If Initiative 300 in Denver passes, and you forget your wallet and get pulled over, police officers will be forced to impound your car leaving you stranded.

Which is why we're asking for your help. We need you to vote No on Initiative 300 if you live in Denver County.

It's deceptive. It's scary. It's expensive. And it's unnecessary.

Police officers already have the ability to impound vehicles if they are concerned about public safety. The Denver Post, Mayor Hickenlooper, ten members of the Denver City Council, House Speaker Terrence Carroll, and a long list of Denver community organizations and individuals oppose Initiative 300. And the proponents of this nightmare are counting on low turnout in an off-year election to sneak this one past us.

What can you do?

• Send an e-mail to 5 friends in Denver and ask them to vote no.
• Talk to your friends, neighbors, and co-workers in person about how important it is for them to return their ballots, and ask them to vote no on Initiative 300.
• Sign up to volunteer.

As for voting, the 2009 Election will be Mail-In Ballot only. Voting couldn't be easier-- it just takes 2 stamps to return, or you can drop it off to the Denver Election Commission in person. So please Vote NO on Initiative 300 and help spread the word.

If you live in Denver, you should have received your ballot in the mail. To check on your voter registration and on the status of your ballot, click here to look it up at the Secretary of State:

http://www.sos.state.co.us/Voter

If you believe you are registered to vote and you have not received your ballot, call 311 today.

Just received from the good Senator's office:

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Udall Announces Support for Confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court

Washington, D.C. -- Today, U.S. Senator Mark Udall announced that he plans to vote to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor when the Senate considers her nomination to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

"As a U.S. Senator I must give my advice and consent before any of the President's nominees to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court may be seated, and I take my responsibility seriously. I said I would take my time to study Judge Sotomayor's record and background and consider the Judiciary Committee hearings on her confirmation before making a decision. Now, as the Senate prepares to vote, I am announcing my support for her confirmation.

"Judge Sotomayor is an extremely accomplished jurist, and she has a very compelling personal story. This historic nomination is not only a source of pride for Hispanic Americans, but all Americans because we all take heart and feel pride when we see an individual overcome enormous obstacles and achieve great things through hard work and perseverance.

"But while her story is inspiring, what matters most are her qualifications for the job, her record, and her approach to the Constitution. And that is where I am most impressed.

"Judge Sotomayor navigated her Senate confirmation hearings with grace. Her years as a prosecutor and a sitting judge were evident. She took tough questions and gave clear and forthcoming answers. Her poise through hours of questioning is a testament to her strength of character. And my study of her record convinces me that she would be an unbiased judge.

"Sonia Sotomayor is a wise choice and a valuable addition to the Court. A generation after my father testified in the Senate in favor of Sandra Day O’Connor becoming the first female Supreme Court Justice, I am humbled and honored to support Judge Sonia Sotomayor."

Are you on Twitter? If not, you should be!

Click here to thank him by Twitter!

In each of our lives, we experience moments of shock that we will never forget. When Kennedy was shot in 1963. When the Challenger exploded over Florida in 1986.

For me, it was when 21 year-old Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten, tied to a fence, and left for dead on a cold October night in 1998. Matt was killed because he was gay. It sent chills of terror through the gay and lesbian community because the message was clear: you're next.

Matt's murder sparked a national movement to amend the federal hate crimes law to include crimes motivated by sexual orientation, gender, or disability.

After ten years, that change in law is finally in sight. Tonight, the U.S. Senate will vote on the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Both Senator Mark Udall and Senator Michael Bennet are cosponsors of this bill. The House version of the bill passed earlier this year with the support of six Colorado Representatives, and President Obama has committed to signing it.

Will you sign our virtual thank-you card to the members of the Colorado delegation who support this important law?

http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/HateCrimesThanks

Angie Zapata was an 18 year-old transgender woman from Greeley who had just moved into her first apartment on her own. She was murdered--in her killer's own words--because "all gay things need to die."

