Tag: Frank McNulty

  DENVER-- If you can measure anything by opening day speeches, the ones given in the House here today suggest the 2014 legislative session is...

Last year's rollicking session was about setting the terms for the election-year debate. Last summer's jarring recall elections assured this year's session will be about replaying those same debates, over and over and over again.

Right now U.S. Senate Republicans are strategizing on how to get Democrats to help them defund Obamacare. Observers have been calling the plan "desperate," which doesn't quite get at its quixotic nature.

Almost a year ago, Erika Highstead and Sarah Musick rented a party space, dressed in their finest and vowed their commitment to each other in front of a hundred friends.

Colorado state Representative B.J. Nikkel, R-Loveland, this weekend said the experience of bigotry and intimidation she experienced last spring during the debate over a same-sex civil unions bill has strengthened her position in support of the bill. She said that, even though she's not running for reelection and won't be at the capitol to vote, she's confident that conservatives will come to see the bill as consistent with their social values and that next year's version of the bill will pass with significant Republican backing.

On the record, Jessica Peck isn't thinking much about a potential Internal Revenue Service investigation into her Denver-based watchdog Open Government Institute.

DENVER-- Opposition to a gay-rights civil union bill defeated here last month was directed in large part by Colorado Springs-based evangelical empire Focus on the Family and the Colorado Catholic Conference. The Christian-right campaign, however, also reenergized a leading anti-gay rights activist organization of the 1990s, influential rough-and-tumble group Colorado for Family Values.

DENVER — Colorado's 2012 Legislature may not have achieved greatness. It may not have risen above partisan divide to solve complex problems and unify a state. It may not have addressed the state's economic malaise or found a way to reliably fund education for the long term.

Colorado legislative debate this year on education, gay rights and women's health policies reflected larger well-worn national political back-and-forths, where showy speeches on immigration "illegals," "traditional marriage" and religious freedom often sidetrack efforts to serve the public good.

DENVER-- The gay-rights civil unions bill at the center of a special legislative session called by Gov. John Hickenlooper died as expected on a party line vote Monday in the Republican-controlled House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee.