Gun debate still lingers in Colorado

DENVER — DENVER The last time Colorado enacted gun-control measures was in the wake of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. Once the laws were on the books, there was little acrimony.

The state's latest batch of gun-control laws -- coming after a gunman's deadly rampage at a suburban Denver movie theater a year ago -- has sparked a struggle over guns that shows little signs of fading. Gun-rights advocates are trying to recall two state senators who backed the package, and dozens of Republican county sheriffs are suing to overturn it.

"This is going to remain a political hot potato for Democrats for many, many months," said gun-rights activist Ari Armstrong.

In the months after the gunman's shooting spree left 12 people dead and injured 70 others, there was little public discussion of gun control here. The shooting at a midnight showing of the Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises" occurred in a key swing county in one of the most hotly contested battleground states in last year's presidential election.

But President Barack Obama, seeking re-election, did not bring up gun control in a state that cherishes its western frontier image. Neither did most Colorado Democrats.

It wasn't until December's shooting at a Connecticut elementary school left 20 first-graders and six adults dead that gun control rose in prominence. By March, Colorado became the only state outside the Democratic Party's coastal bases to pass sweeping gun-control measures, including universal background checks and a ban on high-capacity magazines.

After the Columbine attack, voters closed a loophole that allowed buyers of firearms at gun shows to evade background checks. In the wake of the Aurora massacre, the prospects for more gun control in this libertarian-minded state seemed shaky at best.

In a television interview days after the shooting, Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper appeared to cast doubt on the effectiveness of new gun-control laws.

Hickenlooper said he had quiet conversations around the state and was struck by wide support for universal background checks.

In November, Democrats won both the state House and Senate as Colorado helped re-elect Obama. And on Dec.12, Hickenlooper declared that "the time is right" to talk about gun control.

Two days later in Connecticut, Adam Lanza, 20, shot and killed his mother, then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School and opened fire before killing himself. The attack shocked a country that had grown hardened to mass shootings. Obama vowed an all-out push for gun control.

In Colorado, a similar push was already queued up.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's gun-control organization, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, hired four lobbyists to help push gun bills in Colorado. Vice President Joe Biden called state legislators to urge them to vote for the package. Biden told them that Colorado, with its western traditions, could help set the tone for national gun policy.

To Republicans and gun-rights groups, the message was clear. "The Obama administration and these East Coast politicians decided that, as Colorado goes, so goes the rest of the nation," said Republican state Rep. Mark Waller.

Republican legislators fought furiously to delay the bills' passage. Hundreds of demonstrators circled the state Capitol and packed the legislative chambers. Democrats were confident voters were on their side.

"The voices that are the loudest (in protest) are not the ones that determine elections here," Laura Chapin, a Democratic strategist who worked for local gun-control groups, said after the bills passed.

For gun-rights advocates, the movie theater attack exposed serious problems that Democrats were ignoring: bans on guns in public areas, and the issue of mental health. James Holmes, a former neuroscience graduate student accused of the theater shootings, purchased his guns legally -- including a rifle and a high-capacity magazine able to fire 100 bullets -- but also had seen a psychiatrist who feared he was dangerous.

The legislature agreed to Hickenlooper's $20million plan to expand mental health services. But the gun-control package got the most attention. The bill banning larger-capacity magazines squeaked through by a single vote in the state Senate.

In June, Colorado gun activists collected enough signatures to trigger recall elections for two state senators, including that chamber's president. If Democratic efforts to block them fail, the recall votes could be the first electoral test of post-Sandy Hook gun control.

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Immigrant Measure Still Backed by Gays

Advocates focused their fury on several Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, which considered more than 300 amendments to the bill, after the senators warned the chairman, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, that they would not vote for an amendment he wanted to introduce. The measure by Mr. Leahy, also a Democrat, would have allowed American citizens to seek permanent resident status — a document known as a green card — for a foreign same-sex partners.

But as the bill now moves to the Senate floor, the political damage from the episode for the Democrats — including senators who have been firm allies of gay causes like Mr. Leahy, Charles E. Schumer of New York and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois — may not be as severe as it first appeared. Gay rights advocates, stepping back from the loss, said the overhaul still contained many measures that could benefit gay immigrants, most of which came through the committee gantlet unscathed.

