deportation order while the couple waits to see if the Defense of Marriage Act is overturned and their green card application goes through.

“She could have said no,” Ojeda said. “But instead she gave us time…”

“I was very pleased that both the judge and the government attorney treated the issue with seriousness and respect,” said their lawyer, Lavi Soloway. “I think it was a demonstration of respect for Monica and Cristina and their marriage. They were kind and generous about it.”

Phew. Most sensible folks await the end of DOMA and other crap laws designed to prevent civil rights.

Meanwhile, our best wishes to Monica and Cristina.

A Connecticut priest with a reputation of caring for the poor has shocked his parishioners after being accused of faking a terminal illness to cover up the alleged theft of $1 million from his diocese.

The Rev. Kevin Gray, a 26-year veteran of the Hartford Catholic Diocese, is being investigated by the Waterbury, Conn., police department for allegedly taking money over a seven-year period from a savings fund established for the Sacred Heart parish, money that was to be used for building renovations and church debt, according to the police…

According to Rev. John Gatzak, spokesman, the Hartford Archdiocese became suspicious over the past year as they asked Gray to submit several years’ worth of annual financial reviews from his parish. Gray allegedly said he was unable to complete the reviews because of a serious terminal illness he was battling and asked for more time. Gatzak said that although they gave Gray some leeway and extra time to submit his reports, they began to look at his parish financial records and say they made some troubling discoveries…

Gatzak, 64, said the news has been ever more painful for the parish and it’s parishioners because of the fact that they believed Gray was battling a serious illness, an illness they now believe may have simply been a lie to try and give the priest more time to allegedly cover up the lost funds.

“We are now questioning whether or not he was telling the truth regarding his illness. We don’t know yet,” Gatzak said.

Gatzak said he visited with people outside the church after the 6 p.m. mass, finding them in tears over the news, and full of stories about a priest they loved and admired.

“People telling me how he visited their mother when she was in the hospital, saying he was right there when their grandfather dies. In crisis times, times of need he was there. These are the things people remember and love about him,” Gatzak said.

The inevitable mix of hypocrisy and deceit, gullibility and ignorant trust. The first two couldn’t survive without the latter pair.

If it weren’t for other nations, other cultures, demonstrating that human beings can acquire more education and understanding – I’d wonder if our species isn’t permanently shrouded by the cloud of superstition.

Law enforcement officers figured they would find gamecocks when they raided the house in Shelton, CT.

Instead, petite songbirds with bright yellow feathers and orange crowns awaited.

Because they had been trained to be aggressive, the South African tanagers will be monitored for a month to see how well they’re getting along, said Roger Sweeney, the Salt Lake City bird park curator.

Which is one of the locations where the rescued birds have been transported for rehab.

“We’d gotten 100 cages ready to house these fighting cocks that we were going to seize,” said Bruce Sherman, director from the CT Dept of Agriculture. “There was a lot of time spent setting up and preparing for that, then everything changed when we found out they were finches.”

The cages sized for roosters were made of wire mesh open enough for the tanagers to fly right back out of the cages.

Our society has so many demented, strung out, lame cultural hangups, you have to wonder what will be the next focus for sex, drugs or gambling?

I waited a few days before posting this to see if the state of Connecticut grew a backbone. No such luck.

Links to churches that welcome gay members have been removed from a Connecticut state government Web site.

A spokesman for the Department of Children and Families said Wednesday officials decided “questions of separation of church and state did come into play” with the links to “open and affirming churches,”

The links were challenged by the Family Institute of Connecticut…and other bigots.

“We said all along that if same-sex marriage was imposed in Connecticut, the next thing that would happen would be an effort to re-educate Connecticut children,” institute’s Executive Director Peter Wolfgang said. “That’s what today’s victory was all about: making sure they don’t try and re-indoctrinate children into accepting lifestyles and beliefs that their parents are utterly opposed to.”

There was a time when Connecticut was proudly hailed as the Constitution State. After all, the state’s original constitution served as the model for the U.S. Constitution.

It took clean-living Democrats caving in to Cold Warriors – hack Democrats like Chris Dodd’s daddy, Tom – to remove the essential bits that made the document too dangerous to tolerate. Stuff like people having the right – and duty – to rise up and throw out tyrants.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

A decade-long battle for marriage equality in Connecticut ended when the General Assembly voted to update the state’s marriage laws to conform with a landmark court ruling allowing gay and lesbian couples to tie the knot.

