February 2006 Archives

Expected topics for Jay Marvin's show on AM 760.
Wednesday, March 1

Wednesday, March 1 from 6--10AM on AM 760

7:05AM: It's been a short 6 months since Hurrican Katrina rocked the Gulf States. Where does the region stand as far as rebuilding efforts? Joining Jay is Raj Goyle from the Center for American Progress.

9:05AM: Jay continues discussion on the port situation with The Nation's Washington correspondent John Nichols. Nichols has covered progressive politics and activism in the United States and abroad for more than a decade. We'll also talk about his new blog "The Online Beat" and how a democratic governor would like to ban households with one or more Republican voters from adopting children or acting as foster parents. Absolutely classic!

9:30AM: Jay will talk about the latest developments in the Dubai company who is set to manage terminals at six major U.S. ports. Our special guest will be Richard Wolffe, Senior White House Correspondent at Newsweek . His latest article "No Safe Harbor Here: How a Routine Sale Became a Political Gale-and What's Next for Bush in the Ports Storm."

Coming up on Thursday and Friday
You can hear Jay Marvin twice or 7 hours a day as he does the regular morning show and then fills in nationally for Ed Schultz from 1 to 4 PM.

AM 760 Website

Excerpts from the just-posted Rocky story:

Five constituents who live in House Minority Leader Joe Stengel's district today formally requested an ethics investigation of the Littleton Republican, saying he charged taxpayers for working on days he was on vacation in Hawaii, taking the bar exam and campaigning.

Stengel, a Littleton Republican, on Monday reimbursed the state $891 for nine days he billed last year, seven while in Hawaii and two days for taking the bar exam. He alternately said he used "bad judgment" and blamed the criticism against him on "election year politics."

ProgressNow Action network member, and ethics complaint signer, Bill Cisney provides the zinger:

Bill Cisney, 65, of Littleton, was among those who signed the ethics complaint that was delivered to Speaker Andrew Romanoff, D-Denver.

Cisney pointed out that Stengel last year was one of the leaders in the effort to defeat Referendums C and D, two tax measures on the November ballot.

"Joe made a point of talking about people lining up at the trough to get their share of the windfall from Referendum C," he said. "I guess the difference between Joe and everyone else is he didn't have to line up."

And fellow Republican Andy McElhany, the Senate Minority Leader, takes a swipe as well:

Republicans have been slow to publicly criticize Stengel, in part because he is in a leadership position.

But fellow minority leader Andy McElhany of Colorado Springs, head of the Senate Republicans, broke rank Tuesday.

"It stretches the limit of credibility," he said, of billing for so many days.

February 28, 2006

The Honorable Andrew Romanoff
Speaker of the House
Colorado State Capitol
Denver, CO  80203

Dear Speaker Romanoff,

We write to ask for a formal ethics investigation into the misuse of taxpayer dollars and possible criminal violations by Colorado House District 38 Representative and current Minority Leader Joe Stengel during 2005.

While it's legal for Colorado House and Senate leadership to be compensated for legislative work performed out of session, they cannot ethically bill taxpayers for days they didn't work.

In 2005 Stengel collected a check for 240 of the 247 days out of session, as reported by the non-partisan Legislative Council.  According to the Rocky Mountain News, Stengel claims that the seven days he didn't work were 7 major holidays.

Thus those 240 days Stengel billed included 5 days he spent vacationing in Hawaii, time campaigning for gubernatorial candidate Marc Holtzman, traveling statewide as Chairman of the campaign against Referenda C&D, and 2 full days taking the bar examination. (click here for a Stengel chronology)

We ask that you conduct a full ethics investigation into any possible violations and criminal misconduct pursuant to, but not limited to:  title 18, article 8, of the Colorado Criminal Code for Soliciting Unlawful Compensation and for First Degree Official Misconduct as well as for violations of title 1, article 45 of the Fair Campaign Practices Act.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

William C. Cisney
Constituent, HD 38

Jody Morris
Constituent, HD 38
Felice Sage
Constituent, HD 38

Diane Steen
Constituent, HD 38

Todd Soderberg
Constituent, HD 38

Many veterans claim the military had reported them to credit bureaus and turned accounts over to collection agencies. Severely wounded and disabled soldiers pay had been suspended or severely garnished to pay "overpayments" from Army clerical errors leaving them and their families in financial ruin. According to a study commissioned by the First Infantry Division it is estimated that eight out of 10 of its wounded soldiers from Iraq have gone through the same or a similar ordeal.

News stories are finally talking about the difficulties many returning Iraqi veterans are having in accessing benefits from the Veterans Administration (VA). Check out the following ABC Nightline on January 31, 2006 (Link.

As I watched this heartbreaking and enraging report my first thought was that it's immoral that the only place our current Administration seems to "put Veterans first" is on the answering machine at the VA Hospital! My next thought was that as horrific as the additional emotional and financial wounds that these brave soldiers have endured at the hands of our Government - that someone should warn them the emotional and financial torture is just beginning.

The papers are abuzz right now, with the news that "crime consultant" George Kelling will be implementing his "broken windows" policing in two Denver neighborhoods--with a hefty paycheck from our mayor.

It was announced late last year that the Hickenlooper would be hiring Kelling, and it was met with dismay by those who monitor the Dever Police Department's less than stellar human rights record. And for good reason, as I shall later show.

To put it bluntly, the hiring of George Kelling and the implementation of the "broken windows" policy in Denver is extremely bad news for anyone who values civil rights and individual liberty. It's especially bad for minorities, young people, and the homeless. Not to mention our city's fiscal solvency.

So I'll bring my opinion on the matter to the table, and I want you to at least consider it. Because this move--along with the way our police work in general--has ramifications that could change this city forever.

Sure, our papers can use sunny euphemisms all they want about the issue. But when Republicans and the Heritage Foundation support the theory, you know there's something fishy going on here.

Today's daily news digest

NOTE: some news sites require free registration in order to read their stories.

To subscribe to the daily news digest, click here.

Yesterday the Colorado Senate added exemptions to the smoking ban, including one for small bars. The sponsors of the bill will kill it if its essence is destroyed. But there's still hope:

"It's far from dead," said Sen. Dan Grossman, D-Denver, sponsor of the bill in the Rocky Mountain News. "(But) we have our work cut out to remove all the exemptions.

Write your State Senator
Enter your ZIP+4 at Project Vote Smart to find who represents you and their contact information.

Smoke ban stumbles
Senators vote to exempt many types of businesses
By April M. Washington, Rocky Mountain News, February 28, 2006

Expected topics for Jay Marvin's show on AM 760.
Tuesday, February 28

Tuesday, February 28 from 6--10AM on AM 760

6:20AM: Jay will discuss whether or not Iraq is on the Brink of Civil War with Newsweek's Baghdad correspondent Michael Hastings..

7:05AM: Filling a void left by the Food and Drug Administration's inability to decide whether to make the "morning-after" pill available without a prescription, nearly every state is or soon will be wrestling with legislation that would expand or restrict access to the drug. More than 60 bills have been filed in state legislatures already this year, and that follows an already busy 2005 session on emergency contraception. The resulting tug of war is creating an availability map for the pill that looks increasingly similar to the map of "red states" and "blue states" in the past two presidential elections -- with increased access in the blue states and greater restrictions in the red ones. State Representative Betty Boyd is our special guest too talk about this issue.

9:00AM: It's our weekly update from Media Matters for America. Senior advisor Jamison Fozer our guest on this week to talk about the ports deal with Dubai, Wolf Blitzer and of course... Bill O'Reilly.

Coming up on Thursday and Friday
You can hear Jay Marvin twice or 7 hours a day as he does the regular morning show and then fills in nationally for Ed Schultz from 1 to 4 PM.

AM 760 Website

We would like to invite you, your family, and friends to join us as we ask the passersby about the morality of allowing so many of our fellow Americans to live in poverty. Hope you can come - you do make a difference!!


Next action for:
The Question Alliance
Saturday, March 11, 2006
10-11:30 AM
Corner of University & Highlands Ranch Parkway
(1.5 miles south of C-470 on University)

Topic: Poverty in America

This action will address the fact that 37 million Americans live in poverty. 36 percent of those individuals are considered the "working poor," 3 million are senior citizens and 9 million are children. Is this a moral issue that should be addressed? What does this situation say about America? For more information you can google- Americans living in poverty, etc.

Please remember that it is important to have the same exact wording on your sign.
The exact wording for the question on March 11th is:

Is it moral to have 37 million Americans living in poverty?

We encourage others to participate in this action in your own neighborhood if you'd like. Just let us know your plans, make sure the question is worded exactly the same as above, and let us know how it goes. Remember we are a peaceful, respectful group that abides by local requirements. We'd like to expand The Question Alliance by having drivers read the same important question at multiple locations the same day!

Please bring family and friends to join The Question Alliance. All are welcome!! Children need to be supervised.

This action will be postponed if the weather is too nasty. You might want to make sturdy signs. It can get windy!

Please contact us with any questions, etc.

TheQuestionAlliance@gmail.com

Thank you,

Jim and Diane Schrack

Since it's all the rage these days to live in denial, Governor Owens thought he'd try his hand at it. That's the only explanation I can come up with for this eye-popping joke of a headline, and believe me I've been trying:

Owens: Iraq rage a sign of progress

The violence that has pushed Iraq toward civil war may show the success of U.S. military efforts, Gov. Bill Owens said Sunday after returning from one of the hot spots in the war, because insurgents have had to resort to more extreme tactics...

Just when you thought the level of GOP delusional sycophancy had hit an untoppable zenith...well, there's Colorado's own Bill Owens proving you wrong again.

UPDATE: Who exactly does he think is going to buy this?

No link yet, word just coming in. Colorado House Minority Leader Stengel will return per diem income received during his vacation in Hawaii, as well as a few other disputed days' worth.

Initial response: Rep. Stengel must have realized that he was defending the indefensible. It's a common occurance after a relaxing stay in the tropics that might have involved a few too many Piña Coladas. He still has many questions to answer about the taxpayer money he received last year, and the amount he's agreed to return today doesn't begin to do that.

Developing rapidly...

Below is the text of the network email that just went out:


Dear Network Member,

While it's legal for Colorado House and Senate leadership to be compensated for legislative work performed out of session, they can't ethically bill taxpayers for days that they didn't work. House Minority Leader Joe Stengel needs a reminder of that.

The non-partisan Legislative Council reports that in 2005 Stengel collected a check for 240 of the 247 days out of session, including Saturdays and Sundays. According to the Rocky Mountain News, Stengel claims that the 7 days he didn't work were the major holidays.

So those 240 days Stengel billed included the 5 days he spent vacationing in Hawaii, time campaigning for gubernatorial candidate Marc Holtzman, traveling statewide as Chairman of the campaign against Referenda C&D, and 2 full days taking the bar examination.

Take a stand for ethical government. Call on Joe Stengel to return the taxpayer money he received improperly by clicking here:

Link

Please also forward this to others and invite them to join you in standing up for ethical government.

We'll hand deliver this petition to Stengel and share it with Colorado media and with taxpayer advocacy groups throughout Colorado.

Sincerely,

Michael Huttner
Executive Director

State Senator Deanna Hanna has been attacked for arm-twisting the Colorado Association of Realtors for campaign donations. Specifically, she wrote to them, "There are going to be some very important issues ahead of us. You have a choice. So do I."

The constant need for such arm-twisting is a problem, because it establishes an inter-dependent relationship between legislators and lobbyists, and distracts elected officials from their official business. But in suggesting that there might be a trade-off between what the Realtors want and what the senator wants, she crossed a line.

How ironic that she crossed the line into the territory of full disclosure-- honesty, if you will-- about the true nature of the relationship between legislators and the donors to their election funds. We should all be aghast, not at what Senator Hanna has put into writing, but at the nature of politicking in this age of big money and corporate rule.

Today's daily news digest

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To subscribe to the daily news digest, click here.

If you are not listening to Democracy Now with Amy Goodman, consider yourself uninformed. Also see: DemocracyNow.org

Alamosa KRZA 88.7 FM 6-7 p.m., M-F
Aspen Grassroots TV Ch. 12 6 a.m., 5 p.m., M-F
Basalt Access Roaring Fork 4 p.m., 7 a.m., M-F
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Carbondale KDNK 90.5, 88.3, 100.1 FM 6-7 pm, M-F
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Denver Denver Community TV Ch.57, Ch. 59 TBD
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Durango KDUR 91.9, 93.9 FM 12-1 pm, M-F
Fort Collins KRFC 88.9 FM 6-7pm M-F
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Louisville, Lafayette, Superior Colorado CCTV Ch. 54/62 6am, 10am, 5pm, 10pm
Paonia KVNF 90.9 FM 6 p.m., Tues-Fri
Salida KHEN 106.9 FM Noon, 6pm M-F
Silverton KSJC 92.5 FM 4-5 p.m., M-F
Telluride KOTO 91.7, 89.3 FM 1-2 p.m., T
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Across the U.S. DirecTV: Link TV, Channel 375, M-F: 11am-12noon, 6-7pm EST
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Expected topics for Jay Marvin's show on AM 760.
Monday, February 27

Monday, February 27 from 6--10AM on AM 760

8:00AM: The Bush administration said Sunday it will accept an extraordinary offer by a United Arab Emirates-based company to submit to a second -- and broader -- U.S. review of potential security risks in its deal to take over significant operations at six leading American ports. Christy Harvey joins Jay from the Center for American Progress. Harvey is the Director of Strategic Communications at the Center for American Progress and co-editor of both The Progress Report and the blog, ThinkProgress. She is the cohost of a morning-drive radio program, The Bill Press Show, which broadcasts nationwide on Sirius satellite radio each day from 6-9AM.

On Issue
The attorney general would have to get approval from a secretive intelligence court every 45 days to preserve the Bush administration's controversial surveillance program, according to a draft bill from the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman. The proposal being developed by Sen. Arlen Specter would require the Justice Department to ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to determine whether the program is constitutional. The court also would have to certify the government is collecting information when there is probable cause to believe the program "will intercept communications of the foreign power or agent of a foreign power."

AM 760 Website

We're keeping track of a numer of bills wending their way through the Gold Dome this session on our homepage. Check there often for the latest.

There's not enough room to cover all the good, bad and ugly at the Capitol at any given moment; but if there's a piece of legislation you're watching that you'd like to see listed there, let our Outreach Director Maria Handley know at maria@progressnowcolorado.org. Also, remember that we regularly set up petitions and letter-writing campaigns around issues important to our members -- let us know when you need one.

Go take the OKCupid Politics Test and find out. It's an interesting barometer, and in my case formed up pretty well with self-ID:



Though I find the implications of their "famous people" comparison a little disconcerting:



It's amazing what you discover when you let these dating sites into your brain. Who cares what your sign is? I want to know where you are in relation to Hillary Clinton's forehead.

Cross-posted at Soapblox Colorado while we were down this morning.

Pentagon: Iraqi troops downgraded
Link
The only Iraqi battalion capable of fighting without U.S. support has been downgraded to a level requiring them to fight with American troops backing them up, the Pentagon said Friday. The battalion, made up of 700 to 800 Iraqi Army soldiers, has repeatedly been offered by the U.S. as an example of the growing independence of the Iraqi military...
RELATED: Bombs, clashes as Iraq govt warns of "civil war"
Link
RELATED: Japan to pull troops from Iraq in April
Link
RELATED: Rove: Every Exploding Mosque Has A Silver Lining
Link

Churches lambast US over Iraq, environment
Link
"We lament with special anguish the war in Iraq, launched in deception and violating global norms of justice and human rights," said the statement from representatives of the 34 US members of World Council of Churches. "We mourn all who have died or been injured in this war. We acknowledge, with shame, abuses carried out in our name."

Drinks query revives Cheney row
Link
Vice-President Dick Cheney faced fresh questions yesterday about the shooting of his hunting companion on a Texas ranch, with the release of conflicting witness statements about whether alcohol had been consumed...

Bush won't back off ports deal, aide says
Link
The Bush administration said Friday it won't reconsider its approval for a United Arab Emirates company to take over significant operations at six U.S. ports. The former head of the Sept. 11 commission said the deal ''never should have happened.''

Poll: Bush Suffers Big Political Hit
Link
From a political perspective, President Bush's national security credentials have clearly been tarnished due to the outcry over this issue. For the first time ever, Americans have a slight preference for Democrats in Congress over the President on national security issues. Forty-three percent (43%) say they trust the Democrats more on this issue today while 41% prefer the President...

By no means a comprehensive list. If the past week has got you wondering how much further this disastrous presidency can go before the preamble to the Declaration of Independence becomes operative again, my guess is you're not alone.

National Journal ranks all Senators on a conservative/liberal scale. 100 = Liberal, 0 = Neanderthal.

Salazar: Points: 60.2 Rank: 41

Allard: Points: 9.2 Rank: LAST

Soon, she'll just disappear, Jeralyn suggests;

The she-pundit with long blond hair gave another inflammatory speech last night, this time at Indiana University. As usual, it was filled with insults, such as calling one student "gay boy" and referring to Iraqis as "brown boys."

One comment that drew strong audience reactions came from a young man who asked her if she didn't like Democrats, wouldn't it just be better to have a dictatorship? Coulter responded with a jab at the way the student talked.

"You don't want the Republicans in power, does that mean you want a dictatorship, gay boy?" she said.

Some more Coulterisms:

She claimed liberals "hate God and hate America,"
....She said that Democrats don't want democracy to succeed in Iraq. She said, "They don't think the little brown boys could handle democracy," to which students responded, "We don't tolerate racism here. Go back to Germany."

Neal's Town, Home of the First PodSlam

Why Denver? How could podSlam's amazing, passionate, beat-like poetry come out of what most people think is a cow town? Is there anything more to Denver than a gateway to skiing and the home of Broncomania? Check out the poets at podSlam.org and you'll wonder too.

Maybe it's because Denver has always been a source of leading edge poetry welling up spontaneously from the heart of people more engaged in life than most of us are. I think the first PodSlam is from Denver because Neal Cassady's from Denver. Don't know who Neal Cassady was? Few do.

Let's start with a reminder why tenure for college professors is important.

Tenure provides a vital layer of insulation between academics and the variables of fickle, intolerant society. Repeatedly in the last hundred years, academics have offered unpopular insights on history and contemporary events that have been stunningly vindicated -- often after years of persecution and blacklisting. That insulation is not intended to sanction the sort of academic dishonesty that Ward Churchill stands accused of, any more than those allegations reflect the problem Republicans really have with Ward Churchill. What Republicans really want: that is, to see Churchill fired because of his unpopular opinions, is precisely why protecting tenure is so important to a freely educated society.

And that protection is exactly what Rep. Keith King, (R-Colorado Springs) is trying to destroy with HB-1284.

Tenure bill passes committee

Tenured university professors could be fired more easily under a bill passed Thursday by the House Education Committee.

HB 1284 by Rep. Keith King, R-Colorado Springs, requires state colleges and universities to evaluate professors three years after they receive tenure and at least every five years thereafter.

Faculty members would be fired if they fail to live up to a performance plan established after a failing evaluation or if they fail two evaluations within 10 years...

The bill is not specifically tied to the controversy over Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor under internal investigation for allegedly falsifying research. But Churchill's was the only name that came up at a hearing.

Rep. Michael Merrifield, D-Manitou Springs, the committee chairman, told King that the investigation of Churchill shows that existing disciplinary processes are working.

King responded, "Is he not still employed? Is he not still teaching?"

Do you suppose that's because the investigation isn't finished? Oh, that's right, the "investigation" is irrelevant anyway because Ward Churchill is a traitor. Maybe Rep. King should have just said that -- and come clean with his true intentions.

Our showing of the WalMart movie earlier this month was a great success... we actually had the full scale movie experience with a movie screen, projector, popcorn (although it was free, not $45 a bucket)... the works (THANKS to Eden and Jim... you went WAY over the top!!!). If anyone in the group is interested in seeing the movie, contact Jake @ think@sherosky.com and you can borrow it...

