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What is too extreme politically for Connecticut in the era of President Donald Trump and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani?

According to a television commercial from Governor Lamont's re-election campaign, the extremism is that of the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Greenwich state Sen. Ryan Fazio, who this year voted against legislation that purported to prohibit federal immigration agents from making arrests at schools, churches, and other supposedly sensitive locations.

The commercial's narrator, the pastor of a church in Norwalk who is Black, accuses immigration agents of arresting people "based on the color of their skin." The pastor continues: "Thankfully, Gov. Lamont stepped in. He signed a law barring ICE agents from our churches and our schools. But Ryan Fazio sided with Trump to allow ICE into our schools and our houses of worship. I really can't imagine him being governor. That is too extreme for Connecticut."

But the legislation was and remains a fraud.  

Contrary to the pastor's assertion, the law doesn't prevent federal agents from entering schools and churches or any other places, for state law has no authority over federal law-enforcement agents doing their jobs, as the governor and the legislators who voted for the legislation know. The law is unconstitutional and unenforceable as the pastor himself might have noticed from the governor's failure even to try to enforce it, since any enforcement would risk armed confrontation between the federal agents and state police. 

How ironic, then, for a Black pastor to take the same sort of "states' rights" position that was made in defense of slavery and racial segregation. Claims of state supremacy over the federal government used to be considered too extreme politically for Connecticut.

But now that illegal immigration is politically correct and being used to alter legislative districting in favor of the political party that has created "sanctuary" states, claims of "states' rights" are in fashion in the very region that courageously stood up against them when the Union and basic human rights were at stake.

Indeed, why isn't the nullification being waged by the Lamont administration -- the facilitation of illegal immigration and the interference with immigration law enforcement -- also too extreme politically for the state? 

This issue deserves more serious treatment than it can get from a campaign commercial wrapping deception and racial demagoguery in religious sanctimony.

DEMAND MORE FROM STUDENTS: Public education officials in Connecticut long have refused to address or even acknowledge the problem of social promotion in the schools even as the few proficiency tests the state administers keep illuminating a vast number of students who never gain proficiency in English and math and thus enter adulthood equipped only for menial work.

Some people outside the education bureaucracy acknowledge the problem but think it is now so overwhelming that nothing can be done about it. After all, if academic proficiency was required for promotion of students, in many schools more students would have to be held back every year than would advance to the next grade.

But somehow a few Southern states lately have made progress with their most disadvantaged students by refusing to advance them past third grade unless until they become good readers. That has gotten the kids' attention and that of their parents. In any case many students won't ever meet academic standards unless their schools demand it on pain of some kind of penalty.

Other incentives for performance are easy to imagine. Participation in school sports and other activities outside the classroom could be made a privilege earned by better grades. High school diplomas could be imprinted with a student's grades for each year of his education. Various kinds of diplomas could be awarded signifying student achievement levels, with the lowest levels signifying mere attendance or the lack of it, and employers could be encouraged to ask young job applicants to present their diplomas for review of their qualifications.

Results in student performance might be demanded from teachers and school administrators as well, adjusted for the disadvantages of the students they receive each year.

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