That organizational do-si-do may allow Musgrave to effectively skirt a federal campaign finance rule that prohibits candidates from donating unused war chests to their employers.

Musgrave said of the contribution that will drain her federal campaign fund:

As technology advances and sonograms continue to offer compelling visual evidence of the humanity of unborn children, we’re finding that the younger generation is more pro-life. I’m confident the Susan B. Anthony List Education Fund will effectively marshal the energy and enthusiasm found among young pro-lifers to be a voice for women and the unborn for years to come.

One of those young women leaders could be Kristi Burton, the 21-year-old Peyton resident who was the figurehead behind Amendment 48, the so-called personhood law that attempted to confer constitutional rights on fertilized eggs. Musgrave endorsed the antiabortion and anti-contraception state ballot measure that went down in flames by a three-to-one margin. Burton has since moved on to national prominence with absolutist antiabortion groups the American Life League and American Right to Life.

The congresswoman’s three month tenure with Votes Have Consequences following her own bruising electoral loss has also not gone unnoticed.

Musgrave’s role is to raise funds to target members of Congress in the 2010 election cycle who support abortion rights. On a March 12 press call announcing the initiative, she vowed to use the same scorched-earth tactics employed against her that resulted in Betsy Markey’s landslide 2008 victory.

Last month, a Musgrave called out members of Congress in a fiery fund raising letter to “publicly defend socialism, authoritarian gun-grabbing, gay marriage, infanticide and everything else they vote for in Washington …”

Neither Votes Have Consequences or the Susan B. Anthony List will confirm whether Markey, who supports abortion rights, will be targeted by the group for defeat in 2010.

If voters approve Allen’s ballot measure — after it passes through various hurdles to make the ballot — it could be written to override Amendment 43, the 2006 constitutional measure that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman, Bartels reports.

Allen told Bartels it’s only fair that gay couples “should have the same rights he and his girlfriend of seven years, Crystal Russell, would enjoy if they got married.”

RH Reality Check’s correspondent Kay Steiger attended the conference — timed to coincide with Barack Obama’s inauguration — and caught up with Burton about the “egg as a person” legal movement at the aptly named Liaison Capitol Hill Hotel in Washington, D.C.

That, of course, came after listening to former ambassador and perennial paleoconservative political candidate Alan Keyes bloviate for 57 minutes on biblical themes with little mention of the anti-abortion movement.

Since the ballot measure’s crushing 3-to-1 loss in November, Burton appears to have taken those hard-fought lessons to heart for her next expected go-around with voters.

She urged the pro-life movement to begin to hire political consultants, analyze polling data, and raise more money. This, she admits, comes from her active work with the Republican Party. She noted that the personhood movement often doesn’t get support from mainstream Republicans, pointing to the Republican Senate candidate in Colorado, Bob Schaffer, who came out against the personhood amendment despite identifying as pro-life. “Politicians and pro-lifers don’t really get along that well,” Burton said.

Most of all, she noted, the movement needs to unify. “Do you ever see NARAL, Planned Parenthood or NOW fighting against each other? No, because they have one goal and they don’t really care about anything but their goal,” Burton said.

But then things get muddy, as they did during the campaign season, about just what legal rights for fertilized eggs would mean.

Burton wants conservative activists to adopt the personhood campaign’s framework in their legislative efforts to prohibit stem cell research, eliminate emergency contraception, promote informed consent, and criminalize “fetal homicide.” But she steadfastly denies that Amendment 48 would have expressly affected such issues.

“The personhood amendment was a definition,” explained Burton, who is enrolled in a non-accredited Bible-based online law school. “What it said was that in the future, when our courts and our legislators are considering laws relating to those kind of things — I mean in Colorado there isn’t even a law on birth control, so how a definition can affect a law that doesn’t exist, I’m not sure.”

Except there are state laws on contraception among other reproductive health services.

Maybe it’s time to hit the law books again.

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.