This was one of those weeks which may be bound by the weight of human history to just be rotten. These past seven days represent the collective anniversaries of Hitler's birthday, the shootings at Columbine (1999), the massacre at Waco (1993), the response at Oklahoma City (1995), and now, the shooting spree at Virginia Tech.

 

That's a lot of bodies, and I haven't even talked about the deadliest week in Iraq in a long time. They had like 20 Virginia Tech's since last Sunday. It's all so numbing.

 

Perhaps its just the media cycle that makes this week seem more brutal than any other of the 52. But now we have another reason to dread its passage.

 

What is it about these last seven days as part of the annual cycle that lend themselves to this bleeding piece of earth? Anthony in Shakespeare's Julius Caeser bids us that we should not be "meek and gentle with these butchers!"

 

This week, I found myself thinking about the dead, from a moment in Oklahoma City I had in the summer of 1997. My dad and sister and I drove cross country, back to Connecticut from San Francisco, and we had an opportunity to visit the spot of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

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I t's too nice out to be in front of the computer. Get outside and live a little. But first, do yourself a favor. Power yourself up a big bowl of super sugar cereal, pull up a chair and dig into this classic Tom & Jerry number.

On the same YouTube page where this is, tons of other Tom & Jerry live, too. But this is among the best.

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I have a dream. And I’m not stoned. I want to rent 2,000 square feet of ground level retail on Pratt Street, and in giant green neon letters above the storefront, advertise "Marijuana."

 

You’ll walk in, buy a coffee, a cup of tea, or a fruit smoothie. After you’ve wet your whistle, you can step to the other counter, where your friendly host will show you the evening’s supply of weed. Once you’ve selected an indica or sativa, you can retire with a few friends into comfy chairs and blow bong hits in peace.

 

Yep, I’m openly advocating the legalization of herb here in Hartford. Conservatives like Bill Buckley have been encouraging this for years.

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This is a conversation between two Kens. One Ken is Kenneth Curran, the campaign manager for the Perez for Mayor '07 re-election effort. The other Ken is me.

 

We two Kens sat down Friday, April 6, 2007 at Tisane's in Hartford to discuss the past, present and future.

 

We two Kens have our similarities. We both grew up in Litchfield County: Ken C. in Bethlehem, me, I grew up down the street in Watertown. We both went to Holy Cross High School in Waterbury: Ken C. graduated in 1993, I was class of 1990.

 

Our paths diverged there, although we added energy to the same fire in 2006, when I worked for Ned Lamont's campaign for a short time, and Ken C. was working for Joe Lieberman.

 

We two Kens crossed paths again through Ken Curran's fiancé, Katie, who I attend law school with, and sat next to in a class last semester. Katie and I compared notes on various campaign activities. When she told me Ken would be working with Perez, I knew an interview was a must.

 

We two Kens enjoyed this conversation, and I hope everyone out there in internet-land does, too.

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Mayor Eddie Perez continues to campaign for re-election on the taxpayer dime with yet another four-color Mayor's Update mailer to Hartford residents, which he can legally do until three months before the primary.

 

Whatever the statutory time limits, Perez continues to push ethical boundaries. But that's not the worst of it. Donating to his re-election campaign seems to be the cost of doing business for Hartford contractors.

 

Let's look behind the curtain on a very sloppy April 10, 2007 campaign finance report to see who is privately financing the Perez for Mayor 2007 campaign. Eddie has about $100,675 in the bank, and in the past three months, his juggernaut raised $75,750 from 157 individual donors and $7,805 from nine Political Action Committees.

 

His next closest competitor in the fundraising category, I. Charles Matthews, has some $40,000 in the bank, with $30,000 of that coming from I. Charles himself. The rest of the pack is far behind.

 

Thus, it should come as no surprise to anyone that 76 out of Perez's 157 contributors do business with the city, and they are responsible for $36,750 of the $75,750 total this report. Some of them are listed as having donated in March 2003, which seems kind of strange, because Perez was re-elected in November, 2003. Some of them don't have a year listed at all.

 

The average donation, then, is $482.48.

 

"Oh my God," said one political observer. "Sounds like pinstriped patronage to me."

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This video demonstrates how a congressman should respond when one of their pacifist constituents is placed on a Homeland Security-funded watch list of potential violent threats, arrested and jailed.

 

It took a guy from Ohio Sunday night in Litchfield to show me what a federal elected official should have said to me in response to my arrest and detention. This same Congressman from Ohio wants to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney.

 

In front of the camera, Congressman Dennis Kucinich told me to send him information about my arrest, with times and dates, so he can begin investigation. I can proudly announce that the arrest report is in his email inbox.

 

During Kucinich's speech, he assured the assembled Nutmeggers that the culture of fear was toast in his administration.

 

"As a member of Congress on the Government Oversight Committee, I intend to get some answers about why you were treated the way you were treated," Kucinich told the crowd.

 

"In a Kucinich administration freedom of speech is going to be prized, and we're going towork to repeal the PATRIOT Act to make sure that people understand that we're going to get government off the spying and the lying and all the other things government shouldn't be doing and doing the things they should, which relate to education and health care and jobs and housing," Kucinich said to applause.

 

Keep in mind that not one of the seven members of Connecticut's Congressional delegation has reached out to me about abuse of Homeland Security dollars that were involved in my arrest.

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Democrats, fear not, you won't have to support a pro-war candidate for president in 2008, like you all did in 2004, according to Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich.

 

"I expect to be the nominee because I am the only peace candidate. The American people should not have a nominee who is not opposed to war," Kucinich told a crowd of more than 50 people at a fundraiser Sunday night at the home of Audrey Blondin, a former Litchfield Selectwoman and candidate for Secretary of the State.

 

In a short half-hour speech and question and answer session, which he curtailed because of a CNN appearance in New York City, Kucinich explained the stark differences between him and the Democratic frontrunners, and he laid out a progressive, green vision of the future.

 

"The Democrats can't have a nominee who brought us into this preemptive war," Kucinich said. "While I expect to be the nominee, I don't expect there will be many people who will support a position other than what I am taking."

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"This is a call to action for Connecticut Citizens," the flyer breathlessly read. "Our goal will be to 'Enact immediate cuts in carbon emissions, and pledge an 80% reduction by 2050.'"

 

Saturday afternoon, about 200 hardy souls dedicated to that goal of planetary preservation gathered at the northeast corner of Bushnell Park for a Step It Up rally, one of almost a dozen across Connecticut and one of 1,400 across the country.

 

Considering that there were Step It Up events in Enfield, New Hartford, and Portland, the turnout for Hartford was good. Participants could learn about biodiesel, clean energy, or buy compact flourescent lightbulbs for $1 apiece.

 

As I watched the woman sell the lightbulbs seemingly by the case, I pondered the theory of diffusion of innovation, which posits that social movements occur in five phases: innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%) and laggards (16%).

 

And I wondered, with regards to clean energy and global warming, where are we on the chart?

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Christine Stuart over at CTNewsjunkie proves why she needs to keep on hammering away at her reporting (and why we need to support her financially wherever possible).

 

Yesterday, she and Colin Poitras of the Hartford Courant attended the same Judiciary Committee hearing of the CT State Legislature. She had the bill about me. He didn't.

 

Together, they covered the hearing from top to bottom, and that is the role of a free press. This is a valuable lesson as to why we need more than one main newsgathering organization, because one reporter will never create the whole picture.

 

Christine reported this:

The Judiciary Committee voted 32 to 9 in favor of a bill that would give a legislative committee oversight of law enforcement activities and lists like the one Ken Krayeske showed up on before his arrest at Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s inaugural parade.

Judiciary Committee Co-Chairman Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven, said law enforcement must articulate why they think a person is going to commit a crime. In Krayeske’s situation one of the criteria state police used for considering him a threat to the governor was the fact that he was “campaign manager for the Green Party,” Lawlor said quoting the two-page color brochure state police distributed to local police.

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