Rocky Mountain PBS talk show host Aaron Harber is requesting questions for his two-part series on the future of the Colorado Republican Party. But hurry, your deadline is 10 a.m. Monday.

Summon your inner Helen Thomas and ask some tough questions of these state GOP leaders — whose message out of their recent annual shindig was: “We lost our minds” but we’re not going to change a thing:

Part 1
• Dick Wadhams, Colorado Republican Party Chair
• John Andrews, Former State Senate President and Denver Post columnist
• Ryan Frazier, Aurora City Councilman and rumored U.S. Senate candidate
• Scott McInnis, Former District 3 Congressman and rumored Colorado guberbatorial candidate

Part 2
• Jessica Peck Corry, Public Policy Analyst, Independence Institute
• Josh Penry, State Senator Minority Leader (R-Grand Junction) and rumored gubernatorial candidate
• John Suthers, Colorado Attorney General
• Lori Weigel, Partner, Public Opinion Strategies

Questions for the panelists may be submitted confidentially via e-mail until 10:00 a.m. today.

Part 1 will air on The Aaron Harber Show Tuesday, April 7, at 8:00 p.m., and repeat on Wednesday, April 8, at 5:00 p.m. on KBDI-TV Channel 12. The part 2 broadcast will appear the following week on Tuesday, April 14 and Wednesday, April 15 at the same times, respectively.

(Photo/Nil, Flickr)

After a two day post-election limbo, Colorado’s Amendment 46 failed yesterday on a slim margin. The so-called Colorado Civil Rights Initiative is the first anti-affirmative-action amendment propped by California businessman Ward Connerly to make it onto a state ballot and flop.

The significance is not lost on Amendment 46′s detractors. “I am thrilled,” says Melissa Hart, a University of Colorado law professor who co-ran the Vote No on 46 campaign. “Given that everyone kept telling us we couldn’t do it, it is exciting that we did.”

Connerly’s amendments have a strong track record of winning easily once they make it onto the ballot. He passed three similar proposals in California, Michigan and Washington state in years past. But Connerly’s 2008 push to end race and gender preferences in five states this year — called the Super Tuesday for Equal Rights — was largely unsuccessful. In three states — Arizona, Missouri and Oklahoma — the proposal never made it to the ballot. In Colorado it was voted down. But it passed handily in Nebraska on Tuesday.

Hart says that she and others were aware of the difficulty of defeating the ballot amendment. Many voters, she says, found the language confusing and believed that they were upholding affirmative action rather than dismantling it.

“We would have preferred to not have it get on. It was important to us to fight every step of the way to keep the initiative out of our constitution,” she says. “The first step was to keep it off the ballot because past experience showed that once it was on the ballot it was going to be very hard to defeat.”

In September, the Vote No campaign filed suit against against Colorado Civil Rights Initiative organizers and Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman, alleging that Amendment 46 petition circulators buoyed the measure with thousands of invalid signatures. But the group dropped its suit as the election grew near. They were also unsuccessful in putting a counter measure on the ballot.

And though Amendment 46 was mired in allegations that petition circulators misled Colorado voters into signing onto the amendment, the proposal polled extremely well in the weeks ahead of the election.

So what accounts for the historic outcome? Hart says that a well-connected network of volunteers and a “grassroots educational network” stopped the amendment.

“We didn’t have much in the way of financial resources. We did Spanish language TV ads and we did a couple of radio ads. But this was really a grassroots person-to-person educational effort. That made this campaign different from ‘no’ campaigns in other states. They were more focused on advertising in the past. We didn’t have the resources. We had to do it person-to-person.”

The Vote No group raised around $211,570 for its campaign, more than half of it since the end of September in big donations from the Colorado Progressive Coalition and two groups called Civic Participation Campaign, Inc. and Colorado Progressive Action. The Colorado Civil Rights Initiative was almost entirely funded by Ward Connerly’s two nonprofit organizations. He gave upward of $350,000 to the campaign.