“It feels so good. It really does feel like the book is closing,” said Anne Stanback, president of Love Makes a Family, a gay-rights group that has led the fight for same-sex marriage in the state.

A spokesman for Gov. M. Jodi Rell said she will sign the bill, which passed 28-7 in the Senate and 100-44 in the House of Representatives late Wednesday, into law. While Rell, a Republican, signed the state’s 2005 civil unions law, she has said she believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

The bill comes six months after the State Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that same-sex couples have the right to wed in Connecticut, rather than accept the civil union law designed to give them the same rights as married couples.

It redefines marriage in Connecticut as the legal union of two people. State law previously defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

Carol Gignac, a 62-year-old Roman Catholic from Bristol, clutched her rosary beads as she watched Wednesday’s debate from the Senate gallery. She said she was praying during much of the day for God’s mercy on Connecticut.

Connecticut is known as the Constitution State because the state’s essential legal document was the model for the U.S. Constitution. A fact that won’t mean much to those Americans who could care less about civil liberties or civil rights.

This battle for civil rights will have to stretch out for decades, state-by-state, because our Congress-critters have neither the courage, smarts or leadership qualities to drag the rest of the nation up into the 21st Century. The White House crew isn’t likely to try it – because they’re all about winning this week’s wannabe winnable.

There are about six certified producers for halal meat in the U.S.
Daylife/AP Photo by Paul Sancya

A Connecticut prison inmate has sued the state, claiming that his religious freedom as a Muslim has been violated by the lack of halal meat.

Ricardo Collins filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court. “I am a American Muslim and I am being denied the halal meat for the two Islamic feast days,” Collins said in his complaint. “The halal meat for the two feasts have great ‘spiritual meaning’ to the Muslim community all over the world.”

Collins was sentenced to 70 years after he was convicted of killing a man in Bridgeport in 2002. He recently won an appeal granting him a new trial.

Brian Garnett, a spokesman for the prison system, said that it meets the requirements set down by a court decision that ruled that New Jersey prisons were not required to serve halal meat, which has been slaughtered according to religious rules.

I’ve spent a half-century fighting injustice and bigotry in the U.S.. That includes abusive prisons. I don’t consider ignoring religious preferences to be abusive.

I haven’t an opinion about Collins’ case; but, he was found guilty once. And if there’s one thing I am a hard-ass about it’s – if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.

Successful plaintiffs and their twin sons

The Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled that gay and lesbian couples have the right to get married…

“Interpreting our state constitutional provisions in accordance with firmly established equal protection principles leads inevitably to the conclusion that gay persons are entitled to marry the otherwise qualified same sex partner of their choice,” the ruling said.

“To decide otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional principles to gay persons and another to all others. The guarantee of equal protection under the law, and our obligation to uphold that command, forbids us from doing so. In accordance with these state constitutional requirements, same sex couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry.”

The decision would only allow gay couples the state benefits of marriage. The Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996, denies gay couples federal recognition of state marriages, which provides for federal benefits with regard to Social Security, taxation, immigration and others.

Who knows? Perhaps a dramatic overhaul of both Congress and the White House might leave the nation with a government that thoroughly rejects second-class citizenship?

It’s been almost fifty years since the first time I was arrested for daring to sit next to a Black friend at a White-Only drugstore counter. The miserable bastards who saddle this nation with discriminatory laws – still get more respect and attention from our lawmakers than anyone who cares about freedom and justice.

An upcoming WiiWare game based on that most hallowed and cherished of American pastimes — beer pong — has raised the ire of Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal.

“The video game rating board is under the influence — rating frat party video drinking games suitable for minors,” Blumenthal’s office said in a press release.

Alcohol use as depicted in a game of beer pong is only enough to garner a game a Teen rating.

But even this is no longer included in the game: The publisher, JV Games, has actually pulled the alcoholic content, renaming the game Pong Toss. It’s apparently been re-rated with an E.

But, then, Blumenthal is busy considering an even more important issue for Connecticut residents: should he run for governor or senator?