May 22, 2015 10:49 AM UTC

Get More Smarter on Friday (May 22)

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• by: Colorado Pols

A sopping wet Memorial Day Weekend to you! 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…

► Sen. Cory Gardner’s “pay twice” proposal for birth control women can currently receive copay-free under Obamacare is going over like a lead Zeppelin. The Denver Post’s Lynn Bartels has an updated story with more reaction from pro-choice advocates–quoting Karen Middleton of NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado:

As we saw throughout his career and campaign — when he denied a ‘personhood’ bill he cosponsored even existed — Cory Gardner can’t be trusted when it comes to Colorado women and their health care.

With this legislation, he’s trying to limit women’s access to contraception by undermining the Affordable Care Act and double-billing them, first for insurance then for full retail cost of their birth control. This adds up to hundreds, even thousands, of dollars many women don’t have in their budget — and if birth control isn’t affordable, it isn’t accessible.

And Dr. Mark S. DeFrancesco, president of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists:

The Affordable Care Act removed many barriers to preventive care that keeps women healthy. By making contraceptives available to women without a co-pay, it has truly increased access to contraception, thereby decreasing unintended pregnancies, and allowing women to better plan their futures. Unfortunately, instead of improving access, this bill would actually make more women have to pay for their birth control, and for some women, the cost would be prohibitive.

Ouch. So much for that, Sen. Promise Keeper.

► The GOP-controlled House passed a Band-Aid to forestall negative press over the Aurora VA hospital disaster for a couple of weeks. Rep. Mike Coffman, who has chaired the Oversight Subcommittee supervising this project for years, hopes to use that time to thread the precarious needle between solving the problem and being part of it.

► Republicans are itching for Hillary Clinton to testify about the Benghazi attacks–and so are Democrats, confident that she’ll make mincemeat out of Republicans obsessed with a story that has already been beat to death without uncovering anything scandalous whatsoever.

Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► The feds say Gov. John Hickenlooper’s sage grouse protection plan needs to be tougher–and not on the sage grouse.

► Those dreaded high-stakes standardized tests for our kids next year will at least be a little shorter.

► The state has agreed to kick in $1 million to help keep the Southwest Chief Amtrak passenger train rolling through southern Colorado on its way from Chicago to Los Angeles.

► Speaking of transportation, you’ll like the less-congested “Lexus Lanes” on the Boulder Turnpike, assuming you can afford them.

► After a damning report highlighting serious breakdowns of discipline and widespread abuse of detainees by the Denver Sheriff Department, Mayor Michael Hancock and other Denver official promise better.

OTHER LINKS YOU SHOULD CLICK

► Yes, all this rain is moving the needle for Colorado’s water situation–and downstream states–in a positive direction.

ICYMI

► Hickenlooper makes Jefferson County Schools superintendent and political staff look silly, giving us another chance to post another gratuitous photo of Katy Perry.

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