ANIMAL MURDERERS ON TRIAL: Boulder DA Stan Garnett’s Decision To Prosecute Elk-Shooting Cop A Sign Of Begging Off AG Race?

Published on January 18, 2013 by

Boulder DA Stan Garnett announced today that the Boulder cops who murdered an innocent elk and turned it into jerky have been arrested and could face prison time. A decision to prosecute seems to suggest only one thing — that Stan Garnett, the losing Attorney General candidate in 2010, is deciding not to take another stab at the job in 2014.

Reports the Boulder Daily Camera:

District Attorney Stan Garnett today announced that Boulder police officers Sam Carter and Brent Curnow were arrested this morning in connection with the Jan. 1 shooting of a towering bull elk on Mapleton Hall, saying investigators determined the two men conspired to kill the elk as a trophy and for its meat.

The officers are facing felony counts of tampering with physical evidence, attempt to influence a public servant and forgery, as well as misdemeanor charges of unlawful taking of a trophy elk, a Samson law surcharge, killing an elk out of season, use of an electronic device to take an elk, and official misconduct. 

The TV ad writes itself.

It seems Stan couldn’t withstand the pressure from the Patchouli-perfumed PETA protesters. An army of over 10,000 angry animists petitioned, called and emailed until Garnett gave in.

We figured if Garnett had any future statewide aspirations he would call off the lynch mob and avoid associating himself with an easily mockable high profile case.

That was a week ago, when there were still some unanswered questions that the “serious Boulder prosecutor” has resolved by his announcement today. As we said at the time:

If he runs for AG this time, every other case he has refused to prosecute will be contrasted by his decision to go “John Wayne” on the renegade elk killer. What better way for Republicans to prove that “serious Boulder prosecutor” is an oxy-moron?

But in Boulder, morons are everywhere. Now we get to find out whether the DA is one himself.

Mystery solved? Stan’s staying in Boulder?  

 

WEAK LEADER: Feeble Ferrandino Caves Again On Speaker Pro Tem Appointment

Published on January 7, 2013 by

Normally the Speaker Pro Tem pick in the state House of Representatives is fairly uneventful and has typically been used by Democratic Speakers to fill some geographic, demographic or philosophical void in their leadership structure.

Previous Democratic Pro Tems like Cheri Jahn (philosophically middle of the road) and Kathleen Curry (moderate and from the Western Slope) fit that bill. Ferrandino’s appointment of liberal Boulder Democrat Claire Levy offers no similar benefit to help moderate what is already a VERY liberal and metro Denver-centric Democratic leadership in the House.

Every member of the senior House Democratic leadership…Speaker, Leader, Assistant Leader, Whip, Caucus Chair and three of the four members of the Joint Budget Committee (JBC), is from Denver or Boulder. Levy serves on the JBC, so she’s already at the table. Ferrandino has only three leadership appointments, so it makes little sense for him to expend two of his three appointments on liberal Levy.

Cue what is quickly becoming the all-too-familiar tale of Feeble Ferrandino. Sources inside the Capitol report nothing less than a temper tantrum by Levy threatening something akin to holding her breath until she was picked for the post. Sources also report that Ferrandino wanted to appoint one of his young up-and-comers to the spot until he hit Levy’s resistance and caved. Another pick would have made sense given the extreme centralized power in Denver and Boulder.

Either way, Ferrandino’s inability to exercise leadership over his caucus on his OWN appointment is troubling and should be even more troubling for Guv Hick who is widely reported to be relying on Ferrandino to be his blockade against the onslaught of radically liberal bills.

Maybe Hick should order a couple more cases of antacid…

 

BOULDER BANS DRILLING WITH $5 GAS: Will Longmont Join The Anti-Energy Coalition?

Published on May 9, 2012 by

With gas reaching $4.39/gallon in Colorado, Boulder County stepped up last month to fulfill its role as the capital of tone-deaf liberalism, extending a ban on oil and gas exploration in non-municipal areas. Tonight, Longmont's city council meets to discuss other, illegal drilling bans. Despite Longmont's reputation for being the city of sanity in a county sea of left wing wackos, there is a chance Longmont will join Boulder in their anti-drilling campaign. 

One of the proposed regulations at the city council is a ban on oil and gas drilling in any area zoned as residential. The Attorney General's office says the ban is "unenforceable" as state laws and permitting supersede local rules and regulations. 

Councilman Brian Bagley says he's "not coming from a sky is falling, extreme left, environmentalist prospective" in proposing the ban.

If you vote to ban oil and gas drilling Brian, uh, yes you are. 

These local drilling ban attempts are the latest in the anti-drilling left wing campaign to ban drilling in any way they can. 

Political operative Patrick Davis sums it up nicely in a recent email blast:


 

Anti-drilling groups are out trying to create panic in communities up and down Colorado's Front Range.  

Even though gas prices are at record breaking levels, and even though jobs are in scarce supply, activists are out trying to convince local governments to pass new oil and gas restrictions at the local level that make it difficult or impossible to produce the energy resources that fuel our cars and heat our homes.  

Most communities that have been spun up by extreme environmentalists have, after careful consideration, ignored the anti-drilling hype and thought better of creating a new maze of local regulations. Arapahoe and El Paso Counties, for example, both considered adopting extensive new limitations on oil and gas development in their areas, but then quickly backed off when discovering that Colorado already has the most restrictive oil and gas regulations in the country.

These bans, while pleasing to environmental activists, don't seem to have much basis in law. Assistant Boulder County Attorney Conrad Lattes recently told Boulder County Commissioners that their outright ban on all oil and gas development was not "legally possible."

From The Denver Post:

Toor told the commissioners' meeting audience that he was very sympathetic to their concerns and their calls for a permanent county drilling ban. But he also recognizes "the legal constraints that we have" in regulating oil and gas operations, which, he said, are "limits that can't be wished away."

Ultimately the issue isn't whether a ban will remain in place, as these types of bans have been defeated in court many times, but whether Longmont wants to lump itself in with the left wing wackos of Boulder.

Or, as Patrick Davis sums up: "Do local governments across Colorado support a sensible domestic energy production that creates jobs, or do they stand with the anti-drilling zealots in Boulder?"

 

CHECK YOUR RECORD: Obama Skipped Votes On Student Loan Bill He Is Campaigning On In Boulder Today

Published on April 24, 2012 by

President Obama comes to Boulder today to campaign for the youth vote based on a bill he skipped the vote for five years when he was a US Senator. In a case of delicious irony, he missed the vote five years ago to campaign for President.

Obama is pushing legislation that would stop a student loan rate hike, hoping to score some points with a young population where he has seen his numbers slip. Unfortunately, there aren't many political points left to score after Mitt Romney said he supported the legislation as well. 

Reports Politico's Byron Tau:

In 2007, then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama missed two votes on the student loan interest bill that he now wants Congress to extend.  

Obama twice skipped the Senate vote on the College Cost Reduction and Access Act when the bill came to the Senate floor first in July and again in September of 2007, according to public records.  

The bill, introduced by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) and signed into law by President George W. Bush, first cleared the Senate in July on a 78 to 18 vote, with Obama as one of only four senators to abstain. Obama did not cast a vote again in September, after the House and Senate had ironed out different versions of the bill. He was on the conference committee assigned to merge the House and Senate versions of the bill.

As Obama is doing whatever it takes to move the news away from employment and gas prices, even pushing bills he skipped the vote on four years ago, we thought we'd take the opportunity to remind our readers how little Obama has done on the number one issue to voters, jobs.

Since Obama took office in January 2009, Bureau of Labor Statistics data for Colorado shows employment is down by 33,290, as of March. With a net negative jobs record in Colorado, no wonder Obama is trying to push the conversation elsewhere.

But, before Obama tries to change the conversation to another topic he might want to make sure he has an actual record to campaign on. 


 

SHOCK POLL: Ciruli Associates Poll Has Obama Approval Rating At 25% In Broomfield, 36% In JeffCo

Published on April 19, 2012 by

The Presidential election in Colorado is likely to be won or lost in the swing metro area counties. That makes the most recent Ciruli Associates poll especially troubling for the Obama campaign as it found Obama with near Jimmy Carter approval ratings in key swing counties.

The poll was conducted April 6-10 with 500 Colorado voters in seven metro area counties (Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, & Jefferson). Rick Santorum dropped out of the race on April 10. 

The poll found Obama with an approval rating underwater in the seven Denver metro counties, at 45% approve to 47% disapprove, but the real trouble was found in counties that the Obama campaign has been targeting. 

In Broomfield County, the poll found a shockingly low 25% approval of Obama's job performance. The caveat is that the sample size was probably pretty small for Broomfield, but the same poll also found a 67% approval rating of Governor Hickenlooper in Broomfield. 

The two counties that many observers expect could determine the election are Jefferson and Arapahoe. In Jefferson, Obama's approval rating is 36%, compared to Hick's 65%. In Arapahoe, it's 42% to Hick's 60%. No wonder Hick has refused to formally endorse Obama.

That JeffCo number has got to lift the spirits of Joe Coors Jr's campaign, as the heart of CD7 is in JeffCo, while stirring up some heartburn at Obama HQ in Chicago. 

This poll is also bad news for all the down-ticket Democrat legislative candidates running in these key counties. With Obama so widely despised in JeffCo and Broomfield, Democrats like Diane Primavera, Max Tyler, Andy Kerr, and Brittany Pettersen have reason to worry. And no, Brittany, your community organizing background won’t help you overcome a down-ticket drag this big.  

Ciruli Associates found Obama getting 44% of the metro area vote in a head-to-head match up with Romney, down from the 61% he received in the metro area against John McCain. Romney was only at 30% in the metro area, with 17% choosing "other" and 5% saying "don't know." As the poll only had 67% GOPers supporting Romney, his total is guaranteed to rise once the party coalesces around him as the nominee.

At this point in the race, most observers agree that the President's approval rating is a better predictor than head-to-head matchups as swing voters still know very little about Romney. While the political junkies who read this blog know plenty about him, the voters who decide elections have yet to fully tune in. 

As Obama gets virtually the same support in a match up with Romney as his approval rating, the approval rating seems to be a good indicator of his true support. 

It should also be noted that with an approval rating of only 45% in the metro area, Obama's approval rating is guaranteed to be lower statewide, where the balance of Republicans and Democrats is more even. Possibly even lower than the 39% the last Ciruli Associates poll found last December.

What's clear from this poll is Obama is in big trouble where it counts and Romney has some work to do shoring up Republican support and conveying his message to swing voters. 

 
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