President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Kamala Harris
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
50%
50%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
70%↑
30%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
September 14, 2006 06:25 PM UTC
36 Comments
Did Salazar really hire an advisor to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to manage his re-election campaign?!?
former head of protocol for the Iranian Embassey
Did Tancredo really sing “Dixie” in front of a bunch of Confederacy sympathizers at a recent speech/rally in South Carolina?!?
What next: “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny”?
“Back To The Border” Tancredo was simply having a Macaca Moment. Has David Duke made an endorsement yet in C.D. 6?
Sorry Petie, bad info. Sal Pace is John Salazar’s campaign manager. You might know Sal Pace best from his karaoke rendition of Olivia Newton John. Actually, he’s Salazar’s District Director on a leave of absence.
As for Salazar’s press Secretary…she’s pretty talented & American.
As for you…you’re a racist.
The Hotline is reporting that New York and Minneapolis are still in the running with New York as the frontrunner. They called the Denver presentation “disasterous”.
http://hotlineblog.n…
it would have meant millions of $$ to the local economy….Even republicans would have appreciated that.
http://www.gjsentine…
Check this out! I told you Bernie was in trouble. I even looked up the donations from Berry to Buescher’s campaign.
At one point Mr. Buescher recorded Berry’s name as Gail Berry. As if to conceal her identity. Maybe he didn’t think we would catch it.
Do you really think that Bernie doesn’t know how to spell Berry’s name? Also, under occupation for Gail Berry he listed it as unknown.
How can it be that Bernie does not know how to spell the woman’s name that he took over as State Rep?
How can it be that Bernie didn’t know Berry’s occupation was a lobbyist? Doesn’t he see her nearly every day at the capital while she is lobbying him for this or that?
I am sure Bob will give back his donations from LLC’s and Bernie shouldn’t be such a hypocrite. Bernie give back the money like you promised.
I don’t know anything about Buescher. Unless he’s an idiot, though, I’m sure he’ll send back the money. After being quoted just yesterday saying he would do so, and considering that we’re only talking about a couple hundred dollars, any other decision would be stupid. (That’s not to say he wouldn’t do so as a matter of ethics anyway; just that there isn’t exactly an ethical crisis going on here to begin with.)
It’ll be more interesting to see what Bob Caskey decides. In that case, we’re talking about thousands of dollars, and the Caskey campaign only $8000 on hand. I doubt that will happen, and this will be interesting fodder for the campaign.
If Bernie follows his own advice and returns the money to comply with the spirit of the law. Then, Bob Caskey has no choice or it will be a glaring campaign issue.
I know that Bob has the good sense to return the money. Since Bob Caskey is the “Great White Hope” of the Western Slope and the Republican Party has put so much effort in electing him – they can get him some more money to Bob from somewhere else.
Hint, hint… come on guys. Send Bob your checks today! Pour it on at the last mile! Show these Dems how our guy Bob Caskey can and will clean up in ’06!
Don’t make a laughing stock out of ol Sybil.
Don’t worry about others making Sybil a laughing stock, you seem to be doing just fine yourself.
of this whole situation is that Bernie’s little LLC money came from the office of the REPUBLICAN State Congresswoman who’s seat Bernie now holds. Hmmm…that doesn’t sound quite right. Probably a better way to put that. Oh well, truth is stanger than fiction.
me money I might consider holding her seat too.
Bill Ritter was endorsed by the Montrose newspaper. I believe it is the first paper to endorse in the governors race. This endorsement proves two things about this campaign. First, it shows what a great campaign Bill Ritter and his supporters have run thus far. They have done a superlative job of reaching out to the whole state with a practical common sense approach to the nuts and bolts issues state government is responsible for.
In contrast, it really shows how poor a campaign Beauprez has run. An endorsement from a major West Slope newspaper should have been a slam dunk for Beauprez. The wheels have been coming off for a long time but this establishes that fact. You can’t flip-flop on major issues, take positions that only the wing nuts believe in, nominate a wing nut for lietenant governor and then expect to carry this state.
You need to change your name from Republican 36 to Democrat operative 36. Our newspaper has endorsed Ritter too. No surprise there.
But, Beauprez could learn a thing or two from Caskey. Caskey is good at not taking a real hard stand on anything. He throws some bones to the “wing nuts” but yet if pressed he doesn’t really go so far as to alianate the moderates who are abandoning Buescher in droves.
