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Attorney
general says no politics were behind mill-levy opinion
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/05/01/5_1_1a_AG_politics.html
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said he was not politically motivated when he issued a legal analysis Friday calling Gov. Bill Ritter’s proposed mill-levy freeze a significant tax-policy shift requiring voter approval. “I would never issue an opinion that I didn’t feel was appropriate,” Suthers said. “I had no telephone calls from anybody. I’ve had no e-mails from any Republicans or anything like that.” Suthers said his office has a duty to disclose possible constitutional issues with bills moving through the Legislature, including Ritter’s proposed mill-levy freeze. The attorney general’s role of advising the governor and lawmakers of possible constitutional conflicts, he said, was galvanized in a 2003 Colorado Supreme Court decision that said Attorney General Ken Salazar was right to challenge the Republican-controlled Legislature’s 2003 redistricting plan. “I think they protest too much in suggesting it was politically motivated,” Suthers said of critics who have accused his office of colluding with Colorado Republican Party Chairman Dick Wadhams. Suthers said Wadhams had no role “ghost writing” his office’s opinion. “Dick Wadhams is not smart enough to write that, let me assure you,” Suthers said. According to Colorado Confidential, a left-leaning political Web site, Rep. Terrance Carroll, D-Denver, told a group of Democrats over the weekend he wants to investigate possible coordination between Suthers’ office and the Colorado Republican Party. ProgressNowAction, a liberal Colorado political group, initiated Monday an online petition to call for an investigation of Suthers’ office. Suthers cautioned that he was not calling Ritter’s policy apolitical. He said only his office’s involvement in the matter was divorced from politics.
RELATED: Property-tax debate to start today
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5788317
RELATED: Is Colorado's Attorney General misusing his office?
http://www.progressnowaction.org/page/community/post/al/C2QT
Bush's veto pen poised for war bill
Four years after President Bush declared the "mission accomplished" for the American military in Iraq, the president is poised to veto a $124 billion war spending bill that demands timelines for troop withdrawals from an unrelenting war. "I am about to veto a bill that has got artificial timelines for withdrawal," Bush said Monday in a Rose Garden appearance. "I have made my position very clear, the Congress chose to ignore it, and so I will veto the bill." This could come as early as Tuesday, as the president travels to Tampa, headquarters of the U.S. Central Command that oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This will be the fourth anniversary of the day on which a flight-jacketed and proud president landed as a passenger in the co-pilot's seat of a Navy S-3B Viking on the deck of an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean and declared that major combat had concluded in Iraq.
RELATED: Bill on Iraq to Be Delivered 4 Years After Bush’s Words
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/washington/01cong.html?ref=washington
Justices to rule on world court's reach
The Supreme Court agreed Monday to take up an unusual death penalty case that puts President Bush, the Mexican government and a rapist and murderer from Houston on the same team in a legal battle against the state of Texas. At issue is whether Texas must abide by a ruling from the International Court of Justice in the Hague and reconsider a death sentence meted out to a convicted killer who is a native of Mexico. The lead plaintiff, Jose Medellin, has been on death row since 1994 for raping and strangling two teenage girls in Houston. The outcome also could affect the fate of 28 Mexican natives who are under death sentences in California. Three years ago, the Mexican government won a ruling from the international court holding that U.S. officials had violated a treaty requiring that the consulate be notified when Mexican citizens were arrested and held for serious crimes. American tourists and students studying abroad may be familiar with this treaty, known as the Vienna Convention. It protects the rights of Americans when they are abroad. But police and local prosecutors in this country did not routinely abide by the treaty when they arrested and detained suspects who were not U.S. citizens. Mexico objected most strongly when the death penalty was at issue because it opposed capital punishment. In its suit before the international court, it cited 51 Mexican nationals who were on death row in the United States and said it had not been notified during their legal proceedings. The Mexican government said it would have, at minimum, supplied lawyers to argue against the imposition of a death sentence.
RELATED: Supreme Court to Hear Appeal of Mexican Death Row Inmate
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/washington/01court.html
U.S., China balk at UN climate panel findings
The United States and China want to amend a major report by UN-sponsored climate researchers to play down its conclusion that quick, affordable action can limit the worst effects of global warming, according to documents reviewed Monday by The Associated Press. The critiques, among hundreds of government comments on the draft document, are the prelude to what is expected to be a contentious weeklong meeting as scientists and national delegations wrangle over final wording in the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to be issued Friday. Two previous IPCC reports this year painted a dire picture of a future in which unabated greenhouse gas emissions could drive up average global temperatures by as much as 11 degrees by 2100, and they said animal and plant life already was affected by warmer and rising seas, spreading drought and other effects.
