Despite the pounding he deservedly has taken for making an ethics accusation against Governor Malloy that he couldn’t support, Republican gubernatorial hopeful Tom Foley did the state a service the other day by recollecting that months ago the University of Connecticut Foundation financed some of the governor’s foreign travel.

That financing was a long stretch outside the foundation’s supposed purposes, and it may explain why the governor was and likely will remain silent in the face of the foundation’s recent announcement that it will keep paying its current president for a year at a salary of nearly a half-million dollars even after the foundation’s new president takes over. The foundation is a convenient slush fund for those at the top of state government, and the governor can hardly fault the foundation about its extravagance with its retiring president when Malloy himself is enjoying the foundation’s patronage.

The governor’s having compromised himself with the UConn Foundation also may explain why he won’t be proposing legislation to subject the foundation to the state’s right-to-know law. The foundation long has enjoyed such a special exemption facilitating its operation as a slush fund. This apparently is OK as long as the university keeps producing a nationally ranked basketball team.

Malloy is more opposed to freedom of information generally than any Connecticut governor has been, and the other day his pardons and parole board said it would appeal to Superior Court a Freedom of Information Commission order to do the board’s business in public. The administration’s policy is secret pardons and paroles.

Now if only someone running for governor had the wit to make an issue of that.

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Instead of the UConn Foundation, it’s the university football team that lately has been getting the most criticism. The coach is paid $1.6 million but has produced two losing seasons and is expected to be fired at the end of this one because the Huskies lost their first two games.

But wait a minute. The season is 12 games long, and young players grow, learn, and improve.

So rather than disparage the team and the coach and risk demoralizing them more, how about waiting until the season is over, noting a current example from baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers? The Dodgers went the first three months of the season in last place in the National League West, not escaping the cellar until July. Now they’re far away in first place and are considered the team to beat in the World Series. And all that improvement happened with practice on the field during games.

As the song from an old baseball musical says:

You gotta have heart.

All you really need is heart.

When the odds are sayin’ you’ll never win

That’s when the grin should start.

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Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal is being denounced as a racist for objecting to a proposal by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs that likely would bestow federal recognition on more marginal Indian tribes and thus facilitate more Indian casinos in Connecticut and elsewhere. The accusations against Blumenthal are coming from Indian-related news organizations.

Delightful as it is to see this tired if still vile tactic of politically correct intimidation used against a politician who himself is as politically correct as they come, the only racism here remains that of the federal law that uses race to award casino privileges.

If Blumenthal is in for a penny here he might as well be in for a pound and thus proceed to advance the public interest unreservedly by proposing to repeal the racial entitlement law altogether so that states can regulate casino gambling on their own without favoring any ethnic group.

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