The blog was posted at 11:30 Wednesday night and titled “Colorado Ethics Watch Attack on Clear The Bench Colorado Displays Desperation, Shows Colorado Supreme Court Majority Running Scared.”

“The attack was not unexpected,” Arnold wrote, “because CEW is well known as an organization dedicated to filing nuisance complaints against non-Leftist organizations, candidates, & causes (and, interestingly, giving cover to left-wing groups)…”

Clear The Bench Colorado received word earlier today of a politically-motivated and baseless complaint filed against it by the so-called “Colorado Ethics Watch”. CEW (rhymes with “sue”) is well aware of the fact that Clear The Bench Colorado followed the guidance of the Colorado Office of Secretary of State in filing as an Issue Committee; the complaint is a cheap political stunt without legal merit….

Now, CEW is attempting to change the rules in the middle of the game – just when the other side is driving to the goal.

While we appreciate CEW keeping Clear The Bench Colorado before the voters for their critical consideration of the Court’s political maneuvers, we expect that the political complaint filed by the self-styled “Colorado Ethics Watch” will be dismissed expeditiously.

Now more than ever – stand with Clear The Bench Colorado in defense of your constitutional rights. Exercise your right to vote “NO” on the 4 ‘unjust justices’ of the Colorado Supreme Court’s “Mullarkey Majority” (Justices Michael Bender, Alex Martinez, Nancy Rice, and Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey) who need YOUR approval to continue taking away your constitutional rights: your right to vote on tax increases, your right to defend your home or business from against eminent domain abuse, your right to fair representation in government, and your right to enjoy the benefits of the rule of law, instead of suffering under rule by activist, agenda-driven “justices.” Support Clear The Bench Colorado with your comments (Sound Off!) and your contributions – and vote “NO” on retaining these unjust justices on the bench for another 10-year term!

Clear the Bench exists exclusively to call on voters to “Ditch the Mullarkey Majority” by electing not to retain Justices Bender, Martinez, Rice and Mullarkey. Clear the Bench argues that the justices have acted against the constitution, mainly the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, in ruling it was legal for lawmakers to pass a Mill Levy Tax Freeze to keep taxes at a higher rate to pay for education, for example, and ruled similarly on a “re-definition” that turned taxes into fees to make them easier to pass.

Colorado Ethics Watch says Clear the Bench has been mis-categorized as a political issue committee by the Secretary of State and so can raise uncapped donations. In fact, says Ethics Watch Director Luis Toro, Clear the Bench is working not to promote any issue but to simply target elected officials. But Coloradans have voted to try keep money out of judicial elections so that the work of judge can not be tainted by big donors, he said.

A cursory reading suggests raising money to target the “Mullarkey Majority” goes against the spirit, at least, if not the letter of Amendment 27 (pdf), passed by Colorado voters in 2004. It specifically refers to judges as candidates and aims to limit money flowing into the judge retention process.

From the amendment:

The people of the state of Colorado hereby find and declare that large campaign contributions to political candidates create the potential for corruption and the appearance of corruption; that large campaign contributions made to influence election outcomes allow wealthy individuals, corporations, and special interest groups to exercise a disproportionate level of influence over the political process; that the rising costs of campaigning for political office prevent qualified citizens from running for political office…

“Candidate” also includes a judge or justice of any court of record who seeks to be retained in office pursuant to the provisions of section 25 of article VI. A person is a candidate for election if the person has publicly announced an intention to seek election to public office or retention of a judicial office and thereafter has received a contribution or made an expenditure in support of the candidacy.

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“In a time of two wars, any policy that leads to the discharge of talented and capable troops threatens our national security and wastes resources,” Udall said in a release. “That’s exactly what “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has been doing for 17 years. And that’s why, as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and original cosponsor of this bill, I’m proud to be leading the charge to finally — and fully — repeal this unfair and outmoded law.”

The move comes almost exactly a month after a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing on the policy in which the nation’s top military leaders, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen, announced they would establish a working group that would conduct a year-long study on how exactly to repeal the law.

Sen. Udall said then that he believed the nation should move faster. Then as now, he believed the policy was outdated and worked to harm national security and military readiness.

Udall at the hearing in February:

The legislation Udall introduced with Lieberman today would allow the Department of Defense to continue its study on how best to implement the repeal but it also would ensure that the DOD remains dedicated to implementing repeal, not to merely considering a repeal. The law would also end ongoing military discharges of gay and lesbian service members in the year the DOD study goes forward.

Rea Carey, Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, commended the lawmakers for acting to end the policy and urged immediate action to end discipline being meted out to gay service members for simply being gay. Carey has been making the case for some time that discriminating against gays in the military, men and women willing to fight and die for the country, and discharging them poses much greater risk to readiness than does allowing them to serve openly.

“We urge once again for the immediate halt to all discharges of service members because of their sexual orientation until Congress finally fulfills its responsibility to overturn this archaic, unjust law,” Carey was quoted to say in a release sent out this morning. “Several other countries have already implemented equality in the armed services without issue. It’s long past time for the United States to do the same. It’s long past time to place fairness above foot-dragging.”

Many lawmakers oppose a repeal for fear it would damage unit cohesion and weaken the military.

The Center for Military Readiness, a conservative D.C.-based think tank that opposes any change to “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell” argues that the “proposed new LGBT Law should not be imposed on our military men and women due to predictable negative effects on recruiting, retention, and readiness—the 3 Rs that are essential to maintain a strong All-Volunteer Force.”

Polls demonstrate the American public supports repeal of the law by wide margins. A February 10 Quinnipiac Poll, reported that 57 percent of Americans supported repeal and only 36 percent opposed. This, despite the fact that the language of the poll seemed skewed against repeal.

Among the bill’s sponsors are Carl Levin, D-Mich., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Roland Burris, D-Ill.

The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was implemented in 1993 under former President Bill Clinton. The policy restricts openly homosexual individual from participating in the armed services but prohibits military inquiry and investigation in individuals sexual preference.

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“[W]e find the Amendment’s deficiencies so pervasive that we must nullify the Amendment in its entirety,” the 4-1 majority ruled, holding that the ballot measure violated the First Amendment. Justice Nancy Rice wrote the opinion, with Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey and Justices Michael Bender and Gregory Hobbs concurring.

Tom Lucero

The 2008 amendment was backed by Jon Caldara’s conservative Independence Institute. The amendment spokesman was conservative Colorado University Regent Tom Lucero, now a Fourth District Congressional candidate. It passed with a slim 51 percent of votes.

Sold to voters as a way to guard against pay-to-play style corruption, where groups doing business with the state support candidates who promise to deliver big money contracts once in office, the amendment also forbid teachers who were members of unions and their family members from donating to campaigns. The wording of the amendment was so clumsily written that many detractors were convinced from the beginning that it was overbroad by design.

“The authors of Amendment 54 tried to silence political speakers they don’t like, but they ran into a little roadblock called the First Amendment and, fortunately for all of us, they have failed,” said Mark Grueskin in a release. Grueskin, an attorney at Isaacson Rosenbaum P.C., represented some of the plaintiffs in the case.

Today’s decision was a strong endorsement of the injunction against the amendment handed down in June by Denver District Court Judge Catherine Lemon. Even the one dissenting opinion expressed on the Court today, that of Justice Alex Martinez, underlined problems with the law. He suggested that the unconstitutional portions of Amendment 54 could be discarded, “leaving behind a meaningful enactment, albeit reduced in scope.”

In June, Lemon said the bill both chilled participation in the political process generally and attempted to outlaw it outright for certain groups.

“It’s not a close case,” said Lemon from the bench after hearing closing arguments. “Where First Amendment freedoms are involved, the state has got to [demonstrate] a compelling interest. All we’ve got here is a presumption of corruption and there is no case law to support restricting First Amendment rights based on presumption.”

Lemon further agreed that the amendment unconstitutionally attacked the rights of organized labor in particular.

“It’s obvious from the language of the amendment … that unions have had their rights to participate in the political process completely obliterated and not based on any conduct but simply because of their status as unions, simply because of who they are.”

Lemon agreed with former Colorado Supreme Court Justice Jean Dubofsky, also an attorney for the plaintiffs, that the amendment sought to drastically fight corruption that didn’t seem to be a problem in Colorado.

Laws in Connecticut and New Jersey, for example, said Dubofsky, limit campaign contributions contractors can make only to officials who can directly influence the terms of contracts. To attempt to do more than that is mere fishing and opens up all variety of legal complications and questions of enforceability. There must be solid evidence of actual corruption to make such a leap. She said that there simply is no such evidence in Colorado — no evidence of pay-to-play corruption and no evidence even of the appearance of pay-to-play corruption.

Dubofsky welcomed the Supreme Court decision today.

“[The decision] overturned an overbroad and unconstitutional law. Amendment 54 would have restricted the political speech of thousands of individual Coloradans and organizations, and we are pleased that the Supreme Court agreed.”

Law Week has posted the Supreme Court’s opinion and dissent online.

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Monday, Governor Ritter issued an executive order requiring his cabinet members and senior staff to submit conflict of interest disclosure reports by 25 October. The new order replaces a similar standing order issued a decade ago by the governor’s predecessor, Bill Owens, who sought to increase transparency with the order and guard his administration from investigation and scandal. The Ritter cabinet failed to comply with the Owens order for nearly three years.

Ritter’s new order comes in response to an open records request filed by the conservative Independence Institute in September. The Institute’s request sought access to the the Ritter Administration conflict of interest reports. Last week, however, the Institute reported that of the 15 members of the Ritter cabinet only one had filed any disclosure information. John Stulp, head of the Department of Agriculture, reportedly filed letters with the governor stating potential conflicts of interest.

Jon Caldara, head of the Independence Institute, predictably called the governor out on the misstep.

“If Governor Ritter wants to overturn an executive order that brings a higher level of transparency and ethics to his administration, he’s certainly free to do so, and face the political consequences.”

