The economy and the environment “both won” in Colorado’s legislative session this year, according to an annual scorecard that a leading state environmental group released Thursday.
The campaign mailer features two men leaning together and kissing. The image comes from a treasured engagement photo snapped in New York city that was allegedly stolen and reworked by an anti-gay Virginia group. The group, the Public Advocate of the United States, dimmed the original crisp black and white shot, replaced Manhattan skyscrapers and the Brooklyn Bridge with hazy snow-covered mountains and cut across the middle of the image with words on a blood-red line intended to mock the couple and attack Republican Colorado Senator Jean White, from Hayden in the rural conservative northwest top of the state.
DENVER — Colorado’s 2012 Legislature may not have achieved greatness. It may not have risen above partisan divide to solve complex problems and unify a state. It may not have addressed the state’s economic malaise or found a way to reliably fund education for the long term.
A bipartisan majority of the Colorado Senate on Wednesday passed a civil unions bill that would grant legal recognition to same-sex couples. Senator Nancy Spence from Centennial, one of the Republicans who voted in favor of the bill, argued that the legislation would bolster limited government and individual liberty, core conservative political values recognized by majorities of Republican voters in the state.
DENVER– At a state Senate committee hearing on a same-sex civil unions bill held here Wednesday, a series of witnesses battered Republican lawmakers opposed to the bill, suggesting they were confused in their ideology, nonstrategic in their thinking and enslaved to an outdated anti-gay “hateful bigoted mantra.” The harsh criticism came not from Democrats and their allies but from Republicans testifying in favor of the bill on the basis of conservative principles and out of partisan interest in the future success of the party.
The Colorado Legislature acted quickly and in bipartisan fashion today to require biweekly campaign finance disclosures in advance of this year’s primary elections in June.
Monday marked the first day of meetings to implement the new Colorado Health Benefit Exchange – one of the most controversial bills to make it through both chambers of the State Legislature last session. But it’s clear that Republicans, many of whom voted against the bill, still see it as a hedge against the evils of the federal Affordable Health Care Act, which they derisively refer to as “Obamacare.”
The Colorado Senate just voted to pass its own version of the annual rules bill and reject the House version sent over this morning with the “payday payback” amendment attached. The vote was cast on party lines except for Durango Republican Senator Ellen Roberts, who voted with the Democrats against the measure, reportedly because she agreed with lawmakers who have said the rules bill is no place to rehash controversial payday loan industry regulations.
The three Republican women in the Colorado state Senate this year have voted as a bloc in support of at least two big family-protection bills that their male Republican colleagues have opposed. Weeks ago, Sens Ellen Roberts, Nancy Spence and Jean White argued passionately from the right in favor of same-sex civil unions as a way to bolster families headed by gay couples. The senators argued again passionately this week in favor of legislation that would combat school bullying, which can sink child confidence with tragic results and tear up families.
As the federal government prepares for a disastrous shutdown pinned largely to a House Republican amendment that would defund Planned Parenthood, Colorado Republican Senators attempted to mimic the legislative strategy that has led to the Capitol Hill standoff. Weeks of tense negotiations in Denver produced a budget plan tentatively embraced on both sides of the aisle. Then on Friday in stepped social conservatives in the Senate who during floor debate inserted a hot-button “defund Planned Parenthood” amendment into the budget negotiation.
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