This breaks my heart. I know it is not unknown for this to happen (selling the metal for scrap - the vendors should know better when it is obviously stolen merchandise) but the desecration of graves is inhumane and heartless. I hope those apprehended have their consciousnesses raised with a little prison time and a lot of community service. View Comment

He dances! He sings! He does the cha-cha! Give me a boring numbers cruncher who can administrate City Hall and work with the City Council for the benefit of all Norwalk Citizens. This is obviously a political gesture to make Moccia look good during a campaign. So transparent: now if he could only make his government that way. View Comment

I have maintained this same argument for a long time and absolutely agree with you. Take it zone by zone, but bury these lines already. What IS costing CL&P so much is exactly what you are stating: importing crews from all over the United States and Canada every time this aging infrastructure fails at the slightest wind. They need to examine the places, including Europe, that have made burying their lines part of the process of having any electrical utilities at all. What we have looks and is primitive and will continue to be problematic at the slightest wind. I also object to this being an essentially privatized service with exorbitant salaries and shareholders. It is just like medicine in this respect: when you monetize for profit, a service that should be available to all becomes cost prohibitive because profits are more important than people. It just should not be so with medical care and it should not be so with electricity. View Comment

Yes, thank you. View Comment

Little timmy, there is no conspiracy, as the NRA would like you to believe, to take away your rights to own guns. Rather, there is a more select approach regarding which guns the citizenry need/should have. Given the capability of some of the automatic weapons mentioned on numerous blogs, I think this is reasonable. Do you vote? A right for which many sacrificed their lives, BTW. Those people governing us in Washington and Hartford, the constituency put into office - that's us. If you believe your beliefs are somehow going to protect us from BIG GOVERNMENT, think again. It is a reflection on you and your feelings about others that sympathizing with your view is taken as moral righteousness and religious. You project amazing amounts of fear and paranoia that don't make a whole lot of sense. I am sorry about that but have you considered this might be why people don't like reading what you write? On another thread, Little Timmy, I started out in conversation with a gun owner who was spouting - just like you. We ended up persevering with each other and I found out a lot of useful information about gun ownership and gun regulations. I think you are smarter than you write here. If you insist on mocking or believing in your own righteous way that you are right and everybody else is wrong (this makes you angry according to your post above) you will be writing to the wind. Stick to the topic, do not name call, do not mock, be reasonable in describing why you think robocalls to Newtown residents are OK or not OK. You might get somewhere in what you post! View Comment

At last, a sensible comment with insight. View Comment

The fear you express in this comment is obvious. The problem is the black and white analysis of this issue when there are many shades of grey. You are assuming I am anti-gun. You are assuming wrong. I grew up with guns and believe in their efficacy in the right situations. I do not believe the 2nd Amendment gives the right to anyone, willy-nilly, to be armed like a platoon with all of the accompanying acoutrements. The NRA would have you believe that because of the latter view, I am somehow "anti-gun." No, I am anti-gun companies who are foisting themselves all over our communities making money with the tactic that more guns make better lives for everyone. It just isn't so - everyone who is a gun owner is not a "good guy with a gun" standing at the ready to save themselves, their families or their neighbors. Another part of the NRA message? Cops don't do their jobs. They never are where they need to be in time - the answer? More guns! I think this does a tremendous disservice to all of those people who put their lives on the line to protect our communities. I am not willing to go there. And bless you if you are so naive to believe that a gun will make you live longer. I don't really believe you believe that. What are you going to do when you get some kind of disease? Shoot it? Anything is possible and a gun does not give you longer life. View Comment

I think this is the next wave of tactics from the NRA to members: "get over it already", "no big deal", "too bad you lost your kid but it's time to move on." Think about it: who does this serve? If you didn't guess the NRA, I am guessing you have been so convinced of their ideology you have no discernment left. I am told you are a troll on this site and others but I choose to respect whatever opinion you throw out there as long as we can civilly disagree. View Comment

These articles and that news story came as a result of the full cooperation of the victims of the tragedy. That is not exploitation, that is education. I have been a gun owner in the past and believe in the rights of citizens to carry guns, with reservations. The NRA is exploiting YOU by the very companies they lobby for: gun companies that are making lots and lots of money off of peoples' fear. What a shame and a stain on what good lobbying can be and do for our constituency and government. That you can have such equanimity about this situation is a good thing but not everyone can be and need these long months to be in grief. People express it differently and clearly differently from you. It's all to be respected - you do not have to expose yourself to any of it so skip it and "enjoy". View Comment

I am sorry for your loss. If you think more guns will solve a gun problem, however, you are mistaken. Life is not safe. The world is not safe. You will die someday just like me, just like we all do. The NRA will never in a million years protect you from that. View Comment