Jessica Peck Corry, director of the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, did not return a phone call and an e-mail seeking comment on Amendment 46.

But reached late yesterday afternoon, Connerly said that the amendment likely failed because Colorado voters were overwhelmed with the long ballot and voted no. He also said that people who supported Barack Obama, in particular young people, blacks and Latinos, likely voted against ending racial preferences.

Though Connerly has previously said he intends to move forward with his project to end affirmative action, he told the Colorado Independent that he is turning his focus to prison reform.

California businessman Ward Connerly says he is moving on to other issues after the defeat of his anti-affirmative action ballot measure. (Photo/American Civil Rights Institute)

Anti-affirmative-action guru Ward Connerly will likely halt his nationwide push to end race and gender preferences. Connerly, a part black California businessman, spoke with the Colorado Independent an hour after Amendment 46 toppled by an extremely thin margin.

The so-called Colorado Civil Rights Initiative was the first Connerly amendment to flop after making it onto a state ballot. It was also a key measure in Connerly’s Super Tuesday for Equal Rights campaign, a nationwide thrust to dismantle affirmative action programs in five states this year. In three of those states, the measure failed to make it onto the ballot, and Thursday, after a feverishly close tally, it collapsed in Colorado. Nebraska was the only state this year to approve the proposal.

In a wide-ranging, hour-long phone interview with The Colorado Independent, Connerly said he now intends to turn his focus to prison reform. He downplayed the importance of Colorado’s rejection of a ban on affirmative action programs, and also weighed in on President-elect Barack Obama’s historic win.

When asked how he planned to proceed now that Colorado voters had rejected Amendment 46, Connerly said that he might curb his 12-year-long effort, which produced wins in California, Michigan and Washington state in years past and in Nebraska this year. “Well, I love to read. I love to write. I do have other interests,” he said. “I would like to pursue those things. I would rather do those things than get involved in these initiatives.”

“Contrary to what is said, I don’t need this for my financial well-being. I don’t need it for my psychological well-being,” he added, referring to an allegation that he paid himself $7 million from the two nonprofits that funded his Super Tuesday for Equal Rights campaign. Connerly spent more than $350,000 in Colorado this year, according to campaign finance reports.

But rather than continue the fight against racial preferences, Connerly said he will focus on reforming the criminal justice system. He has developed a passion for the issue because, he said, “I know someone for whom I have great affection who is in this situation. I had to learn a lot more about the system than I ever knew before.”

Connerly said that in the past year, he has contributed “frequently and heavily” to Families against Mandatory Minimums, a national organization dedicated to changing sentencing laws. And he is a proponent of alternatives to incarceration, such as ankle monitors for some convicts.

“I don’t want to mislead you. I don’t want to say I am no longer going to be interested in race equality in our public policies,” he said. “I think this whole business of what we are doing to people who are incarcerated is far more pressing.”

However, Connerly would not concede that the weak returns over his “Super Tuesday” efforts to dismantle affirmative action prompted him to turn his focus to another issue. In fact he went back and forth on characterizing the Amendment 46 result as a loss.

“I sort of felt Wednesday morning at 4:15 a.m. that this would probably be defeated, and I congratulate the other side. We have a different perspective, and they waged a vigorous campaign. It got ugly with the character assassination, and I wish they hadn’t done that,” he said, referring to two Vote No radio ads that called Connerly a “carpetbagger” and were later pulled from the airwaves.

But then he said: “It is up to Jessica Peck Corry and others as to when or if they concede. I am proud of the campaign they waged. The people of Colorado have spoken, and with roughly a million votes on each side, it is hard to say that the issue is settled.” Connerly also credited Corry, the director of the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, with convincing him to launch the proposal in Colorado. Corry did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. But she refused to admit defeat in a Denver Post article, saying she wanted to wait for the last returns. Late Thursday afternoon, the Rocky Mountain News called the election with 96 percent of the votes in; 50.6 percent of Colorado voters said “no” while 49.4 said “yes.”

