The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Conn. lawmakers face wall of confusion
In debating the effectiveness of his proposed U.S.Mexico border wall, President Donald Trump likes to point to Israel’s walls, aimed at keeping out terrorists and illegal immigrants. Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu was glad to be a role model, calling his walls “a great success.”
As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., has been to Israel to inspect the walls, and he has some positive things to say about them.
“In highly dense urban areas, walls might make sense,” he said. Like San Diego and El Paso, where they already exist?
Israel’s Southern wallbarrier with Egypt and the famous wall that snakes around the West Bank are about 600 miles in length, total. That’s a far cry from the nearly 2,000-mile wall Trump is proposing.
A long stretch in the desert along the Israel-Jordan frontier has no wall at all. Sounds a bit like West Texas — whole lot of nothing.
But Israel augments its borders — walled and nonwalled — with sensors, drones and other high-tech equipment.
So, in Himes’ view, Trump’s pointing to Israel actually proves the opposite.
“Israel shows you can have a variety of mechanisms” to achieve border security, Himes said.
Building team Hayes
Rep. Jahana Hayes, DConn., had a rough outing on Day One of her new career representing Connecticut’s 5th Congressional District. Having lost her voice because of a lingering cold, she was sitting alone in the Speaker’s Lobby when I swooped in on her for an interview.
Things appeared to brighten up a bit, however, when her two new, main staffers met her, and they disappeared into a U.S. Capitol elevator.
One was Jason Newton, the press guy, who grew up in a military family and has lived all over. His mother, Josephine, has roots in Bridgeport as the daughter of Italian-immigrant parents. Jason graduated from Southern Connecticut State University in 2008 and was a reporter for WTNH in New Haven, covering politics “pretty heavily.”
Before Hayes hired him, he was a press spokesman for Rep. Matt Cartwright, a Democrat representing an Eastern Pennsylvania district.
The other Hayes aide was chief-of-staff Joe Dunn, a veteran of Sen. Chris Murphy’s office who worked on guns and health care. He’s buttoned-down, friendly, a chief of staff from central casting, at a minimum. His presence speaks to Hayes’ closeness to Murphy, who encouraged her to run in the first place.
“One of the most decent and kind people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with,” Murphy tweeted about Dunn last month.
Dunn grew up Long Island’s north shore. Close to Connecticut as the seagull flies, but he couldn’t see it from his porch.
Boy band sequel
In my previous column, I wrote about Murphy interceding on behalf of ’90s heartthrob boy band, 98 Degrees. Murphy wasn’t able to prevent the deportation of th band’s tour buses from a Norwalk parking lot. But his tweets did put him on record as believing that Connecticut should treat the band as “like the kings they undisputedly are.”
Quite an endorsement. Since Murphy is about the same age as frontman Nick Lachey and the rest of the band members, I wondered if he was, maybe, a groupie of some kind back in the day.
I asked Murphy to help me chart his obsession. Turns out he drove his campaign staff nuts with his love for Lachey’s 2006 solo album, “What’s Left of Me.”
“I was well into my 30s, and my much younger staff met me with derision,” he said. “I don’t listen to it any longer. But the people who worked for me at the time have never let it go.”
A music critic I’m not, but Lachey seems to be a good, emotive singer much like the ones you see and hear on “The Voice” and “America’s Got Talent.”
Not particularly the thing I’d expect Murphy to get excited about. But I’ve caught myself humming hits by “Foreigner” and “Journey,” and my wife made me turn off “Dream Weaver” when it came on Sirius XM. So we all have our guilty lightweight pleasures, though some of us hide it better than others.