Fear the sweater vest!

So much for Governor Mitch Daniels’ “truce” on social issues. Rick Santorum refused to raise the white flag on his principles and charged ahead. Tonight he celebrates a trifecta victory in Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado, all but shattering the myth of Romney’s inevitable cruise to victory in the presidential primary.

I’ll admit it. I didn’t see it coming. To be sure, this victory comes with caveats, as I wrote here. Santorum picked up only five delegates tonight and has 22 delegates to Romney’s 106, but it’s a move in the right direction. (The delegate count is here.)

But Santorum understands something that few of the other candidates can put into words: that the power to mandate is the power to compel and compulsion must be grounded on something higher than the mere will of the sovereign. This is a very effective argument against Barack Obama, but it it also a very effective one against Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, who also supported the Wall Street bailouts, cap and trade (taxing breathing) and of course, the individual mandate in health insurance. Both Gingrich and Romney are essentially progressives in their view that there is nothing government mustn’t do.

(more…)

Santorum: Not Much of an Opening for the Former Senator

Several sources are predicting a Santorum surge in Missouri and Minnesota tonight, but there’s reason for pause before we order out the “Rick 2012″ bumper stickers. Caucuses depend on two things: money and organization. Santorum has neither. Despite an impressive win in Iowa, it is getting harder and harder for him to keep up, because he is second to last in the delegate count with only eight so far.   That may well change tonight, but here are some reasons to be skeptical of a Santorum win, even if he manages to pull off a victory in Missouri or Minnesota:

1. Even if Santorum wins in Missouri, it’s nothing more than a beauty contest. Knowing full well that their vote won’t have any effect on the delegate count, election officials are predicting that only 23% of party loyalists will bother showing up to the polls, according to stl.today.com. Given that Newt Gingrich’s name isn’t on the ballot, Santorum is hoping to show that his victory in the Show Me State will show GOP activists he’s the best anti-Romney. “Protest vote” or not, Santorum needs the win, but what if he loses to Romney in a symbolic race?
2. Santorum isn’t on the ballot in several other states, including Indiana and Virginia, meaning he will forgo 46 and 49 delegates respectively. Santorum is also not on the ballot in Washington, D.C. and lacks full delegate slates in North Dakota, Ohio, and Illinois.

(more…)

Romney greets a voter in Maine

Mitt Romney has now decisively won (or statically tied) in four states that went for Obama in 2008: Iowa, New Hampshire, Florida, and Nevada. He will assuredly win in Colorado and Arizona–two other parts of the Mormon corridor–and in Michigan, where he is a favored son.

And yet all but Arizona (which John McCain, a carpet bagger, barely held) went to Barack Obama in 2008. What does this mean?  For Republican primaries, this is very odd. No presidential candidate in American history has ever won the nomination without winning South Carolina.

In Nevada, Romney won among nearly every group he was expected to (only 9 percent of Mormons voted against him) and did nicely among groups he wasn’t expected to (the Tea Partiers and evangelicals). It may well be that the evangelicals and Tea Parties that voted against him in Iowa and South Carolina were an aberration.

His challenge, though, will be to win in a red state and he hasn’t done it and the emerging narrative of the 2012 GOP race is this: Will Romney win 1144 delegates before the convention in Tampa or will he have to fight it out at the convention?

(more…)

For years we’ve been preaching the same fundamental message – public schools have more of a spending problem than a revenue problem.

And the spending problem is largely caused by skyrocketing labor costs and stubborn unions that refuse to make any concessions during hard times.

The union’s answer, of course, is to raise taxes to provide more revenue for public schools. As long as struggling taxpayers cough up more money, teachers won’t have to give up their perks, and everything will be back to normal, right?

Not according to the voters of Colorado, who had the good sense to soundly reject a ballot proposal Tuesday that would have increased income and sales taxes to help fund public schools. The proposal died an ugly death, with 64 percent of voters saying no.

The main supporters of the measure were the usual suspects: School boards, the Colorado Education Association, and one very wealthy state senator, Rollie Heath, who can afford higher taxes.

(more…)

From the Associated Press:

Obama won 67 percent of Hispanic voters in 2008 but many of those voters have become disillusioned during the past three years. Unemployment among Hispanics tops 11 percent and many Latinos are losing their homes. Others criticize the number of deportations under Obama’s presidency and the lack of progress on a comprehensive immigration plan.

