UPDATE: The Colorado “Independent” – a left-wing rag bought and paid for by the same donors behind Morse and Giron – spends almost 1400 words today trying to excuse explain away Morse’s sickness comments. If Morse was so clear, then why do his allies need a veritable novel to clarify his comments?

Senate President John Morse and State Senator Angela Giron are suing to pull a Free Colorado TV ad that quotes Morse talking about “cleansing a sickness from our souls” on the Senate floor while he was trashing the gun rights movement for trying to block his bills.

Reports KDVR‘s Eli Stokols:

DENVER — With less than two weeks until voters cast ballots in the first two recall elections in Colorado history, both state lawmakers defending their seats are turning to the courts — again.

On Tuesday, an attorney for Senate President John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, and Sen. Angela Giron, D-Pueblo, filed a cease and desist order with Xfinity asking the cable provider to stop airing an ad by a group supporting their recall that offers a misleading and context-free interpretation of something Morse said back in March.

While Stokols may dub the quote misleading, a review of the quote in context shows that Morse was talking about the gun rights movement, not only gun violence, right before he launches into his tirade about “a sickness in our souls.”

Free Colorado clarified their position in a statement, saying:

John Morse is a lousy revisionist historian. In a rambling, angry tirade on the Senate floor, Senator Morse bashed gun owners, gun organizations, and gun dealers and manufacturers, punctuated with his now infamous ‘cleansing a sickness from our souls’ invective. Words have meaning. We encourage the media to play the Morse speech in its entirety, and let the people decide for themselves.

Taking the Morse bait, Stokols fails to mention that, after quoting the RFK quote, Morse expounds on what “cleansing a sickness from our souls” means, as he sees it. Morse rails against gun owners who sent emails and made calls to legislatures, comparing them to criminals.

As if it weren’t obvious enough, Morse goes back to the trough one more time — “sickness”, Morse says after referring to the public outcry from gun owners.

Eli, rewind it and listen to “sicknesses from our souls, and one “sickkkknnnneeeeeees.” Morse can run but he can’t hide.

Here’s how the Associated Press contextualized Morse’s remarks at the time:

Democratic Senate President John Morse claimed victory in the state’s overall gun-control debate, even as he conceded the battle grew ugly.

“Cleansing a sickness from our souls doesn’t come easy. It’s gruesome,” Morse said in a short speech announcing the withdrawal of his assault-weapon liability measure.

Morse’s comments punctuated a nasty, drawn-out debate that drew thousands to the state Capitol over recent days. The gun package jammed legislative emails, prompted several gun-supporting businesses to threaten to leave Colorado and left one man facing criminal charges for threatening messages he allegedly sent a Democratic sponsor of some of the bills.

As Ari Armstrong has written on Complete Colorado’s Page TwoMorse precedes his infamous quote decrying the gun industry and those dedicated to gun rights, making it reasonable to assume his next attack encompasses those two groups.

You can hear the entire floor speech, in context, here.

Morse and Giron’s protest is ironic considering they are running ads deceitfully claiming that Republican candidates Bernie Herpin and George Rivera want to rob the birth control right out of ladies’ purses. Despite local leaders’ best efforts to have those deceptive ads pulled, they remain on air.

Conservatives are obviously chomping at the bit for a fight over Morse’s outlandish quote, and the Democratic lawyers seem to be walking right into it. Or maybe they don’t have a choice — maybe this quote is so damaging that Morse backers have to do whatever they can to purge it from the airwaves, you know, like a sickness from our souls. Whichever, it is clear this is a debate recall-supporters want to have.