Bernie Buescher

A bill mandating stricter handling of oil and gas brine that was passed in 2008 by strange bedfellows Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, in the state Senate and Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, in the House was upheld by a Denver District Court judge Tuesday, according to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

Voters in Colorado care about clean elections and voted through a ballot initiative specifically to enact laws governing campaign finances in 2002. Lawbreakers have been caught and fined. But that’s apparently where enforcement ends. The list of groups violating the law includes an increasing number that simply skirt the fines judges have levied against them. Secretary of State Bernie Buescher now seems determined to go after the deadbeats, but his office told the Colorado Independent that the law, as it stands now, simply lacks teeth.

For the Colorado Republican Party, it’s time to party like it’s 2010 at Keystone ski resort starting this evening.
According to the Denver Post, state GOP members are practically giddy about their chances to reclaim the governor’s mansion, Democrat Michael Bennet’s U.S. Senate seat and who knows what other key races in a red wave that [...]

Dug up fresh, daily.
HEALTH-CARE RICHES: Colorado anti- health-care reform protesters are being rallied and bused around tomorrow by “free-market” group Americans for Prosperity. On its “Patients First Bus Tour,” AFP will be hauling the group to Fort Collins, Greeley, Golden, Colorado Springs, Pueblo and other towns. AFP is a national organization that stands against all [...]

Denver attorney and state Republican insider Scott Gessler appears to be building his campaign for secretary of state on opposition to ballot-initiative reform. It’s a move that positions him as a populist champion of citizen lawmaking at a time when broad consensus has built among lawmakers and analysts in favor of reining in the state’s famously loose initiative process.

Pink lemonade-swilling GOP state Rep. Laura Bradford’s answers to the typically bland Colorado Statesman freshman survey offer up a couple of unexpected doozies between listings of her favorite book, pets’ names and who was responsible for campaign-season attack ads.

Adams County District Attorney Don Quick, reportedly at the top of the list to become Colorado’s next U.S. Attorney, has apparently taken himself out of the running, as has Denver attorney Willie Shepherd, who is active in Democratic Party politics as well as numerous civic and philanthropic boards.

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.

While we’re waiting for confirmation about whether Sen. Ken Salazar is really going to be Secretary of the Interior, and who will be the next senator from Colorado, and who will then maybe be the next U.S. Representative from Colorado, and also who will be the next Colorado Secretary of State and the next state House minority leader and possibly the next assistant minority leader, let’s all relax and amuse ourselves for a few minutes watching Ken Gordon swimming with sharks.

Ask Jeff Dorschner to identify the highest profile cases prosecuted by the the U.S. Attorney in Colorado over the past decade and the spokesman doesn’t miss a beat: Former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio, convicted of insider trading; Terry Barton, the U.S. Forest Service worker who started the largest wildfire in Colorado history; and the three Roman Catholic nuns, convicted of malicious destruction of property for spreading their own blood on a nuclear missile silo in Weld County.

But ask Dorschner who will be his new boss, and he comes up empty-handed.