Surprise: Colorado Democratic Party hates latest GOP congressional map

Update: Dems release map that would sacrifice ground in CD4 to make CD3 and CD6 more competitive (see image below).

The battle in Colorado over the shape of next decade’s congressional districts continues. State Democratic Party Chairman Rick Palacio fired off a response to the latest proposed map released by state Republicans. Democrats want to draw more competitive districts. Republicans want to effectively retain existing districts. Democrats argue that competition will result in greater lawmaker responsiveness and less partisanship. Republicans say they are seeking to avoid disruption and retain communities of interest.

Attorney Regulation Counsel exonerates McInnis in plagiarism case, indirectly castigates Denver Post

Last year government watchdog group Colorado Ethics Watch asked the state’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel to investigate charges that Colorado-licensed attorney and former Congressman Scott McInnis violated professional ethics when he reportedly plagiarized articles he was contracted to write for the Hasan Family Foundation. The plagiarism charges tanked McInnis’s 2010 campaign for governor, but the Regulation Counsel found McInnis not guilty of either plagiarizing or misrepresenting his work to the foundation. The Counsel’s report on the investigation released Friday fingers the Denver Post, which broke the plagiarism story, as the guilty party in the scandal, saying the paper’s reporting was riddled with errors.

Corsi v Obama: Birther industry meets election industry 2011

Righty activist author Jerome Corsi’s latest anti-Obama book, “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” is climbing the ranks at Amazon. It’s now reportedly number 22 with a bullet. The Obama reelection campaign is using news of the book release to fundraise. WorldNetDaily, internet birther headquarters and also publisher of Corsi’s book, is using the Obama fundraising campaign to promote the book. The back and forth is sad and entertaining and will generate a lot of revenue on both sides. U-S-A!

Colo government watchdog group calls on Sheriff Darr to step down

In the wake of his conviction in U.S. District Court Thursday, Colorado Ethics Watch is calling on Adams County Sheriff Doug Darr to resign. A jury found Democrat Darr abused his authority in attempts to trash the law-enforcement career of his Republican opponent in the 2010 sheriff’s election and prevent him from campaigning.

Trump bows out

He was never officially in and now he’s out. Real estate and reality TV mogul Donald Trump flirted for weeks with a 2012 GOP presidential run and came to top Republican voter polls after a high profile proto-campaign in which he rehashed the conspiracy theory that President Obama was not born in the United States but has been passing off a forged birth certificate for years. Trump said he hired detectives to look into the matter. Trump’s announcement today that he will not run comes with typical bravado.

GOP-targeted PBS pulls down prestigious Walter Cronkite Award

Colorado Republican Congressman Doug Lamborn has led the charge to strip government funds from public broadcasting, saying that outlets like PBS and NPR are biased against conservative politics and that the news shows are popular enough after 40 years to survive on advertising revenues. Surveys have consistently shown however that, in the era of overheated cable news, Americans like the product that the not-for-profit business model has delivered, ranking PBS, for example, the most trusted institution in the nation. This week the PBS Newshour was awarded the prestigious Walter Cronkite Award for political television coverage. Gwen Ifill accepted the award in Los Angeles as PBS’s cable news counterparts hosted “birther” conspiracy theorists and sent hundreds of reporters each to London to cover the royal wedding, many more than they sent to Japan to cover the natural and nuclear disasters last month and many more than they have stationed in the powder keg Middle East.

Xcel Energy says anti-renewable lawsuit likely just blowing in the wind

Xcel Energy, the state’s largest utility and a key backer of Colorado’s aggressive renewable energy standard (RES), reacted with skepticism to Monday’s lawsuit seeking to overturn a state law mandating 30 percent of Xcel’s electricity be produced by renewable sources by 2020. “… We understand that [the complaint] was made by a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization,” Xcel spokesman Mark Stutz told the Colorado Independent. “We would be surprised if a federal court would overturn Colorado’s legislatively approved Renewable Energy Standard.”

Gessler history of fighting unpaid election fines hovers over proposed rule changes

Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, according to the Denver Post, will be proposing a new set of rules that would waive or reduce a significant number of campaign finance fines for political committees that fail to file disclosure reports. As an elections law attorney for primarily conservative causes, Gessler represented groups that either flat-out failed to register with the secretary of state and later engaged in electioneering activity or failed to file disclosure reports – sometimes for years. Now he tells the Post he’ll roll out rules in the next few weeks that will make it easier to reduce or waive such fines.

PPP Poll: Colorado GOP Chair Wadhams right to flee

On Monday, Colorado Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams announced he was ending his bid for reelection. He said he didn’t want to lead a party dominated by inflexible Tea Party “nuts” who know little about how politics works. If new survey results are any measure, this may be Wadhams’ best political move in a long time. Tom Jensen at Public Policy Polling reports Wednesday that the GOP civil war against “rinos” will kill the elephant in the Centennial state.

Carroll: Lawmakers could still address conflict issues raised by SOS Gessler

Colorado State Senator Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, said she missed an opportunity to head off the controversy now surrounding newly elected Secretary of State Scott Gessler. Carroll had been weighing whether or not to introduce legislation that would have set strict disclosure laws for the secretary of state’s office in particular and tightened state worker conflict-of-interest laws in general. She didn’t introduce that bill but that doesn’t mean a legislative response to the Gessler controversy is off the table, she said.