Mount Virtus

In today’s Rocky Mountain News, Colorado Democrat pollster Floyd Ciruli takes a cold, analytical look at Gov. Bill Ritter’s approval ratings — boiled down, the picture isn’t pretty for the potential one-term governor:

Surprisingly, new Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter may be in trouble. When compared with his Montana counterpart, Gov. Brian Schweitzer, in recent Rasmussen polls, Ritter’s job rating lags behind Schweitzer by 19 points. Only 45 percent of Colorado voters gave Ritter an excellent or good job rating, whereas 64 percent of Montanans rated Schweitzer as doing an excellent or good job.

Floyd Ciruli cites a litany of reasons for Bill Ritter’s sagging popularity, reasons that have been regular themes of this and other local new media sites:

• An unconstitutional property tax increase
• Do-nothing blue-ribbon panels
• New regulations on oil and gas drilling
• Pushing an unpopular severance tax initiative
• Legal troubles over misspent campaign funds
• Giving union leaders a gold-plated invitation to state government

Ciruli might also have mentioned starring in preachy, taxpayer-funded “green” commercials and signing the now infamous Senate Bill 200, aka the “bathroom bill.” (I’m sure I’ve missed a few.)

As the second half of Bill Ritter’s term approaches, the question remains whether Republicans can field a strong and viable challenger to unseat the increasingly vulnerable incumbent in 2010.

Say what? As absurd as some of our court decisions seem to be, the Euro-wannabes north of the border have trumped us when it comes to sheer lunacy (H/T Doug Bandow):

A recent court decision in Canada should send chills down every parent’s spine. The ruling is so out of bounds that the news story sounds like a parody — but it isn’t. A Canadian judge ruled that a 12-year-old girl was “excessively” punished when her father told her she could not go on a school camping trip because she had broken rules for use of the Internet.

O Canada, the nation with tribunals that enforce politically-correct government censorship of speech, now gives us micromanagement of parental responsibilities. Wherever Canada is, I fear the United States is not far behind. Let’s stand up against the nanny state!

Who do you want appointing federal judges next year: Barack Obama or John McCain? Sobering thought.

From Face The State’s latest “Buzz”:

Americans for Prosperity, a center-right grassroots organization currently focusing on encouraging responsible energy policy, has announced that it is opening shop in Colorado with its 22nd chapter. The effort is being headed up by social conservative Jim Pfaff, a former president of the Colorado Family Council known and praised for his ability to make nice with social libertarians.

This can’t be seen as a positive development by Colorado’s liberal Tim Gill-Pat Stryker-Mark Udall-Bill Ritter axis. Whenever the fiscal conservatives and social conservatives start playing nice, working behind a savvy and respected person like Jim Pfaff, that means the Left can’t fall back so easily on its “divide and conquer” strategy.

It’s still a long uphill climb, though, for Colorado supporters of limited government and fiscal responsibility. But the signs of a trend are encouraging.

I haven’t written much about Senate Bill 200, so-called “anti-discrimination” legislation, recently signed into law by Gov. Bill Ritter. But I certainly took notice when libertarian Ross Kaminsky assailed it in his latest Human Events column:

In the quadrennial marathon to see who can be the nation’s worst governor, Colorado’s Bill Ritter is in a full sprint. On Thursday, Ritter signed Senate Bill 200 which expands “anti-discrimination” law to cover sexual orientation, meaning not only homosexuality or bisexuality, but also “transgender status or another person’s perception thereof.”

The bill is so ripe for abuse and creates so much risk for private business that it’s no surprise the ordinarily media-hungry Ritter signed the bill late in the afternoon (too late for most newspapers to cover the story) with no fanfare (although he frequently has bill-signing ceremonies and particularly for measures such as this which have received this much media attention). It isn’t even mentioned on his Web site, whereas a look at the page shows that he routinely issues press releases on bills he signs into law.

