Colorado lawmakers ready for a somber session

“Daunting.” “Somber.” “Tough decisions.” This is the language of Colorado’s 2009 legislative session which opens Wednesday.

Even with historical markers —two African-American men leading the Senate and, for the first time the House of Representatives — this year’s Democratic-led legislature will be far from a jubilant affair with a state government in the decided throes of hard times.

Of Bigfoot, Bob Schaffer and Colorado’s fake ‘child bride’

The end of the year is always a good time to look back and reminisce on the bizarre and ridiculous, like when U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer claimed that he, personally, had not witnessed a forced abortion while traveling (and parasailing) in the Northern Mariana Islands while in congress — and when two guys from Georgia claimed they had the dead body of Bigfoot. Possibly Colorado’s freakiest hoax of 2008, however, was the crank call, placed by a Colorado Springs woman, that led to the forced removal of 400 children from a Texas compound of fundamentalist Mormons.

$520-a-year minimum wage increase creates heartburn at swanky Broadmoor

Minimum-wage workers in Colorado will get an automatic 26-cent raise on Thursday, from $7.02 to $7.28. And, as the Colorado Springs Gazette points out, the manager of the 5-star Broadmoor hotel, which spent $100,000 opposing the voter-approved increase in 2006, is still grousing about the mandate. But, looked at another way, the increase represents about $520 per year for minimum wage employees –- considerably less than the $680-a-night price tag for a single night’s stay in a suite at the swanky Colorado Springs resort.

2008: The year Colorado finally de-Bruced

This year will go down for many things, but one connecting string of stories stand out: Face it, if you ask most Coloradans what they remember most about the four-month long legislative session, their response is, sadly, predictable. Douglas Bruce kicked a photographer in the knee. And, as columnist Al Lewis noted, Douglas Bruce kicks like a little girl. That was just the beginning.

Top 10 international stories that never made the front page in 2008

It’s time for the annual parade of top stories of the year to come marching through. Just in Colorado we had a doozy of a year, with an historic national election roosting right in our backyard, not to mention a huge ballot and further Democratic gains in what was just a few short years ago a decidedly red state. But what of the rest of the world?

For Tom Minnery, it was an election year of mixed blessings

Colorado had the longest ballot in the country this year, and among the numerous propositions that failed was one that would have lowered the minimum age of serving in the state legislature from 25 to 21. As Tom Minnery, the Vice President of Public Policy for Focus on the Family put it, “No thanks. We have enough immaturity in the legislature already.”

Sen. Dave Schultheis’ must-reads for the proper conservative

Just in time for Christmas, we’ve stumbled across Colorado Republican state Sen. Dave Schultheis’ list of recommended reading, “for the education of a good conservative.” And not one of the 15 must-reads are a day younger than 35 years old. OK, we exaggerate. One of them was published in this century.

Bernie Buescher is Colorado’s next secretary of state

Gov. Bill Ritter has picked state Rep. Bernie Buescher as Colorado’s next secretary of state.

“Thank you for the confidence,” Buescher told the governor. “I will work hard and try to do a good job.”

Ritter announced his pick at a news conference in his office this morning. The position came open when Mike Coffman was elected to congress. In all, 20 people applied; that number was whittled to three, including Buescher, as well as outgoing House Speaker Andrew Romanoff and Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon.

Obama, Rick Warren and the lingering pain for gays

The response to Barack Obama’s pick of evangelical Christian Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration has, not surprisingly, been hot. Some of it’s searing, some not so much. Wayne Besen, whose critiques of anti-gay everything can be stinging, was downright temperate — at least for him — in describing how Warren, the pastor of Saddleback megachurch is not so bad.

The ‘Trials of Ted Haggard’ coming soon to a TV near you

It’s been more than a month since Ted Haggard’s been in the news, but the fallen pastor is back now, thanks to filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi and HBO. Apparently on Jan. 29 they are going to show us what it was like being Haggard post-scandal, moving around from houses to motels and such during the period after the founder of New Life Church was brought down in a gay sex and meth scandal.