“I am willing to support him, but I would like him to keep his word on all the promises he made,” said Marcos Mata, 17, a Las Vegas high school senior who will vote for the first time next year. “Not just on immigration. But I don’t know if I see any improvement. The jobs act, it’s a good idea but he should have been doing that a long time ago.”

Recent Gallup polling showed Obama with a 49 percent job approval rating among Hispanics, compared with about 60 percent in the beginning of 2011. Hispanic voters could prove pivotal next year, especially in fast-growing and contested states such as Florida, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado.

(more…)

Since breaking news about a July 21 raid on a farm 12 miles north of Denver that resulted in local law enforcement officials seizing 193 rabbits from a nationally-recognized rabbit expert, I’ve learned more disturbing details about the case. Perhaps least shocking was my discovery that members of the Denver-area news media appear to have swallowed everything thrown at them by the Jefferson County (Colo.) Sheriff’s Office.

Before pressing on, I’ll recap the lowlights of what transpired after someone placed an anonymous call — the first ever, according to officials with the Sheriff’s Office — to a new statewide Crime Stoppers hotline that had been set up in June, specifically to take reports from citizens of suspected animal abuse:

1. Without a warrant, officials with the Sheriff’s Office descended upon Debe Bell’s Six Bells Farm Candle Factory and Rabbitry at approximately 10:30 a.m., accompanied by three veterinarians and several volunteers from the local branch of the House Rabbit Society — a nationwide group comprised of people who, according to Bell, think rabbits need to be raised like small children.

2. During the next three hours, according to Bell, the throng of law enforcement officers, veterinarians and volunteers opened the doors of her 600-square-foot barn, turned off the water to the swamp cooler (an air conditioning system for the barn) and caused the temperature in the barn to rise to 84 degrees.

3. Some six hours after they arrived, Sheriff’s Office officials produced a warrant which spokesperson Mark Techmeyer said was obtained after they convinced a judge that they had seen “what they believed to be some issues” at Six Bells Farm.

4. During the next four hours, according to Bell, the same throng loaded her rabbits in cardboard boxes, put them in a horse trailer and hauled them off to the county fairgrounds. There, the rabbits were placed in dog and cat crates with solid-bottom floors, meaning, “The minute they urinate, they’re standing in their own urine.”

5. For several days after their arrival at the fairgrounds, Bell said, the crated rabbits were kept in a non-air conditioned concrete-stalls horse barn until officials with the Foothills Animal Shelter — a group tasked by the Sheriff’s Office with caring for the animals — decided that wasn’t working out and obtained a swamp cooler.

(more…)

Debe Bell will probably never forget Thursday, July 21. It was the day she found herself surrounded by people from her local law enforcement agency, and they weren’t there to help.

Unlike John Dollarhite of Nixa, Mo., and several magicians across the country who’ve been hounded and threatened with massive fines by agents from the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Bell had to go face to face with her hare-brained local sheriff.

An anonymous Crime Stoppers hotline tip led animal control officers from the Jefferson County (Colo.) Sheriff’s Office to descend upon Bell’s one-acre farm at about 10:30 that morning and, before the day was over, remove nearly 200 rabbits from the property. The 59 year old was being accused of 24 misdemeanor charges of cruelty to animals, including charges that she somehow mistreated two meat rabbits already inside her freezer. More on the hotline later.

Bell had purchased the 1.01-acre property 12 miles north of Denver nearly 40 years earlier with plans to raise as much livestock as she wanted. After all, it was zoned for agricultural purposes (“A-2”) and had everything she needed, including a four-bedroom, tri-level home and a 600-square-foot barn. It looked like a great place to raise a family.

(more…)

With little more than a year before the 2012 elections, the press has started to sharpen its focus on the candidates. Judicial Watch, meanwhile, is deeply concerned about the integrity of the electoral process — especially given the rampant voter registration fraud caused by the “community organization” ACORN and its partner in crime Project Vote in the last several election cycles. (Do not believe the rumors that ACORN is defunct. As I’ve said before, the organization has splintered into organizations across the country and they are prepared to wreak havoc in 2012. Project Vote is going strong, and hasn’t changed its stripes.)