It’s hard to disagree with the notion that this new law is bad public policy and represents government overstep and intrusion.

Read the rest of this entry »

Face The State is onto another big story, uncovering facts about complaints filed against the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative - which recently qualified for the November statewide ballot.

Face The State’s report has uncovered serious issues with two of the major complaints, issues neglected in the drive-by media coverage.

Here’s the first:

On February 26, Chloe Johnson filed a complaint with Secretary of State Mike Coffman’s office alleging that she was tricked into supporting Amendment 46, also known as the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, a ballot effort designed to end race and gender preferences in government hiring, education, and contracting. The complaint was formally dismissed by the state’s Office of Administrative Courts because Johnson never registered to vote.

Uh-oh. Face The State made another catch yesterday:

A Face The State investigation has revealed that one of the individuals alleging voter fraud against a campaign devoted to ending racial and gender preferences is a longtime liberal activist with ties to multiple organizations promoting such policies.

On April Fool’s Day, Dara Burwell spoke at a widely covered Capitol press conference, alleging that she was misled into signing a petition in support of Amendment 46, the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, an effort certified for the November general election ballot by Secretary of State Mike Coffman, and one that seeks to abolish the use of gender and race preferences in government, education, and public hiring decisions.

Memo to the Left: You are going to have to try harder. Affirmative action isn’t going to validate misguided legal complaints against the Civil Rights Initiative.

Blogging from Chicago…

The silly publicity stunt known as “Earth Hour” is coming to a close here in the Windy City, while it’s about to start back home in Denver. Instead of participating in this self-absorbed deception, I’m joining Tim Blair in celebrating “The Hour of Power” (H/T Slapstick Politics). Not only are all the lights on here, and the computer running (of course), but so is the television (March Madness) and the room heater. It’s also a good time to recharge the cell phone.

One of my new friends here, Jeff from Louisiana Conservative, also has some advice for liberals who are serious about tonight’s event.

My Independence Institute colleague Jessica Corry has a column up at Politics West about a Denver event last night that she says holds out hope for re-uniting key wings of the old Reagan Republican coalition. Former Owens adviser Sean Duffy and Colorado Family Institute president Jim Pfaff were two of the panelists:

Duffy calls himself a “pro-life, pro-gay” Republican, jokingly claiming that he’s been kicked out of the Republican Party multiple times only to come back for more abuse. You may remember him as the right-hand man of former Gov. Bill Owens, a conservative Republican. “At the end of the day, as Republicans, we should all just want the government to leave us alone,” he told me.

And Pfaff, while frequently identified by his ties to Focus On The Family’s Dr. James Dobson and his commitment to “life” issues, says he wants to work with Duffy and other libertarian Republicans to begin rebuilding the Republican Party in the West after years of Democratic gains. In the last few years alone, five traditionally Republican Western states have elected Democratic governors. Pfaff is passionately eager to work through differences because he says he wouldn’t want to live in a pro-life socialist America. Socialism, he says, ultimately leads to a loss of all freedoms.

While pleased to see some shared purpose between these two men and the blocs they represent, Jessica is frank about the challenges, too:

The problem is huge. Republicans are facing an identity crisis of immense proportions. And social issues like gay rights and abortion are only the beginning. With George W. Bush at the helm, the federal government has maxed out our collective credit cards to continue funding the expansion of entitlement programs and an unpopular — but difficult to end — war.

For Republicans taking a stand against such reckless governance, they risk getting slapped with an “extremist” label. It’s no wonder so few of them are willing to stick their necks out.

I would add that there’s a difference between the issues of the global war on terrorism and the battle of Iraq on one hand, and federal government entitlement spending and fiscal irresponsibility on the other. Even though we face the consequences of some earlier tactical mismanagement in Iraq, the former is a difficult but necessary burden. The latter is unnecessary and of Republican officials’ own doing.