In spite of his ambiguity, Connerly did say that Amendment 46 — which performed astoundingly well in polls before the election — failed because Colorado voters were overwhelmed with the massive ballot.

“I think that the fact that there were so many initiatives on the ballot spoke volumes more about this issue than anything else,” he said. “There was a lot of voter fatigue in my view, and they said, ‘Let’s preserve the status quo,’ and they voted ‘no.’”

“A 50-50 vote does not tell either side anything at all. Nothing,” he added, when asked about the legacy of a Colorado loss. “I would not expect the opposition to run off the battlefield if the vote had been 50-50. Nor should they expect us to run away because because of the outcome that there is. You can’t make any decisions based on that kind of situation. Especially in view of the fact that Nebraska won as handily as it did.” Nebraska’s measure passed, 58 percent to 42 percent.

Connerly also said that Obama’s supporters in Colorado likely turned out against his initiative. “I believe that when you have a self-professed, quote, progressive running for president, and he is trying to turn out votes, well, on Election Day a number of those who never voted before were black, Latino and young. That’s what the exit polls clearly showed. Those people are more likely to be opposed to ending what is loosely called affirmative action. I think that is just indisputable.”

Connerly voted for Republican presidential candidate John McCain and said he donated $2,300 to his campaign, even though he was disappointed that McCain showed only lukewarm support for the anti-affirmative-action project. Connerly also said he gave $500 to Obama during the primary because he “was hopeful that Sen. Obama would push the ball up the field a little bit in trying to reduce America’s preoccupation with race.”

Connerly acknowledged the import of Obama’s victory: “This is a defining moment in American history, especially for black people. I didn’t cry as Jesse Jackson did Tuesday night as he witnessed this marvelous, marvelous moment with Sen. Obama making his acceptance speech. I didn’t cry. But I can understand the tears. My heart sang as much as everyone else’s.”

He said he was heartened to hear Obama, who supports affirmative action, tell ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in a 2007 interview that he doesn’t expect his well-off daughters to receive preferential treatment when they apply to universities. “We don’t benefit when people believe our skin color has something to do with who we are,” said Connerly. “Even when society thinks it is doing it for a good reason. You are not helping me. That is my view.”

Colorado voters, on the other hand, think affirmative action still has value. And Connerly won’t be back anytime soon to convince them otherwise.

“I am a pretty active guy, even at 69. And there are other things I would like to accomplish in my life,” he said. “For me to go and try to involve the Colorado Legislature in this issue, well that is not on my list of 100 things I would like to do.”

Stay tuned for more coverage of Colorado’s Amendment 46.

Read more on Colorado Independent’s past reporting on Ward Connerly and his efforts to repeal affirmative action.

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter slams Amendment 46 at a press conference. (Photo/Naomi Zeveloff)

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter lambasted Amendment 46 at a press conference this afternoon, saying that the anti-affirmative action ballot measure will hurt our economy.

“We are in a time in this country and in this state where we have to keep our economy moving forward,” said Ritter, who spoke surrounded by supporters on the west steps of the state Capitol. “Amendment 46 takes us in the wrong direction.”

Ritter said that diversity in the workforce helps the economy and that the ballot measure, which seeks to end race and sex preferences in public contracting, hiring and education, will “destroy years of progress” that the state has made in improving health care, education and jobs.

Ritter’s announcement follows a long trail of similar denunciations. Most recently, the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce decried the measure.

Amendment 46, known as the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, is part of a multistate effort by California businessman Ward Connerly to demolish affirmative action. According to a recent analysis by the progressive Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, Connerly has gleaned more than $7 million from his two nonprofits, the American Civil Rights Institute and the American Civil Rights Coalition.

Ritter called Connerly a “constitutional amendment carpetbagger,” saying “it is wrong to allow him to do that to our state, to our Constitution, to our people.”

When asked which state programs will be cut should Amendment 46 pass, Ritter pinpointed the Fatherhood Initiative, a gender-based program that supports struggling fathers and their families.

Jessica Peck Corry, executive director of the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, defended the measure after the press conference. (Photo/Naomi Zeveloff)

Corry, who also works as a policy analyst for the conservative Independence Institute think tank, added that the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative is a “homegrown effort.” The amendment has been supported almost entirely by Connerly, who has sunk more than $300,000 into the measure so far.

She said that Ritter has violated state law by using taxpayer dollars to push his anti-Amendment 46 views. Corry pointed to an email sent out on Ritter’s Office of Economic Development letterhead announcing an event regarding Amendment 46′s impact on business.

“The governor is entitled to his perspective, but the law doesn’t allow him to use tax dollars to advocate his point of view,” said Corry.

Ritter, for his part, said that he did not use taxpayer dollars to slam Amendment 46.

(Photo/Joe Gratz, Flickr)

An administrative law judge has thrown out charges that Amendment 46 petition circulators misled people into signing onto the anti-affirmative action measure.

Amendment 46 seeks to end preferential treatment for women and minorities in public employment, education and contracting. The controversially named Colorado Civil Rights Initiative is part of a five-state effort launched by California businessman Ward Connerly to end affirmative action.

Connerly’s campaign has been criticized as a misleading attempt to make voters believe that they are promoting equal opportunity rather than destroying it. And in Colorado, at least a half-dozen people filed complaints with the secretary of state’s office, saying they were duped by petition circulators who told them that signing onto Amendment 46 would uphold diversity programs.

But last Friday, an administrative law judge dismissed those claims because they did not provide enough detail. And though several of the six complainants say they may file their grievances again, the months-long process has left them demoralized.

“I think all of us are going through some form of shock right now,” says Venita Vinson, a retired Denver resident who used to work for former Colorado Rep. Pat Schroeder, a Democrat. Vinson says that she was approached by a petition circulator for the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative last October outside of a King Soopers in Denver. The circulator asked her to sign on for affirmative action. “When I said to the circulator, ‘But we already have affirmative action,’ her response was ‘But it is due to expire.’” Vinson did not read the text of the petition but signed it anyway.

It wasn’t until months later, at a community meeting, that she found out about the true intent of the initiative. “At that point, I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I signed it.’” The revelation prompted her to file a complaint with the secretary of state to get her name struck from the petition.

Others, like Candace Frie, read the text of the initiative but still signed, not understanding that she was opting to abolish affirmative action. She was approached last February outside a King Soopers in Arvada. “I was going in and a fellow came up to me, an African-American male, and asked me to sign a petition to end discrimination in Colorado,” she says. “I asked if I could read it and it did say it would end discrimination. I didn’t see anything that raised any red flags.” (The language of the initiative prohibits preferential treatment and discrimination.)

She told the circulator that she was upset about the way that immigrants and gays are treated in Colorado. “He said, ‘This is going to take care of that.’ But a week and a half later I found out that it was the anti-affirmative action amendment.”

“I just felt ill,” says Frie, a retired high school teacher whose husband, Bob Frie, is the mayor of Arvada. “That goes against what I believe in. I have worked with migrant workers. I have worked with the poor. It just goes against everything I believe in.”

In March, Frie filed a complaint with the secretary of state’s office also hoping to remove her signature from the petition.

Three others filed similar grievances, while Tracy Sear, an interior designer from Englewood, reported similarly misleading tactics to the secretary of state, but chose not to sign any petitions.

Sear was approached in early February outside of a Target store by a man who said that the initiative would restore “equality in the workplace.” When Sear asked him whether the measure would destroy affirmative action, he told her that it “could” eliminate some parts of it. According to Sear’s complaint, “I had to ask very specifically a couple of times and press him for an answer before he would admit that the measure would in fact eliminate affirmative action.”

The next day, Sear had a similar experience with a female petitioner outside a King Soopers who said that the initiative would stop “preferential hiring.”

“The language is so vague, it is hard to wrap your mind around what the ramifications could be,” says Sear.