Director of state watchdog group Colorado Ethics Watch Chantell Taylor told the Colorado Independent that Ethics Watch had been looking into the matter when Ritter released the new order yesterday.

“It was a concern,” she said. “But there was no penalty built into the Owens’ order to punish non-compliance. So what could be done, at best, was that public exposure would bring the administration into compliance.”

And that’s what happened, she said. The Independence Institute investigation likely spurred the executive order.

“We’re glad the new order includes disclosure and we hope that going forward we’ll see full compliance.”

Taylor said the only significant update to the Owens order is that the former executive office board of ethics is eliminated by its omission and that’s because the state has created the Independent Ethics Commission in the years since the Owens order was issued.

Like the Owens executive order, the Ritter order, D021 09, (pdf) references Amendment 41– the “touchstone” of which, according to the new order, was that “public officials and government employees must not violate the public trust for private gain.” Ritter’s order applies to “employees in the governor’s office” as well the administration cabinet members.

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According to an article in the Rocky Mountain News today, Clean Government Colorado, the political committee supporting Amendment 54, raised the hundreds of thousands of dollars in the last few weeks, all of it coming from a nonprofit called Colorado At Its Best.

Amendment 54 is a so-called “clean government” initiative that would snuff out political contributions given by certain labor unions, as well as the immediate family members of union officials.

As was reported by The Colorado Independent previously, Colorado At Its Best, the nonprofit bankrolling the campaign, is not required under law to release the names of its contributors, meaning that the “clean” campaign has been funded primarily from donors who are anonymous.

The nonprofit is also connected to Dennis Pohill, a fellow at the conservative Independence Institute think tank, who has refused to disclose who is funding the campaign upon request.

Colorado At Its Best has now given more than $2 million to Clean Government Colorado.

As was reported by The Colorado Independent last week, proponents of an anti-union amendment allegedly focusing on government transparency have funded their campaign with over a million dollars in anonymous cash, making it impossible to know who is supporting the initiative and who paid to put it on the state ballot.

A Web site has been launched supporting Amendment 54, a measure backed by the [conservative Independence Institute] that would prohibit both unions and sole-source contractors with the state unions from giving to political campaigns, essentially snuffing out the traditionally pro-Democratic contributions that are given by labor.

…

Clean Government Colorado, the political committee supporting Amendment 54, has raised more than $1.5 million dollars. At least 90 percent of that money has come from the nonprofit organization Colorado At Its Best, created by Institute fellow Dennis Pohill in 2001 and directed by New York Libertarian activist and real-estate developer Howard Rich, according to documents filed with the secretary of state’s office.

Because Colorado At Its Best is a nonprofit, it is not required to release the names of its contributors, meaning that the “clean” campaign has been funded primarily from donors who are anonymous.

Now it would appear that the mainstream media is starting to catch on to the transparency questions, with a recent article from The Rocky Mountain News pointing out the same facts:

Clean Government Colorado has raised about $1.5 million to promote Amendment 54. All of that money has come through Colorado At Its Best, a nonprofit founded by Independence Institute fellow Dennis Polhill.

But where the nonprofit’s money is coming from isn’t clear. Polhill, who helped pass amendments limiting terms for elected officials, declined to identify donors to the group.

…

Polhill said he was willing to accept criticism for the failure to disclose financial sources because he said his donors feared retribution.

There’s no sign that the anonymous cash flow will be stopping anytime soon either.

Most recent campaign finance disclosures from Clean Government Colorado show that the nonprofit Colorado At Its Best has already contributed an additional $200,000.

The nonprofit has given a total of $1.7 million in anonymous dough to the committee, according to the finance documents.

The legislation requires agencies to implement a tracking system of requests and to report how many requests are approved and denied. It also creates the Office of Government Information Services, a new agency meant to be an independent mediator to resolve FOIA disputes between the government and requesters.

Traditionally the U.S. Justice Department has overseen FOIA operations, including training other agencies on how to respond to inquiries and defending agencies when they are sued by requesters.

“But there’s an inherent conflict on interest,” says Rick Blum, coordinator for the Sunshine in Government Initiative, a coalition of media groups that advocate for government transparency. According to Blum, there is a conflict with the Justice Department mediating disputes while it is acting as the legal counsel for agencies that get sued under FOIA.

Because of this, the Office of Government Information Services was moved “as far away from political decision making as you can put it,” Blum says, as part of the National Archives and Records Administration, to act as an independent mediator between government officials and requesters.

But a month after the legislation was signed into law, the president released his 2009 budget proposal stripping the Office of Government Information Services from the national archives and requesting that the Justice Department use its existing resources to fill the gap.

The move sparked a harsh reaction from Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a sponsor of the OPEN Government Act, who charged in a statement that “once again, the White House has shown they intend to act contrary to the intent of Congress.”

The president’s budget proposal sets the tone for lawmakers to debate the national budget and come to a consensus.

The Justice Department has not responded to a request for comment.

UPDATE: