Colorado scores No Child Left Behind waiver

Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet today applauded the Obama administration decision to grant Colorado schools a waiver from the regulatory requirements of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law. A former superintendent of the Denver Public School system, Bennet has long railed against the law as well-intended but comically flawed, the “biggest federal overreach ever in domestic policy,” he said in a Senate floor speech last year.

In blasting Obama recess appointments, Focus on the Family site turns to torture memos author John Yoo

CitizenLink, the Focus on the Family Christian news site based in Colorado Springs, weighed in Thursday on the latest political controversy winging out of Washington. The site reported that, in using “recess appointments” to fill three seats on the National Labor Relations Board and to place Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, President Obama had “stepped over a line and into history.” The CitizenLink reporter then turned to Georg W. Bush justice department attorney John Yoo, the author of the notorious 2002 War on Terror “torture memos,” to support the argument that the nation was witnessing a major unconstitutional power grab.

Latinos just not that excited by GOP hopefuls

A poll released by Latino Decisions — an organization that focuses on “states in which the Latino vote will play an important role in the 2012 elections” — shows that GOP presidential candidates have low recognition among Latino voters.

According to the Latino Decisions poll released Monday, “none of the Republican presidential candidates has been able to captivate or attract the attention of Latinos until now. In other words, for the time being, among the eight candidates, there is no one equivalent to George W. Bush who would attract a significant percentage of the Latino vote.”

What straw poll? A lesson for the Tea Party in Republican Iowa

GOP 2012 presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney has decided to pass on the Iowa straw poll this summer, a warm-up event for the election-year Iowa caucuses, which increasingly have become a sort of warm-up event for the real primary campaigns. Romney’s decision is making headlines as a risky move but the fact is non-incumbent winners of the GOP Iowa caucus don’t win the GOP national nomination in any kind of consistent way. And the record of caucus winners is even less a predictor for success in the general election. As Romney knows and as the New York Times suggested Saturday, Iowa is now way too Christian right and Midwest parochial to serve as a barometer for Republican America.

Rove greeted by right-wing protesters in Colorado Springs

Former President George W. Bush’s chief of staff and senior adviser Karl Rove was greeted by right-wing protesters Wednesday evening at the annual Lincoln Dinner in Colorado Springs, a fundraiser for the El Paso County Republican Party.

John Salazar tells a funny story about one very awkward lunch at the White House

Agriculture Commissioner John Salazar regales Water Congress members with a story about what happens when a Colorado farm boy is invited to lunch at the White House.

Colorado GOP loses Hasan

Muhammad Ali Hasan, a member of the wealthy and influential Colorado Republican Hasan family and a past state House and treasurer candidate, said he is switching parties. Speaking at the University of Colorado-Boulder on his experience growing up Muslim in the American West and later in conversation with the Colorado Independent, Hasan said he is ending his affiliation with the party for the bigotry he believes has shaped Republican politics over the last year. The FOX News regular and founder of Muslims for Bush said he met recently with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the controversial Democratic leader won him over.

Stapleton has injected more than $200,000 into his own campaign

Walker Stapleton, a member of the Bush family and the Republican nominee for Colorado Treasurer, has now given his own campaign cash and in-kind donations amounting to $214,212, according to his most recent filing with the Colorado Secretary of…

Recalling Bush-Rove Romanoff-style negotiations

Republicans are working overtime today to make political hay out of Colorado Senate hopeful Andrew Romanoff’s revelation that the White House suggested three jobs that might be open to him should he abandon a Democratic primary challenge to appointed…

GOP lawmakers protest ‘government takeover’ of student lending

A group of Republicans this afternoon will meet with reporters to protest the Democrats’ plans to eliminate tens of billions of dollars in government subsidies to private companies that lend to students. The Democrats’ bill would have students borrow directly from the U.S. Treasury, which makes sense to supporters because it’s the Treasury that currently assumes all the risk for those loans anyway — a boon to private companies that assume no risk. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that eliminating the private middleman will save $67 billion over the next decade, most of which will go toward expanding college scholarships to low-income students.