December 21, 2010 10:16 PM UTC

Lots of Eggs in the Lame-Duck Basket

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Bill Martinez has been confirmed for the District Court bench in Colorado by the Senate, reports the Denver Business Journal, filling an 18-month old vacancy.

A flurry of activity at the end of the lame-duck session of Congress–KUNC reports:

Senator Mark Udall praised the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the military’s ban on gays serving openly in armed forces, but says it was part of a larger defense bill that’s still pending.

“It would increase pay for service members and it contains a provision I authored to allow military families to include adult children on their TriCare health insurance policies until the age of 26, just as civilian families can now do through the Affordable Care Act we passed this year,” says Udall.

The Colorado Democrat says he’d like to see that passed before the senate adjourns. And he will keep pushing for the passage of several public lands bills that would affect the state…

Sen. Mark Udall is also reportedly trying one last time to win confirmation in the Senate of Bill Martinez to the U.S. District Court, a nomination that, like many around the country, has been stymied by GOP holds and procedural stalling for almost two years–despite the fact that the vacancies on the federal court for Colorado are considered an emergency situation.

The Durango Herald reports on some of the specific priorities that the Colorado delegation is working on with local support as apart of the omnibus lands bill–a bill we’ve heard is unlikely to move at this point, meaning the list of protections for Colorado natural areas they had hoped to see passed will be left for incoming Rep. Scott Tipton and the new House majority.

Have we mentioned recently how “hopeful” Tipton’s new constituents are that he will do the right thing on forest protection in his district, or transportation funding, or any of the issues he’s telling people not to sweat in the wake of his triumphant “cut the government in half” campaign? The public lands protection that local governments around his district support is just one of a range of issues where Tipton has the choice of pleasing the stakeholders of CD-3, or the “Tea Party” ideologues who boosted him into office. Because he won’t be able to please both.