Little Timmy, before you make another comment, read the article. The recipients of these phone calls made multiple requests of the NRA to be de-listed from the automatic phone calls and STILL received them. These people were not "parading their kids" but, rather, trying to protect them. This is not drama, this is real life which you seem to have a minimal acquaintance with. Really, have you ever lost any one, especially a child, suddenly and violently? Not drama, real life. It hurts. The remaining children deserve to be protected, their privacy unviolated by the likes of the NRA at dinnertime. View Comment

little timmy, clearly you did not really read my comment. Everyone's pain is to be respected and I express my sympathy to Paige. I did not condemn Paige's issue but, rather, asked her to examine the circumstances affecting traumatized families and children from a shooting with receiving letters, over which there is control but, I realize, upsetting. There's a difference. When you think about it, Paige minimizes these families' pain by saying, basically, "get over it". Grief is different for everyone and I don't think that is quite what these families can do and it is an unfair burden to expect them to while receiving NRA phone calls at dinner time. That Paige is able to just toss some letters out in spite of her sorrow is lucky for her - these families do not have that same privilege. I know you are meant to be insulting, but no one lives in a golden tower least of all me. View Comment

Really, Paige? I am sorry for your mother-in-law's death but now replace her with a six year old blasted to smithereens by a sick person with a gun and, instead of a year gone by, a matter of months passed, and you receive repeated phone calls during dinner with your children who attended the school where this atrocity takes place sitting there and a voice from the NRA comes over the answering machine - not a letter over which you have control (recycling anyone) but a phone call, unwanted and unwarranted to a traumatized family. To compare your situation to that is sad - you can't see the difference? A child being blasted is somehow equivalent to bank letters? Now be blase about that. View Comment

Clearly another person who did not read the linked article: these calls were being received by non-NRA members, people who requested at least twice to be removed from the call list and were ignored and not welcoming to the NRA message in any way, shape or form. These people were linked to the tragedy at Sandy Hook and were afraid for their children hearing the NRA message. Have any of you any respect? They were protecting THEIR KIDS FROM YOU as is their RIGHT!!! View Comment

Ken P Jr., Clearly you did not read the Huffington Post article link in this one. These calls were received by parents whose children attended Sandy Hook. By people who had been indirectly linked to a catastrophic event in their town. They made it clear they were NOT members of the NRA. But, the NRA has been carpet bombing CT with their propaganda to sell their "mission", trying to convince people who have lost so much to guns that guns are the answer. I know you think so by your many posts but in this here United States we have the RIGHT to disagree with you. That does not make us liberal, black, white, brown or purple: just in disagreement with you. It is time for you to grow up and understand that adults respectfully do disagree about very important topics like this one. The NRA does not seem to get that and neither do you. View Comment

Lisa Thomson, I look forward to your additional elucidation on these five bad habits. I concur with all of them and have found not only process but behaviors astoundingly puerile. Does the leadership just not know how important their role is? View Comment

