Mike Coffman

On Saturday at a South Denver Tea Party-hosted candidate forum, Republican candidates looking to reverse sweeping losses over the past series of elections took turns railing against government and business as usual in Washington and in Denver. Reflecting GOP campaigns across the country, they proposed sweeping cuts to programs, warned of the rise of socialism and ruminated on the greatest threats to national security. U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck and gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes won in straw polling over respective frontrunners Jane Norton and Scott McInnis.

President Obama gave a long-awaited address Tuesday night at West Point Military Academy on his plan for the war in Afghanistan. It was a speech bound to disappoint and it did, it seems, at least partly on both the left and the right. Among the responses from the Colorado delegation in D.C., Sen. Mark Udall, one of the most supportive of the president’s vision, also felt obliged at one point to respond in advance to constituent dissent. “We must acknowledge the complex choices we face. It is important for us all to keep in mind that no one has all the right answers.”

Rep. Ed Perlmutter, who also offered support for the president’s strategy, said he planned to travel to Afghanistan in the coming months to gain additional insight of his own.

Full video of the speech and a roundup of responses after the jump.

Shortly after the House health care bill was passed November 7, Representative Mike Coffman, a Republican representing Colorado’s 6th Congressional District, issued a scathing press release characterizing the bill as a job killer. But in an article today, the nonprofit, nonpartisan FactCheck.org writes that such claims are overblown.

The Expedited CARD Reform for Consumers Act of 2009, H.R. 3639, passed the House in a 331-92 vote Wednesday, with a number of Republicans joining Democrats in voting for the bill.
Colorado’s Republicans, however, were not among them.  Doug Lamborn, representing the Fifth District, and Mike Coffman, representing the Sixth District, both voted against the bill. [...]

Figuring prominently in the new health care bill released by House Democrats yesterday is a provision to repeal the anti-trust exemption that the health insurance industry currently enjoys.
It’s arguably an odd twist in the traditional Republican-Democratic battle, in that Democrats are the ones pushing hard to return to the free market.

AURORA — At a health-reform town hall gathering this weekend that brought together six members of the Colorado delegation to the nation’s capital, Democrats, including Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet, said that health care costs would continue to skyrocket unless insurance companies were subject to anti-trust regulation and to competition from a national non-profit government-insurance option.

Despite efforts by Colorado lawmakers, the federal government took back $114.7 million in transportation funding authority from Colorado just before midnight on Wednesday.
Officials from the Colorado Department of Transportation said it may still be a few days before they know what projects, if any, will be affected by the take back or “rescission” of federal [...]

Six of Colorado’s seven representatives in Washington, D.C., signed onto a letter Wednesday asking Congress to suspend the state’s obligation to pay back more than one hundred million dollars in transportation funds, a sum that amounts to roughly 25 percent of the stimulus money received by the Colorado Department of Transportation for highways this year.

The state’s top ethics panel has turned over to the Denver District Court copies of all the notes and other records made during five secret meetings a judge said were held in violation of Colorado Open Meetings Law. The judge plans to review the notes and decide whether they should be made public in response to an open records request and lawsuit filed by The Colorado Independent.

DENVER — The Colorado Independent Ethics Commission violated the state’s Open Meetings Law when it failed to convene a dozen closed-door meetings held earlier this year according to strict legal requirements, a Denver District Court judge has ruled. Because the ethics panel didn’t follow the law, the court ordered the state’s top ethics panel to “immediately” release all records of any improperly closed meeting, even those the commission claims are protected by attorney-client privilege.