CO-04 (Special Election)
See Full Big Line
(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
See Full Big Line
(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
See Full Big Line
(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
See Full Big Line
(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
See Full Big Line
(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
See Full Big Line
(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
See Full Big Line
(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
See Full Big Line
(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
See Full Big Line
(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
See Full Big Line
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
April 13, 2009 11:40 PM UTC
23 Comments
In 2004, Ken Buck prosecuted a veteran who showed up to a George Bush for Marilyn Musgrave rally with a “Veterans for Kerry” sign.
making T-shirts,
http://www.greeleytribune.com/…
he’d have time to read the Fourth Amendment.
http://www.dogdoo.com/Default.asp
I am thinking a grande.
He tries to do something about rampant identity theft using stolen social security numbers by undocumented workers and you applaud out of partisanship? You guys are off of your rockers.
I wouldn’t wish identity theft on anybody…except maybe the ACLU. I can take years, if ever, to clean up the wreckage that this does to innocent people and you think its funny.
it’s all about the political end-gane, screw the constitution! Didn’t Ben Franklin say that first, in Poor Richard’s Alamanac perhaps?
How did that go? “The endes justifie the means, forsooth ye forget to plante a Minnow at the base o’ ev’ry corn stalke.”
🙂
Buck had no idea who was stealing an identity from whom, but he figured he’d find something if he looked that Amalia’s tax service. If he decided to raid your accountant looking for crimes, and found you had given money to, say.. EarthFirst, and that, because they’re a terrorist organization, you needed to be charged, would you have an issue?
I thought so.
The issue here is not “identity theft” or “illegal immigration.” It is the expectation of security and privacy guaranteed by the 4th Amendment.
And Buck just had his ass handed to him. If you’re for him, he can’t do his present job–should he get a promotion? If you’re agin’ him–he can’t do his present job and he’s a partisan hack who has validated why we have judicial oversight of self-serving officials.
Identity theft is a crime that should be punished. Using the issue to wave the bloody flag about immigrants in order to advance one’s career is a whole other issue. Having yokel law enforcement clowns on fishing expeditions through people’s tax records with no probable cause is a very bad thing for law-abiding citizens.
It’s between you and the IRS. Should any financial type in any way violate confidentiality, they are in huge trouble with the IRS, the feds and eventually the state.
They cannot disclose it except by direct court order, as I understand it. This fishing expedition did not meet the standards.
Financial people, whether they are bankers, accountants, lawyers, etc., know it’s their ticket to make a living should they disclose without a direct court order. With lawyers, the confidentiality is even harder to puncture. Like damn near impossible.
A DA can’t do it without specific warrants aimed at specific people. In this case, he didn’t have it. He went fishing, and rightly had his line snapped.
by trolling like that. It inspired some really good responses, so thanks.
Don’t you just hate when those judges use the law to determine legality? Sometimes anti-ACLU rhetoric like that reminds me of the villians in Scooby Doo: “I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for that pesky Bill of Rights.”
Plus, using Buck’s logic, wouldn’t it just be easier to lock up every brown person in Weld County and sort ’em out later? They might be doing something illegal, so it’s perfectly alright.
Although identity theft is a serious issue, these immigrants are not engaging in the kind of credit-ruining ID theft that people are so afraid of. They are not using the SSNs to obtain fraudulent home loans or rack up huge amounts of credit card debt. In the vast majority of these cases, the SSNs are used only to get employment, and therefore to pay taxes. If these workers did not obtain SSNs, they would be working off the books and shorting state and federal governments millions in tax revenue.
You should be more worried about your SSN falling into the hands of criminal Americans than immigrants who just want to work to feed their families.
While I’m not trying to defend Buck’s actions, the use of SSNs by illegal immigrants isn’t exactly as benign as you make it out to be.
Let’s say you’re working for most of your life and you get hurt on the job. When you file a workman’s comp claim, they check and make sure you aren’t working anywhere else. If an illegal immigrant is using your SSN it can make it so you’ll lose your benefits because the government thinks you’re trying to scam them. It can also create income tax issues because if the person who uses your SSN claims enough exemptions, they they won’t pay the right amount of tax.
You’re right that it’s not as bad as, say, someone opening a credit card or getting a loan in your name. There are definitely far more damaging forms of ID theft.
What we need is a way for immigrants to be able to work without having to break the law to do so.
and District Attorney Buck, the former chief of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Attorney’s, knows that. Looking for illegal aliens or those who have committed identity theft doesn’t absolve him of his duties as an elected prosecutor to follow the law, including the procedures that can be used to obtain returns. His ambition outruns his judgment almost every time.
According to Ken Buck.
Don’t forget that Buck gets to spend the next few months in the national spotlight prosecuting the murder of Angie Zapata. That’s sure to sure make a lot of the hardcore wingers that Buck is courting uncomfortable.
The trial is scheduled for nine days. There might be some fall-out, depending on the verdict, but Buck won’t be in the spotlight prosecuting the Zapata trial for long.
Posturing and showing that you take an issue seriously matters as much. Indeed, what better reason to give for running for U.S. Senate than, “I couldn’t solve the problems that need to be solved as a D.A., we need new laws, not just enforcement of existing ones.”
I’m also somewhat surprised that Mesa County D.A. Pete Hautzinger (now Republican, once a Democratic HD candidate), who is never shy about grabbing headlines and has serious political ambitions hasn’t made a bid for some sort of higher office.
Buck is making sure his conservative credentials are established, and he doesn’t need to win in court to do that.
Hurts in a general. The curse of the Colorado Republican.
…when your own paper editorializes against you, saying “It’s time to get serious”
http://www.greeleytribune.com/…
Their editorials are so out of touch it’s ridiculous. Last one I read was over a fight they are having with the mayor because he said they should go out of business.
The mayor of a medium size city says on the air (of conservative talk show host Amy Oliver, no less) that he wishes that his city’s paper of record, not to mention an employer of his constituents, fails. I don’t know what the ed board’s response was, but that pretty much makes the mayor look like a jackass regardless.