When it became clear a few weeks ago that the General Assembly would need still more time to devise a state budget for the biennium, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy urged legislators to send him a budget of limited duration, maybe for three months, so state government could continue normal operations and he would not have to allocate money by executive order. It didn't happen.

But then the legislature did pass a budget − one drafted by Republicans and approved because eight Democratic defectors voted for it − and the governor, a Democrat, vetoed it while threatening to divert to a few cities the education money ordinarily sent to the rest of Connecticut's school systems. That will be a disaster, and it is hard to see the necessity of it.

After all, despite the governor's objections to the Republican budget, why couldn't he have treated it as the interim budget he requested pending more negotiations? The collapse of so many schools would have been avoided, the usual state money would have been distributed to all schools, and the Republican budget could have been repealed and replaced as soon as the governor and the Democratic legislative leaders unified their caucuses and re-established their majorities.

Do the governor and the Democratic legislative leaders think that a compromise with their party's budget defectors is impossible?

Does the governor think that by collapsing so many schools he can induce a few Republicans to support the big tax increases he and the Democratic legislative leaders propose?

Does the governor want to punish those towns whose legislators are not as enthusiastic as he is about raising taxes?

Are both sides ready to accept the collapse of so many schools in the belief that the disaster will be blamed on the other side?

If the Republican budget had taken effect for the long term rather than just for a few weeks or months, it might have inflicted a lot of pain on students at the University of Connecticut, the other state universities, and the community colleges, whose funding would be cut severely. The Republicans probably would have been blamed for that.

But any pain in local education resulting from the governor's veto probably will be blamed on him and the Democrats.

Is such pain the prerequisite for inducing people to focus on state government's mistaken and expensive priorities and policies? Focusing on them is far more important than levying blame, since both parties long have been complicit in the bad practices that have been dragging Connecticut down.

Lesson in liberty

Of course President Trump didn't mean to, but by calling for the firing of the professional football players who, as a protest of racial injustice, are refusing to stand for the national anthem, he has given the country its best lesson in civil liberty in many years. Since the players are protesting on company time and property, their teams may penalize them. But as a matter of constitutional law, the government cannot compel expressions of political or religious belief.

Indeed, what most makes the flag worth saluting and the anthem worth rising for and singing is that under that flag and in earshot of that anthem people don't have to salute, rise, and sing. They can always be themselves.

Preparing the way for the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776, the revolutionary patriot Sam Adams saw it coming. "Driven from every corner of the Earth," Adams said, "freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum."

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.