With the General Assembly back in session, interest groups like the Connecticut Business and Industry Association and the Connecticut Education Association are on television again with commercials whose objectives are always obscure.

Addressing the General Assembly at the start of its 2012 session Wednesday, Governor Malloy credited himself with far more than he has accomplished -- getting state spending under control and making government "smaller, leaner, and more effective."

Proposing a few weeks ago to make liquor stores compete on the same terms as ordinary business, without price supports and the ban on Sunday sales, Governor Malloy confronted a powerful but indefensible special interest that always could have been pushed out of the way of the public interest by any governor so inclined. Connecticut never had such a governor until now.

For leading the squad of Marines that killed 24 unarmed civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha in 2005, a staff sergeant from Meriden, Frank Wuterich, will be getting a jail term of no more than three months and maybe no confinement at all. Many Iraqis are angry about this. While most Americans couldn't care less about it, some are confused or embarrassed over how so many unarmed people, including women and children, could be killed by rifle fire from American soldiers without more serious consequences.

What's to be said for Governor Malloy's first year in office? The governor credits himself most for restoring solvency to state government.

Are Connecticut's Republicans really going to nominate Linda McMahon for U.S. senator again? It could seem so, as she has collected endorsements from dozens of party leaders, if Connecticut's Republican Party can be said to have leaders. Maybe "officials" would be more accurate.

Rushing to condemn East Haven Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. for political incorrectness or insensitivity, his critics have let him get away with a real offense: his complicity in the perjury committed by his town's police officers.

Anyone in Connecticut old enough to remember the state Supreme Court decision in the school financing case of Horton vs. Meskill in 1977 has lived through 34 years of "education reform." So if, as Governor Malloy promises, "education reform" is really the focus of the forthcoming session of the General Assembly, those who remember may need their own "scream room."

For decades the three branches of government in Connecticut have been, in effect, not the legislative, executive, and judicial but rather the teacher unions, the lawyers, and the liquor stores. So Governor Malloy's proposal to legalize competition in the retail liquor business may be the strongest blow struck against special interests in Connecticut since the state's 1818 Constitution disestablished the Congregational Church. And what a blow it is, identifying each aspect of the rent seeking that has been incorporated into state law to turn liquor retailing into political patronage.

Parents of children at an elementary school in Middletown got their school board's attention as well as the state's last week when they complained about what their kids call "scream rooms" at the school, small rooms where teachers confine incorrigible or disturbed students having tantrums. The screaming, head pounding, and urinating in the rooms, along with police visits to the school, were bothering and even frightening the other kids and thus their parents too. A state legislator said a third of the teachers have filed worker's compensation claims for injuries inflicted by the incorrigibles.

Some good recommendations have come out of the work of the commission appointed by Governor Malloy to study the long and excruciating electric power outages after the tropical storm in August and the freak snowstorm in October. The governor has followed up with his own recommendations.

Some good recommendations have come out of the work of the commission appointed by Governor Malloy to study the long and excruciating electric power outages after the tropical storm in August and the freak snowstorm in October. The governor has followed up with his own recommendations.

Education was supposed to be the main focus of the forthcoming session of the General Assembly, but as Governor Malloy's new concern suggests, maybe the focus should shift to Internet gambling, now that the U.S. Justice Department has changed its interpretation of federal law to allow it except on sports events.

Connecticut soon may get its first serious debate about teacher tenure. The Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents has proposed replacing lifetime tenure for teachers with five-year terms. Governor Malloy says he will propose broad education policy reforms, including some involving accountability. And now even the state's largest teacher union, the Connecticut Education Association, has proposed annual teacher evaluations based partly on measures of student performance.

Connecticut soon may get its first serious debate about teacher tenure. The Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents has proposed replacing lifetime tenure for teachers with five-year terms. Governor Malloy says he will propose broad education policy reforms, including some involving accountability. And now even the state's largest teacher union, the Connecticut Education Association, has proposed annual teacher evaluations based partly on measures of student performance.

Gambling is taking the course that was obvious when Connecticut challenged the duopoly of Las Vegas and Atlantic City with the Foxwoods Indian casino in 1992 and the Mohegan Sun Indian casino in 1996.

Reduction of state government's financial support for the University of Connecticut, from 44 percent to 30 percent of operating costs over the last two decades, is partly behind UConn's decision to raise its price to students by 17 percent over the next four years. But the university shouldn't be let off the hook so easily.

East Haven Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. affects indignation about a lack of specifics in the report issued the other day by the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division accusing his police department of harassing Latinos. The mayor's indignation is nonsense.

Having made New Haven a "sanctuary city," where local government nullifies federal immigration law by awarding city identification cards to illegal aliens to facilitate their lawbreaking, Mayor John DeStefano now proposes to allow illegals to vote in municipal elections in Connecticut.

Banking and market regulation aren't the only areas where the federal government, subservient to big corporations, refuses to enforce the law, with horribly destructive consequences for the country. The same failure has become policy at the Federal Communications Commission.