Last Tuesday, I moderated a Judicial Watch educational panel entitled “The Voter Fraud Threat to Free and Fair Elections” at Judicial Watch’s headquarters here in Washington, DC.

My guests were: John Fund, a senior editor of The American Spectator and author of Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy and the upcoming The Threat of Voter Fraud to Free and Fair Elections; Christian Adams, former Department of Justice Attorney in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division; and Catherine Engelbrecht, Founder of both King Street Patriots and True the Vote.

It was about as good a panel as we’ve ever hosted, and viewing it will educate, worry and motivate you. You can click here to watch a video of the panel, which was also streamed live over the Internet. We will have a written transcript on our website very soon.

Following our educational panel, on Thursday we released documents obtained from the Colorado Department of State showing that ACORN and its affiliate, Project Vote, successfully pressured Colorado officials into implementing new policies for increasing the registration of public assistance recipients during the 2008 and 2010 election seasons. And, as you might expect, following the policy changes the percentage of invalid voter registration forms from Colorado public assistance agencies was four times the national average!

See what I mean by chaos and havoc?

(more…)

It’s not every day you will see a governmental body, in this case a school board, create competition for itself.  But that’s precisely what the Douglas County, Colorado school board did.

It created a unique, if not unprecedented, voucher program, allowing tax dollars to follow Douglas County students to the school of their choice.

Every single school system in America should adopt this model.  Sadly, parents who need school choice the most tend to live in troubled urban school districts that fight to keep children trapped within geographic boundaries.

But in Douglas County, leaders understand students have a right to the education of their choice, even if it is not within the public system.

John Carson, president of the school board, said recently at a National School Choice Week event celebrating the move: “We all realize that we’ve made two big mistakes in public education.  There’s no choice – or limited choice – there’s not enough competition, and we’ve ceded so much of our children’s education to special interest groups.  And that needs to end.”

Bravo.  If only we had more governmental leaders like Carson, just imagine the improved impression that Americans would have of public education today.

(more…)

Karen Sampson and her Colorado neighbors just won a serious victory for liberty.

In a unanimous decision on Tuesday, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Colorado’s disclosure laws for grassroots political groups.  This is a big deal.  As the Associated Press put it, “The issue is ripe for an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

The federal appellate court held that Karen and her neighbors in the tiny subdivision of Parker North, Colo., should not have been forced to register with the government and comply with burdensome campaign finance laws simply for opposing a ballot issue involving the annexation of their neighborhood.

I wrote previously at Big Government that Karen and her neighbors opposed an effort to annex their town into a neighboring city because it would raise their taxes without providing them benefits.  So they printed up fliers and yard signs.  And then they got sued.

Under what basis?  Colorado’s campaign finance laws, which state that any group of individuals that spends over $200 magically becomes an “issue committee” that is forced to register with the state.  Further, they had to track and report all their “contributions” and “expenditures” and disclose the identities of anyone who gave them money.

(more…)

Polls have closed in CO and returns are trickling in….

So far, it APPEARS that Dem stronghold of Boulder and/or Denver city/county is being reported, as the results seem very heavy toward the Dems – far beyond even the most optimistic Dem polls.  As Denver is the largest city/county, it will skew results quite a bit.

Governor:
Hickenlooper 57%
Tancredo  31%
Maes  9%

Senate:
Bennet  54%
Buck 41%

This is gonna be a long, cool night here in the mountains, so stay tuned.  We have a lot to do to cover the initiatives as well as all the races.

EARLIER TODAY, I HAD A CHANCE TO INTERVIEW BOB BEAUPREZ, FORMER CONGRESSMAN-

I just finished a phone interview with former Colorado congressman Bob Beauprez, who represented Colorado from the 7th district when it was formed.  Mr. Beauprez has had a front-row seat in this election cycle; in the 2008 cycle he was the GOP representative for Governor, losing to Bill Ritter who is not seeking re-election this time. (more…)

John Hickenlooper, the Denver Mayor and Democratic Party candidate for Governor of Colorado said this about Obama in 2006:

Let me say, let me say very quickly that anyone who’s read his 1995 memoir, ‘Dreams from My Father,’ know that he is part-philosopher, part-sociologist, part-historian, but 100 percent community activist. Let me introduce one of the greatest men alive in America, Senator Barack Obama.

There’s a new site to add to your blogroll:  Congress Shall Make No Law.

The site, which has the address makenolaw.org, empowers grassroots activists from around the country that are standing up and saying no to unconstitutional attacks on free speech coming in the guise of campaign finance reform.  The site explains all the latest news and events going on in this increasingly complex area of law.  All of the writers are First Amendment attorneys and experts at the Institute for Justice (IJ)—the libertarian law firm dedicated to striking down campaign finance laws in state and federal courts.

The unfortunate reality is this:  Campaign finance laws are a way to regulate speech and silence speakers.  And they have seriously negative impacts on everyday Americans.

Consider Karen Sampson of Parker North, Colorado:

(more…)

Yesterday, MyTwoCensus.com reported that 2010 Census workers from Colorado have arrived in New York to assist with operations. Each of these employees is put up at a hotel and paid a per diem rate. (I’ve heard that Hilton Hotels are being used for this purpose — which isn’t surprising since Census Bureau officials are known to stay at Ritz Carleton Hotels while on government business).

Michael C. Cook of the Census Bureau’s Public Information Office wrote to me yesterday, “When we assess that a particular office is either not following procedures or has weak management we often make staffing changes, or even send in experienced managers to help improve operations and re-train the temporary staff.” So the Census Bureau is saying that nobody in New York, a city of 8 million people,  is capable of handling these procedures? (Two sources have confirmed to me that one manager from Washington DC is even being put up in New York’s Battery Park in a $4,500 per month apartment on your dime.)

The federal government outlines hotel and per diem rates for New York quite clearly. This means that in addition to their salaries as Census Bureau employees, each individual is spending up to $411 per day, not including flights or other expenditures, merely to eat and sleep in New York.

(more…)

Colorado, like every other state in the nation, is struggling with revenue.

So what’s a state to do? Well, let’s see, the state already taxes income, gas, sales on goods, personal property, corporate income, entertainment, energy, phones, etc. All that’s left to do is…tax a tax.

Never happen you say?

Coloradans must pay a $1.50 waste-tire fee every time they dispose of an old tire at a retail outlet. And according to an “FYI Memo” from the state department of revenue, “Effective August 5, 2009, the waste tire recycling development fee is considered part of the purchase price and is subject to sales tax.”

Based on the revenue of the waste-tire fee from previous years, this means the state and other sub-governments could collect a grand total of anywhere between $300,000 to $500,000…all because they are taxing a fee.

(more…)

As Americans rise up all across the country to challenge a political elite that many believe does not listen to them, it is important to consider the tools that people in many states have employed to directly affect change: the petition.

In Missouri, our Constitution includes the following passage:

The people reserve power to propose and enact or reject laws and amendments to the constitution by the initiative, independent of the general assembly, and also reserve power to approve or reject by referendum any act of the general assembly, except as hereinafter provided.  (Article 3, Section 49)

The document  clearly states that the people possess the right to initiate laws and constitutional amendments, even though they grant those same powers to their representatives in the legislature.  This is an important since it permits the people to enact laws directly and without going through the standard legislative process.

Unfortunately, in Missouri and other states where the people enjoy this right, the initiative process is continually under assault from state legislatures—Republican and Democrat alike—even to the point of adopting unconstitutional limitations to them.  Such efforts have included the following:

• A 1969 law in Oklahoma required that petition circulators be state residents.  In December 2008, the Tenth Circuit Court unanimously struck down that law as unconstitutional.  The Court did the same to a similar law in Colorado in 2002.

• A 2005 law in Ohio that restricted petition gatherers from being paid per signature was struck down by the Sixth Circuit Court struck in March 2008.  Ohio appealed the decision but the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear it.  Similar pay-per-signature regulations have been overruled by federal district courts in Idaho, Maine, Mississippi and Washington.

• A Colorado law that required petitioners to wear badges with their name and whether they were a volunteer or paid circulator was struck down as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1999.

A common argument for limiting the petition process is that it puts too much money into politics or that it invites fraud.  Yet courts have found this not to be the case.  In the 2005 ruling against Ohio, the Court concluded that prohibiting payment per signature would increase the costs and the time necessary to obtain the required signatures. The Court also rejected the evidence that this particular form of payment resulted in fraud.

(more…)