Other provisions that the committee agreed to add to the bill, dealing with asylum and immigration detention, had been the subject of vigorous lobbying by gay organizations.

The committee outcome was a relief for Republicans in the bipartisan group of eight senators that wrote the bill, who had said the same-sex amendment would cripple the entire measure. By fending it off, Republicans held on to crucial support from evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics.

“To try to redefine marriage within the immigration bill would mean the bill would fall apart,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican, told Mr. Leahy in the moments of high suspense last Tuesday evening before the Vermont senator announced his decision. Mr. Graham said support from conservative evangelical churches, which have put on an ambitious campaign to pass the overhaul, “made it possible for a guy like me to survive the emotional nature of this debate.”

One activist who had intensely mixed feelings about the committee’s results was Felipe Sousa-Rodriguez, co-director of Get Equal, an organization that seeks legal equality for gay people.

“I can’t deny my outrage when I felt betrayed,” said Mr. Sousa-Rodriguez, who said he had delivered thousands of petitions to Mr. Schumer’s Washington office just a week earlier.

But he said he was ready to push for the bill on the Senate floor, where lawmakers expect to take it up the week of June 10. “Many of my friends will benefit from the overall legislation,” he said.

Like many gay advocates, Mr. Sousa-Rodriguez, who was born in Brazil, sees the legislation from several angles. He is one of as many as 1.7 million young immigrants who were brought here illegally as children. Those immigrants would be eligible under the Senate bill for an accelerated five-year path to citizenship. They include a vocal contingent of youths who are gay.

But Mr. Sousa-Rodriguez is also legally married to an immigrant from Colombia, Juan, who is about to become an American citizen. If the same-sex amendment were to become law, Mr. Sousa-Rodriguez’s husband could seek a green card for him immediately, without waiting five years. In the Judiciary Committee debate, Mr. Leahy kept everyone, including his own staff, wondering until the final hour whether he would formally introduce the same-sex amendment. He had sponsored similar legislation many times in the Senate, and he left no doubt in his opening statement about his strong support for the provision.

But then he turned to the other senators on the committee, asking them for their views. In agonized comments the Democrats, also including Dianne Feinstein of California and Al Franken of Minnesota, replayed the Republican warnings that the measure would be a deal breaker.

According to several Senate aides, the Democrats were surprised and miffed that Mr. Leahy shifted the burden to them to nix the amendment.

“He did it in a way that made others walk the plank and kept his hands clean,” one Democratic aide said, “and that was not appreciated.”

In the end Mr. Leahy withheld his amendment, leaving open the option of introducing it later. The committee sent the bill to the Senate floor on a strong bipartisan vote.

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After Other States’ Moves, Connecticut Is Still Working on Stricter Gun Law

In January, New York passed the first comprehensive gun legislation in the wake of the killings. On Wednesday, Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado signed bills mandating sweeping new restrictions on the sales of firearms and ammunition there.

But in Connecticut, which became the epicenter of the debate over guns, legislative leaders have yet to introduce a bill to address gun violence and mental health issues. They continue to meet daily, and now expect introduction around the first week in April.

The result, to some, has been a perplexing process in a state traumatized and galvanized by the killings, where opinion polls show overwhelming support for new gun legislation, and where Democrats control the governor’s mansion and both houses of the General Assembly and thus have the ability to pass whatever they want. But legislators say that given the state’s relatively moderate politics, with a culture of bipartisan lawmaking and a new House speaker who made a commitment that both parties would be involved in writing gun legislation, the process has played out in a largely familiar way.

Some Democrats, including Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, and gun control advocates have expressed frustration with the pace. But the House speaker, Brendan Sharkey, a Democrat presiding over his first session, said he was confident that Democratic and Republican legislators could agree soon on comprehensive gun legislation. And, citing a statement by New York’s governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, that his state’s new limits on ammunition magazines were unworkable and needed to be modified, Mr. Sharkey said Connecticut legislators were wise to take the time to get their legislation right.