------------------'High Cost' in Eurpoe ---------------------
"Greetings to everyone who's contributed to our efforts here at Brave New Films,

I just returned from an amazing whirlwind trip to New York, Berlin and the UK. I was in New York for the Court TV launch of the ACLU Freedom Files. The Freedom Files (created by Jeremy Kagan and team) and The Sierra Club Chronicles (from Molly O'Brien and Richard Perez) are Brave New Films' two new television series. I'm truly excited about both of these projects which you can watch on LINK TV satellite (DirecTV 375 and Dish 9410) or download online:

Link European portion of my trip was put together by our terrific sales agent, Richard Guardian and Lightning Entertainment. The goal of the trip was to make sure that Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price is sold all over the world- and it is working.

I wish that each and every one of you could have been with me to see, feel and experience the really quite amazing results of all our work. From Berlin to London to Scotland and then to Ireland, the film screened to sold-out theaters. On top of this we had enormous press interest from print, radio and television from every country we screened in. It was really quite something.

Coming up next week:

Join the Protect Families, Protect Choice Coalition, for Pro-Choice Day at the Capitol on Thursday March 2, 2006 from 8:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Colorado State Capitol. This a great opportunity to make your voice heard!

You can sign up for this event at:
Link

Colorado Citizens Campaign is working on a campaign to cleanup the Cemex cement plant in Lyons.

Donate or Volunteer!
Send a Letter!
Meeting on 3-14-2006


"Cemex Inc. Violates Colorado Air Standards 72,000 Times in 2004
Toxic dust from Cemex's Lyons Cement Plant has been plaguing neighbors for years. State records show that clouds of Cement Kiln Dust drifted from the plant across the St. Vrain Valley twenty-nine separate times between November 2004 and November 2005. The dust settled on neighbors' cars, houses, and in their lungs. The particulates in the dust contribute to asthma and lung disease. The highly alkaline dust can also burn skin and damage auto paint (according to EPA, neighbor, and worker reports). This dust, combined with emissions from the coal-fired kiln, contributes to smog and heath hazards for residents from Denver to Ft. Collins.

According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, the pollution is also a major contributor to hazy conditions in the Indian Peaks Wilderness and Rocky Mountain National Park. Continued pollution will drive tourists, and their dollars, to other vacation spots." Read the whole thing...

Additionally, the St. Vrain Valley Community Watchdogs have additional information and details about this issue.

State of Colorado warning details... sent: (also available here as a verification)
" 9. The inlet PMCD gas temperature records that CEMEX provided to the Division indicate that the temperature at the inlet of the kiln PMCD exceeded the maximum allowable level, 517° F, approximately 72,067 times in 2004, and the temperature at the inlet of the alkali bypass PMCD exceeded the maximum allowable level, 509° F, approximately 368 times in 2004, based on 3-hour rolling averages.
10. Pursuant to 40 C.F.R. §§63.1354(a)(8) and 63.10(e)(3) and Section II, Condition 24.8 of Permit No. 95OPBO082, CEMEX is required to submit an excess emissions and continuous monitoring system performance report ("EER") for any event when the continuous monitoring system data indicate that the source is not in compliance with the applicable emission limitation or operating parameter limit. Such reports must be submitted semi-annually. CEMEX failed to submit EERs for the approximately 72,067 occasions in 2004 where the three-hour rolling temperature average at the inlet to the kiln PMCD exceeded the temperature maximum. Additionally, CEMEX submitted EERs for some, but not all of the exceedances at the alkali bypass PMCD inlet."

God bless this man.

This story made my week. In response to a bill introduced in the Ohio House this month by Republican state Rep. Ron Hood that would ban gay people (or anyone who shares a home with someone gay) from adopting, Democratic Senator Robert Hagan sent out an email on Wednesday to his fellow lawmakers stating that he intends to introduce legislation that would ban households with one or more Republican voters from adopting children or acting as foster parents:

To further lampoon Hood's bill, Hagan wrote in his mock proposal that "credible research" shows that adopted children raised in Republican households are more at risk for developing "emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos, and alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves and an air of overconfidence to mask their insecurities."

However, Hagan admitted that he has no scientific evidence to support the above claims.

Just as "Hood had no scientific evidence" to back his assertion that having gay parents was detrimental to children, Hagan said.

"It flies in the face of reason when we need to reform our education system, address health care and environmental issues that we put energy and wasted time (into) legislation (Hood's) like this," continued Hagan, who has been in the Ohio Senate nine years. Before the Senate, he served 19 years in the Ohio House.

Today's daily news digest

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To subscribe to the daily news digest, click here.

Rocky Mountain News


Abortion proposal tweaked
By Jean Torkelson, Rocky Mountain News
February 23, 2006

Sponsors of a proposed initiative on late-term abortion are making what they call "voter friendly" word changes after a recent poll showed lower-than-expected support.

The Legislative Council will rule today on whether the changes are substantial enough to require a hearing.

The initiative has gone through four changes since September, the most recent one last month. All changes must be approved by the Legislative Council and the title board before sponsors can seek voter signatures to get the initiative on the November ballot.

Now those steps must be retraced.

And I'm sick of making some kind of partisan distinction.

Ethics panel named to investigate Hanna

Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, D-Denver, sought the investigation following a report last week in the Rocky Mountain News that Hanna had demanded the money from the state Association of Realtors.

Gordon said Wednesday that Hanna's letter to the group implied that if the Realtors didn't pay up, their issues wouldn't be supported.

"Senator Hanna's language - whether she was intentionally soliciting money for favorable legislative action, which would be a crime, or through some lapse of judgment has written a letter capable of misinterpretation - tends to bring the Senate into disrepute, damages the Senate's reputation and serves to destroy the faith the public has in legislative bodies," Gordon wrote in his complaint.

She's entitled to a fair hearing, but it's intolerable if it's true. We can make no accusation credibly if we tolerate the same crime in our own house. Why the hell isn't that axiomatic?

The rights of individual residents must be protected, no matter how lucrative the development going on around them or under them. It's the argument that's driving the national revolt against the Kelo vs. New London decision allowing neighborhoods to be bulldozed for private development.

It's the same argument that drove Rep. Kathleen Curry to try for the second year to protect landowners with corporate mineral rights underneath them. This year she's getting somewhere, as the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent reports this morning:

Rejecting talk of changes that might upset a delicate balance, the Colorado House of Representatives on Wednesday approved surface use legislation seen as a compromise between the interests of landowners and oil and gas developers.

The vote was the latest in a string of victories for state Rep. Kathleen Curry in attempting to get the bill passed. It previously had won unanimous approval in two House committees, after she failed last year to get a similar measure out of a committee she chaired.

Curry, D-Gunnison, put forth House Bill 1185 in an attempt to encourage negotiation of agreements between energy companies and owners of surface property affected by oil and gas development. It would raise the bond amount that companies would have to post if they proceed with drilling without reaching agreements.

Cool. We need more of these and fewer meaningless wedge-issue tantrums...

Now, powerless American woman, you'll see why Scalito. Probably why Roberts. And no, it sure didn't take very long, did it?

Ban on Most Abortions Advances in South Dakota

Across the country, abortion rights advocates reacted with outrage and dismay. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which runs the sole abortion clinic in South Dakota, said it was bracing to fight the move in court immediately, if the governor signs it.

...After more than an hour of fierce and emotional debate, the senators rejected pleas to add exceptions for incest or rape or for the health of the pregnant woman and instead voted, 23 to 12, to outlaw all abortions, except those to save the woman's life.

"This represents a monumental step backward for personal privacy for women," Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, said.

Some opponents of abortion rights celebrated what they called a bold and brave move and lauded South Dakota for taking the lead in what they said they hoped would become a series of states to challenge Roe, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal.

The shifting makeup of the United States Supreme Court, the opponents said, offered a crucial opportunity, the first since at least 1992...

...

Today's daily news digest

NOTE: some news sites require free registration in order to read their stories.

To subscribe to the daily news digest, click here.

To celebrate International Women's Day, Code Pink will be holding "Women Against War" rallies around the country. To organize one locally, see Code Pink web site for ideas.

"Drinking Liberally" meetings on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of each month at Old Chicago (downtown Colorado Springs) on Tejon.

Higher-ed bills come fast and furious

By MATT WILLIAMS Colorado Daily Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 21, 2006 9:14 PM MST

Bills on higher education are multiplying seven weeks into this year's session of the state Legislature.

State lawmakers have introduced about 20 bills related to colleges and universities so far, including legislation that would require all institutions to adopt a post-tenure review procedure for faculty members as well as a bill that would give students the opportunity to sign a consent form to notify relatives when they are suicidal.

Most higher education bills are stuck in committees right now as lawmakers continue to tweak them; others are in transit between the House and Senate.

State Sen. Ron Tupa, D-Boulder, told the Colorado Daily on Tuesday that bills on higher education are all vying for the same $4 billion that Referendum C, the state's temporary budget fix, will make available over the next five years.

It has created a landscape of "competing interests" at the Legislature, he said.

Tupa is member of the Senate Education Committee.

"I'd like to see more go into financial aid for the students, and if that comes as a College Opportunity Fund increase, which I'm hearing that it will, I'd like to just see more money assisting students get in and out of college," Tupa said.

MoveOn decides to spend time on this AOL garbage....

The real issue is that people are using AOL... the application has made Internet users dumber for years, by creating a separate world from the "real" Internet. By create an environment that is supposed to be easier to navigate AOL is really making their users believe that AOL is the Internet... AOL served a purpose in 1995 (when I was an AOL user)… now they are more about pop-ups and constant downloads then they are about content and information…


"Dear MoveOn member,

The very existence of online civic participation and the free Internet as we know it are under attack by America Online.

AOL recently announced what amounts to an "email tax." Under this pay-to-send system, large emailers willing to pay an "email tax" can bypass spam filters and get guaranteed access to people's inboxes--with their messages having a preferential high-priority designation.1

Charities, small businesses, civic organizing groups, and even families with mailing lists will inevitably be left with inferior Internet service unless they are willing to pay the "email tax" to AOL. We need to stop AOL immediately so other email hosts know that following AOL's lead would be a mistake."

Better find another culture-war bigot electioneering vehicle, fellas.

House defeats GOP's push on immigration

Republicans marched into Tuesday with 10 bills on illegal immigration. By the end of an eight-hour meeting, only three were still alive...

Democrats in the House Committee on State, Veterans and Military Affairs killed most of them on a 5-6 party-line vote, including a bill by Rep. David Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs, to require sheriffs to ask for federal training so their deputies can enforce immigration laws.

Schultheis said counties should do whatever is necessary, including raising taxes, to get the resources to deal with illegal immigration...

Committee chairman Paul Weissmann, D-Louisville, tried to lay down the law early in the hearing.

"There's widespread agreement that there's a problem with immigration. That's not what we're here to discuss today," Weissmann said. "We are trying to keep it focused on the solution-oriented proposals before us."

It's simple, really. These guys can't pass bills at the federal level, where the issue absolutely belongs. And if they can't put up race-baiting hate bills to pander to their rebel-flag constituents...well, what's an aspiring demagogue to do? This way, they get the best of both worlds: bills that would never work but will never pass -- and make them look like tough guys holding back the Brown Tide. It's a cynical ploy, but it plays in all the right houses.

It's nothing more than the finest Henry Cabot Lodge tradition...

I've watched Nancy Pelosi ever since she was elected to her house leadership post, repeatedly take what I considered, the wrong position on variety of matters. This morning The New Republic on-line version takes a look at Ms. Pelosi's stand regarding the Dems participateion during the Katrina hearings. TNR requires a subscription.

Here is an excerpt:

When House Republicans announced back in September that they would conduct a special investigation into the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi predicted a "sham" inquiry and vowed that Democrats would have nothing to do with it. This instinct was not unreasonable, nor was her political strategy--trying to pressure Republicans into creating an independent panel modeled after the 9/11 Commission. But, once it was clear the GOP wouldn't budge, many Democrats urged Pelosi to let them join the House inquiry. It was better to cry foul from within than without, they said--and why let the GOP hog the spotlight?

Pelosi insisted her boycott strategy was best. That decision began to look dubious during the investigatory committee's high-profile hearings last December, which offered starring roles to Republican members like committee chairman Tom Davis and Christopher Shays of Connecticut.

[snip]

News outlets from the Associated Press to CNN turned to Republicans like Davis and Shays--a moderate desperate to run away from the White House this fall--for quotes about last August's "national failure." The AP even took care to note that this was the man-bites-dog handiwork of a "Republican-dominated" panel. Meanwhile, Democrats found themselves in the odd position of praising Republicans for not delivering the whitewash they had predicted.

To be sure, the report did inflict damage on the Bush administration. But Bush isn't up for reelection--House Republicans are. If only Nancy Pelosi had realized that a few months ago.

If Dems really want to take back control of the house, then maybe we should look for more astute leadership.

Today's daily news digest

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For the BushCo NREL PR fiasco now consigned to the history books, that is. From yesterday's email, for posterity:

Anonymous Tipster:  Two weeks ago one of our network members, who asked to remain anonymous, tipped us that the President was planning to visit NREL which we passed on to the press.  Thank you and to so many others who continue to feed us timely tips.

Courageous Laid-off NREL Workers:  Who had the courage to share their concerns on how NREL's cuts were a set-back to investing in our country's alternative energy efforts.

Congressman Mark Udall and Senator Ken Salazar:  Last November, Udall sent a bipartisan letter signed by over 100 members of Congress to President Bush demanding that the NREL funding be fully restored.  Last Tuesday, Salazar met with and lobbied President Bush to restore the NREL funding.

ProgressNowAction Members:  Thank you to the thousands of you who signed our petition to restore NREL's funding, participated in our "Bush Question" sign contest, and emailed your local newspaper about the importance of restoring the NREL's funding.

Both courtesy the Jay Marvin show on AM760.

2/14/06 (9.8MB MP3)
2/21/06 (10.1MB MP3)

A clear plurality of over 1,000 voters (36%) picked this Question Bush sign, from Kim Baker:



The runner-up was courtesy Rep. Jack Pommer:



Thanks again to everybody who participated, mailed theirs out, et cetera. We're spreading them around...well, you know, liberally.

Expected topics for Jay Marvin's show on AM 760.
Wednesday, February 22

Wednesday, February 22 from 6--10AM on AM 760

6:45AM: After months of trying unsuccessfully to develop a common message on the war in Iraq, Democratic Party leaders are beginning to coalesce around a broad plan to begin a quick withdrawal of US troops and install them elsewhere in the region, where they could respond to emergencies in Iraq and help fight terrorism in other countries. The concept, dubbed ''strategic redeployment," is outlined in a slim, nine-page report coauthored by a former Reagan administration assistant Defense secretary and current Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Lawrence Korb and he will be our special guest.

7:00AM: Jay will discuss how Atheists are trying to gain ground and rid the negative connotations associated with the A word. Joining us is Lori Lipman Brown, who was hired last fall to be the Washington, D.C., lobbyist for an organization devoted to atheist causes, the Secular Coalition for America. She's believed to be the first paid lobbyist for the unbelievers in the nation's capital.

8:00AM: Response to the President's visit to Golden and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory from special guest Congressman Eliot Engle New York District 17 (The Bronx). Engel serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee and the International Relations Committee. He Chairs the Albanian Issues Caucus and serves as Vice Chair of the Democratic Task Force on Homeland Security. He is the founder and Co-Chair of the House Oil and National Security Caucus, which is seeking clean, energy efficient alternatives to America's over-reliance on oil.

On Issue
President Bush said Tuesday that a deal allowing an Arab company to take over six major U.S. seaports should go forward and that he would veto any congressional effort to stop it.

AM 760 Website

By popular demand (that means you), we're upgrading progressnowcolorado.org's traffic capacity tonight. By an order of magnitude.

This means our site will run better than ever as of tomorrow morning. You'll notice next time DailyKos tries to kill us with kindness and ProgressNow actually stays up.

We'll be offline as of 9:30PM tonight for about three hours while we convert to the new server environment. Thanks to all of you for making this upgrade necessary -- there are worse problems for a site administrator to deal with than accomodating success.

And Americans, regardless of how they feel about gay people, have had enough.

Bikers roll to military funerals to oppose anti-gay protests

Wearing vests covered in military patches, a band of motorcyclists rolls around the country from one soldier's funeral to another, cheering respectfully to overshadow jeers from church protesters.

They call themselves the Patriot Guard Riders, and they are more than 5,000 strong, forming to counter anti-gay protests held by the Rev. Fred Phelps at military funerals.

Phelps believes American deaths in Iraq are divine punishment for a country that he says harbors homosexuals. His protesters carry signs thanking God for so-called IEDs -- explosives that are a major killer of soldiers in Iraq.

The bikers shield the families of dead soldiers from the protesters, and overshadow the jeers with patriotic chants and a sea of red, white and blue flags.

Sometimes you have to choose your loyalties carefully. This isn't one of those times.

President Bush's visit to NREL today was:

A. A step in the right direction for renewable energy in the U.S.

B. A political stunt--All talk, no real action.

C. An easy chance for Bush to play dress up in fancy hard hat and safety glasses.

D. All of the above.

E. None of the above. I'll submit my own.

Discuss in the comments.

This just in;

In an 8-1 ruling today, the United States Supreme Court revived a federal lawsuit, Lance v. Dennis, that sought to give effect to the congressional redistricting plan passed by Republicans during the 2003 legislative session.

In 2001, the General Assembly and Governor Owens deadlocked on a redistricting plan after the 2000 census. A Denver District Court adopted, and the Colorado Supreme Court approved, a plan so that the 2002 elections could be held. In 2003, legislative Republicans passed a redistricting plan that reconfigured the districts to the advantage of the Republican Party. Then-Attorney General Ken Salazar sued over the Republican plan, and the Colorado Supreme Court held that the state could not redistrict multiple times after a census. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the Colorado decision.

Andy Oh-willeke with a good summary:

The federal trial court held that the case was barred by an obscure procedural rule known as the Rooker-Feldman doctrine which bans de facto appeals of state court decisions in federal trial courts. The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed and held, unanimously, that the trial court ruling on this issue was incorrect.

In particular, the high court found that the citizens who brought the federal court suit were not sufficiently tied to the parties to the other lawsuits over redistricting to be bound by the decisions in those cases under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, which is a very narrow bar to federal lawsuits in a very particular kind of case where the same people who are the litigants in the state court are also the Plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision doesn't cast much light on the Court's view of the merits of the dispute...

So it could be the last gasp of a broken legal maneuver that was thoroughly reviewed and dismissed over two years ago. Or maybe that newly tilted Supreme Court has a different plan in mind.

We pointed out last July how this challenge was based on narrow, specious amalgams of the law, and ultimately intended to gerrymander Republicans into a dominance they don't deserve based on the population of Colorado. Nothing's changed except the venue...

I am sure that all have heard about the magical increased budget for NREL that coincided with the visit of our illustrious President. A couple of thoughts for you:

-Apparently the money reallocated to NREL is enough to re-employ the fired employees, but it is not the whole amount that was cut. It was my understanding that the decreased money also cut funds to some projects. It seems logical that the fired people and the cut projects would be connected and so now we have funds for the people but not the projects, right? So what are these people going to be doing if there aren't funds for their projects?

-Is this setting a precedent for reversing budget cuts to improve the public image of the Prez on his visits? If so, maybe we should have him out here more often.

From our friends at the White House Project:

Make history and vote for a woman president today. The time is now. Chile, Liberia and Germany recently elected their first female heads of state and we believe the United States is poised to do the same very soon.

The White House Project believes the time is ripe to raise awareness in America about 8 women who are real contenders for the top position in our country.

You can vote online at thewhitehouseproject.org.

The women are: Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), Mayor Shirley Franklin (D-Atlanta), Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Governor Janet Napolitano (D-AZ), Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (R), Governor Kathleen Sebelius (D-KS), and Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME).

It didn't take long for The White House Project to find 8 talented women. We picked these women because...

- They are proven leaders with expertise in key areas such as foreign affairs and economic policy.

- They know how to run for office and they know how to win.