And therefore fiscal responsibility, limited-government issues should be the tie that binds a Republican coalition looking for rejuvenation. That the issue of victory vs. surrender has sadly become (to some extent) such a partisan divide should only provide greater motivation.

Thus I concur with Jessica’s conclusion:

Conservatives and libertarians should follow the lead of Pfaff and Duffy, putting aside their differences on social issues to elect viable candidates dedicated to protecting the working families and small business owners who suffer most when government spending expands. Now, after years of watching Republicans falter, here’s something I can toast to

One final notice: Hoping for a Republican electoral victory this fall primarily on the backs of Democrat failures and in-fighting will not be a tremendous - and will barely be a desirable - outcome. What we should long to see is not a slower creep to the Left but a stop and a turn back to fiscal sanity. And that hard work is done in the trenches.

From the Rocky Mountain News today:

The secretary of state certified a measure for the Nov. 4 ballot Monday that would ban race and gender-based hiring preferences in Colorado.

Supporters of the the measure, Amendment 46, submitted 128,744 signatures March 10. On Monday, Secretary of State Mike Coffman declared that a random sampling showed that enough of them were valid.

The measure is pushed by Ward Connerly, a black Republican who has been vilified by civil rights groups for supporting anti-affirmative action policies. Connerly has led similar successful initiatives in California, Washington and Michigan. Supporters say that the measure’s language mirrors the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

This should mean Connerly’s Civil Rights Initiative appears as the first initiative on the November 2008 state ballot. Here’s the ballot language, embodying the timeless principle of Equality Under the Law, a principle which time has come.

LaShawn Barber reminds readers how the same initiative has succeeded at the ballot box in states that lean further Left than Colorado:

Liberal Californians voted against preferences in government hiring, contracting, and admissions by 54 percent in 1996. So did 58.3 percent of voters in Washington state in 1998 and 58 percent of Michigan voters in 2006.

The election is 32 weeks away, but here’s one of the very first recommendations to vote Yes on Amendment 46.

Eminent UCLA law professor and blogger extraordinaire Eugene Volokh exposes a case of political correctness run amok, to the point of absurdity. “Harassment by reading”? Oh, it’s worse than that. University administrators in Indiana came down hard on an employee reading during breaktime a scholarly book that included “Ku Klux Klan” in the title. (You can learn more about the incident, and the book’s clearly anti-Klan theme here.)

Here’s the key excerpt from a university Affirmative Action Office letter, reprinted on Volokh’s site:

Upon review of this matter, we conclude that your conduct constitutes racial harassment in that you demonstrated disdain and insensitivity to your co-workers who repeatedly requested that you refrain from reading the book which has such an inflammatory and offensive topic in their presence. You contend that you weren’t aware of the offensive nature of the topic and were reading the book about the KKK to better understand discrimination. However you used extremely poor judgment by insisting on openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your Black co-workers. Furthermore, employing the legal “reasonable person standard,” a majority of adults are aware of and understand how repugnant the KKK is to African Americans, their reactions to the Klan, and the reasonableness of the request that you not read the book in their presence.

During your meeting with Marguerite Watkins, Assistant Affirmative Action Officer you were instructed to stop reading the book in the immediate presence of your coworkers and when reading the book to sit apart from the immediate proximity of these co-workers. Please be advised, any future substantiated conduct of a similar nature could result in serious disciplinary action.

Racial harassment is very serious and can result in serious consequences for all involved. Please be advised that racial harassment and retaliation against any individual for having participated in the investigation of a complaint of this nature is a violation of University policy and will not be tolerated.

I guess if you’re looking to be offended, one way or another you will. A new disclaimer label may be needed for many of our nation’s postsecondary institutions:

Warning: Outbreak of politically correct platitudes and victimhood ideologies on campus. Extended exposure may result in a long-term deficit in common sense and a chronic inability to be taken seriously by people in the real world.

Volokh’s post also highlights the follow-up “clarification” letter from the Affirmative Action office that may leave you scratching your head.