The complainants — whose grievances were compiled into a single case — were told that they could not take their names off of the petitions. “It is kind of like casting a vote,” explains Rich Coolidge, spokesman with the secretary of state’s office. “As soon as you cast your ballot it is counted.” They were referred to an administrative law judge to hash out their grievances against Amendment 46′s backers.

But the judge dismissed their complaints on Friday, saying that they did not provide enough detail to move forward. Sear says that they were asked to cite Colorado statute that was violated.

“This took a toll on all of us,” says Sear, who doesn’t know if she will re-file her complaint. “It developed a life of its own and turned into a much more technical and time-consuming endeavor than we expected.”

Amendment 46′s backers, meanwhile, say they are pleased with the outcome.

“Given the lack of evidence presented by our opposition, the court did the right thing by dismissing all of the complaints,” said Jessica Peck Corry, director of the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative and a policy analyst with the conservative Independence Institute think tank, in an e-mail. “We will continue to fight with vigor any and all false allegations against Amendment 46.”

The court’s dismissal is just the latest in a string of failed attempts to challenge Amendment 46. Earlier this month, the secretary of state ruled that a counter-initiative aimed at defending affirmative action did not have enough valid signatures to make it onto the ballot. Then the Vote No on Amendment 46 campaign dropped its lawsuit that claimed, among other things, that signature gatherers were trucked in from out of state, which is illegal in Colorado.

“Our opponents have exhausted their legal options and we now welcome them to have an honest debate before voters on the merits of Amendment 46,” said Corry.

To read more of The Colorado Independent’s extensive coverage on Amendment 46 and Ward Connerly’s national efforts, click here.

With just six weeks and counting until voters are asked to weigh in on the controversially named Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, the Vote No campaign has dropped its lawsuit against its rivals and opted instead for a concentrated advertising campaign.

Yesterday, Carlos Valverde, co-executive director of the Colorado Progressive Coalition and part of the Vote No team, criticized the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative’s Jessica Peck Corry for her “racist” comments earlier this month.

According to Colorado Media Matters, a progressive media watchdog group, Corry, a policy analyst for the conservative Independence Institute think tank, referred to the Barack Obama and Joe Biden ticket as “Obama bin Biden” on an Independence Institute TV panel. She also accidentally referred to Obama as “Osama”:

“We’ve been attacking the Republicans for not being on message to unaffiliated voters. Obama bin Biden, as they should be called, is also off message to unaffiliated voters. You look at who introduced Obama — I almost said, “Osama,” sorry — you look at who introduced Obama, it was labor members, it was unemployed nurses, it was hardco — hardcore, excuse me, radical, leftist activists,” said Corry, referring to Obama’s INVESCO Field acceptance speech. “I was just in my car today and heard a pro-abortion commercial in favor of Obama. They are not on message, just as Republicans are not on message. They just are far to the left at this point.”

Here’s the video:

Valverde jumped on the opportunity to connect Corry’s comments with her anti-affirmative-action efforts.

“For someone who feels a color blind society is ideal, she is comparing someone whose name sounds close to a terrorist’s to a terrorist. We think it is inappropriate and contradictory,” he said, adding later in an email that her words were “frankly racist.”

(Illustration/Lyle Lahey, Flickr)

A campaign seeking to quash Colorado’s anti-affirmative-action ballot measure faces an onerous battle in the weeks ahead as the Nov. 4 election nears. The group behind the campaign hopes to convince voters to reject the ballot initiative, which will dismantle affirmative action programs if passed. But a series of failed legal challenges have left organizers with little cash as they scramble to put together a cogent countercampaign.

The anti-affirmative-action measure, Amendment 46, is part of what was originally a five-state effort this year in Colorado, Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma to end preferential treatment for women and minorities in public employment, contracting and education. Orchestrated by California businessman Ward Connerly, the anti-affirmative-action thrust failed to catch on in all but two states — Colorado and Nebraska. In the rest, petition circulators did not gather enough valid signatures to place it on the ballot, or, in the case of Arizona, state officials found irregularities in the signatures and struck it from the ballot. Similar Connerly-organized campaigns to limit affirmative action have previously passed in California, Michigan, and Washington state.

Vote No on Amendment 46, along with a group called Colorado Unity, also hoped to strip the so-called Colorado Civil Rights Initiative from the ballot by contesting the validity of tens of thousands of signatures gathered by Connerly’s paid circulators. But on Wednesday organizers opted to drop their lawsuit to do just that.

“Our time and energy are better spent elsewhere,” says Melissa Hart, a law professor at the University of Colorado who is spearheading the Vote No on Amendment 46 campaign. She and several others attempted to sue Amendment 46 organizers and Secretary of State Mike Coffman. She claims that petition circulators gathered thousands of fake or irregular signatures, and that between seven and 10 circulators were brought in from out of state. In Colorado it is illegal for out-of-staters to collect signatures for a citizens’ initiative.

“We looked around at the names and addresses” of the circulators, Hart says, “and it was easy to see that they no longer lived at the addresses. We spoke with a landlord who said that one person only lived there for a couple of months. There were other similar examples where this person just appeared and planned to leave. You don’t count as a citizen unless you are planning to stay.”

In July a district court judge ruled that Hart and her team would have to air their out-of-state circulator complaint with an administrative law judge instead. But rather than pursue continued litigation, they decided on Wednesday to kill the suit altogether.

“We felt that the judge’s ruling put us in a bad position; going through litigation is difficult, and those difficulties did not warrant us continuing this suit,” says Hart.

This is the second blow for the Vote No campaign this month. Organizers had also launched a counterinitiative, known as Amendment 82, which aimed to defend the state’s affirmative action programs in the case that Amendment 46 passes. But two weeks ago the secretary of state found that Amendment 82 did not garner sufficient signatures to make it onto the ballot. Hart says that her group may contest that decision. But for now they will focus on educating voters about the dangers of Connerly’s initiative.

“We are going to run the best campaign we can given limited time,” she says. “What I have seen over the course of the past few months is that the key to defeating Connerly’s deceptive language is talking to people and helping them hear what it actually does. What is so disconcerting to me about Amendment 46 is that it is so misleading.”

Connerly’s five-state effort, dubbed “Super Tuesday for Equal Rights,” has come under fire for its innocuous wording, which, opponents claim, makes people think they are signing on to defend affirmative action rather than destroy it.

But Hart and other organizers will have to scramble to battle the Connerly machine. According to campaign finance records, Vote No on Amendment 46 has raised $87,655 so far. And more than $39,000 of that was spent on lawyer fees.

Hart says that she doesn’t regret focusing on the lawsuit and that the group plans to raise and spend another several hundred thousand dollars before election day on yard signs, mailers and radio spots to defeat Amendment 46.

“What has become clear to me and what all the experts said months ago was you can spend the money you want right now, but nobody is going to be listening to you until after the Democratic National Convention and after we know what the ballot looks like. People weren’t focusing on the ballot. Now they are. And we are going to get them focused on 46.”

Meanwhile the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative has raised a whopping $343,280. Around $308,400 of that came from two of Connerly’s Sacramento, Calif.-based organizations: Super Tuesday for Equal Rights and the American Civil Rights Coalition.

Jessica Peck Corry, executive director of the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative and a policy analyst with the conservative Independence Institute think tank in Golden, says she doesn’t yet know what her group will spend on an advertising campaign. The group’s attorney, Scott Gessler, did not return a phone call seeking comment about how much the group has spent on legal fees. Campaign finance reports show a one-time $5,000 payment to Gessler’s firm.

“They have left us with substantial legal bills,” Corry says of the Vote No campaign. “That takes our energy and resources away from focusing on a voter education drive. And that is unfortunate.”

For more on Amendment 46 and Ward Connerly’s Colorado campaign, please take a look at our extensive past coverage.