- Nearly all the contenders have high approval rating in their jobs--some over 70%.

- And, all are risk-takers and women of real courage. These women are decisive and able to wield power, but also willing and able to collaborate and build coalitions.

Look for the results of the 8 for '08 poll to be published in PARADE magazine in April.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
CONTACT: Michael Huttner
(303) 991-1900

Bush's sincerity about investing in renewable energy questioned

Denver - ProgressNowAction challenges President Bush's sincerity when he stated this morning that "good intentions are met with actual dollars spent" for funding renewable energy.

"While President Bush talks of helping NREL, his Administration has requested a further reduction to NREL in 2007," stated Michael Huttner, Executive Director of ProgressNowAction.

The Administration's latest request (click here), from January 31, 2006 to Congress shows a cut of 10 million dollars to NREL in FY 2007.

"We find it troubling that President Bush is talking about restoring funds at NREL, when he is requesting further cuts in the future," stated Huttner.

This morning, President Bush claimed that his administration had sent "mixed signals" to NREL as he has partially restored the millions cut to NREL for this year and had blamed it on "mix-up".

"We do not believe cutting NREL by 10 million dollars in 2007 is simply a mix-up," noted Huttner. "It appears that President Bush's visit to NREL may be just another political stunt," Huttner added.

###

ProgressNow Action is a nonpartisan, grassroots media nerve center which mission is to be a strong credible voice in advancing progressive solutions to critical community problems.

For more interviews, quotes or sources, please call Michael Huttner at 303-991-1900.

The new line in Bush's NREL comedy of errors. Richer and richer, my long-suffering friends:

Bush Blames Energy Lab Cuts on Mix-Up

President Bush on Tuesday acknowledged that Washington has sent ``mixed signals'' to one of the nation's premiere labs studying renewable energies - by first laying off, then reinstating, 32 workers just before his visit.

The president blamed the conflicting message on an appropriations mix-up in funding the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is developing the very renewable energy technologies the president is promoting...

Over the weekend, just before Bush's planned visit to the lab on Tuesday, the government restored the jobs. His trip to the renewable energy laboratory is part of a two-day, three-state trip to promote the energy proposals he outlined in his State of the Union address.

At the direction of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, $5 million was transferred to the Midwest Research Institute, the operating contractor for the lab, to get the workers back on the job, the Energy Department announced Monday.

Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said the decision restores only $5 million of the $28 million budget shortfall at the lab that forced the layoffs.

``The $5 million stopped the bodies from going out the door, but it doesn't provide the money for the (renewable energy) programs,'' Clapp said.

Having taken my Russian history, I have no better description for this than that offered by our companero Stygius.

If they are expecting Coloradans to suspend their disbelief during the visit, the White House will sadly be mistaken.

It's galling that NREL has become the administration's latest Potemkin village in its permanent public relations campaign...

Today's daily news digest

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To subscribe to the daily news digest, click here.

Would you pay $1 more for a gallon of fuel that was clean-burning and derived from a domestically renewable source?

Remember, in most of Europe they pay $6+ for a gallon of smelly old petrol. Everything's relative.

Once again, let me say that this is why I'd make a poor museum employee. Something about suffering fools gladly...

Group challenges science on 'biblically correct' tours

Inside the flagship lab of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a dozen home-schooled children and their parents walk past the offices of scientists grappling with topics from global warming and microphysics to solar storms and the electrical fields of lightning.

They are trailing Rusty Carter, a guide with Biblically Correct Tours.

At a large, colorful panel along a wall, Carter reads aloud from a passage describing the disappearance of dinosaurs from the Earth about 65 million years ago. He and some of the older students exchange knowing smiles at the timeline, which contradicts their interpretation of the Bible suggesting a 6,000-year-old planet.

"Did man and dinosaurs live together?" Carter asks.

A timid yes comes from the students.

"How do we know that to be true?" Carter says.

There's a long pause...

A chance to do the right thing. A chance to show compassion. A chance to understand medicine instead of knee-jerking it into conflict with your always-extensible "morals."

What'll it be this year, Governor?

For 4th time, pill measure hits floor

Rep. Betty Boyd, D-Lakewood, has pushed three times for legislation that would make it easier for a woman to obtain emergency contraception.
Three times she has failed.

This year, Boyd is optimistic about House Bill 1212, which would allow, but not force, pharmacists in the state to write a prescription for a woman seeking emergency contraception without the consent of her doctor...

Boyd said allowing women easy access to emergency contraceptives would result in a substantial decrease in abortions in Colorado.

We'll see if that last fact penetrates Owens' sound-bite awareness...

Expected topics for Jay Marvin's show on AM 760.
Tuesday, February 21

Tuesday, February 21 from 6--10AM on AM 760

President Bush visits the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden on Tuesday to highlight the administration's efforts to develop alternatives to oil. Is the administration all talk and no action and where do we stand as a State as far as renewable energy is concerned? Also worth mentioning 32 people's jobs were restored at NREL today but there are still dozens that have not. We have an outstanding list of guests on this subject and the President's visit.

7:05AM: Executive Director at ProgressNow Michael Huttner is our special guest on the job restoration at NREL. Who we can thank and who we can tell to blow off?

7:20AM: Environment Colorado's Matt Baker joins Jay to talk about the nice talk but little to detrimental action the administration takes when it comes to the energy policy in the United States and Colorado. Baker is one of the leaders in the effort to pass the Colorado Clean Energy Act.

7:30AM: Adriana Raudzens, Associate Field Representative from the Sierra Club, joins Jay to talk about how NREL's budget will be affected and how the Sierra club has called on the federal government to put it's money where it's mouth is and to fully fund clean energy research and development.

8:30AM: Congressman Mark Udall is our special guest to talk about the President's visit to NREL, the deal that might contract a state-owned Dubai company to manage major U.S. ports and about how the U.S. Forest Service is proposing to auction scenic Colorado lands overlooking Rocky Mountain National Park and along the Mount Evans Highway to raise money for rural schools in other states.

9:00AM: It's our weekly check-in with Media Matters for America and Senior Fellow Paul Waldman. Waldman's recent report shows that Sunday Morning Talk Shows are dominated with Republicans and conservative guests. This report has sparked a heated debate over balance on these shows. .

AM 760 Website

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To subscribe to the daily news digest, click here.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, February 20, 2006
CONTACT: Michael Huttner
(303)931-4547

ProgressNowAction's "Thank yous" and "No Thank yous" on NREL Jobs being restored

Denver - ProgressNowAction thanks those responsible for helping restore the jobs of the 32 individuals who were laid-off earlier this month by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and wishes to ensure that those who deserve no credit do not try to mislead the press and public.

"We are thrilled that these courageous researchers and staff members will now have their jobs back," stated Michael Huttner, Executive Director of ProgressNowAction. "We should give credit to those who helped pressure President Bush to restore the cuts, and make sure those who did nothing do not try to steal the credit, again," Huttner added.

ProgressNowAction would like to offer the following 'Thank yous' and 'No thanks' to the following:

Thank you to:

Anonymous Tipster: Two weeks ago one of our network members, who asked to remain anonymous, tipped us that the President was planning to visit NREL which we passed on to the press. Thank you to her and to so many others who continue to feed us timely tips.

Courageous Laid-off NREL Workers: Who had the courage to share their concerns on how such NREL's cuts were a set-back to investing in our country's alternative energy efforts.

Congressman Mark Udall and Senator Ken Salazar: Last November, Udall sent a bipartisan letter signed by over 100 members of Congress to President Bush demanding that the NREL funding be fully restored. Last Tuesday, Salazar met with and lobbied President Bush to restore the NREL funding.

ProgressNowAction Members: Thank you to the thousands of ProgressNowAction members who signed our petition to restore NREL's funding, participated in our "Bush Question" sign contest, and emailed their local newspaper about the importance of restoring the NREL's funding.

No thanks should be given to:

Congressman Bob Beauprez: Not only did Beauprez vote for the cuts to NREL which is in his district, he also refused to sign the bipartisan letter to restore the cuts. Worst of all, he tried to take credit for helping NREL, in a Rocky Mountain News guest editorial this past Saturday, when he, more than any other member of Congress, is most to blame for the cuts. For the facts and a 500 word response to Both Ways Bob's hypocritical editorial, click here.

Senator Wayne Allard: Allard, a member of the majority on the Senate Appropriations completely dropped the ball by allowing the cuts in the first place. The past couple weeks he has tried to blame the cuts on minority members on the Senate Appropriations, which the Colorado press-to its credit-didn't buy. Worst of all, Allard is now trying to take credit for the restoration of cuts by being the first to release a statement about how "pleased" he is to the press.
As for President Bush, he will arrive in Denver tonight and will be visiting NREL tomorrow morning. Stay tuned to our homepage, www.progressnowcolorado.org, for the latest plans regarding his visit.


###

ProgressNowAction is a nonpartisan, grassroots media nerve center which mission is to be a strong credible voice in advancing progressive solutions to critical community problems.

For more interviews, quotes or sources, please call Michael Huttner at 303-931-4547.

Righties seem to be fixated on Cheney's admission of having "a beer" at lunch before the hunt, saying there is no possible way the Vice President, a man in ill health and on who knows what kind of medication, could have been intoxicated by one single beer.

Does anyone really believe that he had a can of beer and that's it? My guess is that he probably drank beer from a glass, and that the people in charge of feeding and imbibing the VP probably kept that glass full.

After all, it was The Bard who once said, "Hunting sober is like fishing...sober." Or maybe it was Uncle Jimbo. Or something.

Call me a cheap date, but one beer will knock yours truly on his ass. And I don't even take heart medication.

Monday there will be a hearing before House Health and Human Services Committee 1:30 P.M. for HB 1193 (Whistleblower Bill).

Colorado lacks a unified reporting process and clear whistleblower protections for healthcare workers who report concerns regarding substandard medical treatment. Workers should never be fired for doing the right thing. This protection is fundamental so healthcare workers feel safe in coming forward to raise and address concerns regarding patient care.

This bill will streamline reporting protocol and prohibit retalliatory firings against these workers who come forward with concerns regarding patient care. When workers feel too threatened or intimated to come forward, it keeps hospitals and providers in the dark about red flags, and makes it difficult to prevent or detect negligence before it's too late.

Should we expect the truth from our government?
That was the question posed during the February 18 Question Alliance action today in Highlands Ranch. Responses were varied.

"People in Douglas County are asleep."

"Get off the street corner!"

"You lost the last two elections -- give it up!"

"What sort of truth do you want? Our troops are out there risking their lives to protect you. You should respect that."

"Asshole. Asshole. Asshole."

"Why don't you get a day job?"

But many thumbs up, some clapping, a few mouthed "thank yous," and friendly honks were also received making the single digit temperatures more bearable. There were enough participants this morning to cover all four corners at Highlands Ranch Parkway and University from 10:00 to 11:30. We expect that several hundred vehicles had the opportunity to read the message.

So, the message is being read and we feel more support is received each time the Question Alliance holds an action. Our thanks to weather-brave participants today and an open invitation to others who would like to help make passersby be more mindful about what is happening in our country and world.

Imagine this being written with a straight face. Both Ways Bob shows us once again why that nickname is so richly deserved in this morning's Rocky:

In the past two years, unfortunately, congressional earmarks have diverted precious resources away from NREL [and Beauprez voted for them --ed.]. The diversion of these funds into other institutions has served to undermine the mission at NREL and other national laboratories. I believe this is a mistake that must be corrected.

The president has declared research into renewable energy a national priority. I believe that means adequately funding the premier national laboratory [that 100 Congressmen went to bat for last November while Beauprez refused to --ed.] tasked with developing renewable energy should also be a national priority...

Meanwhile, back in the real world...just bug-eyed unbelievable...

More like his universal all-purpose Plan B. Got a problem? Squeeze the guvmint.

Tax activist Jon Caldara, accused of being a "big-city Robin Hood" for wanting to use Western Slope oil and gas taxes to help Coloradans pay their heating bills, has proposed instead taking the money from Referendum C revenues...

Caldara said if the Ref C measure doesn't get through all the steps, but the Robin Hood one does, he will continue with it despite Western Slope objections.

And there are plenty.

"My friend Jon Caldara may fancy himself a big-city Robin Hood, but for those of us in rural Colorado, this sounds an awful lot like highway robbery," Penry said last week when he first heard about the proposal.

Both of Caldara's measures are an attempt to limit the amount of money the state is going to collect under Referendum C, the tax measure Caldara unsuccessfully fought last year.

There's no point in getting worked up over it -- it's what he does. It's what his handlers salary him to do, regardless of pesky details like "the will of the people" or "the barest standard of fiscal competence." He may become more irrelevant each time he pulls this stuff, but once he finds a tune that gets the checks in the mail, he schticks with it. At least give him credit for that, like the guy who always finishes the race last but still shows up every day talking smack.

Health care coverage is a vital issue to all, even if we think we are insured. Peter Jennings' report "Breakdown: America's Insurance Crisis," broadcast in December 2005, revealed that overburdened hospital emergency rooms are being closed, and new hospitals are being built without emergency rooms because they are now regarded "cost losers." We all lose in the current system of cost-shifting and private, for-profit insurance that provides a perverse incentive - insuring the healthy and wealthy, and abandoning on a moment's notice anyone who requires health care.

To address this and other issues, a coalition of groups is providing a forum for testimony about consumer and provider concerns, and panel presentations over two days, April 21 & 22 at Montview Presbyterian Church, 1980 Dahlia St, Denver. There is much information on the website www.healthcareforallcolorado.org about health care issues and the planned Citizen Health Care Hearings. Another hearing is planned in Ft. Collins on May 6. Further information and an updated event flyer can be viewed and printed from the website.
Written testimony is being collected now, and oral testimony will be heard on April 21. To be a group cosponsor, or provide testimony, please leave a message at 303-277-8306 or 866-267-9462. Email: admin@healthcareforallcolorado.org

Among other reports, there is a draft Colorado resolution and bill for single-payer health care on the website under Legislative/Consumer Action in the Colorado section.

The Bell Policy Center is urging the House Business Affairs and Labor Committee to approve HB 1327. It would create an alternative base period in order to qualify more low-income workers for unemployment insurance when they lose their job.

The committee is slated to hear the bill on Monday, Feb. 20.

The bill is sponsored by state Rep. Mike Cerbo, D-Denver. It's also the subject of a thumbs-up Opportunity Note written by Rich Jones, Bell's director of policy and research. Look for it on the Policy Watch page of Bell's web site, www.thebell.org.

Rocky's famously conservative editorial board compares Morgan Carroll to Patrick Henry in a Bob Barr-style moment of clarity.

A green light to random stops

She's not Patrick Henry, but Rep. Morgan Carroll may have come as close as anyone in Colorado this week to reflecting the great Virginian's love of liberty and defiance of attempts to curtail it.

It takes courage to oppose any measure that is billed by its proponents as sure to save lives, particularly when it is promoted in highly emotional terms. But it takes a special conviction to denounce the measure as not merely unnecessary but as an outright danger to freedom. And yet that is what the Aurora Democrat did Wednesday when she rose to speak against a bill that would allow police to stop motorists solely because they had failed to buckle their seat belts.

It's simply not possible, in most instances, for police to be sure that someone isn't wearing a seat belt. And because that's the case, House Bill 1125 would effectively give cops the right to randomly stop motorists whenever they liked.

"Random searches and seizures violate the very spirit and the very core of what this country was founded on," Carroll said. "The implications for this are so far beyond seat belts."

We agree: The integrity of the Fourth Amendment's ban against "unreasonable searches and seizures" is at risk...

Today's daily news digest

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The moral of the story...

Man Shot In Accident After Laughing At Cheney

Hours after laughing about Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting mishap, Josh Kayser was himself shot by a friend during a hunting expedition.

The 21-year-old Lafayette [Colorado] man was taken to the hospital Monday night after his girlfriend accidentally shot him while they were trailing a raccoon that had been preying on chickens on his family's property.

"I read that thing about the vice president and said to myself 'how can you shoot your friend with your gun?' And look what happened," he said Tuesday...

This hasn't been printed yet, but we just learned that Joel Hefley is NOT running again in CD 5. The folks in Jay Fawcett's camp must be very happy. Now, if mega-church radical Rev. Ted Haggard goes ahead with his threat to run, CD 5 could get very interesting.

A retired Lt. Col. and Air Force Academy grad versus a nutcake radical right pastor. Yes, very interesting.

I was concerned with Ken Salazar voting yes on an important procedural move related to the asbestos liability-cap bill. His somewhat ambiguous comments on this bad bill worried me.

I didn't need to be. Just yet.

Colorado Senators split on asbestos bill

"I frankly concluded at the end of the day that what was being proposed was unworkable because of, one, the fiscal problems it would create, and, two, the legal issues surrounding the trust fund," Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., said Wednesday.

But accountability hasn't quite won the day --

Salazar said he is considering an asbestos bill proposed by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, that would "set up new medical criteria for asbestos claims that would try to streamline the process of claims."

Anytime somebody wants to "streamline" something related to consumer protections and Big Business is pushing it, be wary. The former AG of Colorado surely knows that, so we'll all be watching what happens next knowing that he knows.

Good on him for now, though.

Should failure to wear a seat belt be grounds for police to initiate a traffic stop?

On its face it appears to be an easy public safety issue, but the more subtle civil liberties questions give pause...

Next time your Republican friend offers the latest parsed-word justification for shredding the Constitution, tell 'em what George Will said today in the Washington Post.

No Checks, Many Imbalances

Administration supporters incoherently argue that the AUMF also authorized the NSA surveillance -- and that if the administration had asked, Congress would have refused to authorize it. The first assertion is implausible: None of the 518 legislators who voted for the AUMF has said that he or she then thought it contained the permissiveness the administration discerns in it. Did the administration, until the program became known two months ago? Or was the AUMF then seized upon as a justification? Equally implausible is the idea that in the months after Sept. 11, Congress would have refused to revise the 1978 law in ways that would authorize, with some supervision, NSA surveillance that, even in today's more contentious climate, most serious people consider conducive to national security.

Anyway, the argument that the AUMF contained a completely unexpressed congressional intent to empower the president to disregard the FISA regime is risible coming from this administration. It famously opposes those who discover unstated meanings in the Constitution's text and do not strictly construe the language of statutes.

The administration's argument about the legality of the NSA program also has been discordant with its argument about the urgency of extending the USA Patriot Act. Many provisions of that act are superfluous if a president's wartime powers are as far-reaching as today's president says they are...

in·sid·i·ous adj.

1. Working or spreading harmfully in a subtle or stealthy manner: insidious rumors; an insidious disease.
2. Intended to entrap; treacherous: insidious misinformation.
3. Beguiling but harmful; alluring: insidious pleasures.

Rep. Morgan Carroll knows what it means:

Senate gets seat-belt bill

It's not often that a Democratic lawmaker gives Republicans goose bumps when talking about the Constitution, but that's what happened Wednesday during the second heated debate in two days on a proposed seat-belt law.

Rep. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, passionately argued against a bill that would allow police to pull over drivers solely for failing to buckle up...

House Bill 1125 passed by a single vote, much to Carroll's disappointment.

"Random searches and seizures violate the very spirit and the very core of what this country was founded on," Carroll said during the debate. "The implications for this are so far beyond seat belts."

She said that police would have unlimited authority to stop drivers randomly, merely by arguing that they thought the driver wasn't buckled up.

"That's not my country, that's not my state," she said. "Simply putting words in here saying, 'Thou shall not racially profile' doesn't fix it."

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...the two biggest achievments of this administration are destroying Iraq and New Orleans...

... so far...

Stunning. Just stunning.

...congressional investigations of government responses to Hurricane Katrina have revealed that two of the nation's key crisis managers, the secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security, do not use e-mail.

...Dr. Irwin Redlener, a disaster-preparedness expert at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, expressed surprise that two officials in such critical positions would not be adept at routine methods of modern communication. "This can't be true," he said, only half-jokingly. "It's almost inconceivable in 2006 for officials at that level of government not to be directly connected to systems of communications."

The people's business? Pressing affairs of state? What does any of that matter if Republicans might lose this November?