“My mantra at the beginning was it is important to act quickly, but it is more important to act intelligently,” Mr. Sharkey said in an interview.

He added, “I’m personally very confident that what we produce will give Connecticut the strongest gun safety legislation in the country when we’re done.”

After the tragedy, Connecticut created a somewhat confusing process, with one commission established by Governor Malloy to research guns, violence and mental health issues and a separate task force set up by the legislature.

Republicans and Democrats on the legislative task force agreed on many elements of a gun-control package but offered separate reports. Both sides called for universal background checks, greater safe-storage requirements and more requirements for buying ammunition. Only Democrats called for expanding the existing assault-weapons ban to cover a broader array of weapons and for a ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

But Democratic and Republican leaders indicated that the fact they were still talking was evidence that those two elements could be part of bipartisan legislation. And Larry Cafero, the House Republican leader, said passing legislation roughly four months after the shootings would be extraordinary given the complexity of the issues.

Colorado’s legislation came eight months after the mass murder in Aurora, Colo., last summer, Mr. Sharkey noted.

Alluding to New York’s experience, Mr. Cafero said, “To be the first out of the blocks and get it wrong is not a success as far as I’m concerned.”

Legislative leaders have largely kept their deliberations private. But one aspect discussed is whether to have multiple bills, with one able to gain broad support and another dealing with issues like assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines that would have a harder time attracting bipartisan agreement. That approach now seems unlikely, people close to the deliberations said.

If there is support for a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines, the next question is whether it should apply just to their sale or also to their possession, meaning that those people who now own them would have to dispose of them. The commission appointed by Mr. Malloy, in an interim report, recommended the ban of the “sale, possession or use” of magazines with more than 10 rounds.

Mr. Cafero last week also sharply criticized the State Police for a briefing about the Sandy Hook case it delivered this month at a law enforcement convention in New Orleans. The Daily News, quoting someone who had attended the convention, reported on details of the crime that have not been disclosed to legislators or the victims’ families. Among the details was that the gunman, Adam Lanza, had compiled a large spreadsheet of mass murders and the weapons used in them.

Mr. Cafero said lawmakers should have all appropriate information as they work on legislation before they finish.

Mr. Malloy echoed Mr. Cafero’s disappointment with the leak, and directed the Office of the Chief State’s Attorney to release additional information on the investigation by next Friday.

But, perhaps indicating some limits to bipartisanship and frustration with the progress made, the governor said in a statement that “the vast majority of people in Connecticut can agree on some simple, common-sense things we can do — right now” and that legislators should by now have all the information they need to proceed.

“What more does Mr. Cafero need to know before he’s finally ready to take action?” Mr. Malloy said.

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Ted Kennedy Helped Shape Mitt Romney’s Career, and Still Haunts It

Twelve years earlier, they shared that stage as opponents in a bitter Senate race. Back then, Mr. Romney accused Mr. Kennedy of waging “untrue, unfair and sleazy” personal attacks. Now, the Republican governor was introducing the liberal Democratic senator as “my collaborator and friend.”

Mr. Romney’s complicated relationship with Mr. Kennedy, from campaign foe to health care partner, helped shape both his political career and his image. Today, as a Republican candidate for president, he is courting conservative voters, a constituency that does not look kindly upon Mr. Kennedy or the Romney approach to health care, which will come under scrutiny again this week when the Supreme Court takes up challenges to a similar measure championed by President Obama.

But try as he might to distance himself, Mr. Romney cannot escape Mr. Kennedy’s influence. On the campaign trail, he uses the senator, who died in 2009, as a foil, denouncing Mr. Kennedy’s “liberal welfare state” policies and boasting of how Mr. Kennedy “had to take out a mortgage on his house to make sure he could defeat me.”

He has said losing to Mr. Kennedy was “the best thing” that could have happened to him, “because it put me back in the private sector.”

Mr. Romney’s attempt in 1994 to “out-Kennedy Kennedy,” as people here say, led him to take stands on issues like abortion and gay rights that he has since backed away from, giving rise to accusations that he is a flip-flopper. Mr. Kennedy’s tough campaign advertisements, which portrayed Mr. Romney as a cold-hearted financier, rattled him, and his bruising loss in the race “viscerally pained” him, one friend said.

But he emerged tougher, convinced that it is better to punch first than to counterpunch later — lessons his campaign is putting to use today.

“Romney was the young up-and-comer in ’94 who thought that the aging champ had lost his edge and was then surprised to get knocked out,” said Rob Gray, a Republican strategist who advised Mr. Romney in his 2002 race for governor. “That certainly caused him to reassess how any future campaign should be built.”

The two men could not have been more different. Mr. Kennedy was the back-slapping Irish pol with the rakish past; Mr. Romney the upstanding businessman who viewed Mr. Kennedy with some disdain. While they eventually joined forces, theirs was a transactional relationship. Despite Mr. Romney’s glowing Faneuil Hall introduction, they never truly became friends.

“I just don’t think they spoke the same language,” said Scott M. Ferson, a former Kennedy aide and Romney neighbor who became a bridge between the two.

They did extend courtesies to each other. Mr. Kennedy lent his support to the construction of a Mormon temple in Belmont, Mass., a project just minutes from Mr. Romney’s home and dear to him. Later, as governor, Mr. Romney turned up during the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston for the dedication of a ribbon of parks named for Mr. Kennedy’s mother, Rose.

But it was their work on health care, a lifelong passion for Mr. Kennedy, that may have had the most enduring impact on Mr. Romney. The legislation gave him national standing to run for president in 2008, only to emerge as a political liability in the current campaign in a way that neither man could have foreseen.

“It’s an irony with a capital I,” said Jeffrey M. Berry, a political scientist at Tufts University who followed their careers. “From the grave, Ted Kennedy is involved in the Republican race for the presidency.”

Mr. Romney and Mr. Kennedy entered the 1994 Senate race as strangers, but their families had been circling each other for decades.

Mr. Romney was 15 in 1962, when Mr. Kennedy was first elected to the Senate. That same year, George W. Romney, Mitt’s father, was elected governor of Michigan; Mr. Kennedy’s brother, President John F. Kennedy, campaigned for his Democratic opponent. Decades later, the elder Romney — who had once worked with Senator Kennedy on legislation promoting volunteerism — prodded his son to run for the Senate seat Mr. Kennedy occupied.

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Wis. Democrats still searching for Walker opponent (AP)

MADISON, Wis. – Supporters of a push to oust Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker from office are prepared to declare victory in their effort to force the Republican into a recall election. But a problem looms for Democrats: They still don't know who would run against him.

Recall organizers say they have gathered far more than the 540,208 signatures required to force the election against both Walker and GOP Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, and will submit their petitions Tuesday.

Walker has meanwhile dominated the state's airwaves with ads defending his agenda, including the law enacted last year that ended nearly all collective bargaining rights for most public workers and spurred the recall effort in the first place.

He's also crisscrossed the country raising millions of dollars, taking full advantage of both the conservative rock star persona built as he put Wisconsin at the center of the national labor rights debate and a quirk in state law allowing those targeted for recall to ignore normal contribution limits until an election date is set.

Walker reported in mid-December that he'd already raised $5.1 million, with about half of that coming from out of state. He received $250,000 alone from Bob Perry, the Texas conservative who was one of the main financial backers behind the Swift Boat Veterans ads that attacked Sen. John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign.

Democrats and union leaders insist they're not concerned about not having someone actively running against Walker and trying to match his fundraising. In fact, they say it was part of their strategy.

"It forced Walker and his minions to run on their record and issues rather than to run against an announced Democratic candidate," said Marty Beil, president of the Wisconsin State Employees Union, the largest union of state workers. "That was part of the rationale through the whole recall petition collection process."

Democrats and union leaders said they also never anticipated competing with Walker on fundraising. Beil said the key for recall supporters will be to maintain the enthusiasm that fueled recall signature collection for the past two months.

"And we win with some resources, but we don't see matching him for dollar by dollar," Beil added.

Walker's campaign spokeswoman Ciara Matthews said in a statement that the governor's record will "stand in stark contrast to whoever the eventual Democratic nominee is." She defended Walker's record from last year, noting he balanced the state's $3.6 billion shortfall without massive layoffs of state employees.

Democrats have framed Walker's budget-balancing tactics as an attack on labor unions, one of their key constituencies. Thousands of demonstrators staged non-stop protests at the Capitol for three weeks and the Senate's 14 minority Democrats even fled the state in a futile attempt to block the collective bargaining plan that Walker signed into law last March.

The Democratic field of would-be challengers to Walker is expected take shape once the Government Accountability Board certifies that petition circulators have gathered enough signatures. Beil said he expected it be clear by the end of the month, while state Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate said he didn't expect a set field before March.

"I don't see any need for a candidate to dip their toe in the water until they absolutely feel it is necessary to do so," Tate said. "We have a blessing of riches in the Democratic Party. We have several people who would make wonderful governors."

Numerous prominent Democrats have said they're considering a run but the two highest profile ones — former Sen. Russ Feingold and retiring Sen. Herb Kohl — have repeatedly said they aren't interested.

Moderate Democrat state Sen. Tim Cullen has said he intends to take on Walker but has not made a formal announcement or been actively campaigning. He said he expects and welcomes a Democratic primary, which likely would be held in May, although the timing will be unclear until possible delays related to the signature verification process and any legal challenges are resolved.

"If there's not a primary, then who's actually deciding this?" Cullen said.

Walker and his allies say organized labor will decide the Democratic candidate. Public workers and their unions have been a driving force behind the recall, helping provide the manpower needed to circulate petitions.

Union leaders have made some of their preferences known. They've been clear in their distaste of a potential candidacy by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who lost to Walker by 5 percentage points in 2010. Barrett has angered some unions with cuts he made to the city budget and his support of a plan a couple years ago that would have given him control of the troubled Milwaukee Public Schools.

Beil and Mary Bell, the head of the statewide teachers union, met with Barrett in December and unsuccessfully tried to dissuade him from running, based on an email Bell sent to other union leaders that was first reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Bell confirmed the meeting and email to The Associated Press but declined to comment in more detail about Barrett or who the union is supporting. Beil also has been outspoken in his opposition to Barrett but won't say who the union supports yet.

Barrett has announced that he's seeking re-election as Milwaukee mayor, which will be decided on April 3. But he's repeatedly dodged questions about another run against Walker, refusing to rule it out or commit to it.

"The candidate has to be a champion of these thousands of people who have said we need a change," Beil said. "The candidate has to be a champion, it can't be the same old message."

One potential candidate organized labor does like is Kathleen Falk, a retired Dane County executive who said she is considering running. Falk, who previously ran unsuccessfully for governor and state attorney general, has been traveling the state speaking out in support of the recall.

Other potential Democratic candidates include former U.S. Rep. Dave Obey, current U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, state Sen. Jon Erpenbach and state Rep. Peter Barca.

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Democrat fundraising site still accepting Weiner donations (Daily Caller)

C.J. Ciaramella C.j. Ciaramella – Fri Jun 24, 12:18 am ET

Anthony Weiner may be gone, but you can still donate to the erstwhile congressman’s re-election campaign, if you’re kinky like that.

ActBlue, an online clearing house for Democrat fundraising, still has active donation sites for Weiner, and his official Web site still has a contribution page, where fans can support Weiner, “Fighter, Reformer, New Yorker.”

So far, Weiner’s ActBlue page has raised $146,372 for the congressman’s non-existent re-election campaign. How much of this was raised after Weiner’s Twitter indiscretions came to light isn’t clear, but at least some of it was.

An ActBlue page called “Breitbart Has Won NOTHING: Donations for Weiner” has raised a fearsome $35 from two contributors.

“In the beginning, I reacted solely because that dishonest slime Andrew Breitbart was maliciously attacking yet another liberal,” the page’s creator writes. “That’s STILL what pisses me off – Breitbart thinks this was a ‘victory’ and all the chatter about being ’shocked’ and ‘disappointed’ in Weiner only fuels Breitbart.”

So go ahead and donate, never-say-die Democrats. Maybe Weiner will send you a thank you message on Twitter.

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