Posts Tagged ‘Richard Blumenthal’

June 10 roundup

  • Compensation awards to soldiers in the UK: £161,000 for losing leg and arm, but £186,896 for sex harassment? [Telegraph]
  • Judge in banana pesticide fraud case says threats have been made against her and against witnesses [AP, L.A. Times]
  • Teacher plans to sue religious school that fired her for having premarital sex [Orlando Sentinel]
  • Now sprung from hoosegow, class-actioneer Lerach on progressive lecture circuit and “living in luxury” [Stoll, Carter Wood at PoL and ShopFloor (Campaign for America’s Future conference), San Diego Reader via Pero]
  • Connecticut law banning “racial ridicule” has palpable constitutional problems, you’d think, but has resulted in many prosecutions and some convictions [Volokh, Gideon]
  • Gone with the readers: newsmagazines, metro newspapers facing fewer libel suits [NY Observer] More: Lyrissa Lidsky, Prawfs.
  • Having Connecticut press comfortably in his pocket helped Blumenthal turn the tables against NY Times [Stein/HuffPo] Must not extend to the New Britain Herald News, though;
  • Interview with editor Brian Anderson of City Journal [Friedersdorf, Atlantic] I well remember being there as part of the first issue twenty years ago.

WSJ: “The other Blumenthal scandal”

An editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal (paywall) quotes me on the subject:

The AG has challenged the verdict, but the Kolb case [Gina Kolb, formerly Gina Malapanis] fits a pattern that the Cato Institute’s Walter Olson calls “bullying, legally ill-founded ventures into litigation.” From his leading role in the tobacco lawsuits of the 1990s to trying to repossess bonuses to AIG executives, Mr. Blumenthal has cultivated a reputation as the Eliot Spitzer of Connecticut.

For more on some of the cases that have brought Blumenthal his reputation as a bully and grandstander, start here, here, and here. And William Saletan at Slate is out with the piece I wish I’d written comparing Blumenthal’s repeated misstatements on his service record with the sorts of misrepresentations for which he’s gone after marketers and other businesses over the years.

For some light on how Blumenthal happened to obtain a photo opportunity in a VFW hall to denounce his critics, check out this post by Ronald Winter.

May 18 roundup

May 5 roundup

Richard Blumenthal vs. Craigslist

The “grandstanding” Connecticut attorney general, notes Mike Masnick at TechDirt, is now publicly decrying Craigslist for turning a profit from sex ads. Why is it turning a profit? Well, the ads used to be free, but Craigslist started charging fees after Blumenthal himself (with fellow AGs) demanded that it do so, the idea being that a credit card trail would scare off some illegal users and make it easier for police to crack down on others.

Blumenthal, a longstanding bete noire of this site, is now running for the U.S. Senate seat held by the departing Chris Dodd. More: New York Times on his Senate bid (rough start, “Martha Coakley in pants”).

March 4 roundup

Richard Blumenthal: guns, tobacco, and grandstanding AGs

I was a guest this morning on Ray Dunaway’s show on WTIC 1080 (Hartford) to discuss Democrat Richard Blumenthal’s bid to replace Chris Dodd in the U.S. Senate. I’ve been covering the Connecticut attorney general’s legal record for years here at Overlawyered as well as at my other site, Point of Law. For details on his bullying, legally ill-founded ventures into litigation against gun makers and dealers, check here, here, here, here, etc., while for the aromatic tobacco-fee angles, you can start here and here. For the time he sued his own state client, see this 2002 post (& welcome Instapundit, New York Post readers).

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