Senate Scrubs Hearings as Politics Trump Policy in an Election Year

Four cabinet secretaries, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, an Army general and the secretary of the Army were supposed to testify Tuesday morning at hearings on matters including Hurricane Katrina and the Bush administration's proposed budget for foreign affairs.

But their invitations were rescinded and the hearings canceled when the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, scheduled a marathon series of 16 votes on amendments to a pending tax bill -- all of them, both parties agree, intended more to score political points than to make policy.

Ultimately, most of those votes were canceled.

They could have been held Monday night, but that did not work for Mr. Frist. He was holding a fund-raiser at his Washington home, with President Bush as the featured guest...

You'd think the guys who place "compassionate" in front of "conservative" would see the compassion in easing the pain of dying people.

Panel OKs bill on pain management

A bill that opponents say gives doctors and nurses a backdoor pass to help with assisted suicide passed a Senate committee Tuesday.

Senate Bill 102 would allow Colorado physicians and nurses to help terminally ill patients manage their pain by administering high doses of medications without the threat of facing manslaughter charges.

"This bill does not condone assisted suicide," said Sen. Suzanne Williams, D-Aurora, sponsor of the bill. "It's simply a preventive measure that allows physicians to help ease the pain of those with terminal diseases."

The push to better protect physicians and nurses follows a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month that upheld Oregon's assisted suicide law against a challenge by the Bush administration.

"When it comes to pain relief, we do less than an adequate job," said Dr. David Link, an oncologist.

He and others urged lawmakers Tuesday to put themselves in the shoes of the dying, and remove barriers that prevent doctors from helping patients live their final days relatively pain-free.

Perhaps it will dawn on the righties when someone they love needs this kind of palliative relief. Until then, resistance to something so simple and sensible is like Bill Frist second-guessing Terri Schiavo's charts.

Do you support legislation to ban smoking in public places in Colorado?

Demographically, one figures this would be a no-brainer with our audience. But then again, I'm a liberal and I smoke.

(ducks)

I've shot a fair amount. Not bad with a rifle, shot some trap. Targets, not so much into hunting.

But I would pay all the money I have to see somebody hit a man-size target with 200 birdshot pellets at 30 yards with a 28-gauge shotgun. I'm not worried about actually paying that money, though, because it's impossible.

Something's not right about that, but I'm not the only one who thinks so -- I expect it will come out in the wash. In some local paper. After the appropriate 24 hour delay.

It appears that Cheney was at least man enough to put a stop to the "blame the victim" smear Karl Rove's been pushing and just now disappeared from the New York Times' wire story (you all saw it though, and don't forget it).

Mr. Whittington broke away from a line of three hunters, including Mr. Cheney, and failed to announce that he was returning to the group. When he approached, Mr. Cheney had already begun to shoot into a covey of quail that was taking off from the ground.

"This all happened pretty quickly," Ms. Armstrong said in a telephone interview from her ranch. Mr. Whittington, she said, "did not announce -- which would be protocol -- 'Hey, it's me, I'm coming up,' " she said.

"He didn't do what he was supposed to do," she added, referring to Mr. Whittington.

Today's story (after that story flunked out):

"Ultimately, I'm the guy who pulled the trigger that fired the round that hit Harry," he said in a televised interview with the Fox News anchor Brit Hume in Washington. "You can talk about all the other conditions that existed at the time, but that's the bottom line.

"It was not Harry's fault," he went on to say. "You can't blame anybody else. I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend. It's a day I'll never forget."

From hitting the wrong target to blaming the victim to evading the press, this is one hell of a Bush administration microcosm. Not to mention what would be happening to you right now, ordinary citizen, if you'd "accidentally" ventilated your hunting partner...

Today's email to our network:

Next Tuesday, Feb 21, George Bush is coming to Colorado to visit the National Renewable Energy Lab for a photo-op. Yet just last week NREL began laying-off its employees as Bush, along with Bob Beauprez and Wayne Allard, slashed NREL's 2006 funding by $28 Million.

If not for the efforts of Rep. Mark Udall and more recently Sen. Ken Salazar to restore this funding, NREL would face still more staff reductions and program cuts in the current budget. 

This raises the latest in a series of questions about Bush's honesty. Now you have an opportunity to Question Bush during his visit.

Click the link below to create a "Question Bush" sign with your question for Bush:

Click Here

Use the same link to vote on all the other Question Bush signs that have been entered. We'll share the winning signs with the media and distribute the winning sign at key locations during Bush's visit.

This contest was inspired by the Question Alliance, started by local residents Jim and Diane Schrack. For months they've given up Saturday mornings to hold signs raising critical questions about our country's direction at a busy intersection in Highlands Ranch. Watch this short video to see them in action:

Click Here

Thank you, in advance, for your Questions.

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Expected topics for Jay Marvin's show on AM 760.
Wednesday February 15

Wednesday February 15 from 6--10AM on AM 760

6:30AM: Jay will discuss the options the U.S. has with Iran. Our special guest is Brian Katulis who is Director of Democracy and Public Diplomacy on the National Security Team at the Center for American Progress.

8:00AM: Troops and Veterans lost on Tuesday with the withdrawal of Iraq War Veteran Paul Hackett from his Senate race in Ohio. Hackett claims, and there is plenty of evidence to back this up, that he was pressured to withdraw by the Democratic Party establishment. Jay will talk about Hackett's sudden withdrawal with John Soltz the Executive Director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

9:00AM: The unmasking of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson by White House officials in 2003 caused significant damage to U.S. national security and its ability to counter nuclear proliferation abroad. According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran. Jay will bring on Larisa Alexandrovna who broke the story for Raw Story. Alexandrovna is the managing editor and reporter at www.rawstory.com

Also: The Story That Wouldn't Go Away

The 78-year-old lawyer wounded by Vice President Dick Cheney in a hunting accident suffered a mild heart attack Tuesday after a shotgun pellet in his chest traveled to his heart.

AM 760 Website

Aaah, spring is in the air and federal Wildlife Services agents are scurrying. It's the best time of the year for federal officials to shoot native wildlife from aircraft, a practice known as "aerial gunning." It occurs on a mix of private and public lands--including Colorado's national forests, canyonlands, and prairies.

Taxpayers pay hundreds of dollars per animal. The ecological damage: priceless.

Watch the video to learn about the Question Alliance.
Then join the Question Alliance.

The Question Alliance was founded by Diane and Jim Schrack of Highlands Ranch, Colorado. Every few weeks they stand on one of the busiest street corners in Highlands Ranch with signs asking one question.
One weekend they asked, "Could you live on today's minimum wage of $5.15/hour? " Another weekend they asked, "If we torture their soldiers -- do you think they'll torture ours?"

Jim and Diane would love some help getting the people of Colorado to think more about their world. Join them by signing up for the Question Alliance.

Watch the Question Alliance Video
Please select a format:
High-bandwidth: Recommended for those with broadband
Windows Media, 5.1MB Time: 2:34
Quicktime 7.0 only, 5.1MB Time: 2:34

Low-bandwidth: Recommended for those with dial-up
Windows Media, 2.6MB Time: 2:34
Quicktime 7.0 only, 1.8MB Time: 2:34

iPod Video: For those of you with iPods
iPod Video, 13.2MB Time: 2:34

You can get started this Saturday, February 18th.

The Question Alliance
Saturday, February 18, 2006
10-11:30 AM
Corner of University & Highlands Ranch Parkway
1.5 miles south of C-470 on University
Question: Should we expect the truth from our government?

Instructions for Download:
For Windows Media:
Best for those using Windows PCs.
Right click on the link and click Save Target As.
Save the file to your desktop. Double-click on the file and view.

For Quicktime:
Best for those using Macs.
Note, this file will only play in the lastest version of Quicktime, Quicktime 7.
Go to www.apple.com/quicktime to download this latest version.
Once you have installed Quicktime 7, just click on the link and give it a second to load.

Alternate title: "Why Democrats Lose"

Answer starts here. Some argue that it started with John Kerry. Or maybe the punking of George McGovern. Doesn't matter. Hang your head in shame, Blue America:

Popular Ohio Democrat Drops Out of Race, and Perhaps Politics

Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran and popular Democratic candidate in Ohio's closely watched Senate contest, said yesterday that he was dropping out of the race and leaving politics altogether as a result of pressure from party leaders.

Mr. Hackett said Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Harry Reid of Nevada, the same party leaders who he said persuaded him last August to enter the Senate race, had pushed him to step aside so that Representative Sherrod Brown, a longtime member of Congress, could take on Senator Mike DeWine, the Republican incumbent...

"For me, this is a second betrayal," Mr. Hackett said. "First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me."

Mr. Hackett was the first Iraq war veteran to seek national office, and the decision to steer him away from the Senate race has surprised those who see him as a symbol for Democrats who oppose the war but want to appear strong on national security.

...

Happy Valentine's Day.

Today's daily news digest

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Mean old Wayne Allard has re-introduced the Federal Marriage Amendment in the US Senate, and Bill Frist has scheduled it for a vote on June 5.

Frist says he wants to get it on the calendar in June because it will be too busy later in the session, and he doesn't want such an important issue to be delayed.

I have another theory. That week in June is the busiest week for primary elections all year. States with primaries that week include Alabama, California, Iowa, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Virginia, followed in the next few weeks by Georgia and Utah. It's preceded by just a few weeks by primaries in Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Many of these states have contested Republican house seats.

Frist and Allard and the majority of the Republican party are once again wasting the Senate's time by introducing a constitutional amendment that has no chance in the world of passage--using gay people as their whipping boy in order to drive conservative voters to the polls. Then, in November, they are using state marriage bans (including one right here in Colorado) to once again beat up on gay people as a way to get their base out in the general election.

It's no different than when the Dixiecrats (99% of whom are now Republicans thanks to the "Southern Strategy") used racism and their segregationist platform to drive ultraconservative voters to the polls ever since Reconstruction. Was that OK then? Is this OK now? What are you going to do to change it?

Here's where I would start:

1. Write letters to the editor using Progress Now's letter writing tool. Tell the public that it's not OK anymore to walk on a minority in order to gather political points.

2. Write your state officials and ask them to support the Colorado Domestic Partnership Act. This is our antidote to the right-wing's bigotry.

3. Write Senator Wayne Allard and demand that he stop trampling on minorities to score partisan political points.

4. Give, give, give! Donate to Progress Now Action and support the wonderful tools we have that make it easy to contact your legislators and newspapers--and support the hard work and ingenuity of Alan, Bobby, Jen, Maria, and Mike, as well as the platform that gives anybody the ability to express and organize.

5. Visit the web site of Coloradans for Fairness and Equality, the group leading the charge to pass the Domestic Partnership referendum and defeat James Dobson's marriage ban. (Brought to you by the friendly neighborhood webmaster--me!)

This year's ballot is going to be oh-so-crowded with initiatives banning abortion, marriage, and immigration--all carefully crafted by the extreme right to drive out their base on election day--on your backs and mine. The religious right has declared all-out war on privacy, fairness, equality, decency, and morality. You need to make the difference--today, tomorrow, and on November 6th.

We would like to invite you to our next Question Alliance action. Please bring your family and friends!

Next action for:
The Question Alliance
Saturday, February 18, 2006
10-11:30 AM
Corner of University & Highlands Ranch Parkway
1.5 miles south of C-470 on University
Topic: Truth in Government

Should we expect the truth from our government?


This action will try to address truth in government. Should the Bush administration be forthcoming about their actions and policies that affect our country? Is openness in government part of Democracy? Who gets to draw the line on secrecy and the public's right to know? For more information on this topic you can google: Bush administration and secrecy, Iraq War, torture, global warming, domestic spying, energy policy, medicare policy, Katrina, Jack Abramhoff, Halliburton, etc, etc, etc.

Please remember that it is important to have the same exact wording on your sign. The exact wording for the question on February 18th is:

Should we expect the truth from our government?

Please bring family and friends to join The Question Alliance. All are welcome!! Children need to be supervised.

This action will be postponed to February 25th if the weather is too nasty. You might want to make sturdy signs. It can get windy!

We encourage others to participate in this action in your own neighborhood if you'd like. Just let us know your plans, make sure the question is worded exactly the same as above, and let us know how it goes. Remember we are a peaceful, respectful group that abides by local requirements. We'd like to expand the Question Alliance by having drivers read the same important question at multiple locations the same day!

Please contact us with any questions, etc.

TheQuestionAlliance@gmail.com

Thank you,
Diane and Jim Schrack

Expected topics for Jay Marvin's show on AM 760.
Tuesday February 14

Tuesday February 14 from 6--10AM on AM 760

6:30AM: Jay will talk about the Senate hearings on Net neutrality--the principle that Internet users should be able to access any web content or use any applications they choose, without restrictions or limitations imposed by an Internet service provider. Are we near the end of the internet as we know it? Our guest on this topic is Celia Wexler, vice president for advocacy at Common Cause..

8:00AM: More than any other member of Congress, Bob Beauprez failed Colorado on two key fronts: investing in renewable energy efforts and preserving jobs for his district. Beauprez talks about helping his district, but when it comes to backing the renewable energy efforts and preserving jobs in his district, Beauprez caved to President Bush's agenda rather than standing up for his constituents. On to talk about the continuing problems with Bob Beauprez is Michael Huttner, Executive Director at progressnowcolorado.org.

9:00AM: It's our weekly check in with Media Matters for America. This week it is Jamison Foser who will talk about a new study that peer and frequent guest Paul Waldman did on the Sunday Morning talk shows. Are they as unbiased as they claim to be?

AM 760 Website

President Bush makes the hard fiscal choices.

Bush Admin. spent over $1.6 Billion on advertising and P.R. since 2003

Today Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Rep. George Miller, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, and other senior Democrats released a new Government Accountability Office report finding that the Bush Administration spent more than $1.6 billion in public relations and media contracts in a two and a half year span.

"The government is spending over a billion dollars per year on PR and advertising," said Rep. Waxman. "Careful oversight of this spending is essential given the track record of the Bush Administration, which has used taxpayer dollars to fund covert propaganda within the United States."

"It is unbelievable that the Administration, on several occasions, has used limited taxpayer dollars to secretly promote initiatives such as No Child Left Behind, while underfunding money for our schools, books, technology, and after school programs," said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings.

See John Salazar and Marilyn Musgrave link arms and cry "Ya Basta!"

Okay. That was a bit much. But it's nice to witness these rare moments when it seems we all live in the same state:

Bush budget plan draws fire for cuts in farm, Western programs

President Bush's $2.7 trillion budget plan for 2007 charts a course that will lead to another fight with Congress - and a bipartisan one at that - over his effort to create private accounts for Social Security, as well as proposed cuts in programs that affect rural areas and Western states...

[Rep.] Salazar put out a list of his objections with the White House budget last week, starting with the proposed changes in farm payments, a planned reduction in federal PILT payments (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) to rural counties for federally owned land, and cuts in other programs that benefit the 3rd Congressional District.

"These cost-effective, practical programs are being used as a scapegoat for misplaced budget priorities," he said in a statement Friday.

Like farm programs, PILT has bipartisan support and both Salazar and Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., are opposed to the administration cut.

"Counties shouldn't be cheated on their rent money because the federal government is their lessee," Musgrave said, noting that 36 percent of Colorado is federal land.

For John Salazar, it's reality. For Marilyn Musgrave, it could be a brief, election year-related flirtation with reality (she doesn't exactly have a jump-up-for-my-constituents track record). Either way, it's just refreshing enough to mention.

Did we really need a 600-page congressional report to tell us that our government failed in its response to Hurricane Katrina?

Here's a brief excerpt as food for thought, then please discuss in the comments.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A congressional report to be released this week slams the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, calling it a "failure of leadership" that left people stranded when they were most in need.

"Our investigation revealed that Katrina was a national failure, an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare," the report says. "At every level -- individual, corporate, philanthropic and governmental -- we failed to meet the challenge that was Katrina. In this cautionary tale, all the little pigs built houses of straw."

Today's daily news digest

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To subscribe to the daily news digest, click here.

As if you don't know how that ends. Dead Guvs were there first --

Don't Mess With Dick Cheney...

...Or he'll shoot your ass.

From the Associated Press:

Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, his spokeswoman said Sunday.

Harry Whittington, 78, was "alert and doing fine" after Cheney sprayed him with shotgun pellets on Saturday while the two were hunting at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas...

Look (snarl), it was a [expletive] accident.

I am troubled by liberals whom I otherwise respect jumping up to defend Harry Reid from allegations that he consorted with Jack Abramoff's lobbying team on legislation that favored Abramoff's clients. I'm not going to link to anybody but you know who you are.

It's not that I think that Harry Reid is personally implicated in Abramoff's defrauding of Indian tribes, or that Jack Abramoff represents in any meaningful way a "bipartisan scandal." The propriety has been well-established. Anybody who has taken even a cursory look at the workings of K Street understands that not just Abramoff, but the whole brass-plate economy of influence peddling in Washington suckles at the teat of Republican plutocrats. That's not what I worry about.

Since I'm not worried about Harry Reid's ability to defend himself, I'm not interested in defending him. And to defend him at this point sends the wrong message. Right now, the GOP is terrified of the Abramoff scandal escalating any further than it already has. The worst-case scenario is somewhere around 20 Representatives, to my knowledge all GOP, being implicated beyond re-electability. There remain significant unanswered questions about Interior Secretary Gale Norton. Christian Kingpin Ralph Reed. James Dobson. All kinds of bit players who wound up in Colorado, from Italia Federici to Drew T. Durham. And now come the pictures of Dubya and Jack Abramoff. The Abramoff card, played correctly, is wild and earth-rending stuff. Samson with his hands on the pillars (you Biblical types know what I mean).

So yes, my advice would be to shut up about Harry Reid. Don't give them the chance to label this line of attack as partisan. So far, it hasn't worked -- but if all the same people who've been leading the charge to lop heads over Jack Abramoff are suddenly defending a (D) accused of basically the same thing...well, in my opinion you're just helping Bill O'Reilly's increasingly desperate damage control.

I honestly think Karl Rove is losing his fabled edge. This is just not the ironclad message management we've come to expect from the Bush administration, and you wonder what it portends for the coming months.

Intel pros say Bush is lying about foiling 2002 terror attack

Outraged intelligence professionals say President George W. Bush is "cheapening" and "politicizing" their work with claims the United States foiled a planned terrorist attack against Los Angeles in 2002...

Intelligence pros say much of the information used by Bush in an attempt to justify his increased spying on Americans by the National Security Agency, trampling of civil rights under the USA Patriot Act, and massive buildup of the Department of Homeland Security, now the nation's largest federal bureaucracy, was "worthless intel that was discarded long ago."

In August 2004, just as the Presidential campaign was about to heat up, the Bush White House raised the terror alert, claiming attacks were imminent on major financial institutions. The alert, apparently timed to steal thunder from Democrat John Kerry's nomination for President, was withdrawn after administration officials admitted it was based on old information from a discredited informant.

The discredited information dated back to the same period when intelligence agencies began receiving reports of a planned attack against Los Angeles...

It occured to me that I could do a much better job of handling the press for President Bush than Scott McClellan. Maybe I should send the White House a resume -- I wonder what the pay scale is? It ain't easy, running cover at this level had better start at GS-12 or something decent like that.

Here goes: let me start by saying that this is an classified matter and we're not going to get into commenting on classified matters.

But while I won't comment directly, I will say this: pay no attention to this carping BS from the "intelligence community." They're all a bunch of spineless liberals anyway. What the hell do they know? Valerie Plame must have sent them. Ahmed Chalabi told us differently.

It's absolutely essential that we citizens shut up and trust Bush on the whole business of prosecuting the war on terror. Invading the wrong country, torture, Willie Pete bombs in Falluja, the thirteen year old 'terrorists' at Gitmo, American citizens stripped of their rights by brazen fiat, the extrajudicial domestic spying, all of it. Everything changed on 9/11. For starters, we realized that innocent citizens don't need due process because they are (duh) innocent. Bush said before he got elected that a "dictatorship would be a lot easier." You thought he was kidding, didn't you?

