After Other States’ Moves, Connecticut Is Still Working on Stricter Gun Law

In January, New York passed the first comprehensive gun legislation in the wake of the killings. On Wednesday, Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado signed bills mandating sweeping new restrictions on the sales of firearms and ammunition there.

But in Connecticut, which became the epicenter of the debate over guns, legislative leaders have yet to introduce a bill to address gun violence and mental health issues. They continue to meet daily, and now expect introduction around the first week in April.

The result, to some, has been a perplexing process in a state traumatized and galvanized by the killings, where opinion polls show overwhelming support for new gun legislation, and where Democrats control the governor’s mansion and both houses of the General Assembly and thus have the ability to pass whatever they want. But legislators say that given the state’s relatively moderate politics, with a culture of bipartisan lawmaking and a new House speaker who made a commitment that both parties would be involved in writing gun legislation, the process has played out in a largely familiar way.

Some Democrats, including Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, and gun control advocates have expressed frustration with the pace. But the House speaker, Brendan Sharkey, a Democrat presiding over his first session, said he was confident that Democratic and Republican legislators could agree soon on comprehensive gun legislation. And, citing a statement by New York’s governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, that his state’s new limits on ammunition magazines were unworkable and needed to be modified, Mr. Sharkey said Connecticut legislators were wise to take the time to get their legislation right.

“My mantra at the beginning was it is important to act quickly, but it is more important to act intelligently,” Mr. Sharkey said in an interview.

He added, “I’m personally very confident that what we produce will give Connecticut the strongest gun safety legislation in the country when we’re done.”

After the tragedy, Connecticut created a somewhat confusing process, with one commission established by Governor Malloy to research guns, violence and mental health issues and a separate task force set up by the legislature.

Republicans and Democrats on the legislative task force agreed on many elements of a gun-control package but offered separate reports. Both sides called for universal background checks, greater safe-storage requirements and more requirements for buying ammunition. Only Democrats called for expanding the existing assault-weapons ban to cover a broader array of weapons and for a ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

But Democratic and Republican leaders indicated that the fact they were still talking was evidence that those two elements could be part of bipartisan legislation. And Larry Cafero, the House Republican leader, said passing legislation roughly four months after the shootings would be extraordinary given the complexity of the issues.

Colorado’s legislation came eight months after the mass murder in Aurora, Colo., last summer, Mr. Sharkey noted.

Alluding to New York’s experience, Mr. Cafero said, “To be the first out of the blocks and get it wrong is not a success as far as I’m concerned.”

Legislative leaders have largely kept their deliberations private. But one aspect discussed is whether to have multiple bills, with one able to gain broad support and another dealing with issues like assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines that would have a harder time attracting bipartisan agreement. That approach now seems unlikely, people close to the deliberations said.

If there is support for a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines, the next question is whether it should apply just to their sale or also to their possession, meaning that those people who now own them would have to dispose of them. The commission appointed by Mr. Malloy, in an interim report, recommended the ban of the “sale, possession or use” of magazines with more than 10 rounds.

Mr. Cafero last week also sharply criticized the State Police for a briefing about the Sandy Hook case it delivered this month at a law enforcement convention in New Orleans. The Daily News, quoting someone who had attended the convention, reported on details of the crime that have not been disclosed to legislators or the victims’ families. Among the details was that the gunman, Adam Lanza, had compiled a large spreadsheet of mass murders and the weapons used in them.

Mr. Cafero said lawmakers should have all appropriate information as they work on legislation before they finish.

Mr. Malloy echoed Mr. Cafero’s disappointment with the leak, and directed the Office of the Chief State’s Attorney to release additional information on the investigation by next Friday.

But, perhaps indicating some limits to bipartisanship and frustration with the progress made, the governor said in a statement that “the vast majority of people in Connecticut can agree on some simple, common-sense things we can do — right now” and that legislators should by now have all the information they need to proceed.

