Connecticut: Democratic Politicians Support Federal Mandate Requiring Catholic Hospitals to Perform Abortions

Via Fr. Z...

On Sunday, some Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate said they'd favor the concept of a federal law requiring even Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. 

Now, the state's Catholic bishops are objecting.
Connecticut's Catholic bishops—including Bishop William Lori, who announced in March that he is leaving the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport to become archbishop of the Baltimore Archdiocese—have issued a statement expressing their dismay after all five Democratic candidates said during Sunday's "Face the State" debate that they would support legislation forcing Catholic hospitals to perform abortions.

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Connecticut prepares to abolish the death penalty

Despite public support for the death penalty, Connecticut may become the next state to abolish capital punishment, with lawmakers taking up the vote Wednesday.

Legislative action was delayed last year amid the high-profile prosecution of a death penalty case involving a brutal home invasion that left a mother and her two daughters dead. But now the Senate is set to vote on legislation that would replace the death penalty with life without parole.

"In the state of Connecticut, the death penalty is randomly applied," Senate President Donald E. Williams, Jr., a Democrat, told msnbc.com. "Police chiefs in recent surveys across the country have said that it's the least effective tool to deter violent crime and it's applied in a discriminatory way, whether it’s racially, economically or geographically.”

" ... The death penalty requires perfection, and that’s just simply not possible in an imperfect judicial system.”

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The photo at the linked news story is almost enough to make me rethink my opposition to capital punishment.

Connecticut conservatives sue to block budget

HARTFORD, Conn. — Connecticut conservatives said Friday that they planned to file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the newly adopted state budget, alleging spending exceeds revenue in violation of the state's 1992 balanced budget amendment.

The plaintiffs said they would file the lawsuit by the end of the day in Hartford Superior Court, seeking to overturn this week's approval of the two-year, $40.1 billion budget by Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the Democrat-controlled legislature. A Malloy spokesman denied the allegations.

The lawsuit will claim the budget violates the state constitution's balanced budget amendment, because it includes a $2 billion shortfall that the Malloy administration hopes to fill with labor savings, including worker concessions. GOP officials say because administration talks with labor unions are pending, the budget isn't balanced.

Tom Scott, a former Republican state senator and conservative activist, said the Milford-based Roger Sherman Liberty Center conservative think-tank he co-founded is a plaintiff, along with Republican state Rep. Christopher Coutu, GOP state Sen. Len Suzio and Litchfield businessman and former congressional candidate Mark Greenberg. Coutu, Suzio and Greenberg joined Scott at Friday's announcement at the Hartford courthouse.

"They have to be stopped and their reckless behavior needs to be reined in by a judge," Scott said, referring to state Democratic leaders.

Scott noted that state voters approved the balanced budget amendment after the state income tax was created following a bitter political fight.

"Even those that voted for the income tax recognized that the people of Connecticut expected some protections against reckless spending, wildly out-of-balance budgets and massive tax increases with no thought to the economy and the rights of voters," Scott said. "This constitutional provision was designed to protect the taxpayers against the very thing that happened this week."

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