The dust-up over harsher penalties for child rapists in the form of Jessica’s Law between House Speaker Mark Ferrandino (D-Denver), who sent the bill to the kill committee, and House Assistant Minority Leader Libby Szabo (R-Arvada) has been, to put it mildly, heated.

Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly has taken Ferrandino (or Fernandino depending on the episode) to task for his legislative tactics, and in effect, protecting pedophiles. The Democrat hack atop The Denver Post’s editorial page, Curtis Hubbard, has attempted to defend Ferrandino by crying victimhood, all the while ignoring the substance of the issue — Jessica’s Law itself. 

Hubbard’s ignorance on the issue exposed itself pretty well last night on O’Reilly’s show (see the full exchange here):

O’Reilly: Do you, as editorial page editor of The Denver Post, support Jessica’s Law or not?

Hubbard: Listen, I don’t know enough about it.

That’s not surprising considering, as we speculated yesterday, it appears Hubbard cribbed his column on the topic from a fundraising letter sent on behalf of the Colorado Democratic Party.

But back to Ferrandino and the battle with the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Szabo.

Getting pummeled as he is, Ferrandino has been looking for ways to show Rep. Szabo that “he’s the boss.” After all, he hasn’t taken kindly to her public condemnations and opposition. So how does a man like Ferrandino show Szabo who’s boss? He has reportedly been holding her bills in committee and forcing her to make several appearances in his kill committee, all normal stuff that politicians use to flex their muscle against other politicians. Here’s where Ferrandino gets a little weird and a lot petty.

On February 27th, Rep. Szabo requested official House Tributes to recognize 6 Jefferson County School District high schoolers who had participated in a local youth leadership program. According to sources, the Tributes were delivered to Ferrandino for his signature on March 4th so that they could be presented to the students in person when they visited the Capitol on March 5th. Nearly two weeks later, Ferrandino has yet to deliver the Tributes requested to honor those 6 JeffCo high school students. Sources also report that Tributes requested after Szabo’s have been signed and delivered by Ferrandino.

What kind of politician uses high schoolers to punish a political opponent? We here at the Peak have seen pretty much everything and our level of cynicism is pretty healthy, but the level of personal and professional pettiness exhibited by Mark Ferrandino is striking.