“What more does Mr. Cafero need to know before he’s finally ready to take action?” Mr. Malloy said.

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Terry McAuliffe and the Other Green Party

By Ben Werschkul and Mac William BishopTimesCast Politics: Terry MacAuliffe: Mark Leibovich on ‘The Macker.’

Terry McAuliffe, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is starting a company that makes little electric cars. On a sweltering Friday in early July, GreenTech Automotive unveiled its signature vehicle — the MyCar — at a plant opening in the North Mississippi town of Horn Lake. McAuliffe was puttering backstage before the event with his pals Bill Clinton and Haley Barbour, the former governor of Mississippi and archetypal Republican lobbyist.

McAuliffe the Democrat (left) and Barbour the Republican, share a laugh.

The holding area was crowded and somewhat frenzied. People designated as V.I.P.’s kept streaming through, many in from China, where GreenTech is building an 18-million-square-foot facility. They arrived, dozens of them, via a Harrah’s shuttle bus with a big “Fun in Store for Those Who Ride” painted on the side. As Clinton prepared to go onstage, I asked him if he would ever consider buying a car from McAuliffe, who he once marveled could “talk an owl out of a tree.” “Absolutely, I would buy a new car from Terry,” he told me. “But a used car? I am not so sure about a used car.” He laughed and wheeled around and repeated the line to Barbour (“Listen to what I just told him . . . ”), while slapping his fleshy back.

McAuliffe, 55, is eager to be known, foremost, as a businessman and an entrepreneur, and not so much as a political moneyman. That will take some doing. He is “the greatest fund-raiser in the history of the universe,” Al Gore once said, in keeping with the hyperbole often heaped on McAuliffe, known widely as the Macker, by the politicians who love/need him. McAuliffe, who is in fact quite hard to dislike and is himself a peerless exaggerator, has collected legions of friends over the years. “There are 18,000 names in my Rolodex,” he boasted to me earlier that morning over coffee. When I pressed him, he revised the number upward, to 18, 632. The acknowledgments section of his memoir, “What a Party!” runs six single-spaced pages and includes the names of every member of the Democratic National Committee during his time as the party chairman. In a five-minute span of conversation, McAuliffe distilled for me the extent of his psychological complexity: 1) He pinches himself all the time because he’s so lucky. 2) He likes to think out of the box. 3) He swings for the fences every day. 4) At the end of the day, it is what it is.

If McAuliffe’s trademark is fund-raising, his principal identity is as a Professional Best Friend to Bill Clinton. The subtitle of “What a Party!” might as well be “Let Me Tell You Another Story About Me and Bill Clinton.” (One involved South Korean Intelligence agents thinking McAuliffe and Clinton were more than just friends.) If he is not dropping the name of the 42nd president, the Macker is telling you that he just got off the phone with Bill Clinton, or that, what do you know, President Clinton is actually on the phone right now, and can you please excuse him for just a second (“Hello, Mr. President”). And if Mr. President is not on the phone, there is a good chance he is, as today, close by.

Clinton’s voice is softer and throatier than you remember. He has lost considerable weight, evident to anyone who has seen him in photographs (once known as the “Big Dog,” he’s now more “Vegan Dog”). But it is jarring nonetheless to see the svelte version of the former president up close, especially since his head is as big as it ever was — a fact accentuated by the ruddy brightness of his face and pronounced cheekbones. Encountering Clinton these days is like meeting a skinny older guy who is wearing a Bill Clinton mask.

McAuliffe’s MyCar debut is the culmination of years of planning for a firm that is trying to reinvent the automobile. Unsaid was that he also hoped it would reinvent Terry McAuliffe as he approaches his own probable run for governor of Virginia in 2013 — something he tried in 2009, losing in the primary to a relative political unknown named Creigh Deeds. GreenTech could be the vehicle, so to speak, for McAuliffe to escape his lane as a political rainmaker, carnival barker and Clinton appendage and reposition himself as “a Virginia businessman fighting for Democratic causes and creating jobs,” as his Web site says. It hardly mattered that a lot of these jobs would be in Mississippi, not Virginia, because of a package of tax and infrastructure incentives McAuliffe was able to secure from Barbour, who himself made the successful transition from operative-businessman to public office when he was elected governor of Mississippi in 2003.