The time has come for all Real Americans to cash in their "citizenship" and join the GOP's new American Coalition of the Willing, where everything is ad-hoc -- like the rule of law, for example. And you don't need no stinkin' receipt from your voting machine either.

Beyond that, just go about your business and stop asking questions. The best thing you can do to help win the war on terror is go shopping. Depending on your socioeconomic bracket, enlisting your kids in the Army might also be a good idea. But please, don't spend too much time thinking about all this "are we creating more enemies than we're killing" or "is this still the America I was born in" stuff. Because if you do, the danger is we'll get hit again.

First Photo of Bush and Abramoff

Bush "has one of the best memories of any politician I have ever met," Abramoff mused in the e-mail last month, adding that, He "saw me in almost a dozen settings, and joked with me about a bunch of things, including details of my kids." The White House, however, has continued to assert that the President had no recollection of ever meeting Abramoff.

McClellan told TIME: "The president has taken countless, tens of thousands of pictures at home and abroad over the last five years. As we've said previously a photo like this has no relevance to the Justice Department's investigation (of Abramoff)."

This meeting, however, was a relatively small gathering attended by some two dozen people, including Garza and another Indian tribal leader who was Abramoff's client. At least two tribes, the Coushatta of Louisiana and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw, contributed $25,000 each to the anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform, which is headed by Grover Norquist, a well-known conservative ally of the White House. Garza...is under federal indictment for allegedly embezzling more than $300,000 from his tribe...

First, it was those incompetent Dems in Louisiana. Didn't fly, so Brownie moved back to Boulder and opened up an "disaster consultant" shop. Or maybe it's an exhibit.

Anyway, since no one bought White House Katrina whitewash, they apparently went with plan B, which was to let Brownie slide under the bus.

But it seems that throwing people under the bus is the one thing Brownie is good at. So much for taking one for the team:

Brown defends role in hurricane crisis

Former federal emergency czar Michael Brown, who for months has shouldered much of the blame for the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, on Friday pointed the finger at the White House, saying he told top officials there on the day the storm struck that New Orleans was being flooded.

The White House and Homeland Security officials have said they were not aware of the storm's severity until the next day, and President Bush said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

But Brown methodically described how he briefed top officials--one of whom he thought was Deputy Chief of Staff Joseph Hagin--on Aug. 29, the day the storm made landfall.

This whole thing is just one huge HR problem if you think about it. From the decision to hire Brown by Bush to the decision to hire Bush...

Seriously, just this week, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Committee meeting;

When asked to describe the most difficult moral decision she'd made during her career, Coutler responded "There was one time when I had a shot at Clinton."

And this dangerous whackjob is still invited to Sunday talk shows...

Reported by Harry Hall
Bell Policy Center volunteer

In a 6-0 vote, with one senator was excused, the state Senate Health and Human Services Committee on Friday approved the elimination of an assets test in determining eligibility for cash assistance under the federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program.

The vote was on Senate Bill 134, sponsored by Sen. Paula Sandoval, D-Denver, and Rep. Betty Boyd, D-Lakewood.

This asset test currently denies TANF eligibility to anyone who has more than $2,000 in assets. Such assets include health savings accounts, retirement funds, college funds, and checking and savings accounts. These savings have an important impact on economic security, educational attainment, and household stability.

Seven people, including Rich Jones, the Bell's director of policy and research, offered testimony during the committee hearing. Six of those who testified favored eliminating the assets test requirement. Their reasons included a minimal cost to state government and the value of enabling dependent families to preserve their limited financial resources.

Holding modest savings while getting temporary assistance helps these families build a bridge from government dependency to self-sufficiency.

For more information on SB 134, read an Opportunity Note on the bill researched and written by Robin Baker, a Bell senior policy analyst.

You can find the Note on the Policy Watch page of Bell's web site, www.thebell.org.

The snow finally came down from the mountains and blanketed the Front Range. Several inches fell over the whole Denver Metro area. It is a beautiful thing, as long as you aren't on the roads.

“Oh it snowed last night,
Oh it snowed last night,
The snow bears had a pillow fight…”
–A rhyme Mom used to sing when I was a child.

I wonder what this means for my premature blooming lotus.

 

Meanwhile, up in the hills…

One of my favorite towns in Colorado, Glenwood Springs, was given a "Preserve America Designation." According to the town paper:

 

Cindy Cochran, director of the Frontier Historical Museum in Glenwood Springs, said the designation is significant, and she hopes it will lead to other benefits for the town.

“It points to the fact that we have a lot of history here and we really have made an effort to try to preserve it,” she said.

The existence of two museums - the other being the Glenwood Railroad Museum - helped the city earn the designation. Other key factors include the existence of the Frontier Historical Society and the Historical Preservation Commission, City Council’s passage of a historical preservation ordinance, and the completion of an architectural survey involving more than 100 historic structures downtown.

Glenwood Springs' Post Independent believes this will be a boost to the town's tourism:

Heritage tourism is the fastest-growing segment of the tourism industry, Milhans said. People interested in local history “tend to be folks who stay longer and spend more money than other classes of tourists,” he said.

Glenwood may be particularly well-positioned to take advantage of this trend. Its tourism and history are intricately intertwined. Some of its biggest tourist attractions - the Hot Springs Pool, the Hotel Colorado and the cemetery where Doc Holliday is thought to be buried - date back to before 1900. And tourism remains a chief industry for the town today.

I know my husband and I will keep coming back to Glenwood. We've hiked up to Doc Holliday's grave--the view is incredible--and spent countless hours soaking in the hot springs. We even spent our honeymoon there. (That is, at the hot springs, not the cemetery.)

It is a good feeling to know our favorite places will be preserved for years to come.

A note: These photos are from a trip we took on spring break in 2004. I'm considering going up there for my (un)birthday at the end of this month. (Yes, I'm a "leap year baby".) I hope to post some wintertime pictures then.

When we last saw Independence Institute "Campus Accountability" merc Jessica Peck Corry, she was having a little trouble getting elected to the state senate. Happens often enough.

Then the job writing for the Colorado Daily ended, and it seemed for awhile as though her special brand of race-baiting and academic witch-hunts would relegated to the occasional Rocky Mountain News Speakout rant or bulk-mail from the Double-Eye.



There's Jessica (upper right corner) at the CU College Republicans' infamous "affirmative action bake sale" in the spring of 2004. What a treasure.

"The purpose was to show the true atrocities of affirmative action," said Jessica Corry of the Campus Accountability Project.

Naturally with her keen insight and sensitivity she was the perfect choice to seat on the CU Blue Ribbon Commission on Diversity (please note sarcasm). You know, after the hard-core racists fell through. And she didn't disappoint her handlers.

Timeout?

CU alumna Jessica Peck Corry of the Independence Institute, a conservative think tank in Golden, wrote a letter to Brown on Thursday asking for the delay so the university can provide more detailed data about how CU-Boulder spends $21 million annually on diversity programs.

In Corry's letter to Brown, she writes, "I hope you will join me personally in denouncing any suggestion that 'fostering' an environment that celebrates diversity is 'the highest priority of the university.'"

Former Denver mayor Wellington Webb, more politely than I would be:

He agrees the group could use more time to review spending, but said any such review should be to find more money for diversity programs - not to question their efficacy or try to cut them.

"Diversity programs did not cause these (racial) problems," Webb said. "That's like blaming the victim."

Fortunately, there's a quick end to her predictable little outburst, with the headline "CU says diversity commission's work will go as planned." Much like ABOR, successful College Republican chapters, or getting one of my favorite professors fired, it's an extremist swing and a miss. She'll be back though. Being well-funded gets inept treachery a long way. Just ask her boss Jon Caldara. And, of course, watch out if she has cookies.

Why does it seem like the population of the United States doesn't care much about what is going on in American right now?
These headlines from today (see Alan's post below), each one, should have people upset with their government.

--White House Knew of Levee's Failure on Night of Storm.
--E-Mail Notes Say Lobbyist Met President Many Times.
--Ex-Cheney Aide Testified Leak Was Ordered, Prosecutor Says.

But I don't hear the disgust.
Why not?

The history of walls or barriers between countries have a history of bloodshed and failure, which Tom Tancredo and others should take into account. Congressman Tom Tancredo (r-Colorado) ask President Bush to 'man' the American/ Mexico Border with US Military troops just a few days ago.
The China Wall ( a Wonder of the World site) failed to keep out the barbarians, the Berlin Wall failed to keep its citizens within its boundaries, and the two barriers erected by israeli, the Gaza Strip Barrier and the West Bank Barrier, has only inflamed the Palestinians to further violence. The Walls and Barriers tend to do just the opposite of their intended purpose, as will the American/Mexico Wall proposed by Mr. Tancredo.
What the Walls have done is hindered communications and information between adversaries. All of the Walls, Barriers, and fences, have had their temporary days of infamy amid bloody violence, which have lead us, and will lead us nowhere.
Rather, we need an open and free dialog with those across the contentious borders, and not wall them off. Solutions require intelligent input from all sides of a border dispute, and the more complex the dispute, the higher the intelligience level must be.
As Progressive Democrats we can take the lead away from 'shoot-em-dead' Tom Tancredo and his supporters by opening up free and open two-way discussions with the Government, the politicans, and the people of Mexico and not build a Wall of Hindrance beween us.

Media Matters has been freaking out about all these stories on Bush's so-called "recovery" in the polls. That is, the "recovery" that they're all talking about but not citing many polls to back up.

There is this poll:

Bush's job approval near bottom

President Bush's marks on overall job approval and for handling the economy are mired near their lowest levels despite a spike in consumer confidence over the past month, an AP-Ipsos poll found.

Bush's job approval is now at 40 percent and his approval on handling the economy at 39 percent. Those numbers haven't budged over the last month even with the public's confidence in the economy growing and the president delivering an upbeat State of the Union address.

One ominous note:

The AP-Ipsos poll found that the president has slightly improved his standing on handling foreign policy and terrorism to 47 percent. This comes as the public has grown more accepting of the administration's policy on domestic eavesdropping, with almost half now supporting it.

The president has been campaigning aggressively for that program over the last month, repeatedly telling people that eavesdropping on some international calls is legal and necessary in his war against terrorism.

Maybe it's the people I hang out with, who certainly aren't all a bunch of bleeding-hearts like me, but I haven't talked to anybody who's happy about this domestic eavesdropping. Nobody. People I talk to don't like it, don't like a lot of things they see happening under fluttering American flags right now.

You're right , maybe a couple of bloggers channeling Hugh Hewitt are down with flushing the 4th Amendment. But funny how on this issue, for every Hugh Hewitt there are ten Bob Barrs...

The 4th Amendment does not leave "wiggle room" for our Government and its agents to search and seize without a sworn warrant. And as the President and his agents can aquire legal warrants quickly, securely, and secretly there is no excuse not to obtains the necessary warrants.
The 1803 Supreme Court ruled in the Marbury v. Madison case that "an act of Congress is null and void when it conflicts with provisions of the US Constitution.". This was one of the most important, if not the most important ruling that the Supreme Court ever made, for it rules that the US Constitution is the preimere law of the land.
It matters little, the machinatations that the President and his agents go through, to subvert the IV Amendment for their own use. The IV Amendment is a clearly written declartative sentence that, really, cannot be tarnished.

After we sent out an email to our network yesterday on the NREL budget cuts and layoffs, the Denver Post's Mike Soraghan made some phone calls.

Everybody, myself at the top of the list, was left dumbfounded by Bush's claim in the State of the Union address that renewable energy was important -- more so after the budget he submitted a week later proposed cutting a further $10 million from NREL's budget on top of $28 million cut last year by Congress.

Somebody up there must have figured out that nastygrams like ours were inevitable and richly-deserved unless they did something.

Bush pencils in visit to NREL

President Bush plans to visit the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden on Feb. 21 to highlight the administration's efforts to develop alternatives to oil, sources say.

Word of Bush's visit came Thursday as administration officials said the president's energy initiatives could lead to funding increases for NREL, instead of the cuts laid out in his 2007 budget proposal to Congress this week.

"We believe now that NREL will get more funding next year" instead of less," said U.S. Department of Energy spokesman Craig Stevens...

Certainly this is a positive development. It doesn't excuse gutting NREL's budget back before Hurricane Katrina made alternative energy popular, it doesn't excuse proposing even more cuts before realizing it would make them look bad after Bush's 'oil-junkie' speech, and it won't save the jobs of the dozens of people getting laid off. But it's a positive development.

As for Both Ways Bob Beauprez?

"These accusations have been made by a partisan organization with no interest in renewable energy," said Beauprez spokesman Jordan Stoick. "Rep. Beauprez has and will continue to work closely with the officials at NREL to help them advance their mission."

He also noted that all Colorado Democratic legislators voted, along with Beauprez, for the spending bill that diverted money away from NREL.

Voting for a huge appropriations bill is one thing. Not signing on to a letter signed by 100 representatives from both parties to save an institution in located in his own district? That's quite another, and it's pretty damn far from what I's call "working closely." If that's what Beauprez really wants, he can start by visiting ProgressNow's energy policy index and calling one of the folks listed there.

Today's top stories tell their own story:

White House Knew of Levee's Failure on Night of Storm

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans. But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department's headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.

E-Mail Notes Say Lobbyist Met President Many Times

The disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff told a magazine editor in recent days that he had met with President Bush many times and was invited to the president's Texas ranch for a gathering of campaign contributors in 2003, the editor said Thursday. The journalist, Kim Eisler, national editor of Washingtonian magazine, said in an interview that he had received the information in e-mail messages from Mr. Abramoff, a major Republican fund-raiser who pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to bribe public officials.

Ex-Cheney Aide Testified Leak Was Ordered, Prosecutor Says

I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, told a grand jury that he was authorized by his "superiors" to disclose classified information to reporters about Iraq's weapons capability in June and July 2003, according to a document filed by a federal prosecutor.

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Amazing, really. Depressing. But, amazing; news that White House new directly exactly as the levees failed;

Representative Thomas M. Davis, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the special House committee investigating the hurricane response, said the only level of government that performed well was the National Weather Service, which correctly predicted the force of the storm. But no one heeded the message, he said.

"The president is still at his ranch, the vice president is still fly-fishing in Wyoming, the president's chief of staff is in Maine," Mr. Davis said. "In retrospect, don't you think it would have been better to pull together? They should have had better leadership. It is disengagement."

Disengagement. Lying. Law-breaking. Torture. Spying on Americans.

Nothing impeachable here...

I know you're all waiting breathlessly for the Winter Olympics to start, so I'll be brief.

I've really, really got to get to one of these Drinking Liberally events. There's one coming up in a couple of weeks, in fact. Everybody comes away from it with all these witty and relevant opinions about stuff and here I am photoshopping road signs.

Well, the photoshopping is kind of witty. And occasionally relevant. Stygius, astutely:

Politically, strategically, and logically, one would think that Colorado politicians would want to fight for this facility, and raise the profile of its national mission, while bringing Federal dollars to Colorado. Good for Colorado and good for America. Warms the heart. A no-brainer.

Bringing us to Bob Beauprez's record on NREL...

Undaunted, our dear friend em dash over at Unbossed has some insight after her rough yet instructive trip to the Gold Dome.

The committee is not the enemy
Focus on persuading the committee members to consider your point of view on the issue. Being combative won't earn you any friends even among supporters.

That also doesn't mean channelling mealymouthed Alan Colmes but phrasing is everything. "With all due respect..." "I appreciate your consideration..." goes a long way to establishing your credibility and propriety on the issue at hand.

She has quite a lot else to say after her testimony, and it's worth reading. I remember testifying before the Education Committee on Davey Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights" a couple of years ago. As good as I thought I was, I was a squeaky little distraction compared to what a little preparation might have afforded.

Of course, we did kill ABOR.

In other news, some things are so consistent or predictable that you wonder why you keep pointing them out. I should just create a "Tom Tancredo is a lunatic and this is why" link that I periodically update.

Finally, there's the subject of (cowers) abortion. Rather, there's that subject I'm not going to discuss because on so many levels I have absolutely no right to. Instead, here are some links to posts by women with regard to abortion in Colorado, and all us males should feel it incumbent upon us to shut the hell up and listen to them.

UPDATE: the situation with this bill is still fluid, and Senator Salazar still has every opportunity to opposite any final version of it. It's worth clarifying that his vote today was to limit debate on the bill, not final passage (and we know how the honorable Senator hates to drag out debates).

Once again, a bad idea gets Ken Salazar's tepid support.

Salazar votes for Asbestos Act

Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado was undecided about his stance on the Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act almost until he cast his vote.

In the end, he voted late Tuesday to proceed on the bill, although he said it should not be the Senate's first priority...

Why it's a bad idea:

In broad strokes, the Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act of 2005 would restrict asbestos victims from bringing claims to court. Companies with claims against them and insurers would contribute to the fund. Based on their illnesses, victims would receive from $25,000 to $1.1 million...

"To American business, I think this bill is extremely important," said John E. Roueche III, director for investor relations at McDermott International. "We have seen 70-plus companies that have gone into bankruptcy because of asbestos litigation and there are household-name companies that still have serious asbestos issues."

It is no surprise that McDermott is in favor of the legislation. It has more than $600 million riding on the outcome of the debate...

Here's an idea! If you think something is a bad idea, how about voting against it? Failing that, maybe we should just announce to the American people that after considerable research, the United States Senate has determined the value of a human life to be somewhere around $1.1 million. Somewhat less if you're not actually dying this minute.

I know, what a shocking notion taking a stand against a bad idea must be...

Women won't "just get over" reproductive freedom

By Diane Carman
Denver Post Staff Columnist
DenverPost.com

I will fight against anybody, including those in my own party, who say abortion should be a litmus test.

- Sen. Ken Salazar,

endorsing Bill Ritter for governor.

So it's come to this. The right to privacy in a fundamental health-care decision is trivialized as a petty, narrow, political litmus test.

With women making up 58 percent of Democratic voters in the state, Salazar's threat is a risky strategy.

"I don't think that was necessary," said Dottie Lamm, a Democratic pro-choice advocate for 40 years. "I think he could have made that pitch for solidarity without alienating the very people he was trying to bring in."

Lamm has not leapt aboard the Ritter bandwagon - at least not yet.

"I'm still kind of reeling from John Hickenlooper's decision not to run," she said. "I'm feeling very ambivalent."

It's going around.

Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald said Salazar's office has encouraged her to endorse Ritter. But his unwillingness to support women's reproductive rights still makes her uncomfortable.

"I understand where he is on this issue," she said. "It's not where I am."

Judging by the storm of calls and e-mails to NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado on Wednesday, the abortion issue is not going to go away just because Salazar says that it should.

"For the 1 million women of childbearing age in Colorado, the issue of nongovernmental interference in their private, personal lives is of paramount importance," said Kathryn Wittneben, executive director of Colorado NARAL. "Women's reproductive rights are fundamental freedoms that cannot be lightly dismissed by political candidates for political gains."

What is the best renewable energy hope for the U.S.?

What is it--Wind, Ethanol, Biodiesel, Solar, something else?
Let me know, I'm curious.

Discuss in the comments.

Call for Beauprez to apologize for NREL layoffs in his district

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, February 9, 2006
CONTACT: Michael Huttner
(303) 991-1900

Denver - ProgressNowAction called on Congressman Bob Beauprez to apologize to his constituents being laid-off this week by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Beauprez voted for $28 million in cuts to NREL. NREL is located in his district. In addition, he refused to sign a letter requesting that President Bush restore the funding to NREL.



"I have been working on energy issues for 25 years, and with this week's cuts at NREL I am now unemployed," stated Carol Tombari a resident of Morrison and a mother of three who was laid-off Tuesday by NREL.

On July 28, 2005, Beauprez voted to cut renewable energy funding to NREL by $28 million. As a result, Tombari was among the first of the renewable energy workers who is being laid-off. More lay-offs are expected.

"More than any other member of Congress, Beauprez failed on two fronts: investing in renewable energy efforts and preserving jobs for his district," stated Michael Huttner, Executive Director of ProgressNowAction.

