12 January—Joe Biden embarrassed himself yet again yesterday afternoon, just hours before the Borough of Litchfield Board of Warden and Burgesses (BOLBOWAB) embarrassed itself yet again. No, he didn’t crap his pants (probably), but BOLBOWAB did (certainly).

Joe embarrassed himself, after hopeful harpy Kamala Harris had paved the way, by announcing that he was “tired of being quiet” and shouted nothing of substance at his choir when he should have been quietly negotiating and propitiating with two wisely recalcitrant Democrats to corrupt Senate rules even more than Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell had done.

One would have thunk that Joe Biden’s care givers knew better than to let him out without a muzzle. On the other hand, they told him what to shout and how to shout it, so what the hell.

That takes us back to BOLBOWAB vs. yellow ribbons. When the burgesses bypassed the borough counsel and hired an outside lawyer for the meeting, could anybody have doubted what their intent was? Before retaining Tom Gerarde as their ad hoc mouthpiece, BOLBOWAB obviously confirmed that he’d support their position. No problem there. The two lawyers on the board may even know him professionally or socially. No problem there. And in all events his firm’s website touts his most impressive record as a “public entity defense lawyer.” Of course, it doesn’t detail his losses. No problem there.

Getting down to the yellow ribbons, then, Tom Gerarde appears to be of the opinion that local regulations trump (forgive the word) the First Amendment simply because it would be inconvenient to set a precedent and open the floodgate, as it were. “You would not be able to restrict what goes up,” Tom told the meeting. “If you were to try, it would be a violation of the First Amendment. If you allow one message, you would have to allow them all.”

Precisely. Isn’t that what the First Amendment is all about? What Atty. Gerarde is saying is that unless the borough arrogantly and callously breaks the law by ignoring the First Amendment by banning yellow ribbons, it will be forced to obey the First Amendment by permitting other expressions of whatever to be posted on the Green. In other words, by ignoring the First Amendment in the first instance, the borough will be able to continue to ignore the First Amendment ad infinitum.

In his ludicrous defense of the borough’s indefensible position, Atty. Gerarde opined that the BOLBOWAB compromise that permitted the yellow ribbons to stay in place is not binding because the officials who signed off on it are no longer in office. Wow! Does that mean that other borough regulations passed by burgesses who are no longer in office are now null and void? And could that be extended to the town, the state, and the nation?

My unlawyerly reading of the borough charter tells me otherwise, that, like regulations, commitments of one BOLBOWAB accrue to succeeding BOLBOWABs. I haven’t seen minutes of the meeting at which the yellow-ribbon commitment was made. But there’s no doubt a commitment was made. Because if an enforceable commitment hadn’t in fact been made, why would Atty. Gerarde have raised the preposterous point that the commitment wasn’t enforceable?

It certainly looks like Atty. Gerarde’s and BOLBOWAB’s battle cry is “Damn the Constitution and full speed ahead!”

In all events, I’m sure the American Civil Liberties Union could argue the case far better than I.

And I’m not even going to go into Acting Warden Atty. Gayle Carr’s specious rationale for wasting borough taxpayers’ money on outside counsel to handle—and perhaps litigate—the nasty yellow ribbons. Except to note that BOLBOWAB hiring an ad hoc lawyer is not the same as the town’s board of selectmen relying on its legal counsel for advice. Especially when the BOLBOWAB lawyer is supposed to defend the indefensible.

There are only two ways Borough of Litchfield residents and taxpayers can put an end to this sort of abusive nonsense. First, at the annual borough budget meeting, which is also the annual borough meeting, don’t give the bastards any money to throw away on anything, including the dreaded Historic District Commission. Second, consolidate the borough with the town . . .