Pet Deaths Spur Call for Better FDA Screening
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/30/AR2007043001865.html
Amid growing revelations that suppliers in China frequently spike pet food and other food ingredients with contaminants to boost profits, momentum is building in Washington to bolster the Food and Drug Administration's capacity to detect and screen out adulterated imports. Several Chinese suppliers conceded over the weekend that adding melamine to pet food ingredients -- now blamed for the deaths of many animals in the United States and possible contamination of the human food supply -- is but the latest technique for fooling U.S. companies into thinking they are purchasing a high-quality product.
RELATED: FDA widens Chinese import alert
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/2007-04-30-chinese-imports-usat_N.htm
RELATED: Senate Takes Up Bill to Change Drug Agency Operations
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/washington/01drug.html?ref=washington
Today’s complete national news
Colorado
Demonstrators to turn out for immigration reform
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5514373,00.html
Denver and other cities across the nation will host another round of marches today to demonstrate that the campaign for immigration reform is still under way. Organizers don't expect the massive turnouts of last May 1, including an estimated 75,000 people in Denver. They say that fallout from highly publicized raids by immigration agents and Colorado's push to curb illegal immigration have combined to discourage public displays of dissent, particularly among people who crossed the border illegally. "I think it will be different this year. . . . The conditions are much worse than they were last year," said Emily Parkey, a spokeswoman for Rights for All People, which helped organize today's event.
RELATED: Immigrant advocates set to march again
http://dailycamera.com/news/2007/may/01/immigrant-advocates-set-to-march-again/
RELATED: Pro-immigrant rally in Denver set for Tuesday
http://greeleytrib.com/article/20070501/NEWS/104300130
Property crime bill OK'd
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5514079,00.html
A bill that would reduce penalties for certain property crimes to keep minor criminals from clogging the state's crowded prisons won the Senate's final approval Monday. "Many people are going to prison for property crimes, and that's the last place we should be sending them," said Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, D- Denver. Senate Bill 260 raises the threshold for property crimes that include theft of rental property, motor vehicles, fraudulent checks, unauthorized use of credit and ATM cards as well as defrauding a creditor or debtor and trafficking food stamps. The measure, by Sen. Abel Tapia, D-Pueblo, bumps misdemeanor losses from $500 to $1,000 and the felony threshold from $15,000 to $20,000.
Ethics queries go unanswered
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5513948,00.html
"I don't know." "I don't recall." "I don't remember." Developer Rick Sapkin, chairman of the powerful business group Colorado Concern, repeated those phrases over and over Monday while testifying before a legislative committee investigating an ethics complaint filed against the group's lobbyist. Composed of top CEOs statewide, the group opposed a home buyers' protection bill this session that eventually was passed and signed by the governor. The group's executive director, William Mutch, helped arrange for phone calls in Democratic lawmakers' districts telling voters they could lose their homes if the bill passed and that the measure was a tax intended to make trial lawyers rich. "My involvement in this is very limited," Sapkin told the three-member ethics committee. That statement appeared to perplex panel members, who pointed out that e-mails show that Sapkin received scripts of the automated phone calls - planned in February and placed in March - and urged others not to panic when Democratic lawmakers became livid over them. Sapkin is with Edgemark Development and is a co-chairman of Gov. Bill Ritter's Business Advisory Group. He was asked not to preside at the group's April meeting, Ritter's spokesman Evan Dreyer said Monday.
RELATED: Business chief denies he OK'd script for robo-calls
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5788318
Local towns and cities outline energy impacts
http://postindependent.com/article/20070501/VALLEYNEWS/105010026
Mayors and city council men and women from across the state got a firsthand look at what energy development has meant for Western Slope communities Monday. The Colorado Municipal League's energy committee met in Rifle Monday morning. CML lobbies for state towns and cities and its members are elected officials of those governments.
RELATED: Officials oppose severance tax initiatives
http://postindependent.com/article/20070501/VALLEYNEWS/105010025
Today’s complete Colorado news
Today’s complete daily news: http://media.progressnowaction.org/digest/050107.htm
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