In addition, on November 8, 2005, a bipartisan letter from 100 members of Congress was sent to President Bush urging him to "fully fund" renewable energy programs as authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Beauprez refused to sign that letter.

"Beauprez talks about helping his district, but when it comes to backing the renewable energy efforts, Beauprez decided to tow the party line and not push President Bush rather than helping his constituents," stated Huttner.

As Beauprez will not stand up to President Bush for his district, ProgressNowAction launched a petition today urging the White House to restore the renewable energy investments to NREL.

"This is classic Both Ways Bob: Who does Beauprez represent, the renewable energy efforts in his district or the oil industry with ties to him and the White House?" Huttner asked.

In 2004, Beauprez was among the largest recipients of the $25 million the oil and gas industry gave to candidates for federal office according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

# # #

For sources, an interview or additional information call Michael Huttner at 303-991-1900.

ProgressNowAction is the largest progressive grassroots organization based in Colorado. It is a nonpartisan, 501(c)(4) whose mission is to be a strong credible voice in advancing progressive solutions to critical community problems.

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As a Democrat!
Snip:

Reagan Navy Secretary Will Run for U.S. Senate

By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 8, 2006; B05

RICHMOND, Feb. 7 -- James Webb, who served as President Ronald Reagan's Navy secretary, said Tuesday that he will seek the Democratic nomination to run against U.S. Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) this year, hoping to challenge the one-term incumbent on foreign policy and the conduct of the war in Iraq.

"I don't wake up in the morning wanting to be a U.S. senator," Webb said in an interview. "I wake up every morning very concerned about the country. We need to put some focus back in our foreign policy, a different focus."

Webb, who has been flirting with a Senate bid for months, declined to elaborate about his decision or his campaign plans. But he said he will file papers this week to officially become a candidate. He said he will formally announce his plans as early as next week.

"Yes, we're going to file papers later this week," he said. In addition to a focus on foreign policy, he said his campaign would "look very hard at all the notions of fairness in our society."

Allen's chief of staff, Dick Wadhams, said of Webb's announcement: "Senator Allen has always expected a competitive race. We will run on competitiveness, national security and values."

Washington Post

Our friend in Washington arrived,



And delivered about three thousand signatures and comments to Senate Judiciary Committee staff. Like this nice-looking kid in the Majority Office:



Thanks again to everybody who signed the List or watched Jen's priceless video. Since new Listees continue to flow in (a couple hundred since we shipped the finished document to Washington yesterday), we'll continue to see that your signatures and comments are delivered to the Judiciary Committee, as well as other Congressional leaders. Which also means it's not too late to sign up:

progressnowcolorado.org/nospy

Being one of the lone female voices on this blog can be a bit lonely sometimes. Not because there aren't great guys who blog here, there certainly are, but because there are some things that guys just don't get.

Abortion is one of those issues. Sure, it's easy for a guy to say, "Yeah, I'm pro-choice." But the bottom line is, the word "choice" in that statement rests solely on the woman. It is the woman that makes the horrible choice to keep or end a pregancy. No man has ever, not once, made that choice. Sure, they've been involved in making that choice. But they've never laid on the table with their feet in the air and either had an abortion or gave birth. Therefore, choice is something that only women can truly understand.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all those men out there who are pro-choice. And I love guys...all my best friends in the world are guys. But even when my best friends start to weigh in on the issue of choice, I role my eyes. I mean really, how can they understand the commitment and sacrifice and, i'm sure, joy it takes to allow your body to be a vessel for another life.

In today's Denver Post, Senator Ken Salazar said in his endorsement of gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter:

"We need to move beyond the polarization of the issue of abortion,"

That's certainly easy for those guys to say. It's not their bodies in question. The former Senator from Wyoming, Alan Simpson, had it right when he said that he had no right to weigh in on the abortion issue because he was a man and choice is a personal and intimate decision for women.

As I wrap up this rant, I am reminded of a column talking about the impact of Betty Friedan I read earlier this week in the LA Times:

This entire history is in urgent need of retelling today, at a time when other legacies of the movement -- most notably legal abortion -- are under assault. Historical amnesia, not the fundamentalist Christian right, is the true villain. Millions of young women and men today simply cannot imagine what life was like before Roe vs. Wade any more than they can imagine what it was like to be told "No Women Need Apply" at the door to graduate-school classrooms.

I am of the post-Friedan generation. I get to enjoy the work those brave feminists did long before I was born. However, I appreciate those words--"historical amnesia". Another way to state it could be apathy.

Yes, we've enjoyed the fruits of Friedan's and other feminist's labor. So, let's not let the likes of Ken Salazar, Bill Ritter, and Tim Kaine minimize all that work by saying, "We need to move beyond this polarizing issue...". I guarentee you the religious right hasn't moved beyond this issue. If we stop our fight and let them take over...well, I'm afraid that "historical amnesia" will no longer be historical and will no longer be amnesia. It will become a living reality.

What is the most important thing the government can spend your taxpayer dollars on?

Please, discuss in the comments.

Republicans win because they know who they are and what they want. Democrats lose because they can't agree. We need to get it together and agree on an agenda and then do everything possible to forward that agenda.

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People of faith, this is what George Bush's "faith-based initiative" is doing in your name:

A rehabilitation program at a church is facing allegations it forced people to work as telemarketers for 28 cents an hour under the threat they could go back to jail.

The men were sent to the program by judges or state agencies for substance abuse rehabilitation. A department report said they were paid about 28 cents an hour, but even those wages were withheld and donated to the church (emphasis mine).

Extremists in the religious right are making a mockery of Christianity. It's high time the mainstream of America took a stand against this kind of abuse. If he were confronted with a group of people struggling to overcome powerful addictions to drugs and alcohol, what would Jesus do? Do you suppose slave labor would be on his list of options?

They may replay this on C-Span, Joseph Lowery and Jimmy Carter didn't pull their punches. MC

Originally posted: February 7, 2006
Bushwhacked at King funeral
Posted by Frank James at 5:30 pm CST

For many people, a funeral probably seems an inappropriate time to criticize someone in attendance, especially if it happens to be the president of the United States.

But many Christian funerals are used by preachers to strike the conscience of those attending in order to create a come-to-Jesus moment where souls are won. Sometimes at such funerals, hard things are said. Coretta Scott King's funeral fit that bill.

The powerful and the privileged mixed with churched and the humble today at New Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta for the memorial service for Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King, Junior.

I was driving to Colorado's State Capitol for a meeting when on NPR's Talk of the Nation they did something strange - the played minutes long experts from speakers at the funeral from President George W. Bush, President Clinton, and Maya Angelou.

That was a gift from NPR to us.

It's the best speech that President Bush has ever given. President Clinton and Angelou were moving.

Listening to these words, I was humbled by this great life remembered; encouraged by the sacrifices she made, the love she gave, the energy and tears she shed; reminded that struggling for the those less fortunate, calling for peace, fighting for justice, challenging power, resisting apathy and cynicism are callings that we need to head if we are to remake the world.

I encourage you to listen to the speeches here. Shut the door, turn off the phone, and just listen…..

The woman warrior
By Ellen Goodman | February 7, 2006

WHEN THE news came of Betty Friedan's death on her 85th birthday, I remembered Aug. 26, 1970, the Women's Strike for Equality. I remembered Betty Friedan parading down New York's Fifth Avenue, with tens of thousands of exhilarated women behind her.

I also remembered the afternoon edition of my paper illustrating that march with two front-page photos. On the left was the pretty, blond, smiling figurehead of some unknown group of Happy Homemakers. On the right was Betty Friedan, mouth open in midshout, face contorted, as unattractive a photo of this woman as was ever chosen by any editor. Under both pictures ran a simple, loaded question: Which one do you choose?

This came to mind not only because Betty won her place in the history books. It reminded me of what this passionate and irascible, strong-willed, and difficult woman was up against: a culture with prescribed roles for women and harsh ways of slapping down those who didn't conform.

Betty Friedan, author and agitator, most assuredly did not conform. Not to Peoria, Ill., where she grew up. Not to suburbia, where she raised her children. Not even, always, to feminism.

She was born the year after suffrage passed. Her book, the book, ''The Feminine Mystique," was published in 1963, the year that Adlai Stevenson told my graduating class at Radcliffe how important our education would be in raising our children. It was released to paperback and fame in 1964, the year I worked in the sex-segregated research pool at Newsweek magazine -- and thought I was lucky to have the job.

It's easy to forget now what it was like before Betty named ''the problem that had no name" and, in futurist Alvin Toffler's words, ''pulled the trigger on history." We know how far women have come, but for every woman who believes life has improved, there is another who believes that life has become more stressful. Some of us believe both things at the same time.

Rocky Mountain News

Ex-DA still 'has problem': abortion

By Lou Kilzer, Rocky Mountain News
February 7, 2006

Now, a new waiting game begins.

Minutes after Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper announced he would not run for governor, attention turned to candidate Bill Ritter.

Will certain reluctant Democrats rally behind the former Denver district attorney, or will they seek an alternative?

Alice Madden, the majority leader in Colorado's House of Representatives, said she might just be that alternative.

"I'm seriously considering running," she said after the mayor's announcement.

Several big-money Democrats and old party pols were working to conscript Hickenlooper, political consultant Floyd Ciruli said.

Some in the party are "having trouble uniting behind Ritter," he said. "He still has a problem."

That problem centers on one issue: abortion. Ritter is personally opposed to abortion, although he says he would not back any effort to criminalize women or their doctors.

The Colorado Democratic Party will be holding a caucus training program on Saturday, February 18 from 10am - 2pm at Morgan Community College, Founders Room, Fort Morgan.

If you'd like to carpool, contact me at em AT unbossed DOT com.

Expected topics for Jay Marvin's show on AM 760.
Wednesday, February 8

Wednesday, February 8 from 6--10AM on AM 760

6:30AM: Investigative correspondent from Newsweek Michael Isikoff is our special guest. Isikoff will dissect what I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby's defense will be and will refute the idea that Valerie Plame was not in covert status.

7:00--8:00AM: State Representative Gary Lindstrom our very special in studio guest to talk about his run for Governor. We'll find out where he stands on the issues, what his beliefs are and his thoughts on Bill Ritter, Bob Beauprez and Mark Holtzman.

8:00AM: Either Mark Silverstein or Cathy Hazouri from the Colorado Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union will join Jay to talk NSA surveillance and how to tell if you are being watched and what you can do about it. They will also discuss the federal lawsuit filed by the ACLU over domestic surveillance.

AM 760 Website

Meet the new boss! Same as the old boss!

From Public Citizen's Clean up Washington Campaign:

In a news interview this past Sunday, the new House Republican Majority Leader and DeLay replacement, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), restated his opposition to bans on lobbyist-funded travel for members of Congress. And claiming that Congress has in the past  "overreacted" to scandals, he made the following remarkable statement: "…taking actions to ban this and ban that, when there's no appearance of a problem, there's no foundation of a problem, I think, in fact, does not serve the institution well."

No foundation of a problem? Not even an appearance of a problem?? Pardon our incredulity, but has the new majority leader been living on another planet for the past six months?

Please help the new majority leader adjust his ethical vision. Click here to send a quick message reminding Mr. Boehner that, yes indeed, we do have a problem!

We've got the largest Congressional bribery scandal in decades, members of Congress resigning, being indicted and/or being investigated by the Justice Department, trips to lavish resorts and Scottish golf courses, lobbyists pleading guilty to criminal charges, a White House refusing to disclose its ties to the guilty lobbyists, Indian tribes being bilked out of tens of millions of dollars, major legislation (prescription drugs and energy) being written by and for corporate interests while members of Congress and their staff are writing legislation one day and turning around to take high-paying lobbyist jobs with the same firms that benefit the next… and Mr. Boehner does not even see a problem?

Please take a moment to give the new House Republican Majority Leader a piece of your mind.

$3 Trillion Dollar War and We Can't Afford to put Dead Soldiers on Ice?

Paul's Story

On August 15th, 2005, my brother, Sgt. Paul A. Saylor of the 48th Brigade, 108th Scout Division lost his life while fighting for our country in Iraq. A HUMVEE he was in accidentally rolled off the road and fell down an embankment into a canal. He was knocked unconscious and drowned. Paul was 21. He was, is, and always will be a hero like every other soldier fighting for America. Upon his return home my family was told that my brother's body would not be viewable. We were told he was non-viewable due to injuries sustained from the accident. This was not true. We asked our funeral director to open Paul's casket and see if there was any way we could view him to say our last goodbyes.

He notified us that there was no way he could repair or cover the damage done to Paul due to neglect and no refrigeration. Paul was non-viewable not because of injuries he sustained, but because our United States Army failed to care for his body. There have been recent instances in which the Army has failed to give our fallen heroes the honor they deserve in arriving at their final resting place, such as not having proper military escorts at airports, but this goes much deeper. In truth, upon his death my brother's body was left to rot like a dead animal on the side of the road.

My family has talked and met with Army officials many times. At the formal investigation meetings, despite the fact that our questions on the treatment of Paul's body were made known prior to each meeting, the Army representatives failed to even acknowledge the question as to why a fallen hero's body would come back in such stages of decomposition as to be unrecognizable after such a short period of time (3 days). The Army continues to investigate why my brother returned home in such deplorable condition. My brother, a hero, was neglected by the very institution he served.
(snippet)
thanks

I don't give a flip what party one belongs to. a 3 trillion dollar war and we can't afford refrigeration for better treatment for the fallen!

Pauls Story

For President?

The President has argued that Congress gave him authority to wiretap Americans on U.S. soil without a warrant when it passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force after September 11, 2001. Mr. President, that is ridiculous. Members of Congress did not think this resolution gave the President blanket authority to order these warrantless wiretaps. We all know that. Anyone in this body who would tell you otherwise either wasn't here at the time or isn't telling the truth. We authorized the President to use military force in Afghanistan, a necessary and justified response to September 11. We did not authorize him to wiretap American citizens on American soil without going through the process that was set up nearly three decades ago precisely to facilitate the domestic surveillance of terrorists - with the approval of a judge. That is why both Republicans and Democrats have questioned this theory.

This particular claim is further undermined by congressional approval of the Patriot Act just a few weeks after we passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force. The Patriot Act made it easier for law enforcement to conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists and spies, while maintaining FISA's baseline requirement of judicial approval for wiretaps of Americans in the U.S. It is ridiculous to think that Congress would have negotiated and enacted all the changes to FISA in the Patriot Act if it thought it had just authorized the President to ignore FISA in the AUMF.

In addition, in the intelligence authorization bill passed in December 2001, we extended the emergency authority in FISA, at the Administration's request, from 24 to 72 hours. Why do that if the President has the power to ignore FISA? That makes no sense at all...

None of the President's arguments explains or excuses his conduct, or the NSA's domestic spying program. Not one. It is hard to believe that the President has the audacity to claim that they do. It is a strategy that really hinges on the credibility of the office of the Presidency itself. If you just insist that you didn't break the law, you haven't broken the law. It reminds me of what Richard Nixon said after he had left office: "Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal." But that is not how our constitutional democracy works. Making those kinds of arguments is damaging the credibility of the Presidency.

And what's particularly disturbing is how many members of Congress have responded. They stood up and cheered. They stood up and cheered.

Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote: "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

Yesterday afternoon, an article following up on last week's No-Spy List campaign appeared on the Rocky Mountain News' website.

This morning it seems to have winked out of existence. This is where most other liberals would give you the standard 'the Rocky is rightie propaganda trash' line. But I'm a charitable guy: I always try to turn the other cheek while patiently holding their hand and leading them towards the news that matters. And I saved the story -- follows. ProgressNow still loves you, Tillie Fong, and you can tell your editors so:

No spy list takes off
By Tillie Fong, Rocky Mountain News
February 6, 2006

An online petition, dubbed the "no spy list" which was circulated by ProgressNow Action has garnered over 2,000 signatures in a week.

Today, as the Senate Judiciary Committee starts holding hearings on domestic spying, the signatures will be hand-delivered to the committee chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, the ranking Democrat.

"We will get a lot more signatures this week and deliver a full list to the 18 members (of the committee) Friday or a week from today," said Michael Huttner, executive director of ProgressNow Action.

Last week, the liberal online group started the petition to protest against the domestic spying by the National Security Agency that the Bush administration says it authorized to combat terrorism.

"We got picked up by blogs all over the country," said Michael Huttner, executive director of ProgressNow Action. "It's pretty exciting. We're thrilled with the response."

To promote the petition, the group also aired a short video clip on its website, set to the Rockwell song, "Somebody's watching me" which spoofs the government's activities.

"We had over 30,000 people who viewed the 'no spy' video," said Huttner. "Our server almost crashed with the video."

The group is also collecting donations to try to air the video on television stations this week.

To watch the video, log onto Link

To sign up on the "no spy" list petition, go to Link

You'll recall that President Bush made some kind of arm-waving big deal about renewable energy in his State of the Union address.

Just like "competitiveness initiatives," underfunded, ideologically stilted campaigns against AIDS in developing nations, Social Security privatization...makes for a good speech, but in the real world:

Energy lab sees staff, funds cut

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden will lay off up to 40 staffers and faces a proposed $10 million budget cut for the coming year.

The cutbacks come a week after President Bush said in his State of the Union address that finding alternatives to oil was vital to the nation's economic competitiveness...

On top of that, NREL's proposed 2007 budget of $162 million - released Monday by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman - is $10 million less than the lab's current appropriation.

In his State of the Union speech Jan. 31, Bush said the country is "addicted to oil" and must wean itself from foreign imports.

Bush put a premium on alternative-fuel vehicles, ethanol from agricultural waste, solar power and wind technologies.

"The president said all the right things about energy in his State of the Union speech, but his actions do not match his words," U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., said in a statement.

"How do layoffs at NREL and a flat budget for next year add up to a commitment to new thinking on energy?" Udall said.

It's that voodoo only the Bush administration can do...

Yesterday Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique and modern day leader of the feminist movement was laid to rest.
Yesterday also, I read this small article in the Rocky Mountain News:

Michaela Hutchison became the first girl in the nation to win a state high school wrestling title while competing against boys.

Hutchison won the final of the 103-pound weight class during Alaska's big school wrestling championships. The Skyview High sophomore entered the state tournament ranked No. 1 in her weight class.

Amid chants of "C'mon Michaela" and "Girl Power," Hutchison earned a 1-0 victory Saturday against Colony High School's Aaron Boss.

(snip)

She finished the season with a 45-4 record that included 33 pins, one short of the state single-season record. Hutchison is the third in her family of 10 children to win a state title, joining brothers Zeb and Eli.

"After 23 years of coaching you remember a lot of things. I'll never forget this one," Skyview coach Neldon Gardner said. "I can't think of anybody more deserving than Michaela. She works as hard as any boy I've ever had."

It's cliche to say you've come a long way, but it seems it is true.

However, in reading the many columns and editorials that followed in the wake of Ms. Friedan's passing, I ran across this in the LA Times:.

This entire history is in urgent need of retelling today, at a time when other legacies of the movement -- most notably legal abortion -- are under assault. Historical amnesia, not the fundamentalist Christian right, is the true villain. Millions of young women and men today simply cannot imagine what life was like before Roe vs. Wade any more than they can imagine what it was like to be told "No Women Need Apply" at the door to graduate-school classrooms.

Seems we've come a long way, but we've still got a long way to go.

I don't know how many women readers we have on this blog, but i'd love to hear your stories or your thoughts on where we, as women, stand in today's world.

Who is the best candidate to become Colorado's next governor?

Discuss in the comments.

Today's daily news digest

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To subscribe to the daily news digest, click here.

Naive or not, pie in the sky dreams of a country where anyone could grow up to be..................

If you get a chance to watch the second round of the Bush spying investigation on C-Span today, you can witness not only the sleaziest lawyers I have ever seen, to include Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, but you may also witness the very rock that our republic is based on, shattered into a zillion pieces of dust, so disembodied that not even a dream could survive, it is the anti-stardust that destroys dreams and worst of all it will kill truth, justice and the American way.

