Tag: Kevin Lundberg

A bill designed to put a stop to lavish "business" trips taken by government entities, such as Pinnacol Assurance, was laid over Wednesday after Democratic senators proclaimed the bill still too lenient with taxpayer dollars. The bill was laid over in the Senate Judiciary Committee to determine support for an amendment.

As the federal government prepares for a disastrous shutdown pinned largely to a House Republican amendment that would defund Planned Parenthood, Colorado Republican Senators attempted to mimic the legislative strategy that has led to the Capitol Hill standoff. Weeks of tense negotiations in Denver produced a budget plan tentatively embraced on both sides of the aisle. Then on Friday in stepped social conservatives in the Senate who during floor debate inserted a hot-button "defund Planned Parenthood" amendment into the budget negotiation.

A recent survey of Mississippi Republicans conducted by Public Policy Polling (pdf) found that a majority of them believe inter-racial marriage should be illegal. According to the poll, 46 percent of the Republicans told PPP staffers that interracial marriage should be illegal and 14 percent of them said they weren't sure. Only 40 percent of Mississippi Republicans believe interracial couples should be allowed to legally marry. The poll comes a week after Colorado Republicans voted down a bill that would have granted Colorado gay couples domestic partnership rights already granted automatically with marriage to straight people. The Republican lawmakers said the issue should be left to voters to decide.

Bipartisan co-sponsorship of a bill to set up a public healthcare exchange in Colorado appears now to be on shaky ground after House Majority Leader Amy Stephens, R-Monument, broke a pact between herself and Democratic cosponsor Sen. Betty Boyd, D-Lakewood, by pushing what Boyd called a "poison pill" amendment.

The coming debate in the Colorado House Judiciary Committee on same-sex civil unions bill SB 172 will center on Republican arguments for and against the legislation. The debate scheduled to take place under the Dome in Denver Thursday will underline the dynamics shaping the larger national debate on gay rights-- a debate that now pits Republicans against Republicans because Democrats and Independents have already made up their minds on the matter.

Colorado civil unions bill SB 172 may have passed out of the state Senate Thursday but the video shadow of the debate over the bill is growing on the internet. Berthoud Republican Senator Kevin Lundberg is drawing fact-checking and mockery for the discredited and reaching arguments he made against the bill on the floor of the Senate before his colleagues and the cameras of the Colorado Channel.

Senate Republicans delivered Pat Steadman's same-sex civil unions bill to the Republican-controlled House Thursday with momentum and a message. Although the twelve Republican men in the Senate voted against it, the three Republican women in the Senate voted in favor of the bill, making the case to leaders of the Republican-controlled House to take up the bill with good faith and allow it to move beyond committees and onto the floor of the House for a vote.

The gay and lesbian community are one step closer to being able to participate in state sanctioned unions after the Colorado Senate voted to pass on second reading SB 172. Democrats heralded the bill as a historic moment in the fight for civil rights and the protection of children.

The Senate Judiciary Committee took one step yesterday toward ending sex trafficking in Colorado, a crime that many do not know exists but which traps girls, many of them born and raised in Colorado, at an average starting age of 12 to 14 years old.

Openly gay Chairman of the Colorado Federation of College Republicans Troy Ard is lobbying colleagues and friends to support Senator Pat Steadman's same-sex civil unions bill making its way through the state legislature. Ard's support for the bill is personal, political and ideological. He wants to enjoy equal rights under the law as a gay American; he believes the Republican brand would benefit enormously by embracing gay rights; and he believes Americans should always be pushing their government to expand individual liberties.