   Read More »

Ever since President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the right wing has attacked her with racist and sexist remarks--part of a coordinated strategy to tarnish her credibility. And now they've continued their assault by publishing problematic and disrespectful images.

The fact is that Judge Sotomayor is the most qualified nominee to the Supreme Court in at least a generation. She has more trial experience than any sitting member of the Supreme Court had when they were nominated. And she just received a unanimous recommendation fy the American Bar Association-something that can't be said about any of George W. Bush's nominees.

So we partnered with Presente.org to bring Colorado this poster design to celebrate our pride in her historic nomination and to thank you for standing with her. We hope you'll download it, spread it far and wide, and invite your friends and family to do the same:

http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/Sotomayor

The poster was designed by Presente.org co-founder and artist Favianna Rodriguez. When you download the poster you'll have an opportunity to sign the petition, which we'll send to the Senate Judiciary Committee on your behalf. Hearings on Judge Sotomayor's confirmation are scheduled for this coming Monday, July 13th. That means we only have a few days to get this poster distributed and reproduced everywhere-on web sites, in street windows, and on office walls.

Right-wing extremists like Tom Tancredo and Rush Limbaugh will only ramp up their attacks against Judge Sotomayor. We can't let them dominate the conversation. It's up to us to show just how many people stand behind Judge Sotomayor.

Help us by downloading the poster and spreading the word to your family and friends:

http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/Sotomayor

Thanks for all you do!

P.S. - We also have created bumper stickers based on the poster that you can purchase. Also, if you don't have a color printer or if you would like to get a larger, high-quality poster printed, you can do that as well. Just visit our shop on CafePress.

http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/Shop

Kopel, in his opinion piece today in the Rocky Mountain News
KOPEL: Web, not bias, offing papers seems to put all the blame on CraigsList and all of we who use the world wide web.

Who or what do you think has caused the probable demise of the Rocky and perhaps the Denver Post as well?

Weigh in with your opinion on Kopel's article . Today.

Interesting article in today's Boston Globe:

US executions in a lull as court examines lethal injection

A quarter-century has elapsed since the United States experienced as long a pause in executions as the one the Supreme Court has occasioned with its current examination of lethal injections.
more stories like this

No one has been put to death since Sept. 25 and the earliest that executions will probably resume is in the summer. Forty-two people were executed in 2007, the lowest total in 13 years. Last month, New Jersey became the first state in four decades to abolish the death penalty.

But when the justices return from their holiday break and hear arguments today in a lethal injection case from Kentucky, their questions are unlikely to focus on whether capital punishment or even the method of lethal injection is right or wrong.

The two death row inmates whose challenge is before the court are not asking to be spared execution or death by injection. Their argument, at its most basic, is that there are ways to get the job done relatively pain-free.

While the Supreme Court debates which drug cocktail will do the job "painlessly," states are revisiting their death row cases and finding wrongful convictions--sometimes too late. It's the fear of executing an innocent person that is slowing that nation's rate of executions, not concerns over pain suffered during lethal injection.

It will be interesting to see the technical results of this challenge, whether this poison or that poison is the most "humane" for administering the death penalty, but it won't answer the real question America is grappling with.

So you wanted to "play nice" with the White House on those Supreme Court nominees a couple years ago, did you? Formed that "Gang of 14" to keep our collective wheels spinning in greased grooves, no nasty contentious filibusters--right?

The result:

Precedents Begin to Fall for Roberts Court

No Supreme Court nominee could be confirmed these days without paying homage to the judicial doctrine of "stare decisis," Latin for "to stand by things decided." Yet experienced listeners have learned to take these professions of devotion to precedent "cum grano salis," Latin for "with a grain of salt."

Both Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. assured their Senate questioners at their confirmation hearings that they, too, respected precedent. So why were they on the majority side of a 5-to-4 decision last week declaring that a 45-year-old doctrine excusing people whose "unique circumstances" prevented them from meeting court filing deadlines was now "illegitimate"?

It was the second time the Roberts court had overturned a precedent, and the first in a decision with a divided vote. It surely will not be the last...

Sometimes the court overrules cases without actually saying so. Some argue that this is what happened in April, when a 5-to-4 majority upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act without making much effort to reconcile that ruling with a decision in 2000 that found a nearly identical Nebraska law unconstitutional.

As a technical matter, the new decision, Gonzales v. Carhart, left the earlier ruling still on the books, doing its overruling "by stealth, without having the grace to admit that is what they were doing," in the words of Ronald Dworkin, the legal philosopher, who wrote a highly critical appraisal of the new decision in The New York Review of Books last month. "Justices Roberts and Alito had both declared their intention to respect precedent in their confirmation hearings, and no doubt they were reluctant to admit so soon how little those declarations were worth," Professor Dworkin said from London in an e-mail message.

Much of the news and blog coverage of the US Attorney scandal has centered on the US Attorneys in question prosecuting Republicans, as in the case of US Attorney Carol Lam and disgraced former representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham. But the larger over-arching issue what Republicans call "voter fraud." Voter fraud is almost nonexistent in this country, but Republicans like to wave this red herring in their attempt to suppress minority voter turnout.

McClatchy brings this out into the open in the mainstream media with a story about Hans von Spakovsky, the Republicans' go-to man in the Justice Department using unethical and strong-arm tactics to hide the effects of their vote suppression efforts.

But let's remember that these efforts at suppressing minorities, though being taken to a recently unheard of level, are not new. Republicans have long sought to use the law to suppress their opponents' right to vote. Before becoming a drug-addled Supreme Court appointee, the late Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist was a foot soldier in the Republicans' minority vote suppression machine in
Arizona.

Democrats have rightly long been apologizing for and distancing themselves from racist Jim Crow laws perpetrated by conservative Democrats in the South after the Civil War. But the racists just switched parties, and their efforts to marginalize minorities continues at full steam under the Republican Party's umbrella. Like Osama bin Laden in a cave, Jim Crow is alive and well, hiding in plain sight. The Republican Party gives Jim Crow aid and comfort, and furthers his insideous agenda from the highest levels of government.

We had a little fun with 'Foxy' the fox today... NO, not That Kind of Fun!

We heard that Frontier was doing a Campaign Interview style promo for the 'Foxy' Frontier's Favorite Animal at the Civic Center today across from the City Hall. So we thought this would be great test of our Concept of Instant Vigils.

We flew downtown and did a 'one indian' to their 'circle the wagons' maneuver. The media types applauded my arrival but grumbled later when they had trouble getting a shot without our signs in the background.

Our sign on one side said.

Call Foxy and tell her to
Stop the Iraq War
and impeach Bush

and on the other side

Call Foxy and say
Stop the War and
impeach Bush.

Amazing the amount of eyeballs these signs got.

It was Fun...
you all shoulda been there.

Maybe next time, eh! Join Us.
Impeachment can be fun.

John

WeeklyVigilsToImpeach.Us
Link

ProgressNowAction Member
Link

Clovis "Chuckie" Claxton was a happy, go-lucky Cub Scout in Washington until age 10 when he contracted meningitis and encephalitis, leaving him paralyzed and mentally retarded. In 1991 at age 20, but with the mental faculties of a 10 year old, he was convicted of child molestation after playing doctor with a neighbor girl. Chuckie served his sentence, and was deemed by his court-appointed therapist and law enforcement not to be a recidivism threat.

Things went as well as can be expected for a severely disabled man with aging parents for ten years until they moved to Ocala, Florida where they hoped the warm weather might make it easier for Chuckie to get around on his own. In accordance with the law, Chuckie was registered in Florida as a sex offender as a result of his previous conviction. The local sheriff performed a threat assessment and determined that Chuckie had no risk of re-offending. Things began looking up as Chuckie made some ground with Medicaid and gained approval for an electric wheelchair. But the good times would not last.   Read More »