For starters, yesterday, Arlen Spector decided to have Gonzales testify without being sworn in, the Democrats, in minority, protested and asked for a vote, not one Republican voted for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Cornyn of Texas used his time to make apologist statements for the administration in the most sickening display of retro-Clintonian legal mumbo jumbo that would make even the most disreputable car salesman swoon with envy. This is all an old story -orchestrated, rehearsed and refined over centuries, the dream of absolute, unchecked power ridding itself of the messiness and complexity of democracy. Every news story, every event, every crisis has been choreographed and who is in control of your television set and is slowly overcoming the internet? You don't think men and women are capable of such evil? Guess again, men and women are capable of things that won't resolve with the imagination and those that have witnessed such evil are but a generation or two from irrelevance. Few eye witnesses left to the holocaust, fewer and fewer from the 1st World War, none from the American Civil War. And so it goes, man forgets his history and is doomed to repeat it over and over. Men and women that are willing to sell their soul for wealth and security in a life so brief that it is hardly worth the guilt and pain, the deceit and treachery, the crime and the punishment.

Yes, we are at a crossroads, for those of you that have a little fight left in you, fight this good fight, give Ken Salazar a call and remind him of his duty to uphold and defend the Constitution and above all remind him of the part he played in having Alberto Gonzales appointed the top cop in the land. If Ken didn't have religion before, he better get some now. MC

Focus on the Family has apparently endorsed Shawn Mitchell's bill of confusion (a "reciprocal benefits" law that basically doesn't do anything, in order to confuse voters about Domestic Partnerships).

Paul Cameron, a "scientist" who has been kicked out of every respectable scientific organization for being a bigoted hack, had this to say about it:

This is madness. Currently there is one voluntary relationship that immediately confers these benefits - marriage between a man and a woman. Married couples receive these benefits because they make substantial contributions to society. They are more economically productive, provide the best environment in which to raise children, and are the least likely to commit crimes. Homosexuals, on the other hand, are less economically productive, seldom produce children or raise them well, and are more likely to commit criminal acts. In addition, society should not reward relationships that tend to spread disease. (italics mine)

I'm not sure whether I should be happier that Cameron reveals the extreme right as a bunch of rabid, homophobic bigots, or that he gives the appearance that they are melting down on their own pet issue.

Bell analyst pokes holes in K-12 funding proposal

One issue likely to be on the Colorado ballot in November is the so-called "65 Percent Solution."
Promoted by the group First Class Education, it's a simple enough plan that sounds sensible. It would require school districts to spend 65 percent of their overall funds in the classroom.
But Bell's research shows it doesn't deliver, and may well damage public education.
Frank Waterous, a senior analyst on education issues for the Bell Policy Center, examined the 65 Percent Solution and found two major flaws:
1. A Standard & Poor's analysis of nine states considering the 65 Percent mandate (including Colorado) shows no relationship between the percentage of funds spent in the classroom and test scores. Some high-performing districts spent less than 65 percent, while some low-performing districts spent more.
2. The definition of classroom spending cuts out key services that bolster student success: teacher training, curriculum development, libraries and guidance counselors.

I guess I was a bit ahead of the real situation regarding the balance and independence of Sen. Spector. To use my version of an administration line, "if you don't have anything to hide, then why not go under oath?

Still, I'm glad to see he's getting grilled from both sides of the aisle.

An ill eagle -- did this hearing really just happen in your country?

Gonzales Defends Legality of Surveillance

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales insisted Monday that President Bush is fully empowered to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants as part of the war on terror...

Gonzales reiterated the administration's contention that Bush was authorized to allow the NSA to eavesdrop, without first obtaining warrants, on people inside the United States whose calls or e-mails may be linked to terrorism.

Here's a guy you hope stays away from light planes...

Feingold charges Administration lied, Gonzales misled

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales came under intense fire from Wisconsin Democrat Feingold and other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Feingold laid into administration comments, about critics of a White House surveillance program having "a 9-11 eleven view of the world." Feingold said "the president seems to have a pre-1776 view of the world. That's the problem here."

The administration, said Feingold, "has been violating the law, and misleading the American people," and he accused Gonzales of much the same, during his confirmation hearings a year ago. Feingold said Gonzales at that time wanted the Judiciary Committee to think that the eavesdropping program was not going on. "But it was," said Feingold, "and you knew it."

It's tough to know where this will end, but the Republican 'patriots' who claim without a seam that yes, Bush has always had the power to tap your phone without a court order are the ones you should be most worried about. They're the ones to whom your Constitutional protections have always been meaningless. That, or they've signed on to liberty's destruction out of pure craven ambition. And not even Arlen Specter is willing to make the trip with them.

Either way...

This is a resource-packed article on the unsavory players pushing Tom Tancredo's "clash of civilizations" immigration crackdown. Know who, and whatever they tell you, know why --

Amnesty Program - Message to Nation's Political Leaders
By Alan Gray, NewsBlaze

The Minuteman Project announced a rally today in Washington, D.C., to bring attention to the national crisis of illegal immigration and the impending "guest worker" amnesty program before Congress. Minuteman Project Founder Jim Gilchrist and Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) will speak against the proposed legislation.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, February 6th, 2006
CONTACT: Michael Huttner
(303) 991-1900

Thousands of "No-Spy List" signers delivered to Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee

Denver - Today ProgressNowAction will deliver thousands of signatures from its "No-Spy List" to Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The signatures are from citizens across the country who share objections about President Bush's domestic spying program.

"When it comes to protecting citizens from being spied on by President Bush and the National Security Agency, there has not been a No-Spy List sign-up until now," Huttner stated. "We look forward to sharing with members of the Senate Judiciary thousands of citizens who object to President Bush's illegal domestic spying," Huttner added.

ProgressNowAction launched the No-Spy List petition at Link hours before the State of the Union, asking citizens who object to unwanted domestic eavesdropping to sign up. ProgressNowAction encountered record traffic on their website, and blogs throughout the country shared the No-Spy List with their readers during the past week.

The "No-Spy List" was inspired by the no-call list. Over 50 million citizens in twenty-eight states are signed on to telephone "No-Call Lists" that protect them from unwanted telemarketing calls.

ProgressNowAction also launched a "Bush Spy Video" ( Link ) produced by ProgressTV that is a lighthearted look at spying on US citizens by President Bush and his National Security Agency.

###

ProgressNowAction is a nonpartisan, grassroots media nerve center which mission is to be a strong credible voice in advancing progressive solutions to critical community problems.

For more interviews, quotes or sources, please call Michael Huttner at 303-991-1900.

in defense of eavesdropping;

When Mr. Feingold pushed to have Mr. Gonzales sworn in, Mr. Specter called for a vote. The committee voted, 10 to 8, along party lines not to have Mr. Gonzales sworn in.

Today's daily news digest

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To subscribe to the daily news digest, click here.

What parts of your life do you not want the government to learn more about and why?

Discuss in the comments.

Expected topics for Jay Marvin's show on AM 760.
Monday, February 6

Monday, February 6 from 6--10AM on AM 760

6:30AM: Anger has broken out across the Muslim world over 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that were first published in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten in September and reprinted in European media and New Zealand in the past week. Violent protests are marring Europe over this issue. Joining the program is Imam of the Islamic Center of Ahl Al-Beit in Denver, Ibrahim Kazerooni. Kazerooni was born in Al-Najaf, Iraq, into a religious family and began his theological studies in that city when he was very young. As a Shiite Islamic priest, or imam, he emerged as an Iraqi dissident and was imprisoned repeatedly under Saddam Hussein. Fleeing the country in 1974, he says friends and relatives left behind were killed.

7:00AM: The Guardian (UK) reported on Friday that President George Bush told British P.M. Tony Blair "that the US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of 'flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours'. Mr. Bush added: 'If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach [of UN resolutions]'." This came out in a memo obtained by Phillipe Sands, QC, for the new edition of his book "Lawless World." The memo is apparently the minutes of a two-hour meeting between Bush and Blair which took place at the White House on January 31, 2003 - close to two months before the "decision" to go to war. Joining Jay is Richard Norton-Taylor who is the Security Affairs Editor at The Guardian.

8:00AM: New revelations in Congressman Bob Beauprez' Selective Service Classification History Report indicate that he requested and received three different student deferments. They also indicate that Beauprez came up for the draft, based on his lottery drawing for 1970 of #160. Yet on August 6, 1970 the records indicate that Beauprez was "excused" because of a questionable "physical reason." Progress Now and Veterans for Progress have called on Beauprez to apologize for misleading people by publicly parading around in a military issued uniform, and yet the records show Beauprez never served. Joining the show is veteran for Progress member and former Staff Sergeant in the Vietnam war - Jim Hudson.

Coming up on Tuesday:

Ambassador Joe Wilson
Dr. Phillipe Sands - The man who obtained the memo that President Bush told British P.M. Tony Blair "that the US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of 'flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours'.

AM 760 Website

Okay, I'm only watching the Super Bowl because I have an HDTV and it seems obligatory. Seriously, shut up.

But I'll say this: watching a 63 year old man who has partied like Mick Jagger has partied and can still gyrate like that has got to give you some hope. Damn you all, I want to live.

See this article from USAToday.com.

I love the fact that moderate Republicans such as Spector are starting to come out of hiding. Now if the Dems could show a consistent front, then maybe they could convince some of the moderate Republicans to join with them on important issues. Fantasy? maybe, but I can still hope.

.. and completely ineffective;

Intelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat, according to accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources with knowledge of the technologies in use.

Bush has recently described the warrantless operation as "terrorist surveillance" and summed it up by declaring that "if you're talking to a member of al Qaeda, we want to know why." But officials conversant with the program said a far more common question for eavesdroppers is whether, not why, a terrorist plotter is on either end of the call. The answer, they said, is usually no.

...The Bush administration refuses to say -- in public or in closed session of Congress -- how many Americans in the past four years have had their conversations recorded or their e-mails read by intelligence analysts without court authority. Two knowledgeable sources placed that number in the thousands; one of them, more specific, said about 5,000.

The program has touched many more Americans than that.

...The scale of warrantless surveillance, and the high proportion of bystanders swept in, sheds new light on Bush's circumvention of the courts. National security lawyers, in and out of government, said the washout rate raised fresh doubts about the program's lawfulness under the Fourth Amendment, because a search cannot be judged "reasonable" if it is based on evidence that experience shows to be unreliable.

Participants agree; it's completely illegal;

...government officials and lawyers said the ratio of success to failure matters greatly when eavesdropping subjects are Americans or U.S. visitors with constitutional protection. The minimum legal definition of probable cause, said a government official who has studied the program closely, is that evidence used to support eavesdropping ought to turn out to be "right for one out of every two guys at least." Those who devised the surveillance plan, the official said, "knew they could never meet that standard -- that's why they didn't go through" the court that supervises the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.

This describes one of their rogue methods well;

...Jeff Jonas, now chief scientist at IBM Entity Analytics, invented a data-mining technology used widely in the private sector and by the government. He sympathizes, he said, with an analyst facing an unknown threat who gathers enormous volumes of data "and says, 'There must be a secret in there.' "

But pattern matching, he argued, will not find it. Techniques that "look at people's behavior to predict terrorist intent," he said, "are so far from reaching the level of accuracy that's necessary that I see them as nothing but civil liberty infringement engines."

Secrecy, illegality, incompetence. All we've had in five Federal years...

Who's going to win the Super Bowl?

Discuss in the comments.

How Does It Work?

Smoke a joint. Don't smoke schwag.

Yeah, right. You just want to turn me into a pothead.

No...this is about stupidity. There's 8,000 years of evidence of it's most excellent properties. Most people that have objections about using marijuana have never smoked it. They rely on information that has been debunked and even ridiculed. Marijuana is legal in Denver and it's not addicting so go ahead, spark one up. You won't be stupid anymore.

A small businessman who had never previously run for political office, John Hickenlooper was elected Mayor of Denver on June 3, 2003, and inaugurated on July 21, 2003. Since taking office, Mayor Hickenlooper passed a citywide charter reform initiative to modernize Denver's personnel system, overcame a $70 million deficit to balance the City budget while averting major cuts in services and massive layoffs, reached deals with United, Frontier and Southwest Airlines enabling all carriers to grow at Denver International Airport, implemented the most sweeping set of police reforms in Denver's history, built an unprecedented partnership with Denver Public Schools, launched efforts to create a more business-friendly environment in city government, initiated a citywide campaign to end homelessness, created Denver's Sustainable Development Initiative, and ushered in a new era of bipartisan regional cooperation culminating in passage of the largest regional transit initiative in the history of the United States.

The Colorado legislature started its 2006 session a few weeks ago. One of the bills I'm most excited about is a proposed ban on smoking in restaurants and bars. But right now some bar owners are trying to make the law meaningless by 'carving out' exemptions for certain types of bars.

Send a quick e-mail to your state representatives. Tell them that you want to ban smoking in all bars and restaurants. You can find who to contact in two seconds. Just grab a magazine or bill that has your 9-digit Zip code and go to:
Project VoteSmart. After you enter your Zip, click on your representatives under "Colorado Senate" and "Colorado House of Representatives." Then find their e-mail address and fire away.

Article: Sending a clear signal
Rocky Mountain News - Denver,CO,USA
By Lynn Bartels, Two lawmakers are threatening to kill their bill to ban smoking in the workplace if legislators ...


Example: My e-mail to legislators:
As my State Representative/Senator, I hope you'll support a ban on smoking in workplaces, including all bars and restaurants. I don't want a watered down law that doesn't include all bars.

I lived in California when the state was the first to ban smoking in bars and restaurants. I admired the integrity of my representatives to do what was best for the people of the state.

A handful of businesspeople may be negatively impacted by a smoking ban, which I'm sure you are very concerned about. But, as in California and other places that have since banned smoking, lawmakers are increasingly doing what is best for the people they represent by contributing to healthier interior environment. I hope you will, too.



Thanks for your help. :)

Suggested ambience - click here, broadband users, and don't let the man get you down.

Last week at this time I was freshly back from the Leadership Program of the Rockies' annual retreat. The key points from this experience, if you recall were

1) Ann Coulter may be pure evil, but she's not crazy. An important distinction.

2) All you Dems and libs out there who think Colorado's shift down the spectrum from red to blue is some kind of prophetic inevitability had better wake up - what I saw at the LPR indicates that the righties are miles ahead of us in planning for the next generation of Colorado political leadership. The closest equivalent to the LPR in progressive politics is Chris Gates' Colorado Institute for Leadership Training. That program is probably the place to start, Blue Brahmans - but it's time to get on the stick and build something real. The alternative is the next generation of progressive leadership in Colorado will be the kids of the present leadership (look around), in effect locking a wealth of talent out of the mainstream -- or maybe the Blue Revolt of 2004 will go down as an unsustainable anomaly. You may not think the stakes are that high, but Bob Schaffer does...

As the week began, I might have thought that the heaviest lifting was done: that seems kind of funny now.

In honor of both Black History Month and the celebration of Coretta Scott King's life that is going on today in Atlanta, I would like to pose this question to you all.

Who is your favorite Black historical figure?

Post your answers in the comments section. That's where I'm putting mine.

Meyerson;

Warrantless wiretapping and immigrant bashing: What else can Republicans run on this year? Their competence? Their ethics?

The Canyoun-Courier printed a pair of op-ed's on the domestic partnership debate. The pro side was written by Greg Dobbs, and is very good. The con side was written by Kelly Weist, and in addition to being just plain wrong (which is well-addressed by Dobbs), it's also sprinkled with factual inaccuracies and logical fallacies, which I will attempt to outline point-by-point.

Gay marriage -- and its baby sister, domestic partnership -- are really all about the money, not about some notion of everlasting love that is denied its expression.

Everything in life is about money at some level. Weist could have made the same argument about opposite-sex marriage and commonlaw marriage, or about protections against workplace discrimination for racial minorities. It's all about money, therefore we should outlaw it.

Proponents of domestic partnership want Social Security benefits, health insurance benefits, pension benefits, tax deductions, inheritance and power of attorney.

Yes it's probably true that proponents would like something to do with Social Security, but that's a federal issue that will not be addressed by the Colorado Domestic Partnership Act, and it's a red herring.

Funny thing -- all of the benefits that accrue to married couples under these various laws and programs do so for a reason that has nothing to do with marital bliss. They have to do with protecting the most vulnerable in our society, our kids.

Actually that's just factually wrong. Marriage itself, until post-Victorian times, had nothing to do with marital bliss, but with amassing and keeping wealth and property in the family along male bloodlines. Women weren't even allowed to own property, let alone split it equally in the event of a divorce. The protection sought by domestic partnerships was originally passed for straight relationships in an attempt to grant women equality, not to protect kids.

And in the cases where those protections do protect kids, the kids of gay and lesbian couples need protecting just as much as the kids of straight couples, as Dobbs elaborates on in his piece.

Weist then claims that "study after study" prove that having married parents is better for kids. Weist never actually cites any study specifically, and gives the impression that these studies extoll the virtues of married straight parents over committed same-sex parents. I would suggest that if Weist actually consulted any of these studies, that they are more likely about single parent households versus dual parent households. I suggest that Weist consult the study after study that shows same-sex parents to be every bit as good as opposite-sex parents. Those studies show that to the degree that kids of same-sex couples have more problems than kids of straight parents it usually has to do with the kids experiencing anti-gay bias.

There is nothing stopping domestic partners from executing powers of attorney, for financial matters or for healthcare, wills that leave their property away from their family and to the partner, designations of pension benefits and other property rights, and the ability to petition a court to change their name.

Nothing other than the fact that these contracts are extraordinarily expensive to set up, and extraordinarily easy to be thrown out in court. All it requires is an anti-gay judge (not all judges are liberal activists). The average person doesn't have the money to set these contracts up, and doesn't have the money to defend them in court if they are challenged.

And none of those contracts is worth a hill of beans unless gay and lesbian people carry them with them wherever they go. The only time healthy people need a durable medical power of attorney, for example, is during an emergency when time is precious.

Weist then goes on about how traditional marriage has a public purpose and says that granting basic rights to gay and lesbian people would negate that whole purpose. That's the same argument people made when it was illegal for blacks and whites to marry. When they were finally allowed to marry (and we're not even talking about marriage for gay and lesbian people, just some basic rights), did it negate the public purpose of what had been up until that point "traditional" marriage?

There are other insults in the piece, such as the specious roommate reference, and additional specious references to federal benefits such as Social Security and tax deductions that have no place in this argument. Read it for yourself and leave comments at the bottom of the article.

"The question should be how do we keep Aurora wet, but (also) how do we keep La Junta viable," commented former state engineer Jeris Danielson, who represents the Arkansas Basin Roundtable on the new Interbasin Compact Committee. It sums up the challenge facing the committee, which held its first meeting in Denver Friday.

The 27-member committee was created to set the stage for interbasin cooperation over state water problems. My sense, from remarks of agricultural and western slope basin representatives over the past few years, is those folks are resigned that Front Range cities will end up with their water. It's just a matter of what they get in return. I encourage them to stand much more firmly against damming their rivers, diminishing their flows, and degrading the quality of the water that does flow downstream to them.

Let's look down the road at what will happen to Colorado's population if we continue current policies, in denial of the limits of our natural resources. Our growth plans are so huge the only way to meet those water needs would be to devastate agriculture, recreation and wildlife. Even then, we'll find we cannot suck enough water out of Colorado's mountains to provide for that population. Any doubt?

Remember this year: 2121. None of us will live to see that year, but our grandchildren will. It's not that far off. Yet that will be the year, if we continue at recent growth rates, that today's entire statewide population will reside in Colorado Springs. That's right - today's state population of 4.6 million, all packed neatly like sardines into El Paso County. And the state? Just move that decimal point; instead of today's 4.6 million, it will have 46 million!

If anyone thinks they have the conservation program to stretch our water resource to sustain 46 million in Colorado, raise your hand. How about the money, let alone the plan, for a transportation system? Clean air? What do you think I-70 will look like? I-25? The cost of these impacts to our citizens and state will more than wipe out any prosperity we might hope to achieve by going down this road. The sooner we take off the rose-colored glasses and come to terms with the fact we cannot base our state and local economies on continued expansion, the better our future will look.

