Archive for the ‘Local Politics Colorado’ Category

Don’t ask, don’t tell coming to an end..?

January 13, 2009

I personally could care less what people do to entertain themselves so long as that behavior does not affect others, and is done with consenting adults. Others would disagree with me, and that’s fine.

Here, is what some of those that might be most affected are saying. Hopefully wordpress will not “spam” me for bringing all these different “links” to a single post. I believe that this issue is of such importance though that it needs to have more than one or two players in the games ideas floated.

http://cmrlink.org/HMilitary.asp?docID=339

http://cmrlink.org/HMilitary.asp?docID=337

http://cmrlink.org/HMilitary.asp?docID=332

http://cmrlink.org/HMilitary.asp?docID=326

http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/obama_military_gays/2009/01/08/169333.html
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/surveillance/basic.htm

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/factsheets/msm.htm
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090107/ts_alt_afp/usmilitarygays_newsmlmmd

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1707545,00.html

http://www.heritage.org/research/nationalsecurity/em359.cfm

http://www.health.mil/dhb/meetings/2007-12/


04_Walker_Emergency%20Blood%20Transfusions.pdf

http://www.health.mil/dhb/recommendations/2008/


EmergencyBloodTransfusionCombatTheaters.pdf

http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_account/different_hiv_rates_among_homosexuals_and
_heterosexuals_ignores_risky_behavior_data

http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=JrcYGJ1CQdx8wxjl923nnkQhwy6bbT4BYTZk0dCrG4rwn
L19qGk6!1746175250?docId=5001267771

http://www.avert.org/usastatg.htm

Another “Top” list

January 12, 2009

I just knew that there had to be more top (ten) lists. Either for this past year, or for the new year. I found another one, and it is great!

2008 in review: Top questions Barack Obama did not answer

By Mark Alexander

Perhaps you’ve noticed an abundance of “Top Ten” lists in recent weeks. As usual, the mainstream media has churned out a variety of year-in-review pieces of late. Two events vied for top billing on all those lists — the financial meltdown and the presidential election. At present, it isn’t clear which of those debacles presents the greater threat to our nation.

The factors leading up to the economic collapse in the last two quarters are clear (see Economics 101). What is not clear, however, is whether we can limit the damage to a mere recession.

On the other hand, we have learned that Barack Hussein Obama (as he prefers to be named for his oath of office) is a charismatic master of deception and deflection. What we haven’t learned, therefore, are the answers to a plethora of questions about his citizenship, his mentors, his faith, his worldview, and his tragic childhood — a childhood which gave rise to the pathological narcissism that launched his political career and guides him to this day.

Not that many of those questions weren’t asked. Plenty of them were posed in our profiles of Obama but were met with obfuscation, prevarication and equivocation.

Who is this guy?

So, who is this guy?

In one sense he answered that question in his political autobiography, “The Audacity of Hope”: “I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

That explains who he is in the glassy eyes of his messianic following, but who is he really? Who is Barack Hussein Obama, the president-elect of the United States of America?

In pursuit of an answer, I have compiled a list of some important questions directed at BHO that he did not answer in 2008.

Where to start … how about the beginning: Are you a natural-born citizen, as constitutionally prescribed in Article II, Section 1 and Amendment XX, Section 3, for the office of president?

When the question of citizenship came up a year ago, I presumed that this issue was a “straw man” — that your strategy was to send some adversaries on a rabbit trail to nowhere, only to release your official birth certificate just prior to the election. But you didn’t do that.

I believe that you were born in Honolulu, but I have been to the hospital where you were, ostensibly, born, and they could not produce any birth records or tell me who the attending OB might have been. Of course, 1961 is many years past.

Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle has sealed your on-file birth records, making them unavailable for verification. You refuse to request that the documents in question be made available for examination by dispassionate analysts.

To obtain a driver’s license, one has to provide some proof of citizenship — so why did you not comply as a presidential candidate? Surely you can influence the state of Hawaii to release your original birth certificate for public inspection, so this lingering question can be put to rest before your inauguration.

We know that you hold constitutional rule of law in contempt, but in the unlikely event that it is revealed sometime after your inauguration that you are not a natural-born citizen, we would be faced with a serious constitutional crisis. When do you plan to release your original birth certificate?

Moving on, given your strange childhood and broken family (similar to that of Bill Clinton, the last unmitigated narcissist to occupy the White House), you indicated that your primary childhood mentor was a communist, Frank Marshall Davis.

How did his mentorship shape your understanding of the role of government and economics?

You claim that you never heard any of the anti-American and black-supremacist rants of your mentoring pastor, Jeremiah Wright. However, you spent 20 years in Wright’s church, he officiated at your marriage and the baptism of your children, and you identified him as a “father” figure.