Even our moderate/conservative paper said they would consider Caskey for another office at another time – just not against Buescher (not that strong of an endorsement for Buescher I will add).
I don’t think they will be that nice to Beauprez. Perhaps Bob Beauprez can sit down with Bob Caskey and get some pointers.
… but the endorsement of Bernie for HD55 by the Sentinel was not only strong, it was clearly enthusiastic.
Here is a passage from the endorsement:
The editorial board’s lack of enthusiasm for Caskey is clearly shown by their boilerplate comments about him being an ok fellow (and that he might have been a suitable candidate in some other century in some other country).
So, Bernie is “indisputably superb” and Caskey is just “good and decent.”
A similar gulf exists between the candidates for HD54. When the Sentinel endorsed Democrat Richard Alward they referenced his unequivocal stances on important issues. In stark contrast, they slapped around his opponent with concerns about his ambivalence and “genuine questions about the GOP candidate’s capacity for independent thinking.”
Ouch!
that would do Buescher some good and give him great publicity to boot. If Buescher returned the LLC money he was given, hold a press conference and challenged Casky to do the same, Buescher would look more honorable Casky would have to give back the money or it would become an issue. You know it would hurt Casky more than it would hurt Buescher to return that money. And Buescher would look the better man for it.
and it will probably happen tomorrow.
She had to take it down for inaccuracies? Don’t have their facts straight? Guess Angie got the drop on them.
I saw the ad this morning, so I don’t think it ever got taken down. If you want to talk about factual inaccuracies, look at the Denver Posts break down of both Paccione’s and Musgrave’s ads and come to your own conclusion. http://www.denverpos…
The ad you saw was the re-edited version with the more obvious innacuracies changed.
I hear that many of the problems were with the non-spoken portions of the ad, and Musgrave’s people were able to make changes to the on-screen text to bring them closer to the truth.
Now THERE’s a standard all politicians should aspire to!
To the Editor:
In reviewing the Denver Post’s ethics policy we came across this statement:
“When significant inaccuracies are committed by an editorial employee, or a pattern
of errors in stories is detected, a department head or above should be informed of
the problem immediately.”
With your policy as our guide we are contacting you regarding a recent editorial
published on Monday, September 11th, regarding crime in the City of Denver. In it
you mock the valid concerns of those who correctly argue that Denver did not do as
well as other major cities in combating crime during the last twelve years. In fact
the murder rate increased in Denver while it dropped nearly everywhere else.
You claim that the public did not notice this increase. Well, perhaps among the
people you associate with it went unnoticed, because a rise in violent crime works
its way up from the bottom. Oh it will get to your level, but only after much pain
is suffered by those below you. Perhaps you should listen better, or at any rate
read the uniform crime reports published by the FBI.
You go on to aggressively defend the practice of plea bargaining. This is the
practice in which offenders – even violent offenders – plead guilty to lesser
charges to make more serious charges go away. In return for their guilty pleas they
get less time – or even no time – in prison.
You ask your readers to accept that this is just “how the criminal justice system
really works.” You fret that “voters could come to believe that plea agreements are
inherently bad,” and argue that “to the contrary, the community often benefits” from
plea bargains.
Here’s a figure for you to think about. 15 murders a day. 15 murders are committed
each day in the United States by convicted criminals under government supervision –
on probation or parole or some other scheme that gets them out of jail and back into
the community. This figure is from a National Center for Policy study.
It makes a prosecutor who brags about his conviction rate look pretty silly, doesn’t
it?
Another study, followed in the Boston Globe and conducted by the U.S. Justice
Department, found that during a 17-month period criminals released “under
supervision” murdered 13,200 people in the United States and committed more than
200,000 other violent crimes. Almost all of these human beings with lives and hopes
and loved ones where murdered by criminals convicted through the use of the plea
bargain.
Tell us again how this is a benefit to the community?
Sure it serves the prosecutor well enough. He can point to an inflated conviction
rate and then go off to the voters and tell them what a great job he’s doing for
them. But what about the poor guy or gal who gets murdered? 13,200 of them – 17
months.
If 13,200 people died in a 17-month period from food poisoning because the nation’s
meat inspection system wasn’t up to par – would you tell them that’s just how the
system works? Would you tell them to adjust to it and be afraid that they might
think it “inherently bad”?
