February 29, 2016 12:42 PM UTC

Get More Smarter on Monday (Feb. 29)

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• by: Colorado Pols

This is historic — “Get More Smarter” won’t use the date “Feb. 29” for another four years! 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…

► State Senate President Bill Cadman is eating a plateful of crow this morning after Attorney General Cynthia Coffman issued a ruling on the so-called “Hospital Provider Fee”:

Providing guidance on the question of whether the state can reclassify the 2009 hospital provider fee to exclude the revenue from caps imposed by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, thus sparing the budget from large unnecessary cuts elsewhere, Republican Attorney General Cynthia Coffman has released her long-awaited opinion requested by Gov. John Hickenlooper. GOP Senate President Bill Cadman, who began this year’s legislative session by declaring any such fix a nonstarter, isn’t going to like it…

…You’ll recall that Cadman blew up negotiations over the hospital provider fee at the beginning of the session by circulating an opinion from the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Legal Services suggesting the fix wouldn’t pass muster under TABOR. No one is impugning the credibility of OLLS’s staffers, but the fact is that their opinion is strictly advisory and nonbinding. Cadman was on shaky ground to summarily declare the hospital provider fee fix dead on the strength of this one nonbinding opinion. As of now, Cadman has no legal leg left to stand on.

► What’s that you asked about? The KFC? I love chicken…oh, you said, “KKK.” Republican Presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is having some trouble explaining his Sunday talk show dodge of a question about accepting the endorsement of David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan. From Politico:

Donald Trump blamed CNN for providing a “lousy earpiece” in explaining his non-answer to the network on Sunday when asked to disavow the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke…

…A day before the Super Tuesday primaries, Trump made sure to repeat the fact that he had disavowed Duke.

“Now, if you look on Facebook, right after that, I also disavowed David Duke. When we looked at it, and looked at the question, I disavowed David Duke,” he said. “So I disavowed David Duke all weekend long, on Facebook, on Twitter and obviously, it’s never enough. Ridiculous.”

► Hillary Clinton handily defeated Bernie Sanders in Saturday’s South Carolina Primary, making “Super Tuesday” super-duper important for Sanders. Colorado is one of several states that Sanders is hoping to pick up on Tuesday, hence his big rally in Ft. Collins over the weekend.

Let’s get ready to cauccuusssss…

Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie endorsed Donald Trump for President on Friday, then went out and botched his surrogate duties by being completely unprepared to answer relatively straightforward questions about Trump’s policy proposals.

► You can always count on the Adams County Republican Party to make some sort of dumb-assed comment about Confederate flags and liberal racists, or something.

► It seems increasingly inevitable that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for President, and the bandwagon is starting to fill up. Crazypants Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions on Sunday endorsed Trump for President. From the Washington Post:

The endorsement represents a major blow to Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), one of Trump’s two chief rivals for the Republican nomination. Cruz has touted his strict positions on border security and deportation, leaning on his strident commitment to conservative ideology as a key rationale for his candidacy. In the run-up to the March 1 Super Tuesday primary elections, Cruz has tried to undermine Trump’s conservative bona fides on immigration reform, characterizing his plan as “amnesty.”

The announcement is the latest in a series of high-profile endorsements by prominent GOP voices including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arizona governor Jan Brewer. Sessions’s appearance came as a surprise for those in attendance, who cheered when he took the stage.

Ready, set, implode!

► Colorado Republicans won’t have the chance to choose a candidate for President during Tuesday’s caucuses, but there is still plenty at stake with a baker’s dozen of GOP Senate candidates seeking their Party’s nomination. State Sen. Tim Neville is widely expected to dominate the grassroots caucus process in Colorado, which is causing no shortage of consteration for Republicans.

► Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) has been speaking in-step with Senate Republican leaders about refusing to hold confirmation hearings for a new Supreme Court nominee. As our local PolitFact Check reports, Gardner needs to work on his American History lessons.

► You will not get autism from clicking on this link any more than you might if you received a childhood immunization.

► Expect a relatively slow week in the Colorado legislature as non-Metro Denver legislators are given time off to travel home for Tuesday evening caucuses. The Grand Junction Sentinel takes a look at this week’s legislative agenda.

► Government officials are looking at measures to decrease the number of fatalities from traffic accidents (of course, statistically, you are now just as likely to be killed by a firearm in America).

OTHER LINKS YOU SHOULD CLICK

► Well, look at that! Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas really does have the ability to speak out on the Supreme Court. On Monday, Thomas audibly asked questions during oral arguments for the first time in 10 years.

► Do gutters have gutters? The Republican race for President has really gotten into more, uh, gutters lately.

ICYMI

► Bernie Sanders may be running out of states that will support his candidacy for President, but he’s not lacking in finances.

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