Free Republic

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Convicted former Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez is seeking more than $130,000 in unused sick and vacation time. Bart Halloran, Perez's attorney, has sent to Hartford's director of human resources asking the former mayor be paid for 1,200 hours of unused vacation and 768 of unused sick time. Perez was convicted of using a city contractor to have free work done at his home and could be going to prison. The former mayor's criminal conviction doesn't change the fact he was a city employee, said Saundra Kee Borges with the city's Corporation Counsel.

WINDSOR LOCKS, Conn. – Aerospace giant Hamilton Sundstrand will eliminate 300 union machinist jobs at its Windsor Locks plant. The work will shift to lower-cost production plants in Poland, Singapore and Arizona, said Daniel P. Coulom, a spokesman for Hamilton Sundstrand. The job losses will take place over the next few months and any forced layoffs won’t happen until late this year, Coulom said. ... The average wage of a union machinist at Hamilton Sundstrand is about $30 an hour, he said. Many of the workers have been with the company for decades Before these cuts, the machinists union represented...

This is called, of course, “eminent domain.” The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment allows the government to take private property for “public use,” so long as “just compensation” is paid. In the infamous 2005 Kelo decision, the Supreme Court held that “public use” could include, well, private use, so long as the new property owner paid more in taxes than the previous one. In other words, it allowed developers and the government to gang up on homeowners. The developer gets more land, the government gets more tax money. The only losers are the original owner and his property rights. A decade and...

BARKHAMSTED,Conn. -- A hybrid electric Chevrolet Volt believed to have sparked an overnight blaze in a garage in Barkhamsted last week, reignited again on Monday. The state fire marshal's office is investigating how the electric car parked at a Center Hill Road home caught fire Monday morning. Last week, homeowners Storm Connors and his wife, Dee, woke up to the sound of a smoke alarm around 4 a.m. The couple's garage, where they parked their new Chevrolet Volt hybrid, was on fire. Firefighters were able to put out the blaze. A firewall built between the home and the garage saved...

According to the typical liberal media narrative, those of us who have questioned President Obama's life documents are kooks. Nuts. Creeps. "Birthers." When Donald Trump raises issues with the birth certificate, members of the left, right, and center assume that he's doing so for political reasons and that there's no real story. They use the Old Jedi Mind Trick: "nothing to see here ... move along." There's only one problem. There's something to see here. There has been an enormous amount of misinformation with regard to Obama's life documents from well-meaning grassroots activists...to outright disinformation supplied by the Obama Administration...

With an average of 29 homicides a year since 2003, news of a fatal shooting in Hartford this month was not rare. News that a woman, 32-year-old Quiana Dismuke, was the victim was also not unheard of. But the fatal shooting of Dismuke outside her home on Edgewood Street stands out from other homicides in the city, experts say, because the suspect in her killing is another woman. "It's very atypical, what happened in Hartford," said Susan Koski, an assistant professor at Central Connecticut State University who teaches gender crime and gender justice. Get Our iPhone & BlackBerry Apps --...

Unions are taking hits from all sides. Membership has fallen to 11.8 percent of the workforce — 14.7 million people — with most unionized workers in the public sector. States like Wisconsin are stripping collective bargaining rights. Budget deficits have state and municipal leaders pressing public-sector unions for concessions. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy wants $1 billion in union concessions over two years. New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr., normally a pro-labor politician, laid off unionized police officers, municipal employees and teachers when concession talks stalled and the budget gap widened. And on a picket line in Orange, locked out workers...

On Sunday, the Empire State became the sixth state to top $4 for the average price of a gallon of gas, joining Alaska, California, Connecticut, Hawaii and Illinois, according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge. The average price of gas also rose to more than $4 per gallon in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.

NEW YORK – The average price of gasoline is now above $4 per gallon in five states, and it could rise to that level in New York and Washington, D.C., this weekend. For American drivers, the $4 mark is a grim reminder of tougher times. The last time gas prices were that high was in the summer of 2008, just before the economy went into a tailspin. Retail surveys suggest motorists are reacting to higher prices now by buying less fuel, yet the government expects pump prices to keep climbing this summer. The national average has increased for 24 straight...

BARKHAMSTED, Conn. -- Fire officials suspect an electric hybrid car may have sparked an overnight blaze in a garage in Barkhamsted on Center Hill Road. Homeowner Storm Connors and his wife, Dee, said they awoke to the sound of a smoke alarm around 4 a.m. The couple said they have lived in the home for nearly 40 years. They built it and raised their children there, so when the flames took over their attached garage Thursday morning, burning it down to its beams, the couple started to panic. They said they were worried they were going to lose their home...

