Gambling

If you haven’t been to the Colorado gambling Mecca of Black Hawk in a few years –- maybe since the quaint notion of $5 limited-stakes gaming was first approved by voters who wanted the former mining town’s western character preserved –- you probably wouldn’t recognize the place.

As foreshadowed by the $7.5 million campaign put together by Coloradoans for Community Colleges, Amendment 50 has passed. That means voters in Cripple Creek, Central City and Blackhawk will soon vote on raising the maximum bet limit in Colorado from $5 to $100, allowing casinos to stay open 24/7 and bringing in craps and roulette.

Amendment 50 promises to pour millions into Colorado’s community colleges without raising taxes in an economy teetering towards recession. Why then, are so many people complaining that this gift horse has rotten teeth?

With a record 18 proposals on everything from oil and gas taxes to unions to the developmentally disabled to gambling, Colorado voters will be weighing in on the longest ballot in Colorado since 1912 — and the largest in the United States this year.

Apparently, for a group of blog-happy Christians, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Bentley Rayburn is, according to a headline in the Denver Post last week, jumping into the race to take on Rep. Doug Lamborn and Jeff Crank – who announced in early August his own definite plans for another go against the freshman congressman.

For such a normally enthusiastic guy, Rayburn’s comments [...]

In the latest round involving Rep. Doug Lamborn, the El Paso County GOP and a couple who wrote a letter criticizing his vote on dog fighting and accepting gambling money, the county party late last week issued a statement announcing the outcome of its “investigation” into the matter.

And Lamborn promptly issued his own statement disagreeing [...]

Consequences.
Rookie Republican Congressman Doug Lamborn talked about consequences in a phone message he left for a pair of GOP constituents. The pair had criticized Lamborn in a letter to the editor.
“There are consequences to this kind of thing,” Lamborn warned on the answering machine of Jonathan and Anna Bartha.
You bet there are consequences, and those [...]

We knew it was only a matter of time before Colorado’s newest congressman, Doug Lamborn, hit the big time. But who know it would be over a pair of menacing phone calls to a couple in his district, warning that there would be “consequences” for their letter to the editor criticizing Lamborn for taking gambling [...]

UPDATE Sunday, Sept. 2: The Denver Post today published the text of the phone messages that Rep. Lamborn left on Jonathan and Anna Bartha’s answering machine. The messages appear at the bottom of this story.

It is unclear exactly what motivated Congressman Doug Lamborn to unleash an attack on a Colorado Springs couple who criticized his [...]