Is it possible that you have been so steeped in his racist rhetoric and hatred for America that you failed to recognize it for what it was?

You claim that terrorist William Ayers was “just a guy in my neighborhood,” and that you were “just eight years old when he was a terrorist.” However, you were 34 when Ayers used his radical celebrity to launch your political career from his living room. You were 40 when this unrepentant terrorist was featured in a New York Times article (on the morning of September 11, 2001) and quoted in the opening paragraph proclaiming, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Ayers added, “America makes me want to puke.” You were working on your second major “philanthropic” project with Ayers at that time, and when interviewed for your first Senate run, you claimed that your primary qualification for public office was your role with the ultra-Leftist Annenberg Foundation — an appointment that you received from Ayers.

So, what is the real nature of your relationship with Ayers?

Regarding your ties to the Socialist New Party, the ACORN crowd, Rod Blagojevich, Tony Rezko, Saul Alinsky, Father Michael Pfleger, Khalid al-Mansour, Kwame Kilpatrick, Louis Farrakhan, Rashid Khalidi, Raila Odinga and other haters, hard Leftists and convicted felons, are we to assume these were just “guys in your neighborhood”?

If you were a Civil Service Employee, could you pass a background check to receive a basic “Secret” clearance? If not, why should the American people trust you as the steward of their security? (OK, I know the answer. “No.”)

When you turned 18 years of age, did you register with the Selective Service System as required by law?

Regarding your “realtor” friend Rezko, how do the unusual circumstances surrounding the purchase of your Chicago mansion differ from the purchase made by former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA) of his California house — a purchase that ended with his arrest and conviction?

George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” All committed Socialists understand this principle. In 100 words or less, can you compare and contrast Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations with Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto? In 50 words or less, can you describe any significant difference between International Communism and National Socialism?

Whom do you hold accountable for the economic fiasco, and what is your plan to ensure it doesn’t recur? What is your plan to halt the imminent inflation resulting from the Fed’s printing of money to fund TARP and all the additional handouts?

Why do you think government can provide better and more efficient health care than the private sector? Keep in mind, yours is the same party that was regulating the housing market when it became the first economic domino to fall.

Can you explain how excessively taxing large corporations (which, in turn, pass these “fees” on to the consumer) provides economic “stimulus,” or how this makes lower- and middle-income Americans wealthier?

The motto of your campaign was “change,” but you have never specified what that change means — change from what to what? Based on the goals you have spoken about, it appears that you (and your handlers) would like to change our country from a democratic republic to a socialist/Marxist one. Would you please disabuse me of this notion?

You campaigned about needing “new blood” in Washington. Given this, how do you explain your selection of so many people from the Clinton and Carter administrations?

Our national debt stands at $10 trillion, and rises at a rate of roughly $75 million per hour each day. Do you see any problem with such large numbers, and if so, do you have a plan to fix it?

What is your plan to rein in congressional spending?

Define “rich.” As in “taxing the rich.” The amount appears to have varied depending upon which speech you and Joe Biden made during the campaign. $250,000? $200,000? $150,000? None of these pre-income tax amounts would qualify anyone as being rich, and yet, you voted to increase taxes on the “rich” at the $40,000 level.

During Bill Clinton’s administration, he raised taxes and government revenue collections decreased. George W. Bush reduced taxes and revenue collections increased. Why?

What yardstick will you use to determine when our troops should return home from OIF and/or OEF? How will you measure success? Given that the surge strategy in Iraq has, without question, worked, why is it that you cannot simply admit you were wrong?

What is it about leaders of states who sponsor terrorism and harbor terrorists that makes you believe peace is negotiable with them? What makes you think that Iran, Syria and terrorist entities such as Hamas, Fatah and Hezbollah will adhere to anything they might “agree” to in a signed document?

What is your position on amnesty for illegal immigrants? What is your vision for immigration reform, generally?

Vice president-elect Joe Biden said, “Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama. … Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate. And he’s gonna need help. … He’s gonna need you … to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

What in heaven’s name was he ranting about?

In regard to your so-called “National Service Plan” you stated, “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded [as the military].” That sounds like a force of like-minded socialists, young pioneers, brown shirts, Obama youth, ready to trade brooms for guns.

What were you talking about?

On the subject of guns, you said of the Second Amendment (the palladium of all other rights), “I believe in the Second Amendment. Lawful gun owners have nothing to fear. I said that throughout the campaign. I haven’t indicated anything different during the transition. I think people can take me at my word.” However, your nominee for attorney general, Eric Holder, reaffirmed in the recent Heller case his long-held position that the Second Amendment confers no rights of individual gun possession by private citizens.

Can we still take you at your word?

What is your position on the Enumerated Powers Act (H.R. 1359), which would require all legislation introduced in Congress to “contain a concise and definite statement of the constitutional authority” empowering Congress to enact it?

And on the subject of constitutional authority, on 20 January, you will be taking this constitutionally prescribed oath: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Exactly what Constitution are you swearing to “preserve, protect and defend” — that which was written by our forefathers and defended by the blood of Patriots for generations since, or its vestigial remains, the so-called “Living Constitution” as amended by Leftist judicial diktat? After all, you said you would nominate Supreme Court Justices who met your ideological test rather than those who were impartial jurists.

If the latter, should anyone take your role as commander in chief seriously?

And a final question: At a Florida rally four days before the presidential election, you asserted: “[W]e want to do this, change our tax code (a.k.a. ‘redistribute the wealth’). … John McCain [calls] this socialistic. You know I, I, I don’t know when, when, uh, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.”

For the record, when you were an adolescent (by your own account, smoking dope and snorting coke) John McCain was a POW in Hanoi. Despite being a Naval Academy graduate and the son of a high-ranking admiral, McCain had requested combat duty and was assigned to the USS Forrestal. He was on the flight deck of the Forrestal during the inferno that killed 134 of his fellow sailors. He was flying his 23rd mission as part of Operation Rolling Thunder over Vietnam when his A-4E Skyhawk was shot down by a missile over Hanoi. He was subjected to more than five years of horrific torture by the Communist NVA, including two years of solitary confinement.

You claim that John McCain has made “a virtue out of selfishness.” When will you issue a public apology for that odious remark?

source

Boy Scouts win against anti freedom bigots

January 12, 2009

This was a long and bitter fight, and the morons almost won it.

COLORADO: Elbert County Stands-Up for Boy Scouts of America Shooting Center! On Tuesday, January 6 the Elbert County Board of Commissioners voted 3-0 to finally grant the Boy Scouts of America their Special Use Permit.  This permit will now allow them to relocate the shooting range located at Peaceful Valley Scout Ranch, preserving the continuing education of the safe use of rifles, shotguns, handguns, and muzzleloaders.  The Boy Scouts had applied for a Special Use Permit from Elbert County to relocate the shooting range facility, “The Travis Facility,” further into the interior of Peaceful Valley Scout Ranch.  After having conducted extensive and costly testing to ensure that the new site followed all noise, lead, and environmental laws, the new site was chosen to accommodate the few anti-gun neighbors who had filed complaints.  Due to these few anti-gun property owners who live near Peaceful Valley, the County had unfairly delayed approving the Boy Scouts permit request.  This delay had been putting the 2009 shooting programs at risk of being canceled.  Most importantly, without the Travis Facility, the Boy Scout community would have lost an essential firearms safety-training venue and put an end to one of the nations most highly recognized firearms education programs.  Thank you to all who attended the meeting and voiced their support for the Boy Scouts of America who have, and will attend this valuable and important facility.

SCI Law Seminar for Hunters

January 12, 2009

ATTENTION HUNTERS:  Please Attend Safari Club International’s Wildlife Law Seminar on Saturday, January 24! For those who are planning to attend Safari Club International’s Annual Convention in Reno, Nevada, at the end of this month, please be advised of a seminar that will be given on Saturday, January 24.  Entitled, “Wildlife Law: Issues and Controversies Regarding Wildlife Management and Use,” this seminar should be of particular relevance to hunters who are interested in the laws affecting the shipment of firearms and trophies across state and international borders, as well as those interested in current issues affecting the management of wildlife.  The seminar will be held from 8:45 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., on Saturday, January 24, at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa, located at 3800 S. Virginia Street, in Reno.  Admittance is $129, which includes the seminar, written materials, and single, same day admission to SCI Hunter’s Convention.  Registration will close on Monday, January 12.  For more information and to complete a registration form, please click here.  To learn about SCI membership and their convention, please visit www.safariclub.com.

DOW VOLUNTEER PROGRAM GOING STRONG AFTER 15 YEARS

January 12, 2009

Two articles from DOW on this subject. Stop talking, and start walking! Get out there and give them a hand. Heck! It’s fun too!

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Since 1993 people have cleared trails, planted seedlings, banded wild turkeys, spawned trout, mended fences, answered phones, entered data, and counted Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep.  What they all have in common is they are volunteers with the Colorado Division of Wildlife (DOW).

Over the past 15 years, more than 4,700 individuals and families have donated their free time, muscle, and brain power to help the DOW accomplish its mission to perpetuate wildlife resources and provide people with the opportunity to enjoy wildlife.

“Rapid development and habitat loss have increased the challenges to Colorado’s wildlife and the DOW is fortunate to have a dedicated group of people willing to get up early on cold mornings or work late nights to help the DOW in multiple ways,” said Jena Sanchez, a Volunteer Coordinator from Colorado Springs.  “Volunteer efforts make a huge impact on helping wildlife.  The value of their donated time is over a million dollars a year.  Volunteers help accomplish important work that might not get done otherwise,” she said.

Sanchez conceded that not all of the jobs volunteers assist with are glamorous, but they all have a positive impact for wildlife.  “Counting bighorn sheep and mountain goats sounds neat.  But it means getting up before dawn to climb mountains in sometimes less than ideal weather.  It can be a grueling experience, but by in large every volunteer who does it comes away with a sense of personal gratification that they are making a difference.”

Sanchez said the agency tries to match people with tasks they are comfortable with.  Not everyone wants to get wet spawning fish, get dirty planting trees, or work with youngsters teaching hunting safety and outdoor ethics.  Some volunteers do light office duty, work in customer service centers, serve as campground hosts, or staff information booths at wildlife festivals and trade shows.

The net effect, she said, is that game wardens and biologists get valuable assistance; and hunters, anglers, bird watchers, and other wildlife enthusiasts see the direct benefits in healthier wildlife populations.

Two of the most popular volunteer programs are the “wildlife transport,” and “bear aware” teams.    Every year, hundreds of orphaned or injured animals are transported by volunteers to licensed rehabilitation centers where, whenever possible, they are nursed back to health and released back into the wild.  Some of those same volunteers serve as liaisons in neighborhoods where bears and people share the same environment.  The bear aware volunteers distribute educational materials and instruct homeowners in ways they can minimize conflicts with bears.

All DOW volunteers are required to complete an application form and participate in an orientation session prior to being assigned to project teams.  Additional training may be required in the event the project involves specialized skills.  For more information about the DOW volunteer program, visit the DOW website at: http://www.wildlifestate.co.us/Volunteer.  Or contact one of the four regional Volunteer Coordinators listed below.

In southeastern Colorado including Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Lamar, contact Jena Sanchez (719) 227-5204, jena.sanchez@state.co.us.

In southwest Colorado including Montrose, Gunnison, Durango, and the San Luis Valley contact Jennifer Kleffner at (970) 375-6704, Jennifer.kleffner@state.co.us.

In northwest Colorado including Grand Junction, Glenwood Springs, Aspen, Craig, and Steamboat Springs, contact Linda Edwards at (970) 255-6145, linda.edwards@state.co.us.

In northeast Colorado including Denver, Castle Rock, Sterling, and Fort Collins, contact Mary McCormac at (303) 291-7369, mary.mccormac@state.co.us.

-30-

For more information about Division of Wildlife go to: http://wildlife.state.co.us.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR WILDLIFE VOLUNTEERS

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Colorado is home to some of the most diverse wildlife populations in North America.  Since 1993, the Colorado Division of Wildlife (DOW) Volunteer Program has provided people the opportunity to contribute their time and talents to help wildlife.

Over the past 15 years, more than 4,750 volunteers have supported the DOW in unique ways, such as counting bighorn sheep and mountain goats, searching for bats near entrances to inactive mines, teaching children and adults to hunt and fish,  doing light office duty, and much more.

This winter, the DOW is holding new volunteer orientation programs across the state to recruit and prepare people for spring and summer projects.

Typical activities include transporting sick and injured wildlife to rehabilitation centers, helping spawn fish, monitoring nest sites for ospreys and eagles, being tour guides at fish hatcheries, State Wildlife Area clean-ups, and a variety of other hands-on projects.  Projects are seasonal and vary by region of the state.

For people interested in public outreach and education opportunities, the projects include teaching people about black bears in neighborhoods where bears are active, and staffing information booths at festivals and trade shows.

New volunteer orientation meetings will be held on the following dates and locations:
Denver, Jan. 21
Pueblo, Jan.  21.
Colorado Springs, Jan. 22.
Fort Collins, Jan. 28
Grand Junction, Feb. 17

To learn more about these or other opportunities to get involved, contact one of the following DOW volunteer coordinators:

In southeastern Colorado including Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Lamar, contact Jena Sanchez (719) 227-5204, jena.sanchez@state.co.us.

In southwest Colorado including Montrose, Gunnison, Durango, and the San Luis Valley contact Jennifer Kleffner at (970) 375-6704, Jennifer.kleffner@state.co.us.

In northwest Colorado including Grand Junction, Glenwood Springs, Aspen, Craig, and Steamboat Springs, contact Linda Edwards at (970) 255-6145, linda.edwards@state.co.us.

In northeast Colorado including Denver, Castle Rock, Sterling, and Fort Collins, contact Mary McCormac at (303) 291-7369, mary.mccormac@state.co.us.

-30-

For more information about Division of Wildlife go to: http://wildlife.state.co.us.

TWO NEW PARCELS ADDED TO SOUTH REPUBLICAN SWA

January 12, 2009

AWESOME!

TWO NEW PARCELS ADDED TO SOUTH REPUBLICAN SWA

Burlington, Colo. – Two more parcels of land have been set aside for wildlife recreation and added to the South Republican State Wildlife Area in eastern Colorado.  The Colorado Division of Wildlife and landowner Rodney Kleweno established a joint land protection agreement on 1,760 acres in Kit Carson and Yuma Counties. The agreement includes public access for sportsmen.

The north parcel, in Yuma Co., is about 660 acres of cottonwood, river bottom, and agricultural crop land.  The South Fork of the South Republican River flows through this parcel and provides excellent waterfowl, turkey, small game, and deer hunting opportunities, as well as wildlife habitat for nongame species.  The south parcel, in Kit Carson Co., is about 1,100 acres.  It is a mixture of shortgrass rangeland and CRP land.  This property will provide pheasant, small game, and deer hunting opportunities.

“The funding for these easements came from money provided by sportsmen who bought Habitat Stamps as part of their hunting and fishing license purchases,” said Shaun Deeney of the Colorado Division of Wildlife.  “These are excellent properties that benefit many wildlife species including deer, turkey, upland game birds, waterfowl, raptors, song birds, and a variety of small game species.”

“This project gave me the opportunity to protect my property from future development.  Knowing this land will be kept in agriculture for my family to continue to farm and ranch is important to me,” said Kleweno.

Since the parcels are in the immediate vicinity of the South Republican State Wildlife Area near Bonny Reservoir, they will be managed under the same regulations as the South Republican SWA.  The parcels will be open to year-round walk-in access to hunters, anglers, or anyone who purchases a Habitat Stamp, but the properties will remain in private ownership.

For directions or more information about hunting or fishing opportunities, call the South Republican SWA at 970-354-7317.

For more information about Division of Wildlife go to: http://wildlife.state.co.us.

Gun Control, the Democrats are out for revenge

January 10, 2009

Ever since the election I have been commenting about how the politics of revenge will become the law of the land. My RSS feed has been going nuts about new taxes, new confiscation, and assorted other schemes that the gun control crowd are coming up with in order to deny you of your Constitutional rights with regard to being able to properly, and effectively defend your self, family, friends, and country.

What follows is among the best that I have come across.


Alan Korwin

Gun law update: Brady Gun-Ban Strategy Outlined

(Prior report with Brady gun-ban lists: http://www.gunlaws.com/newstuff.htm)

The powerful gun-ban lobby has developed its own language to color and disguise its true agenda — the disarming of law-abiding Americans in every way possible, and the end of effective self defense.

Their latest set of plans — used as a fund raiser (outlined below) — is filled with nice sounding terms that put a deceptive spin on their goals. Respect for the Bill of Rights is nowhere to be found, only clever end runs and literal destruction of rights Americans have always had.

Starkly missing from these plans is any direct attack on criminals — the whole game plan is aimed at firearms the public holds. It is a product of abject gun fear — hoplophobia — that afflicts the people behind the plan. They deny they’re hoplophobic, but just look at their plans, directed solely at restricting and eliminating guns — instead of the crime caused by criminals they nominally complain about. I noticed that all mentions of accident prevention, a former holy grail for the group, are gone.

The hypocrisy is unequivocal and self evident. Sarah claims, “We need to get these ‘killing machines’ off our streets.” Well, go ahead. Any person, on any street, operating any “killing machine” belongs in prison immediately under existing law, right? Everyone, even the Bradys, know this. It doesn’t matter if your gun is black, or too short, or holds the right amount of ammo.

The problem isn’t the “machines,” it’s the lack of law enforcement — in the bad parts of town and among the gangs where most of the problems occur (see maps: http://www.gunlaws.com/GunshotDemographics.htm). They will not admit this, and they do not address this.

Instead, they act out on their phobia and attack you and me. The real problem of crime and violence is just an excuse for them to work on disarming people who didn’t do anything.

The Federal Bureaucracy of Investigation, along with the Bureaucracy of Alcohol and Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives are in complete sympathy with the plan. The Brady plan will get them more staff, more office space, more of our money and more power, the acknowledged holy grail of bureaucrats.

Politically Corrected Glossary — of Bradyspeak

(See the entire glossary: http://www.gunlaws.com/politicallycorrect.htm)

Full article here

RITTER: MY STAFF AND I DECEIVED COLORADO ON THE STATE BUDGET DEFICIT

December 31, 2008

People simply cannot say that they were not warned. From the Independence Institute to Gunny Bob the warning was sent out loud and clear.

Gov. Bill Ritter’s office now says its economists used outdated information and underestimated the size of the budget shortfall that Colorado is facing this year.

The new forecast from Ritter’s budget office puts the shortfall in the current fiscal year ending in June at $230 million — more than three times the $70.2 million the governor’s office forecast on Dec. 19. A forecast from legislative staff put the shortfall at $604 million, and the two offices agreed to sit down and go over their calculations together.

Evan Dreyer, a spokesman for the Democratic governor, said a major difference in the forecasts from the two offices was in how they projected revenue from capital-gains taxes levied on the sale of securities or property.

“They (legislative staff) were utilizing a more current data source for their capital-gains projections,” Dreyer said, saying that information came from the Internal Revenue Service while Ritter’s office was relying on older information from the Colorado Department of Revenue.

“We adjusted accordingly,” Dreyer said. “That said, we are going to make every contingency necessary to achieve even deeper cuts if we need to.”

Ritter now is asking state agencies to submit proposals to cut their budgets by 10 percent in the next fiscal year, which starts in July. He had already asked departments to show how they could cut 2.5 percent from their budgets in the current fiscal year.

Even after the revisions from Ritter’s office, there is still a nearly $400 million difference between the executive and legislative branches in their visions of how bad the current year will be.

Dreyer said there are still differences between the offices in how they project revenue from sales tax as well as corporate and personal income taxes.

“Forecasting is an extremely difficult job, even in the best of times, and this is an unprecedented bad time,” Dreyer said, adding that economists had not done anything wrong.

“For the past several months, we have been adjusting the budget and creating the necessary flexibility to keep the budget balanced,” he said. “Regardless of the differing forecasts, we will work together with the legislature to continue prudently managing the budget.”

For members of the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee, whose job it will be to slash spending, the difference in the forecasts is unsettling.

“From a budgeting standpoint, it leaves us as a legislative body the difficult task of deciding which scenario — and we’ll probably be cautious and use the worst scenario — to balance our budget for the current year,” said Sen. Moe Keller, D-Wheat Ridge.

Rep. Al White, R-Hayden, another member of the panel, agreed.

“We are tasked with picking a lane here, and we’ve got two different road maps that have drastically different destinations,” White said. “We can only take the most conservative one because therein lies the least danger.

SOURCE

2008 Liberal Media Awards

December 26, 2008

I spent a little more than thirty years living in the Denver area, and one of the things that I most enjoyed while there was listening to the blowtorch of the Rockies, 850 KOA Radio.

The entire line up is great, and they certainly do have the best trafic reports. What follows is commentary, and awards by Mike Rosen. Enjoy!

ROSEN: 2008 liberal media awards

It’s time for the 21st annual Media Research Center’s awards for the most biased, manipulative or downright goofy quotes from liberals in the “mainstream” media. I’m honored to serve, once again, on MRC’s distinguished panel of conservatively-biased judges. Here are some of the lowlights from among the winners and runners- up of Best Notable Quotables of 2008:

* Quote of the Year: Co-anchor Chris Matthews: “I have to tell you, you know, it’s part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama’s speech. My – I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often.”

Co-anchor Keith Olbermann: “Steady.”

Matthews: “No, seriously. It’s a dramatic event. He speaks about America in a way that has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with the feeling we have about our country. And that is an objective assessment.” (Exchange during MSNBC’s coverage of the Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., primaries, Feb 12)

* Barbra Streisand Political IQ Award for Celebrity Vapidity: “If you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don’t, then you’ve got the Army, Iraq, I don’t know, something like that. It’s not as bright.” (Novelist Stephen King at an April 4 Library of Congress Event for high schoolers, later carried by C-SPAN2)

* The John Murtha Award for Painting America as Racist: “What do you think the bigger obstacle is for you becoming president, the Clinton campaign machine or America’s inherent racism?” (ABC’s Chris Cuomo to Barack Obama in a Dec. 20, 2007, interview on Good Morning America)

* Half-Baked Alaska Award for Pummeling Palin

“You know the one thing that I don’t think anybody’s said yet is that she’s very mean to animals, this woman. Why does she have it in for these poor polar bears and caribou, and she aerial-kills wolves? That’s a very mean thing to do. I think that that’s an important point.” (ABC’s The View co-host Joy Behar on CNN’s Larry King Live, Sept. 9)

* Let Us Fluff Your Pillow Award for Soft & Cuddly Interviews

“What of the attacks has busted through to you? What makes you angriest at John McCain, the Republicans? What’s being said about your husband that you want to shout from the mountaintops isn’t true?” (NBC’s Brian Williams to Michele Obama in a taped interview shown on the Aug. 27 Nightly News)

* The Irrelevant Rev. Wright Award

“He was assassinated by sound bites . . . His whole career was being summed up in sound bites that added up to no more than 20 seconds, endlessly played through the media grinder of our national press. He was angry about that . . . he was like a man who goes out and picks up the morning newspaper and gets hit by a cyclone!” ( PBS’s Bill Moyers talking about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show on May 13.

* The ‘Pay up, You Patriots’ Award

“It’s early April, which means these are the few days of the year when Americans of almost any political stripe unite in a perennial ritual: complaining about taxes. Count me out. I’m happy to pay my fair share to the government. It’s part of my patriotic duty – and it’s a heckuva bargain . . . There seems to be an inconsistency about people who insist on wearing flag pins in their lapels, but who grumble about paying taxes . . . Genuine patriots don’t complain about their patriotic obligations . . . Pay up and be grateful.” ( Former ABC and CNN reporter Walter Rodgers writing in the Christian Science Monitor, April 2)

* Politics of Meaninglessness Award for the Silliest Analysis

“Media bias largely unseen in U.S. presidential race” ( Headline over Nov. 6 Reuters dispatch claiming no liberal tilt in favor of Barack Obama)

If your stomach is strong enough to handle the complete awards list, you can get it online at www.MRC.org.

Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon on 850 KOA. He can be reached by e-mail at mikerosen@850koa.com.

Are Democrats Better on Privacy and Surveillance?

December 25, 2008

This piece by James Bovard points out the application of Historical Fallacy by various leftest organizations. Not the least of which is the Democrat Party. To be sure, the Republicans lost any and all credibility over the past eight years as the party of limited government, if indeed they ever truly deserved such a moniker.

The call for a new political party that actually does more than give lip service to the Constitution and Bill of Rights is nothing new. I have serious doubts that anything will come from this need though. Not to mention that the two majority parties have passed laws making any attempt to effectively remove them from the halls of power doomed to utter failure.

The Bush administration has probably illegally violated Americans’ privacy more than any presidency in at least a generation. Many Americans are understandably ready to throw out Republicans who trampled the Bill of Rights.

But is the solution to elect a Democrat? Many liberals were shocked in July when putative Democratic Party presidential nominee Barack Obama voted in favor of the bill to retroactively immunize illegal wiretapping by Bush officials and telephone-company executives. Even worse, the bill authorizes the federal government to conduct far more warrantless wiretaps whenever the president claims the nation is endangered.

Some Americans are looking back at the 1990s as a comparative Golden Age for Privacy. Unfortunately, most people have forgotten that the Democratic Party’s record on surveillance was dreadful.

The Clinton administration consistently championed the right of government employees to stick their noses almost anywhere — into people’s email, car, house, or personal effects. Clintonites set off one false alarm after another to justify extending government’s right to intrude. The administration consistently sought to exploit technological development in order to maximize government’s control over the citizenry.

The Fourth Amendment states,

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The purpose of the Fourth Amendment was to prevent government officials from having dictatorial power over citizens.

The prohibition against unreasonable searches is the key to the Fourth Amendment.

As law professor Jeffrey Standen observed in an article he wrote for Legal Times, each extension of government power makes further extensions “reasonable” — since “reasonable” is defined on a sliding scale by however much intrusion people will tolerate from the government. The Clinton administration often sounded as if the only searches that were unreasonable were the ones that government officials did not care to do.


Public housing and the Constitution

In 1993, the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) began warrantless sweep searches of residents’ apartments to confiscate firearms. Other cities, such as Baltimore and Philadelphia, also used warrantless mass sweeps of public housing apartments to seize guns and other items. Law professor Tracey Maclin observed, “During these sweeps, officers would rifle cabinets and dresser drawers, look inside refrigerators, overturn mattresses and sofa cushions, and inspect private papers and closed boxes.” In early 1994, the CHA proposed beginning routine no-knock raid sweeps. On April 7, 1994, federal judge Wayne Andersen ruled that the dragnet searches were unconstitutional, warning, “The erosion of the rights of people on the other side of town will ultimately undermine the rights of each of us.”

President Clinton was outraged that a judge limited the power of the police, and announced, “I’m so worried that all the progress that’s been made will be undermined by this court decision.” Two months later, he visited the Chicago housing projects, again endorsed the searches, and declared, “The most important freedom we have in this country is the freedom from fear. And if people aren’t free from fear, they are not free.”

In Clinton’s view, public-housing residents apparently had no reason to fear the housing police’s storming into their apartments. Yet, court testimony showed that the warrantless searches, none of which occurred within 48 hours of actual shooting incidents, were ineffective at reducing crime. Harvey Grossman of the American Civil Liberties Union observed,

Instead of meeting their obligations to provide real safety, Chicago officials perpetrated a hoax by convincing many residents that warrantless sweep searches of all apartments would enhance their safety.

CHA officials have complained that they are forbidden by federal regulations from even checking whether applicants for public housing have a criminal record.


Pawing is not searching

The Clinton administration consistently argued that few, if any, government searches were blocked by the Fourth Amendment. In early 2000, the Supreme Court heard the case of U.S. v. Bond. A Greyhound bus was stopped at an internal Border Patrol checkpoint in Texas. After agents checked all the passengers’ identification, one agent went through and pawed, squeezed, and manipulated each piece of luggage in the overhead bins. He detected a suspicious object in one canvas bag — and Steven Bond was shortly thereafter charged with possession of a brick of meth. Bond’s lawyer argued that groping the luggage was an unconstitutional search.

The Clinton administration argued that no constitutional rights were violated because Bond and other passengers had no “legitimate expectation of privacy.” The Clinton administration brief asserted,

The fact that tactile inspection of a bag’s exterior may reveal information about its contents no more establishes a search than when officers standing on a public sidewalk or in open fields make observations of the contents of a car or a house. Passengers handling bags in a manner similar to the manner of Agent Cantu may not pay attention to what they sense, or know how to interpret it. But nothing bars government officers from using specialized knowledge to keep themselves alert to, and to help them interpret, that which any other member of the public might have sensed. To take this reasoning to its logical conclusion, since people in rush hour subway trains are occasionally most uncomfortably pressed against each other — so cops should be allowed to press their bodies against that of any passenger.

The Supreme Court, in a decision written by archconservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist, scorned this particular minimalist interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. He declared, “Physically invasive inspection is simply more intrusive than purely visual inspection.”

Some of the Clinton administration’s anti-drug policies were highly egalitarian, striving to violate everyone’s privacy. During the 1996 presidential campaign, Clinton proposed mandatory drug tests for all teenagers applying for a driver’s license. This followed the Clinton administration’s endorsement of mandatory drug tests for school students in a 1995 Supreme Court case. Clinton administration Solicitor General Drew Days argued that a school district “could not effectively educate its students unless it undertook suspicionless drug testing as part of a broader drug-prevention program,” as Cato Institute lawyer Tim Lynch noted.


High-tech hustles

A 1998 ACLU report observed that the Clinton administration had

engaged in surreptitious surveillance, such as wiretapping, on a far greater scale than ever before…. The Administration is using scare tactics to acquire vast new powers to spy on all Americans.

On April 16, 1993, the Clinton administration revealed that the National Security Agency had secretly developed a new microchip known as the Clipper Chip. A White House press release announced “a new initiative that will bring the Federal Government together with industry in a voluntary program to improve the security and privacy of telephone communications while meeting the legitimate needs of law enforcement.” This was practically the last time that the word “voluntary” was used.

The Clipper Chip presumed that it should be a crime for anyone to use technology that frustrates curious government agents. The ACLU noted,

The Clipper Chip proposal would have required every encryption user (that is, every individual or business using a digital telephone system, fax machine, the Internet, etc.) to hand over their decryption keys to the government, giving it access to both stored data and real-time communications. This is the equivalent of the government requiring all home-builders to embed microphones in the walls of homes and apartments.

Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, observed, “You don’t want to buy a set of car keys from a guy who specializes in stealing cars.” When the federal National Institute for Standards and Technology formally published the proposal for the new surveillance chip, fewer than one percent of the comments supported the plan.

The administration eventually abandoned its Clipper campaign but stepped up its attacks on purveyors of encryption software.


Wiretap mania

When the Clinton administration proposed legislation to massively increase the number of wiretaps, they named their offering the “Digital Telephony and Communications Privacy Improvement Act of 1994.” Apparently, the more the government could invade people’s privacy, the safer they would be. In the final cut-and-paste on Capitol Hill, the bill was renamed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.

On October 16, 1995, the telecommunications industry was stunned when a Federal Register notice appeared announcing that the FBI demanded that, as a result of the new law, phone companies provide the capability for simultaneous wiretaps of one out of every hundred phone calls in urban areas. As the ACLU noted, the FBI notice represented “a 1,000-fold increase over previous levels of surveillance.”

The 1994 law led to five years of clashes between the FBI and the communications industry over the new standards. The Federal Communications Commission was designated as the arbiter of such clashes in the act; in August 1999, the FCC caved and gave the FBI almost everything it wanted.

The FCC bowed to FBI demands and required that all new cellular telephones be de facto homing devices. Cell phones must now include components that allow law enforcement to determine the precise location where a person is calling from.


Conclusion

The Clinton administration’s attitude towards high-tech should have alarmed any Americans who think the government is not entitled to read their email, tap their calls, or know precisely where they are. Clinton’s power grabs should have taught Americans of the perils of allowing politicians to ignore the Fourth Amendment. Any such “lessons learned” were declared “null and void” after 9/11 by the same politicians who quickly put their own boot prints on the Constitution.

Unfortunately, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have a good record of respecting citizens’ privacy. Perhaps it is naive to expect politicians to obey the Constitution when so many Americans believe that omnipotent government is their only hope for survival. Americans need to relearn why the Founding Fathers distrusted politicians across the board, regardless of nation, party, or creed.

James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.