We do have a choice in the matter. We can continue to pursue public policies that promote and depend on migration of additional population into our state in pursuit of an illusion of prosperity (resigned that we have no choice but to destroy Colorado in the interest of steady employment). Or we can shift to more enlightened, sustainable economic development strategies - strategies that offer reality-based optimism that we can sustain our economy and Colorado can still be a nice place to live for our grandchildren in 2121. At Friday's meeting, Department of Natural Resources Director Russ George got it right. He said, "We're at a point where we may be too many for the water Mother Nature provides." Duh!

Dave Gardner
Founder & Chair, SaveTheSprings

A sustainable approach to our environment & quality of life - for current & future generations
Visit us at www.savethesprings.org

Wow. I'm speechless.

Chris Matthews baselessly suggested on his show tonight that gay people might be responsible for burning down several churches in Alabama because Baptists hate gay people.

See the video yourself.

Which one seems more...enhanced? Discuss.

...the indoctrination starts early;

So the House Republicans tried to rig their own election. It just doesn't get any better than that, does it?

But, after all, it's what they are trained to do from the time they join the Party:

Everyone who watched this summer's race for College Republican National Committee (crnc) chair with any detachment has a favorite moment of chutzpah they admire in spite of themselves. Leading the count are the following: speaking sotto voce of your opponent's "homosexuality"; rigging the delegate count so that states that support your candidate have twice as many votes as those that don't; and using a sitting congressman to threaten the careers of undecided voters. I can understand the perverse appeal of each of these incidents. But I cast my vote for the forged letter.

It's so much a part of their make-up that it's hardly even remarked upon. Their friends in the media don't seem to find it worthy of mention either. Republicans believe that stealing elections is perfectly moral and right. They do not believe in democracy. That's why they talk about it all the time.

Believe it or not, this sort of backpedaling didn't start with Hamas.

Rumsfeld says Chavez rise 'worrisome'

...Rumsfeld said the emergence of populist leaders through elections in Latin American was "worrisome."

"You've got Chavez in Venezuela with a lot of oil money," he said. "He's a person who was elected legally just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally."

Riiight. See, there's "democracy," and then there's American Export-grade Democracy (c) All Rights Reserved. The two aren't always mutually exclusive -- though sometimes one makes the other inconvenient. When that happens...well, you know what happens when that happens. Just like Jacobo Arbenz and Salvador Allende know.

Yesterday we discussed the $40 billion in budget cuts passed by Congress this week, cuts that target America's neediest: unemployed, single moms, students.

Bet they told you it was for those poor Hurricane Katrina victims, didn't they? Maybe a little patriotic belt-tightening to get us over the hump in the war on terror?

Guess again.

Senate Passes $70 Billion in Tax Cuts Over 5 Years

One day after Congress gave final approval to a contentious measure to reduce the deficit by nearly $40 billion through 2010, the Senate last night easily approved a $70 billion tax-cutting measure that would more than wipe out all those savings...

Reminds me of another Katrina visual, when the white folks were foragers and the black folks were looters. Here, Jack Abramoff is a criminal -- but when Congress loots the voiceless and gives the money to their own supporters they're "helping America's working families."

Oops, wrong script.

Rumsfeld: Terrorism threat may be greater

His remarks come as the Pentagon is preparing to release a broad four-year defense review that does not eliminate any major weapons programs but calls for more spending on special operations forces, cuts in Air Force personnel, and a restructuring of the Army and reserve forces.

Rumsfeld's speech also touched on the idea that Americans must be braced for a long war on terror, a theme that both Rumsfeld and President Bush have pressed in recent days. And Rumsfeld again warned that the only way terrorists win is if the United States loses its will to continue the fight in Iraq.

The administration has faced a growing public uneasiness with the Iraq war, which is costing more than $4 billion a month and has left more than 2,240 service members dead...

Bill Johnson over at the Rocky Mountain News has a column today that makes such a great point, I felt compelled to share.

Yet the papers this week have been filled with stories and debate on defining marriage, of saving it from the homosexual hoard, that failure to do so will effectively make marriage meaningless. We need to get a grip.

Straight people, more than any other group - truth be told - are killing the institution just fine by themselves.

The more remarkable thing, too, is that the one place in the United States where same-sex marriage IS allowed, is also the state where traditional marriage is the strongest.

Yes, it is Massachusetts, the home to uber-liberals John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, of latte-sipping, anything-goes commie liberalism.

Yes, Massachusetts - the state where more than 7,300 gay couples have married in less than two years, or since they were allowed by law - has the lowest divorce rate in the nation.

Here's my favorite part of the whole column:

The more telling statistic - given the individuals pushing the Colorado amendment - is that born-again Christians, themselves, divorce at a higher rate than the rest of us.

So, maybe we should amend the Constitution to protect the "institution of marriage" from born-again Christians.
What do you think? Would that help?

Things are beginning to gear up in Larimer County for the 2006 mid-terms. And not a moment too soon.

Are you looking for a place to get involved, learn about the issues, or commiserate with local progressives?

One of the most frustrating things about Loveland/Fort Collins is the communication void. There is no central clearinghouse of names, places, and dates to find grassroots political activities.

I've listed some events and organizations that I'm aware of below the fold. Please feel free to add your 2-cents.

Hot off its recent success getting NBC to scuttle its series Book of Daniel, the hardline Christian extremists are all over the news this week, both locally and nationally.

Pat Robertson again called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez.

Christian extremists represented by Denver-based radical cleric Jason Janz are lambasting their own movie production company for casting a gay actor in a Christian movie.

Yet another group of extremists is up in arms over NBC casting former goody-two-shoes girl Britney Spears on Will and Grace.

And last but not least, Bishop Philip Porter said that if Coloradans don't vote to move the gay marriage ban from statute into the Constitution that they would "bring upon [themselves] untold pain and misery." That's politically-correct press conference speak for "hellfire and damnation," which you know is what the good bishop is preaching at his Pentecostal church on Sundays.

...incompetent ideologues;

An FBI-led watchdog agency has opened an investigation into multiple complaints accusing NASA Inspector General Robert W. Cobb of failing to investigate safety violations and retaliating against whistle-blowers. Most of the complaints were filed by current and former employees of his own office.

Written complaints and supporting documents from at least 16 people have been given to investigators. They allege that Cobb, appointed by President Bush in 2002, suppressed investigations of wrongdoing within NASA, and abused and penalized his own investigators when they persisted in raising concerns.

...Cobb, a 1986 graduate of George Washington University's law school, became NASA's inspector general on April 22, 2002, after working for a year as an ethics lawyer in the office of the White House General Counsel.

Under the Inspector General Act of 1978, the president appoints independent officials to monitor Cabinet departments and larger federal agencies through audits and investigations. Cobb is among four of 11 inspectors general appointed by Bush who previously worked in the White House, and one of nine with no audit experience.

Just like those Young Republicans ruining Iraq...

These bozos can't...run...anything....

Being the charitable guy that I am, I'm gonna just presume they're a little slow on the uptake.

'Liberal MSM' Ignoring Beauprez Flight Suit Story

Hundreds of comments were posted on these sites by early evening, with angry anti-Beauprez sentiments far outnumbering the handful of apologists who blamed everyone from Republican competitor Marc Holtzman to undeclared Democrat challenger John Hickenlooper for the release. Despite the hubbub, however, Colorado's major newspapers and TV outlets had still not acknowledged the initial story or subsequent outcry by Friday morning...

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The Dems want the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Abramoff scandal. If this happens, it's a HUGE problem for the righties.

... excerpt:

There's a common theme underlying the botched reconstruction of Iraq, the botched response to Katrina (which Mr. Bush never mentioned), the botched drug program, and the nonexistent energy program. John DiIulio, the former White House head of faith-based policy, explained it more than three years ago. He told the reporter Ron Suskind how this administration operates: "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. ... I heard many, many staff discussions but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues."

In other words, this administration is all politics and no policy. It knows how to attain power, but has no idea how to govern. That's why the administration was caught unaware when Katrina hit, and why it was totally unprepared for the predictable problems with its drug plan. It's why Mr. Bush announced an energy plan with no substance behind it. And it's why the state of the union -- the thing itself, not the speech -- is so grim.

All cat. No hattle.

A Denver Baptist minister is making national headlines because he is mad a gay actor is playing a missionary in a new movie.

Even closer to voters hearts, Focus on the Family, the National Association of Evangelicals, and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops - among others - are supporting a state constitutional amendment that says that marriage is between "one man and one woman."

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, Colorado is on the front lines of the so-called "culture war."

Bell Policy Center released its first Opportunity Note Feb. 1 to members of the state House of Representatives in advance of a committee hearing on HB-1024.

The Opportunity Note is modeled on the familiar Fiscal Note produced by the Colorado Legislative Council Staff.
The Note evaluates a particular bill's impact -- positive or negative -- on opportunity for Coloradans to live a healthy, educated and self-sufficient life. It also evaluates whether the legislation achieves its goal in a cost-effective manner.

HB-1024, sponsored by state Rep. Jerry Frangas, calls on state colleges and universities to commit to provide the necessary support services to make sure low-income and minority students succeed. The bill got a thumbs-up rating in Bell's Opportunity Note.

While you were busy fretting over domestic spying, a shaky economy, a corrupt Congress, a President who lies to you, et cetera:

Poor, Elderly and Students to Feel Pinch

The House yesterday narrowly approved a contentious budget-cutting package that would save nearly $40 billion over five years by imposing substantial changes on programs including Medicaid, welfare, child support and student lending.

With its presidential signature all but assured, the bill represents the first effort in nearly a decade to try to slow the growth of entitlement programs, one that will be felt by millions of Americans. Women on welfare are likely to face longer hours of work, education or community service to qualify for their checks. Recipients of Medicaid can expect to face higher co-payments and deductibles, especially on expensive prescription drugs and emergency room visits for non-emergency care. More affluent seniors will find it far more difficult to qualify for Medicaid-covered nursing care.

College students could face higher interest rates when their banks get squeezed by the federal government. And some cotton farmers will find support payments nicked. State-led efforts to force deadbeat parents to pay their child support may also have to be curtailed.

Yesterday's 216 to 214 vote, largely along party lines, gave a much-needed boost to President Bush...

It's great to see that no matter how rough it seems for them, no matter how stone-cold obvious their chicanery gets, no matter how increasingly likely it becomes that an outraged American electorate will throw them out of office like moneychangers in the temple this November -- the GOP can still pull together and shaft the neediest Americans when they have to. Ain't no Jack Abramoffs sticking up for them. Ain't no Pioneers in that socioeconomic bracket.

And $40 billion buys a lot of tax cuts. Sure it's a crime -- get in line with that complaint.

More Flight Suit Bob, from an F-16 joyride in April 2003 out at Buckley AFB (courtesy Stygius, via Soapblox):

UPDATE: sign the petition: ask Beauprez to apologize.

Veterans Call on Beauprez to Apologize

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, February 2, 2006
CONTACT: Michael Huttner
(303) 991-1900

Denver - Veterans called on Congressman Bob Beauprez to apologize for publicly parading in a military-issued uniform when selective service records revealed that Beauprez avoided ever serving.

"We are calling on Mr. Beauprez to apologize for misleading us,"  stated retired Sergeant Jim Hudson, a Vietnam Veteran.

This photo of Congressman Bob Beauprez was taken at the Front Range Airport in Watkins, Colorado in June, 2004.

The Selective Service Classification History for Robert Louis Beauprez indicates that he requested and received three different student deferments.

The records also indicate that Beauprez came up for the draft based on his lottery drawing for 1970 of #160.

Yet on August 6, 1970 the records indicate that Beauprez was "excused" because of a "physical reason."

"Mr. Beauprez appears to want it both ways: he publicly parades in a military-issued uniform, and yet the records show he never served," stated retired Staff Sergeant Michael D. Collins, a veteran who served in Vietnam with the 1st Air Calvary Division.

"While Beauprez claims he's for veterans, he has the worst voting record on veterans' issues of any of the Colorado members of Congress," noted Collins.

According to the Disabled American Veterans, Beauprez has the worst voting record of any member of the Colorado congressional delegation, as he voted against them on every one of their key votes for both 2004 and 2005. (www.dav.org)

Hudson and Collins joined other veterans today in their call for Beauprez to apologize.  They also launched a new group "Veterans for Progress", Link, and asked other veterans to join them to hold elected officials accountable.

# # #

For sources,  interviews or additional information call Michael Huttner at 303-991-1900.

progressnowcolorado.org is a nonpartisan, 501(c)(4) whose mission is to be a strong credible voice in advancing progressive solutions to critical community problems.

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Expected topics for Jay Marvin's show on AM 760.
Thursday, February 2

Thursday, February 2 from 6--10AM on AM 760

6:20AM: Jay will discuss President Bush's energy plan or lack of. At the State of the Union the president urged a need to lose dependence on oil for energy. Will he follow through? President of Apollo Alliance Jerome Ringo is our guest. Apollo Alliance provides a message of optimism and hope, framed around rejuvenating our nation's economy by creating the next generation of American industrial jobs and treating clean energy as an economic and security mandate to rebuild America.

8:30AM: Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream is our special guest to promote the "True Spin Conference", a national conference on media relations for progressives. This is scheduled for February 2 and 3 in Denver.

9:00AM:
Jay will discuss the current situation in Israel/Palestine. More countries have joined in on pressuring Hamas to denounce violence. How did we get to where we are in the middle east now and where are we headed? Our guest is yet to be determined from the Middle East Institute.

Coming Up:
On Tuesday February 7th special guest Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

AM 760 Website

I had no idea that Jack Carter was a Vietnam veteran, saw him on Larry King tonight with his dad, the 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter. Couldn't help but like the guy, he's sharp as a tack, below a little about Jack from his website, he's running against the Republican incumbent in Nevada.

I was born in 1947 in Portsmouth, VA., the first of three Navy brats born to Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. Two brothers, Chip and Jeff, arrived within a few years and a sister, Amy, followed in 1967 - Dad having won a 15-year skirmish for a last try at a girl after putting Mom through raising 3 boys largely by herself while he was out to sea.

In 1953, the family moved to Plains, GA, following the death of my Grandfather, Earl Carter. Shortly after I arrived, I took my first job: keeping the office for Dad on Saturdays, answering the phone, and generally doing what I was told. Thus began a long career at Carter's Warehouse. As I got older, the standard job involved moving peanuts, corn or cotton from their farm trailers and into a warehouse, mill or gin, and then transferring them again to their next resting place. When later I joined the Navy, my fingerprints were so mutilated that I had to fill out a special form indicating that "Manual Labor" was the cause.

Finally, the hamlet of Plains, population 650, loosened its grip and I left for Georgia Tech and the big city of Atlanta. But, in 1968, I placed my college career in abeyance and joined the Navy.

After boot camp and training as an electronics technician I was assigned to the USS Grapple, ARS 7 (Auxiliary Rescue Salvage). Our ship served in Vietnam and returned home, very slowly on only one of four engines, the following year.

A physics degree at Georgia Tech followed and I was able to enter the University of Georgia School of Law in 1972.

Sankenbunritsu blog:

関連話題：　
面白い上に、今のご時世をよく反映しているこのビデオをご紹介。バックグラウンド・ミュージックは、８０年代に大ヒットしたあの曲。

Translation (update thanks to my buddy Tetsuo): "A Related topic: In addition to being funny, this video reflects current events well. As for the background music, it was a hit in the 1980s."

Windows Media　（高速）／（低速）
Quicktime　（高速）／（低速）

The above text may not be viewable in all browsers. Here's a picture:



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ProfNet Experts Round-Up: State of the Union Address Part 1

MICHAEL HUTTNER, attorney and executive director and founder of progressnowcolorado.org, a model for new media organizing: "There is a reason why President Bush and the failed policies of his administration have the lowest approval ratings of any president in more than 30 years. The top one percent is wealthier and wealthier under this administration, while the average American has seen little relief in his/her pocketbook." As a private political consultant, Huttner helped spearhead Colorado's legislative efforts in 2004. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Denver College of Law, teaching legislation and lobbying. Huttner worked as policy advisor to Governor Romer and clerked at the White House for the Office of the Counsel to the President.

In barely 24 hours, and that's just the ones we can track. Seems to have some resonance -- or maybe it's just really funny. As with most successes, it's a little from column A and a little from column B.

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Can anyone explain this to me? Kerry lost. He is much like Gore at this point. Kerry was scared to speak out when he was running for president but now, since he is "safe" he feels he can say whatever he wants. It is fundamental to the basic problem the Democrats have. Most responses seem based in the fear that they may do or say the wrong thing... perhaps if they thought about what they wanted to say first and how that ties to their "values" they would not have to be as concerned...

My suggestion would be to never see Kerry again. He lost, he is associated with a loss and when people see him, they think of him as a loser and of the Democrats as losers. I just do not see it helping the Democrats to have him out there...

What do you think? Anyone disagree? Agree?

Under the Gold Dome, I suppose they feel insulated from the corruption scandals wreaking havoc in GOP-undermined Washington.

I suppose they think that nobody cares about influence-peddling and lobbyist-driven corruption in Colorado. It's just a flyover state, after all. Polls say nobody out here in the hinterland has ever even heard of either Jack Abramoff or a legislative "office account."

So naturally, when Rep. Morgan Carroll appeared before the House State Affairs Committee yesterday to place some limitations and disclosure on the pervasive influence of lobbyists at the Capitol, her bill was savaged and poisoned by self-interested politicos from both sides of the aisle.

Proposed reforms prompt ire, changes

Colorado lawmakers gutted a lobbying- reform bill Tuesday by removing the mandatory one-year "cooling off" period that would be required before a lawmaker could return to the Capitol as a lobbyist.

House Bill 1149, sponsored by freshman Democratic Rep. Morgan Carroll of Aurora, emerged from a contentious committee hearing stripped of major provisions and amended in a way that allowed House Republicans to crow that they are the champions of fighting special interests...

Carroll's original goal was to give the public more information about the interactions between lobbyists and lawmakers. What survived was a bill that lost the support of most Democrats on the committee.

"I think without all of that totally confusing, convoluted amendment gamesmanship, the bill was probably going to die," Carroll said. "But now, for very ironic reasons, it's lived in a form that if it's not fixed, I'll kill my own bill."

Carroll's bill called for more thorough reports from lobbyists about their clients and the bills they were trying to influence.

More than 15 people - including a Republican lobbyist, a Longmont carpenter and a former college professor - showed up to testify on behalf of her bill. No one opposed it.

No one except, it appears, a few self-interested politicos on the State, Veterans, & Military Affairs Committee.

Most lawmakers on the committee were not friendly to Carroll's bill. Coleman said the extra disclosures are unnecessary because lawmakers already make filings to the secretary of state.

Rep. David Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs, said lobbyists don't influence his votes.

That's right, folks: government corruption might be the biggest story in the country, there might be ample evidence of all kinds of corruption in Colorado state government, from electeds to agencies -- but according to Dave Schultheis there's nothing to see here. Take his word for it and don't let the door smack you in the ass on your way out, citizen.

We can do better than this, a message that should be delivered without partisan distinction.

They [the American people] are concerned about unethical conduct by public officials and discouraged by activist courts that try to redefine marriage.

In 8 seconds, the president dismissed the corruption scandals gripping Congress and his Administration and equated these in the American mind with judges who have applied state constitutional precepts on equality to lesbian and gay couples.

I was going to write the same thing, but TPM beat me to it.

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I was watching CNN's coverage of the SOTU speech tonight and after listening to Gov. Tom Kaine's (note: corrected name) rebuttal, was thinking how well suited the Dems are to retake the Senate in the fall. Then Nancy Pelosi was interviewed and she proceeded to find a way NOT to answer a single question with anything but totally idiodic answers. Someone please please put a gag on that woman!

I felt like she nearly single-handedly undid the good of Gov. Kaine's message.