Cruel, Vicious, Unnecessary and totally NRA. View Comment

meatball - I, likewise, am aware of the heinous organization the FDA represents particularly in the development of durable medical equipment that makes surgical practice so much less invasive and recovery quicker. Often, the tools that MD's use, like laparoscopic or micro surgeries, took years and years to pass through the approval process at the FDA while being tested and used on humans successfully in Europe. I find some of what they have allowed versus what they have "held up" in terms of medical practice criminal e.g., medications not yet thoroughly tested for side effects but representing huge profits released and humans becoming the monetary guinea pigs. Big pharma and the FDA work hand in hand. Likewise, I am very familiar with the effects Monsanto has had upon big-ag and their tactics. I believe it was last year in the Hudson River Valley that organic farmers' crops were being contaminated by the pollen from pea fields, the pea seeds being genetically modified with the so-called "killer gene" that does not allow regeneration of crops by seed collection for the following year. (One of many reprehensible practices on behalf of Monsanto's profit margin.) "It is perhaps significant to note however that in approximately 80 percent of these types of violent incidents, the perpetrator has been taking psychiatric medication." Can you please provide a citation for this number? Prisons have become de facto mental hospitals but, I would think, violent incidents would occur due to withdrawal or not taking medication that has a leveling behavioral effect. I think I must have been unclear about the "team" approach for administering psychotropic medications. The "team" is the patient and their doctor, the latter not just a dispensary of meds but a monitor of their effects. Honestly, MD's who dispense (and we know that prescription medications are abused more than illicit drugs countrywide) without monitoring of effects are simply drug pushers. A harsh statement, I know, but I have seen so much of this that it not only frightens me, it makes me angry. Prescription pads should be secured like guns because, ultimately, if a human being with a brain gets the wrong kind, wrong amount or combination of medications it is like sticking a gun to the head and is well documented in leading to violent behavior or self-destructive behavior and suicide. (I am not quantifying the numbers here because I think most are underestimates.) Orthomolecular Medicine is not a new paradigm to me. I am afraid it is as subjective to quackery as main stream medicine and that is too bad. You are right about research dollars and medical training and it is a sort of Catch 22. OM needs more research yet the very research it needs to qualify it as a mainstream practice is not available to it. (Although NIH has an "Alternative Medicine" division now that is well funded.) While I also am aware of the lack of patenting for "natural" substances, big-pharma has certainly co-opted this to their advantage by selling lines of vitamins and micro-nutrient formulas much to my disgust but not to my surprise. Medicine does not necessarily suppress symptoms but, as far as can be ascertained, redirects or re-paths the neurotransmissions that cause the symptoms. (In a lot of cases, they do not know why whole classes of medications work.) The brain changes just like the rest of the body with environmental factors especially stress - this is why medicines for the brain need to be monitored and not simply administered. Unfortunately and to the detriment of the reputation of psychiatry, there are many doctors out there who simply pull out their pad and prescribe based on a standardized practice of presenting symptoms and not on the individual's needs. So, I see it this way and I am a lucky person/patient I know: get an MD that will be open to nutrient deficiencies and tests for them. I take Mg and D as a result of this as well as Melatonin to supplement sleep meds. I also take several psychotropic meds that are carefully monitored by my MD (I keep charts.) I have been through an OrthoM program at one time (not successful long term) as well as other approaches to brain wiring malfunctions and have learned to bridge programmatic paradigms: big-pharma, yes, but also natural substances that address the whole body. It is still not easy to be one of the millions who suffer mental illness or disease and I do wish there was a way every one who had one could walk through an FMRI enroute to their MD's office with a good, verifiable set of diagnostics in hand but neurology and neuro-psychiatry is not there yet. In the meantime, I know how difficult it is to navigate the waters and, when not addressed appropriately, whatever method works for the person's brain malady, know how damaging it can be. Our country's medical system, society, and government really, really needs to get their collective heads around this. Thank you, meatball, for your additional information and lengthy reply. I appreciate the thoughtfulness it represents and wish there were more comments like yours - mental health really needs this kind of dialogue in America. View Comment

I found this a very interesting string of entries on psychiatric/psychological care. There is an assumption made that Mr. Lanza's actions were the result of side effects of psychiatric medications and that these are bad - an approach strongly promoted by the Church of Scientology, has some foundation for some people but shows what I think is a more severe problem. When taking psychotropic drugs, there must be a team approach with the prescribing doctor. This would be true when taking insulin for diabetes or a statin for cholesterol. Psychotropic drugs affect the function of the brain, its stability and how the world is perceived which makes it even more important that physicians moderate intake. I have not seen any reports, however, that Adam Lanza had this catastrophic reaction due to improper dosage or monitoring of mood altering drugs. I looked up Dr. Abram Hoffer, read his autobiographical statement and Wikipedia entry. The reason there has not been a wide adoption of his approach is that his successes are merely claims as they have not been able to be replicated. That would be with the exception of niacin for lowering the "bad" cholesterol which is a widely accepted alternative to taking statins. Orthomolecular medicine, however, is as commercialized as any "big pharma" practice with plenty of opportunities to buy mega-doses of various vitamins to improve health. The claim at "truehope.com" is they have helped as many as 90,000 people with their approach: the NIMH statistics on the number of people struggling with mental health in America is 57.7 million people over the age of 18. In addition, vitamin therapy is also not benign and has many side effects for those who many have compromised neurotransmission, as with schizoaffective disorders, or other health issues, e.g., adrenal problems. I am not a big fan of the pharmaceutical industry either and find their aggressive marketing, courting of physicians and veritable takeover of medical practice in America repulsive. At the same time, many people have brain wiring that needs help and this is what we have got. I tried all of the various "natural" modalities myself before reluctantly joining the big pharma ranks. Defective brain wiring in my family is genetic - my mother suffered horribly from mental disease and, if she had had the opportunity to take medications that would have helped her, well, let's just say, I wish she could have. Her life would have been improved immeasurably. Meds are a pain to take and have side effects but, at the same time, allow many, many people suffering from mental illness to have lives in their respective communities. We may not like how they are delivered to us, wish they were further along in research studies to maximize their effectiveness and minimize their discomforts but feel lucky to have them at all. I lived in California when Reagan was Governor and released all of the long term care mental patients to what was supposed to be community living in half way houses. Those were never established - funding was not forthcoming nor did communities want identified mentally ill people, and thus began the large homeless issue costing California far more in policing, imprisoning and providing scattered health care to released patients. Penny wise, pound foolish and one of the more egregious moves ever made by a California state governor. View Comment

Same here. I have tried to stop the updates multiple times with no success. I am going to contact the person from Daily Voice on the header, Mr. Branch, and see what I can do. View Comment