March 08, 2016 12:42 PM UTC

Get More Smarter on Tuesday (March 8)

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• by: Colorado Pols

Four more states get a chance to make a statement about Donald Trump today. It’s time to Get More Smarter with Colorado Pols. If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example).

TOP OF MIND TODAY…

► Voters in Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan, and Mississippi get their chance today to vote for their preferred candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination. Michigan and Mississippi will also hold Democratic Presidential Primaries today.

Meanwhile, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is facing increasing pressure to drop out of the race for President as his road to victory has morphed into little more than a rocky dirt path.

► Colorado Republicans continue to face questions from media outlets about whether or not they plan to support the GOP nominee for President even if his name happens to be Donald Trump. We’d imagine that some Republicans, such as Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) and Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Aurora), may be tired of getting these questions from reporters, and if so, we’ve got a little advice for them: Perhaps you should try a) Answering the question clearly, on the first try, and b) Sticking with one answer for longer than 24 hours. 

► As Donald Trump marches ahead toward securing the Republican Presidential nomination, a disconcerting new approach to dealing with crowds is casting an ugly shadow on His Hairness. As Politico reports from North Carolina:

Donald Trump’s rally here began with the candidate asking all attendees to raise their hands and take an oath to vote for him, while extended barriers cordoned off the press and plainclothes private intelligence officers scoured the crowd for protestors.

These new tactics, which the Trump campaign has introduced over the past week, represent refinements by Trump and his staff in their quest to control the atmosphere and message of his often unruly rallies. They come in the wake of an altercation between a photographer and a Secret Service agent at a Trump event, and at a time when the emboldened candidate has escalated confrontations with protesters, leaving his podium to stare them down at his two most recent rallies and repeatedly lamenting that his supporters cannot retaliate against them.

Holy Hitler!

Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► The Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact site opened up a Colorado version of the site earlier this year, and there has been no shortage of political nonsense that needs correcting in Colorado. The Colorado PolitiFact site, a partnership with KMGH7 News in Denver, targets Republican Senate candidate Jon Keyser in its latest fact-check over Keyser’s false claims that Sen. Michael Bennet “wants to bring Gitmo terrorists to Colorado.”

► Republican Party leaders are still meeting with business leaders in a likely-doomed effort to try to derail Donald Trump as the GOP nominee for President. As The Huffington Post reports:

Billionaires, tech CEOs and top members of the Republican establishment flew to a private island resort off the coast of Georgia this weekend for the American Enterprise Institute’s annual World Forum, according to sources familiar with the secretive gathering.

The main topic at the closed-to-the-press confab? How to stop Republican front-runner Donald Trump.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google co-founder Larry Page, Napster creator and Facebook investor Sean Parker, and Tesla Motors and SpaceX honcho Elon Musk all attended. So did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), political guru Karl Rove, House Speaker Paul Ryan, GOP Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Cory Gardner (Colo.), Tim Scott (S.C.), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Ben Sasse (Neb.), who recently made news by saying he “cannot support Donald Trump.”…

…Philip Anschutz, the billionaire GOP donor whose company owns a stake in Sea Island, was also there, along with Democratic Rep. John Delaney, who represents Maryland. Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, was there, too, a Times spokeswoman confirmed.

We’re not saying Republicans are wrong to be having this kind of a meeting in order to figure out how to stop Trump. What we are saying is that Republicans probably should have had this kind of meeting about six months ago.

► Jason Salzman is keeping track of Colorado Republicans who admit that they are supportive of a Trump candidacy. Trump Watch!

► Former New York City Mayor and media billionaire Michael Bloomberg will not run for President in 2016 as an Independent or third-party candidate. Bloomberg had been considering the possibility for months, but ultimately decided that he didn’t want to risk doing anything that might inadvertently guide voters toward Donald Trump.

► The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is filing suit in Seattle as part of an effort to prevent Uber drivers from forming a union.

► Five up, five down. Colorado House Democrats defeated five separate bills on Monday that all sought to weaken or repeal gun safety laws. From a press release out of the House Democrats Press Office:

In a series of party-line votes over more than seven hours of hearings, the House State, Veterans & Military Affairs Committee today defeated five bills intended to increase the prevalence and the threat of guns in everyday life in Colorado.

Three of the bills would have removed varying safety, training and background check requirements for concealed weapons. Another would have repealed a restriction on the transfer of high-capacity ammunition magazines, and the fifth would have allowed a business proprietor to shoot people to death on the mere suspicion of evil intent.

The Neville Nutters — Sen. Tim Neville and his son, Rep. Patrick Neville — were again very active in pushing to get rid of safety regulations. Two bills sponsored by the Neville Nutters would have allowed concealed carry of firearms in public schools while also eliminating training requirements and permits for concealed weapons altogether.

We’re going to repeat that, because you really need to make sure you read this: Two bills sponsored by the Neville Nutters would have allowed concealed carry of firearms in public schools while also eliminating training requirements and permits for concealed weapons altogether.

► No word yet from the U.S. Supreme Court on whether or not a lawsuit filed against Colorado’s decision to legalize marijuana can move forward. The lawsuit, filed by our dickhead neighbors in Nebraska and Oklahoma, has already been rejected by a lower court.

► Colorado House Democrats are working to crack down on companies that do business in Colorado but avoid paying state taxes by creating offshore entities.

OTHER LINKS YOU SHOULD CLICK

► Governor John Hickenlooper has ordered that all flags in Colorado be flown at half-staff in honor of former First Lady Nancy Reagan, who died on Sunday at the age of 94.

► A Colorado Springs City Council Member has drafted a resolution to somehow try to prevent Syrian refugees from moving to Colorado Springs. We hate to break it to you, Councilman Andy Pico, but there are already more than enough reasons for people to avoid moving to Colorado Springs.

ICYMI

► Trump Flirts with Fascism?

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