Independent Streak: Tuesday June 16 headlines, snark and breaking news

Chaput, Polis push ‘mutual interest’ in immigration reform

In a case of the world’s strangest bedfellows, U.S. Rep. Jared Polis and Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput set aside their vast political differences to join forces Saturday to promote federal immigration reform at a Northglenn church Saturday.

Those competing world views weren’t lost on the Catholic News Agency’s awkwardly worded press release citing Polis as “openly homosexual and a supporter of abortion rights” in which the archbishop and Boulder congressman “would disagree ‘vigorously’ on ‘some very serious social issues.’”

Independent Streak: Monday, June 15 headlines, snark & breaking news

Blame Milton Bradley for your bankruptcy and economic ruin

For God’s sake think of the children.

Slate’s The Big Money page offers up a horrifying feature on the personal finance lessons we learned as kids playing popular board games.

Agriculture mega-corps push politically-engineered carbon trade

Despite an exemption from a proposed cap on greenhouse gas emissions, Big Agriculture has declared war on clean energy legislation making its way through Congress.

Grist has the details on what it describes as a sop to large agribusinesses to continue its old, polluting ways:

Antiabortion protesters jailed over protest at Focus on the Family

The longstanding feud between hard-line abortion foes American Right to Life Action and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson came to a head in a Colorado Springs courtroom Thursday.

Rev. Bob Enyart, a pastor at Denver Bible Church who proudly refers to himself as “America’s most popular self-proclaimed right-wing, religious fanatic, homophobic, anti-choice talk show host” was sentenced to nine days in the city pokey after refusing to pay a $400 fine for trespassing on the Focus campus.

Dobson on Bush: Greatest president or greatest president ever?

Exhorting the eminence of former President George W. Bush, Focus on the Family’s James Dobson and its new lobbyist Tim Goeglein, who left the White House as a disgraced former aide to Karl Rove, waxed rhapsodic for the better part of 90 minutes on the radio about the former Leader of the Free World’s morality, faith and championing of the antiabortion culture wars.

The stunning three-part “Insider View of the Bush Presidency” discussion culminated today on Focus on the Family’s Daily Broadcast and drew sharp, if unspoken, contrasts with a morally-lacking President Barack Obama.

Wadhams’ quest for presidential Big Kahuna centers on South Dakota

Once upon a time, when Colorado GOP kingpin Dick Wadhams was referred to as “Rove 2.0”, the Las Animas political operative was on a fast track to manage a presidential campaign.

U.S. Sen. George Allen’s racist “macaca” gaffe uttered at a Virginia re-election campaign stop may have derailed then-campaign manager Wadham’s direct trajectory toward the Big Kahuna. But long ties to a darkhorse 2012 Republican presidential candidate may give him another shot at a run at the White House.

Proposed hospital buyout could limit reproductive, end-of-life care

The contentious transfer of two Colorado-based Exempla hospitals to a Catholic health care network is likely to further shrink comprehensive health care services for Denver-area patients because they violate church doctrine.

Local patients seeking reproductive health care or termination of invasive life support could soon face health care professionals invoking conscience clauses, should the transfer of Exempla Lutheran Hospital in Wheat Ridge and Exempla Good Samaritan Hospital in Lafayette to the Kansas-based Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System be approved.

Tweet of the Week: Colorado leads nation out of recession

When do economists predict this good news will happen in the Centennial State? Look below the fold.