Photo/Miss_Colleen, Flickr)

Did we mention that Colorado’s 18-issue ballot this year is long? As in, the longest in the country? And the longest in Colorado since 1912? We did? Well, here’s something new to chew on. The two states pulling in second and third places — Oregon and California — don’t even come close to touching our massive, large-and-in-charge ballot. Those states count a meager 12 questions on each of their ballots. Hell, Colorado beat that back in 1992, when voters weighed in on a record 13 questions. That was the longest ballot in recent memory. But now, Colorado has unearthed this leviathan ballot. In fact, the ballot is so big that it’s impossible for us to continue our ballot run-down in neatly themed packages.

So here are three more randomly selected ballot issues to be put to Colorado voters this year.

Read more of The Colorado Independent’s coverage of Amendment 46 here.

Read more of The Colorado Independent’s coverage of Amendment 48 here and here.

For more information on the 2008 Colorado ballot, read Colorado ballot chock-full this year and Colorado’s monster ballot longest in the nation

For the entire list of measures with links to the Colorado Legislative Council’s “Blue Book” analysis, see: Colorado voters face longest ballot in 96 years.

In July, Colorado Confidential reported on an angry letter originating from a Department of Justice e-mail address. The message, riddled with spelling errors, was sent to Independence Institute analyst Jessica Peck Corry in response to a Denver Post editorial she wrote supporting medical marijuana.

Since then it has been discovered that the note came from a DEA agent, and the agency’s Denver field director says that matter comes down to freedom of speech. “I actually encourage my people to try and provide facts to people doing stories,” says Jeff Sweetin, who heads the DEA’s Denver Field Division.

“A government e-mail address, which is the Department of Justice account that DEA uses–our employees are under policy permitted to use those for personal use,” Sweetin says, although noting that  agents are limited to uses that “would be of negligible time and monetary value.”

In the message, agent Thomas D. Miller blasted Peck Corry for putting “liberal spin” on the medical marijuana issue, and misleading the public with her “liberal friends.”

“We don’t adopt the use of the work liberal as an agency, but obviously it’s a very emotional topic,” says Sweetin, explaining that the agency is accused of putting marijuana users in jail when he says that is often not the case.

When asked about the unprofessional nature of the e-mail, notably the misspelling of words like medicinal (spelled “medicimal”) and the lack of factual information, Sweetin brought up the agent’s right to an opinion.

“Well we’re certainly against the misspellings,” he says. “I’m not saying this is a DEA press release, I mean this is one of our agent’s opinions, but I would certainly expect as journalists you all would be more interested  than the average person in society, that people have a voice in our society. I think the fact that this came from a government e-mail address, I would be surprised if that tempered your interest in someone having freedom of speech.”

Although the e-mail may be on shaky ground, the DEA’s policy against marijuana is not. According to Sweetin, the agency does not see pot has medicinal and will “go after cannabis clubs wherever they exist.”

The answer might surprise you.

According to an e-mail message obtained by Colorado Confidential, DOJ agent Thomas D. Miller used his government address to vent against a pro-medical marijuana opinion column that appeared in the Denver Post on Sunday–a column that was penned by Independence Institute analyst Jessica Peck Corry. “Since, I am part of one of those drug task forces, I am inclined to speak out on your facts,” reads the letter, appearing to come from Miller’s usdoj.gov e-mail address.

“So quit lying to the public and trying to put your liberal spin on this issue. An [sic] I find it utterly absurd that you are a co-chair of 2006 Guarding Our Children Against Marijuana Prohibition,” writes Miller to Peck Corry. “Using the word children is once again a liberal politcal spin, that you and your liberal friends use to mislead the public. If you are truly for the use of marijuana for medicimal [sic] purposes, your campaign slogan should not have the word children in it.”

Perhaps the letter wouldn’t have such a humorous aura if it wasn’t for that fact that the Independence Institute, a nonprofit “free market think tank” with emeriti like John Andrews and Tom Tancredo, would usually not be thought of as ecstatically “liberal.” Then there are the numerous spelling errors.

On a day when it was announced that other federal drug officials are under investigation for politicization by a House committee, is it possible that agent Miller violated any policies by using his government address to send hate mail?

Full letter: