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Calling it an “anathema,” Dem Sen. Richard Blumenthal has said “I will fight” the arming of teachers in schools. Appearing on this evening’s Hardball, Blumenthal said: “He [President Trump] seems to be backing the idea of arming teachers and eliminating gun-free zones. That idea has been rejected soundly and consistently by the entire educational community; by teachers, superintendents, principals. Because it makes schools less safe. And it is a non-starter, whether it’s proposed singly or part of any other measure in the United States Senate. I will fight it, because it is an anathema. A dangerous and frightening prospect. But...

Ledyard police said a 17-year-old high school student has been arrested and charged with threatening and breach of peace. According to a letter from the high school principal, that student made a comment stating “I could buy an AR-15”, the same gun used in the Florida shooting. The principal said the student wasn’t threatening to do harm, but rather was talking about buying guns. The principal said the student does not have access to guns at home.

Here we go again with yet another “national conversation” about guns that is neither a conversation nor national. And not productive. Understandably, as with the Newtown, Conn., elementary school massacre in 2012, the agonized outcries and visceral fears after the outrageous Broward high school deaths on Feb. 14 erupt from parents who entrust their most prized treasures to a public school. The betrayal is horrendous. The suffering unimaginable. And we flail around trying to find answers for the unimaginable, the inexplicable, the unacceptable. There must be something we can do to prevent such awful events. There is. We could have....

More than a century of tradition changed at Yale University on Tuesday. The Whiffenpoofs, the senior a cappella group, admitted its first female singer. Sofia Campoamor was picked to be one of the 14 new members of the Whiffs’ Class of 2019. “I’m really excited,” said Ms. Campoamor, a 20-year-old junior from Washington, D.C. “To me the overall goal is to change the conversation around senior a cappella to one that is not about gender, but about music.” *** Founded in 1909, the Whiffenpoofs bills itself as the oldest collegiate a cappella group in the U.S. The Whiffs and an...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH) — A New Haven woman, determined to keep her own gun from getting into the wrong hands, sawed her weapon in two. Former School Teacher Amanda Meyer told News 8 via Skype that she was moved to take action in the wake of the Florida school massacre. “I had decided to do it before the Parkland shooting happened but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. And it was after that and reading the negativity on social media and realizing that I didn’t want to be part of that club anymore that finally drove me to...

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A Ledyard student was arrested after he allegedly said he could buy a semi-automatic weapon, the principal told parents on Thursday. Ledyard High School Principal Amanda Fagan said the specific purpose to reach out to parents was "to counter some false information that was posted today on a community forum on Facebook. That social media post indicated that a student at the high school had been arrested today for posting on the internet that he was going to shoot up the high school. That information, as presented is false." On Thursday, a 17-year-old student allegedly said "I could buy an...

LEDYARD, Conn. (AP) — Connecticut officials say a 17-year-old high school student has been arrested for commenting, "I could buy an AR-15," the day after the same gun model was used in a high school shooting that killed 17 and injured others in Florida.

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It was a feel-good story for a few hours: Luge veteran Erin Hamlin gets the chance to enter her last Olympics carrying the U.S. flag into the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Games, winning that distinction after a vote by some of her fellow athletes. And then Shani Davis tweeted. With that, the entire process was called into controversy. The tweet posted to Davis' account said the process by which Hamlin won was executed "dishonorably," and included a reference to Black History Month — raising the question of whether the speedskater was suggesting that race played a role in the...

A West Virginia bill that would end taxpayer funding for abortions in the state is slated for a public hearing Monday in the state House. West Virginia is one of 17 states that funds elective abortions for low-income women through Medicaid. State House Bill 4012 would end taxpayer funding for abortions except when medically necessary to save the mother’s life, the AP reports. Since 1977, state taxpayers have been forced to pay millions of dollars for tens of thousands unborn babies’ abortion deaths, according to West Virginians for Life. “The federal government limits tax funding of abortions to cases of...

Gov. Dannel Malloy on Monday proposed legislation to help Connecticut residents make up for $10 billion in lost federal tax deductions under the recent tax overhaul.His plan aims to assist Connecticut homeowners who face higher federal tax bills because the new law caps state and local tax deductions at $10,000 a year. To get around that cap, Mr. Malloy’s proposal would give towns authority to form charitable organizations that residents can contribute to in exchange for property tax credits.Charitable contributions kept their full deductibility under the tax overhaul.The governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut also said in January...

A shadowy figure tied to the Clintons has suddenly emerged in the Trump-Russia collusion saga.His name is Cody Shearer, dubbed “Mr. Fixer” for Bill and Hillary Clinton and a workmate of fierce Clinton defender Sidney Blumenthal.Last week, his name surfaced in a letter to the Democratic National Committee from Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican. The letter listed nearly 40 names and entities. The two senators asked the DNC to disclose any communications with them from March 2016 to January 2017. The list included the well-known...

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If you’re planning to watch the Super Bowl but you can’t stand the NFL take-a-knee protests, you may want to root for the Philadelphia Eagles. Not a single Eagles player sat or knelt during the national anthem, one of just seven teams with perfect non-kneeling records, in a season that saw 684 such incidents, according to a study released Thursday by Sports Pundit. The other Super Bowl LII team, the New England Patriots, landed in the middle of the pack with 17 incidents of anthem sitting or kneeling, wedged between the Buffalo Bills with 16 and the Cleveland Browns with...

By now you probably know that the 2017 Tax Act significantly limited the deduction of state and local taxes against your federal income. For most Americans -- particularly ones in low-tax states or states with no income taxes -- these new rules will have little effect on your life. For high-income individuals in high-tax states, they will suffer dearly from this policy. There has been speculation of how many will relocate. How bad will the impact be to the states they are leaving? That is another question. We do not know how many people will leave states like New York,...

NEW BRITAIN - A court interpreter was charged by state police Monday with attempted kidnapping after he allegedly tried to lure a 12-year-old girl out of New Britain Superior Court in September. Mahfuz Alhamid, 28, of Meriden, is accused of asking a girl waiting for her mother, who was having a probation meeting, if she would kiss him and go out to the parking lot with him. The girl became frightened and approached a stranger for help at the courthouse, a warrant for Alhamid’s arrest said. The man she asked for help was wearing a court-ordered electronic ankle bracelet and...

NBC News and MSNBC national affairs analyst John Heilemann on Tuesday asked Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) if he thought House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) had "been compromised by the Russians." The question comes following a Monday vote in the House Intelligence Committee to make a controversial Republican-crafted memo public. The memo purports to show bias within the FBI and the Department of Justice. "Congressman, I’m going to ask you a question I asked Sen. [Chris] Murphy (D-Conn.) a little earlier. It’s an impolitic question and one that would have seemed absurd in almost any other circumstance," said Heilemann,...

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One reason Democrats seem so fixated on importing illegal immigrants and allowing their children to stay and become citizens may be the exodus from high-tax and traditionally Democratic states. Anecdotal evidence is usually not helpful in determining trends, but when stories begin to accumulate and sound the same attention must be paid. Two friends of mine, who are longtime California residents, recently decided to move from that highly taxed state to states with lower taxes. As much as they love California, they tell me, they can no longer afford to live there. United Van Lines' National Movers Study has for...