State Senator Kevin Grantham blasted the University of Colorado yesterday for their anti-democratic shenanigans in shutting down the infamous 4/20 protest and limiting access to the Gideons to distribute Bibles on campus.
DENVER — Limits on campus gatherings and literature distribution at the University of Colorado drew sharp comments from a Southern Colorado lawmaker on Wednesday.
Sen. Kevin Grantham, R-Canon City, used the waning minutes of the special legislative session to challenge policies adopted by the university, which he says are an affront to free speech.
“It negatively affects First Amendment rights at our flagship institution,” Grantham said. “This is not a grade school where we’re trying to protect little children. These are adults on a public campus, and there’s restrictions being placed on adults to access a public arena.”
Damn straight.
It's refreshing to see a politician stand up for the principle of the First Amendment, rather than just standing up for the rights of those they support. Whether it's Bibles or bongs, love of Jesus or love of Ganja, the First Amendment doesn't discriminate.
As much as the left likes to brag they love free speech, it is liberals who are trying to shut down the free speech of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Rush Limbaugh because they don't agree with their politics. Let it be noted it was a "rock-ribbed conservative" who stood up for principle, not politics.
In organizations that value accountability, when major mistakes are made, heads must roll. Yet in the Lower North Fork Fire, which began due to errors made by the state government, and tragically killed three people, no one has been fired. Why?
Jeff Jahnke
When the GSA Las Vegas conference spending scandal was revealed, GSA Administrator Martha Johnson stepped down and a host of other employees involved were fired. After the JP Morgan $2 billion loss, the trader mostly responsible for the loss and his boss were publicly pushed out. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned after the 2006 midterm shellacking.
Accountability matters. But, so far, it doesn't seem to matter to Governor Hickenlooper.
In the case of the the Lower North Fork Fire, the mistakes were made by the Colorado State Forest Service, which is headed by Jeff Jahnke.
Hickenlooper, though, doesn't appear inclined to hold Jahnke responsible, telling 7News: "As much as you want someone to be found responsible and held accountable, we don't know for sure, yet, I don't think, how responsible anyone was and whether this wasn't just a freak act of nature."
That's BS, Governor, and you know it. As 7News pointed out, serious errors were made:
The facts from the Governor's own review show that the Colorado State Forest Service violated its own prescribed burn plan by not monitoring the burn area for a minimum of three days, specifically Sunday, March 25 -- the day before the fire reignited and escaped.
"There was one break of protocol where no one went and looked at the fire on Sunday. Now, Bill Bass thought that did not contribute to the escape of the fire because they came back on Monday morning and the fire was completely out, or they felt it was completely out. And while they were there just kind of walking around and rolling up hoses and leaving, they judged the fire to be completely controlled, suddenly this freak wind came up," said Hickenlooper.
Wind was forecast ahead of time. On Saturday, the National Weather Service issued a Red Flag Watch for the burn area to take effect Monday. By Sunday, the watch became a Red Flag Warning to take effect Monday. A Red Flag Warning is issued by the National Weather Service to call attention of forecast users to special conditions that may result in extreme burning conditions. It may forecast rapid changes in weather conditions which may increase the fire danger rapidly.
Serious errors were made in the controlled burn, serious errors that destroyed homes and lives. As the review of the fire reveals, it was not some freak accident.
The Colorado State Forest Service screwed up, and it's time the press start asking Hickenlooper about Jeff Jahnke and others who should be held responsible.
Earlier today the US Senate voted on President Obama's budget, rejecting it with a stunning vote of 99-0. Senate Democrats have yet to propose and vote on a budget of their own for over three years now, but Senate Republicans forced their hand and brought up Obama's budget for a vote.
President Obama's budget suffered a second embarrassing defeat Wednesday, when senators voted 99-0 to reject it.
Coupled with the House's rejection in March, 414-0, that means Mr. Obama's budget has failed to win a single vote in support this year.
Republicans forced the vote by offering the president's plan on the Senate floor.
Democrats disputed that it was actually the president's plan, arguing that the slim amendment didn't actually match Mr. Obama's budget document, which ran thousands of pages. But Republicans said they used all of the president's numbers in the proposal, so it faithfully represented his plan.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, even challenged Democrats to point out any errors in the numbers and he would correct them — a challenge no Democrats took up.
Democrats want to complain it wasn't Obama's budget verbatim, as it wasn't thousands of pages long, though it had all the same numbers. Their argument doesn't appear to be more than just knee-jerk pushback, as no Democrats could point out where it differed from Obama's budget.
This election is going to be about jobs and the economy, not the multitude of distraction issues Democrats try to peddle on a weekly basis. It is news like this that provides a stark reminder of why Democrats want to talk about anything but jobs or government spending.
Miklosi for Congress campaign consultant Steve Welchert has been caught advising a company looking for bond business to bribe a school district with polling in order to "steal" $90 million of taxpayer funds. The impolitic statement comes from an email unearthed by a Denver Post investigation into potential corruption in school bond campaign finance.
This idiotic statement comes after a long line of troubles with Rep. Joe Miklosi's Congressional campaign staff. The campaign's former finance director was not paid in full, resulting in a back pay complaint being filed against the campaign. Additionally, Miklosi replaced his campaign manager last month, and the new manager happens to have a record of speaking dismissively about employee compensation complaints.
When Colorado citizens vote to borrow money to build new schools, a library or a recreation center, the crusader behind the curtain is often the investment banker who gets paid to sell the bonds.
..."So I created a piece of direct mail with some burning books on the cover," consultant Steve Welchert recalled in a lawsuit deposition on a matter unrelated to the campaign. "And the campaign committee was a little alarmed, but I said, you know, you only get one bite at the apple. We only had money for one piece of communication."
The burning books worked. "They got the money they needed for their schools and their sprinkler systems, and off they went," Welchert said.
Welchert also sent an e-mail to Piper Jaffray in 2009 that recommended offering a poll or two to the Aurora school district, adding that "it's a very cheap price to pay for stealing 90m." [Peak emphasis]
Not only is this an enormously stupid thing to say about the use of taxpayer money, but it appears to be an example of straight-up, Chicago-style corruption. Welchert appears to be saying the company should bribe a school district with polling with the expectation that the gift of polling be repaid through the contract for a $90 million bond.
Does Joe Miklosi agree with his consultant's tactics? What does he think about the concept of "stealing" $90 million in taxpayer funds?
Will we see even more Miklosi for Congress staff turnover now?
Since Miklosi is just introducing himself to Aurora voters, we don't think he'll want to be associated with someone who was trying to "steal" their school district's taxpayer funds.
UPDATE: A source tells us that the ad will be running in the Grand Junction, Colorado Springs and Denver media markets.
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Crossroads GPS, the 501(c)4 arm of American Crossroads, is going up with a $25 million ad buy across 10 swing states, matching the Obama campaign's own $25 million ad blitz dollar-for-dollar. In Colorado, the ad buy is $208,000 over the next four weeks.
The ad hits Obama on a list of his broken promises, fitting into the narrative in the RNC ad that launched this week in Colorado on Obama's broken promise to "cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term."
As we pointed out yesterday, a recent study by Stanford University found voters do not like politicians who break promises. The Stanford study found voters even dislike politicians who break promises that they don't even agree with in the first place. With such a long list of broken promises, Obama will have a lot of explaining to do.
The other states being targeted are Florida, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
In an editorial that in some states would qualify as an assault and battery of House Speaker Frank McNulty, The Denver Post accuses legislative Republicans of being just as focused on social issues as are legislative Democrats, who have spent the last several days attacking McNulty and the GOP for killing civil unions legislation.
But in its editorial, The Denver Post chose a strange example of extraneous social issues to attach to the GOP: repealing Obamacare.
Unable to offer a straightforward defense, McNulty conjured a laughable explanation that tried to shift the blame to the Democratic governor and a "divisive social agenda."
"This is Gov. Hickenlooper's special session that he called for the purpose of passing same-sex marriage," McNulty said. "From our perspective, our side is focused on job creation and economic recovery."
That argument conveniently forgets the divisive issues raised by his party. The first debate of this year's session was on a hopeless resolution calling for a constitutional convention — the last one was held in 1787 — to repeal the Affordable Care Act, aka "Obamacare." Then there were debates on gun rights; a bill that called for drug testing of welfare moms; a measure calling for the federal government to sell land; and the centerpiece of job creation: criminalizing "unlawful termination of a pregnancy." [Peak emphasis]
Now we know it for certain, the Post is off the rails. Repealing Obamacare is not a social issue, in the "guns, God, and Gays" mold (to use the common refrain). It is not some marginal fantasy of an issue contrived by House Republicans either.
It was the Number One issue of the 2010 election. We all remember former Congresswoman Betsy Markey, correct? The reason she is not in Congress today is because she got on the wrong side of the "social issue" known as Obamacare.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) is out with a new ad airing in Colorado today that uses President Obama's own words to hammer him for his broken promise to reduce the deficit.
The video uses Obama's very specific and repeatedly made promise that he will "cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term" juxtaposed against a clock counting up the national debt under Obama -- currently over $15 trillion.
It is this kind of ad, rather than ideological attacks on his renewable energy boondoggles, that could be most damaging because it calls into question Obama's character.
As a recent study by Stanford University found, voters despise politicians who break promises. The study looked specifically at anti-tax activist Grover Norquist's no new taxes pledge. Interestingly, the study found that voters will hold it against politicians who break the pledge, even if they don't support the pledge itself.
(We're sure Colorado Ethics Watch will investigate this thoroughly. - promoted by ColoradoPeakPolitics)
With the anticipated Democrat-imposed demise of House Bill 1333, which would have given Colorado teachers monthly discretion to opt in or out of a union, the legislation's biggest opponent -- the Colorado Education Association -- won a temporary victory. Currently, educators in many districts have as little as 2 weeks during a busy time of the year in which they have to visit the union office or union rep to revoke their membership. The only argument presented by CEA and its favored legislators to oppose HB 1333 was a bogus claim that giving teachers such freedom would undermine the "local control" of privately-negotiated collective bargaining agreements.
Seriously, folks? Clearly, union officials are uncomfortable talking about this issue and would love to make it go away quietly. While their hopes for widespread inattention may be dashed when it comes to this issue of teacher options, they maintain an advantage when it comes to incredible campaign finance reporting logic.
Last night, the political reporter for the Pueblo Chieftain, Patrick Malone, forgot his job for a minute and suddenly thought he was an activist or an editorial writer, not a reporter. In crossing the line, Malone asked Speaker Frank McNulty, who blocked the civil unions bill, if he was "concerned at all that this seals your legacy as a bigot"?
We get it. You support civil unions. That's fine. But so what: do your bloody job. You're a journalist, not an Op-Ed writer.
Malone didn't even couch the question as asking McNulty to respond to critics who called him a bigot. He straight up said blocking this bill makes you a bigot, does that bother you?
Civil unions, and gay rights more generally, is a "tender and sensitive" issue as Mitt Romney has said. Due to its emotionally charged nature, reporters need to be careful in how they address the issue. Malone, in this case, threw caution to the wind and, along with it, his responsibility as a reporter to be objective and fair.
When Senate President Brandon Shaffer filibustered his own redistricting bill last year, did Malone ask him if he's concerned his actions would seal his legacy as an enemy of the Colorado constitution? After all, redistricting is one of the few responsibilities for the Legislature laid out in the state constitution and Shaffer was directly dodging that responsibility.
No, Malone didn't ask that.
While we would have loved to see Malone ask Shaffer that question, it wouldn't have been appropriate. Reporters aren't supposed to ask loaded questions.
And in this case, Malone did just that. Let it be a cautionary tale to other reporters.
While writing love songs to Governor Hickenlooper for calling a special session on civil unions, the press has totally diverted away from holding the Hickenlooper Administration responsible for its non-response to the egregious and fatal errors of state bureaucrats in the Lower North Fork Fire.
Peter Blake of the Colorado News Agency recently recounted an example of another Colorado governor who actually took responsibility for mistakes of the state:
When a state worker in a front-end loader dislodged a 6.7-ton boulder on Berthoud Pass in 1987, it rolled into a bus full of tourists, killing nine and injuring 15. It took six years, but the state ended up agreeing to a settlement of $2.5 million.
But that case didn’t involve governmental immunity. The plaintiffs’ attorneys filed under the federal civil rights act, and they named individual defendants as well as the state. The settlement went well beyond the immunity limits, which were somewhat lower then. That’s because Gov. Roy Romer didn’t want tourists to think the state could kill them with virtual impunity. [Peak emphasis]
Attorneys for North Fork fire victims might try a similar tactic—or something even more imaginative. Or they can go straight to the state claims board, which would determine whether there was negligence and recommend damage awards for each plaintiff. The legislature would still have to appropriate the money.
Did Hickenlooper's non-response to the fire give people the impression that the state could kill them and destroy their homes with impunity? Blake quotes the husband of a woman killed in the fire saying "It is just disgusting to see their arrogance...They bathe themselves in immunity."
Blake's hard hitting salvo comes on the heels of a bungled early response by the Hickenlooper administration. While most of the press, per normal form, gave the Governor a full and free pass, one TV station brought down the hammer.
7News brutally took Hickenlooper to task, calling his administration's report on the fire "soft" and "political." During the press conference announcing a deal on victim compensation in the Lower North Fork Fire, Senate Minority Leader Bill Cadman even cited the 7News report as clarifying the issue for him.
When the press gets done serenading Hickenlooper and editorializing against Speaker McNulty, maybe they'd like to get back to their job holding Hickenlooper accountable for his administration's inept response to a recent tragedy.
And the first question they should ask is the question posed first by Peter Blake: People died, Governor, so will anyone in state government be fired?
Reports The Pueblo Chieftain's 
It didn't turn out well for Mr. Obama.
This idiotic statement comes after a long line of troubles with Rep. Joe Miklosi's Congressional campaign staff. The campaign's former finance director was not paid in full, resulting in a 
We get it. You support civil unions. That's fine. But so what: do your bloody job. You're a journalist, not an Op-Ed writer. 
Peter Blake of the 