HARTFORD — Dominion Energy officials said Wednesday they would spend “tens of millions of dollars” shutting down the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant the company owns in Waterford if Connecticut lawmakers impose a tax on electricity generators that would cost the utility $320 million a year. Officials with the Virginia company acknowledged there are other possible alternatives besides closing the plant, including a court challenge of the generation tax if it becomes law. But they insisted the company is not bluffing with its threat to close the plant and that a shutdown would cost the state $1.2 billion in both direct...

Don't let legislators and lobbyists compromise your right to defend yourself and your loved ones Contact Your Legislators and Members of the Judiciary Committee Today Legislation (SB 1094) that would ban the possession of any magazine (rifle, pistol or shotgun) capable of holding more than 10 rounds will be voted on in the Joint Committee on Judiciary this month. If this bill passes, law-abiding gun owners will have to begin surrendering their magazines by July, or face confiscation by the state police and a felony charge. Again, this proposal would not only ban the sale of these magazines, but would...

After hearing complaints from taxpayers during 17 town hall meetings, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is expected to announce changes in his tax package as early as Thursday that would increase taxes on the wealthy and help the middle class. Malloy is expected to drop his plans for eliminating the maximum $500 property tax credit that chiefly benefits middle-class homeowners, Capitol sources said. Instead, the level probably will be lowered to $300. To help pay for it, Malloy would propose changing the income levels at which tax hikes take effect for the highest earners. Higher tax rates would kick in at...

The Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled that the state can cut off medical assistance to legal noncitizens who have been in the country fewer than five years, clearing the way to implement a 2009 budget cut that had been stalled because of legal action. Since the 1996 federal welfare reform law, states have been prohibited from providing Medicaid coverage to noncitizens who had lived in the country fewer than five years. Beginning in 1997, Connecticut provided coverage with state funding to legal noncitizens who met the qualifications for Medicaid except for not having been in the country long enough. But...

Banks, other lenders and mortgage servicers do a better job of maintaining repossessed homes in predominantly white neighborhood than they do in African-American and Latino neighborhoods, according to a new report Monday that included Hartford and New Haven counties. The report, released by the National Fair Housing Alliance, could form the basis for an industry lawsuit by the alliance. The report didn't name lenders or servicers who were chronic offenders because the investigation is ongoing, and the alliance hopes the release of the report will call attention to the problem and spur changes. The alliance and three of its member...

Waterford is Connecticut's home of nuclear power. The town relies on the two reactors at Millstone for jobs and tax revenue. "I like Millstone, get power from it, and I have no problem with 'em," said Steve Byrne of Waterford. Still, after the havoc in Japan two state legislators wanted to give townspeople a forum to ask questions about safety at Millstone with officials of the plant's operator, Dominion. "I think you have to understand that in our community, in Waterford, we've hosted the power plant of course for decades and are very used to conversations like this," said Rep....

NY, NY: A 23-year-old former Greenwich (CT) woman was stabbed to death inside her Lower East Side apartment early Sunday morning. Police said she was nearly decapitated and they have arrested her boyfriend. Police found Sarah Coit in the living room of her third floor apartment at 63 Clinton St. shortly after 2:30 a.m., suffering from multiple stab wounds. Detectives arrested Raul Barrera, 33, who lived with the her and charged him with second-degree murder.

As the esteemed Ivy League university that taught five US presidents, 18 Nobel laureates and countless captains of industry, Yale has one of the loftiest names in education. But the £25,000-a-year alma mater of Bill Clinton and both George Bushes has been plunged into a sexual harassment scandal that threatens to drag its reputation through the mud. The US government has launched an investigation into complaints by 16 students at the Connecticut college. They allege a string of serious assaults and rampages by gangs of men that went unpunished. Yale's management has allowed the cultivation of a "sexually hostile environment",...

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said Friday that the state's pension system is not "sustainable'' under the current system. The pension system has been underfunded for years, and the fund paid out $1.2 billion per year for 43,000 beneficiaries in 2010. Pensions are currently a topic of discussion on the closed-door talks as Malloy is trying to obtain $2 million in concessions and savings from the unions over the next two years. Public records, compiled into a database by the Hartford-based Yankee Institute, show that 378 retired state workers received pensions last year of more than $100,000. "If I had known...

Waterbury, Conn (WTNH) - The first civil trial in the case of a Connecticut doctor suspected of sexually abusing hundreds of children got underway Tuesday.The defendant, Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center, where Doctor George Reardon worked, is accused of failing to protect the alleged victims.On this first day, jurors already had to see disturbing child pornography pictures, and they are likely to see many more, as John Doe #2 tries to prove that St Francis Hospital failed to protect him from Doctor George Reardon.Reardon died in 1988, but dozens claim that as children they took part in a growth...