No, you’d get mad. You’d write about it and tell them to reform the system. But
newspapers like yours seem to have a softer spot for murderers than they do for
business.
You don’t know how bad the system is until you look into the eyes of a victim robbed
of justice in a plea bargain. There was this young mother with a beautiful baby.
The baby’s uncle minded the child and one day the uncle’s friend visited. While the
uncle ran to the store, the baby was sexually and physically assaulted – left with
brain damage, blind, one leg with permanent nerve damage.
The cops did their job, he was caught and arrested. Then the lawyers stepped in,
and in their game struck a plea bargain that dropped the sex charge (so he wouldn’t
experience the stigma of having to register as a sex offender) and left him eligible
for parole after serving just two years in prison.
So now the young mother relives her pain attending hearings to fight to keep the man
who destroyed her baby behind bars. But he’ll get out by 2007. And in the meantime
he gets an education and training and job placement.
For her, it’s the sand pit. Her life is set. She will grow old caring for her
wounded child and on her death bed she will worry about what will become of him when
she’s gone.
The lawyers, the prosecutors, the system – and the newspapers that defend it – have
much to answer for.
Sincerely,
Jim Logue
Board of Directors
The Campaign for Victims of Crime
“This is the practice in which offenders – even violent offenders – plead guilty to lesser charges to make more serious charges go away. In return for their guilty pleas they get less time – or even no time – in prison.”
Dear Jim,
Your attack on Bill Ritter via an attack on the Denver Post while articulate, ignores the actual impact of plea bargaining.
From ‘Law’s Order,’ by David Friedman, of the Santa Clara University School of Law:
“For a real prisoner’s dilemma involving a controversial feature of our legal system, consider plea bargaining.
“The prosecutor calls up the defense lawyer and offers a deal. If the client will plead guilty to second-degree murder, the district attorney will drop the charge of first-degree murder. The accused will lose his chance of acquittal, but he will also lose the risk of going to the chair.
“Such bargains are widely criticized as a way of letting criminals off lightly. Their actual effect may well be the opposite — to make punishment more, not less, severe. How can this be? A rational criminal will accept a plea bargain only if doing so makes him better off — produces, on average, a less severe punishment than going to trial. Does it not follow that the existence of plea bargaining must make punishment less severe?
“To see why that is not true, consider the situation of a hypothetical district attorney and the defendants he prosecutes. There are 100 cases a year; the D.A. has a budget of $100,000. With only $1,000 to spend investigating and prosecuting each case, half the defendants will be acquitted. But if the D.A. can get 90 defendants to cop pleas, he can concentrate his resources on the 10 who refuse, spend $10,000 on each case and get a conviction rate of 90 percent.
“A defendant faces a 90 percent chance of conviction if he goes to trial and makes his decision accordingly. He will reject any proposed deal that is worse for him than a 90 percent chance of conviction but may well accept one that is less attractive than a 50 percent chance of conviction, leaving him worse off than he would be in a world without plea bargaining. All defendants would be better off if none of them accepted the D.A.’s offer, but each is better off accepting. . . . Individual rationality does not always lead to group rationality.”
While your story regarding a poor mother is sad and striking…it tugs at the heart at the expense of the common good. As a (recent) victim of crime I too want the person to be caught and prosecuted. But, I am unwilling to sacrifice the rule of law on the alter of reactionary outrage. The justice system tempers the rage of the victim to conform with the collective values of our community.
Bill Ritter acted in line with the overwhelming majority of DA’s around the country when he balanced the risk of prosecution with the guarantee of retruibution and punishment by plea bargaining. He dedicated his life to public service as a missionary and as a prosecutor for the People of Colorado (when he could have had a 6 or 7 figure salary at any of Denver’s top firms). I, for one, laud his continued dedication to public service and will extend my vote to him in his bid for Governor.
for the mother and baby for, as you say, “the common good?”
Your argument sounds very much like the old Soviet line about breaking a few eggs to make an omelet.
Is a society that denies justice to the weak and vulnerable for “the common good” a just society?
“Bill Ritter acted in line with the overwhelming majority of DA’s around the country” and that got us the figures he cites here: 13,000 murders of innocent people by convicted criminals on release through plea bargains.
Does anyone really want to defend this? Is an election really that important? Is Bill Ritter really so important that you or anyone else would stoop to defend this kind of carnage? I hope not.
I say we reform the system and stop making excuses.
Andy,
Never do I state that we should sacrife ‘justice’ for the common good and shame on you for asserting otherwise. If we are to talk about justice for a victim – how does a victim achieve justice? Do we let a victim take the law into his or her own hands? No. Instead we have built a nation upon the rule of law.
The rule of law charges officers of the court with the responsibility of matching a possible punishment with the crime. This is the role of the DA. Unless all criminals are presumed guilty and unless all criminals commit the same crime the DA must have the power to plea bargain.
Under your argument any criminal that commits any crime at any age must be locked away for the rest of their lives. It is the only way to make sure recitivism cannot occur. Be careful what you wish for, or your favorite beer baron could be hawking silver bullets from a 10×10 cell.
Justice must be just. That means criminals must pay a debt to their victims and the community must be protected from the danger of which the criminal is capable. Ritter founded the Victim’s Assistance program and prosecuted the most dangerous criminals to the fullest extent of the law. A plea bargain does not rob society of justice – rather it is the closest thing we have to acheiving it.
Your argument is a stretch at best. To imply Ritter is responsible for 13,000 murders is not only stupid, it’s unjust.
for 13,000 murders, rather, collectively the system that he and his fellow prosecutors (and you) defend is a cause in those murders.
Look, who ever you are, there are plea bargains and then there are plea bargains that go too far. Prosecutors who shine their “conviction rate” often go too far. The results are clear.
Are you actually defending a system that gives a child sex offender two years? Do you defend a system that results in 13,000 murders over a 17-month period?
Listen, I don’t have a favorite beer baron (I lean to the Green side on most issues) but I have the same standing (as the family member of a victim of violent crime) as Cindy Sheehan has (as the family member of a soldier killed in Iraq)and if we’re going to count heads the plea bargain system is killing a lot more Americans than the war in Iraq.
But I guess you agree with your favorite President when he tells us we are fighting the good fight and there’s no other way, so let’s keep on keeping on.
Don’t worry, be happy, and support the system.
Dude, Ritter FOUNDED the Victim Assistance program. Then he instituted a results-based support program for the victims of violent crime. And that not being enough, he launched a statewide support and community based model other states use today.
So when you try to attack him for not being a “victim advocate” as a DA?!?!? THAT DOG WON’T HUNT.
Dem’s would do well to talk-up his outreach and victim support programs, but heck — they’re doing so well right now — why bother tweaking the message?
As for Republicans, we need to just stay far far away from the subject. Because we’ll lose the argument.
http://www.edsdirtys…
Ed needs to come clean with voters.
I notice you’ve been registered for almost 3 minutes when you posted this. That website is so full of holes…
Look out, this poster has been registered a month!!!! OOOOOH!
Does raise an interesting question. What is going on with Perlmutter and disclosing his past?
It’s not the registration, mon colonel, it’s the weblink he posts. This kind of sleazy site does nothing for the debate about this race. It is ridiculous to expect that an attorney would reveal a client list – it would be incredibly inappropriate.
There are too many of these attack sites on both sides of these races, and they are pathetic attempts to smear – not any kind of discourse about issues. I happen to know both Ed and Rick, and you know what? They are both bright, committed, and interested in making their district and country better. I happen to believe in the policy stances of one more than the other, but that’s because of their policy stances, not who they legally represented as an lawyer, or because of some essay they wrote while they were in their teens. People like DanJ75 can’t sift through the issues, so they resort to smearing candidates. It’s intellectually lazy.
should be renamed to: Let’s capture and punish who destroyed the WTC.
Then again, as the Republican president, Bush’s priorities have always been skewed. Just months after declaring he wanted bin Laden “dead or alive,” Bush said, “I truly am not that concerned about him.” Turning his attention away from Bin Laden, Bush trained his focus on Iraq — a country he now admits had “nothing” to do with 9/11. So now, after 100’s of Billions of $’s (where is fiscal conservatism again?) spent on an illegal, ill-planned quagmire(which, by the way, virtually 100% of Republican legislators refuse to condemn or adopt a succesful plan for), here we are.
The November elections are just around the corner. After squandering the good will and unity of the American people and the world, after thousands of needless deaths and 10’s of thousands of maimed and injured (including innocent women and children), it’s high time to hold our elected officials accountable. The majority party has to go! They’re a tragedy, and history will record them as such.
Those who can’t see this……..in my opinion are as full of a dangerous hubris and blind loyalty.
The majority party has to go.