Over at the Corner, Mark Steyn highlights the Left’s illogical “Sharia creep” in its latest manifestations in the United States:

Forty years ago, advocating separate drinking fountains made you a racist. Today, advocating separate taxi cabs or separate swimming sessions makes you a multiculturalist.

No one has a keener eye for this stuff than Mark Steyn. If you’re not reading him regularly, you should be. After all, he has been fighting the good fight for free speech against Canada’s Human Rights Commission. (More on this story from Michelle Malkin.)

A little solidarity today from south of the 48th parallel.

Over at Pajamas Media, Scott Johnson eulogizes the late William F. Buckley, Jr.. First, probably his most significant accomplishment:

When Buckley founded National Review as the voice of the [conservative] movement, he performed two acts of statesmanship that were vital to the movement’s ultimate, if unlikely, success: he reserved exclusive ownership of the magazine to himself so as to prevent the kind of sectarian brawls that had killed other such magazines, and he prohibited John Birchers and other kooky anti-Semitic organizations from the magazine’s precincts.

Johnson also observes what is left undone:

Until [Buckley] gave up public speaking in 1998, his frequent campus speaking engagements were part missionary work, part performance art, and like nothing else available on the campuses he visited. In the decades following the founding of National Review, the conservative movement experienced successes that must have exceeded even Buckley’s visionary imagination. Yet the university remains almost entirely untouched by Buckley’s call to action. In fact, it understates matters considerably to say that circumstances on campus have not improved since the publication of God and Man at Yale in 1951.

Except for my quibble based on the fact that I distinctly remember attending a Buckley debate at Penn State in 2000 (after the 1998 cited here), I think this is a larger point that has been overlooked by some. While we certainly ought not diminish Buckley’s giant and consequential legacy, Johnson reminds us - in the spirit of President Abraham Lincoln - of “the great task remaining before us.”

As though a reminder were needed, El Presidente today focuses on a clash of politically incorrect student journalism and the university Free Speech police. While we mourn Buckley’s passing, the world keeps on turning.

Via K.J. Lopez at the Corner, news comes today that the great William F. Buckley, Jr., has passed away.

While very few writers and speakers have ever had a greater facility with the English language than Buckley did, there was much more to him than the elegance of his prose. He was an intellectual champion for conservatism long before there was any popularity to be gained by it. From his seminal book God and Man at Yale to his great legacy in the founding of National Review, he did as much as any American in the 20th century to advance the conservative cause through logical, forceful, and passionate argument, as well as through refined wit and good humor.

To get a glimpse of the man - his ideas and his rhetoric - you can search a comprehensive online database of Buckley’s writings and speeches - created by my alma mater Hillsdale College.

In November 2006 we lost the great Milton Friedman, and now Buckley. Together they represent perhaps the two greatest minds in the broader conservative movement and the two most influential voices for free markets, limited government, and personal freedom - not to mention the strong roots and high ideals of Western Civilization - America had in the 20th century.

It’s a sad day for the conservative moment and for anyone in this nation who respects a good, vigorous, civil, and intellectual policy debate. But condolences especially to his family and dear friends. I’m sure far more eloquent elegies will be written in the coming days, but wanted to add my two cents while the news is fresh on my mind.

R.I.P., William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925-2008)

Thought-provoking read for the day: Selwyn Duke at American Thinker questions where adhering to “conservatism” has gotten us and whether we need to re-assess our approach:

I don’t want to preserve the cultural status quo, I want to overthrow it. Then we can pull the statist weeds up by the roots and burn them in freedom’s fire, just like our Founding Fathers did. Do you think they were conservatives? Conservatives don’t start revolutions; they simply make sure their shackles are made no heavier.

Political victory rests on cultural victory, and changing the culture starts with changing our mentality. We have only two choices: We can be revolutionary.

Or we can be wrong.

Read the whole thing.