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Obama and Fellow Liberals Heckled -- by Other Liberals (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | Remember when new DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Shultz told US News how really cool it will be when Obama reminds people during his campaign of all the things he has done for women since he's been in office and how her imaginary Republican "war on women" will backfire on the GOP in the 2012 election? Yes, the outreach to women during the campaign "will be unprecedented" in little Debbie's mind.

Well, it has backfired all right, but not quite in the unparalleled manner in which little Debbie predicted. According to the Washington Times, when White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer told liberal activists at the Netroots Nation conference in Minnesota that the president championed an equal-pay law, the moderator replied, "Frankly we're a little sick of hearing about that one."

Ooops.

Additionally, less than 24 hours earlier, White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley got an ear-full from business leaders of the National Association of Manufacturers in Washington about the Obama administrations unnecessary interference and burdensome regulations in the industry. As Mr. Daley listened to the volley of complaints, he was left with no other suitable response than to admit, "Sometimes you can't defend the indefensible."

White House spokesman Jay Carney's feeble attempt at damage control was, "You have to understand that he [ Mr. Daley ] went in there with no prior knowledge about the cases that were put before him." Loosely translated, Mr. Carney was informing us that, although they sent him to the event as an official White House spokesperson on the issue, Mr. Daley didn't know what he was talking about.

"But obviously the [examples] that sounded bad," Mr. Carney fumbled further, "he thought, you know, sounded bad, and he said so."

At an appearance in Miami, FL, President Obama tried in vain to recapture the glory days of his 2008 campaign, back when he was an un-vetted enigma in whom people could cut and paste their most cherished visions of Hope and Change. According to a report by Politico, the air of the 2,200-seat concert hall at the Adrienne Arsht Center for Performing Arts was even filled with the same old soundtrack, including "City of Blinding Lights" by U2 , the president used as his 2008 anthem. The only thing different from 2008 was the size of the crowd.

"The expectation was 900," a Democratic official said, seeming to find some sort of success in the fact that 980 tickets were sold. So, if they were only expecting 900, why book a 2,200 seat venue? Was it to ensure Obama's ability to obtain that ominous God-like reverb , which has become somewhat of a not-so-subtle aspect of the president's speeches over the years and noticed by more than a few people?

Then there was the man who heckled Obama about slacking on that promise about stopping AIDS. Of course, in the spirit of supporting an individual's civil rights for which liberals are so famous, the man was quickly silenced and ushered from the hall. Strangely, officials in Obama's administration seem to think the rise of criticisms from their base will ultimately somehow prove "helpful" in the president's re-election efforts. Obama supporters feel otherwise.

NPRreported on the discussion held by Netroots Nation called "What To Do When The President's Just Not That Into You."

"I honest to God thought I was voting for these guys and that it was going to be the first time in my lifetime that I'm finally in a position of power," John Aravosis, whined. John, a gay-rights blogger on AMERICAblog, thought he would be working with the White House on a regular basis, saying, 'OK what could we do this year on gay stuff?' Wouldn't it be cool, oh, 'Don't ask, don't tell,' this is great.' "

"It's like the president's not our boyfriend anymore," Daily Kos editor Joan McCarter pouted.

"You're going to have to knock on doors," Mr. Obama said in a more-than-half-empty concert hall in Miami. Although he left out the "get in their faces" and "argue with them" message he did remind them, "You're going to have to talk to all your friends and neighbors, and you're going to have to talk to the naysayers."

Yeah. Good luck with that.

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