Below I’ve listed some of my favorite reporting about Colorado’s legislative session that ended Wednesday.

My favorite: The Denver Post’s John Frank wrote an accessible yet detail-rich article on the failed effort to secure funding for a wildly successful teen-pregnancy-prevention program. Read it here: IUD Jewelry Emerges at Colorado Capitol to Demystify and Educate on Birth Control. 

The Post’s Joey Bunch and John Frank teamed up to show how middle class reality connects to the legislature. Read it here: Fear and Worry in Colorado’s Middle Class Lures Politicos.

The Grand Junction Sentinel’s Charles Ashby provided a cool look at the flaming arrows launched at Republican Rep. Dan Thurlow. Read it here: Thurlow Defends Record. 

Colorado Public Radio reporter Megan Verlee’ provides an outside-the-Capitol perspective on the teen-pregnancy issue. Listen here: For Colorado Teen Moms, There’s Help but Daunting Statistic. 

Colorado Public Radio’s Verlee demystified the complicated debate about the Earned Income Tax Credit. Listen here: 5 Things to Know about the Earned Income Tax Credit, a Proven Poverty Reliever.

Denver Post reporter Lynn Bartels explained how a bill offering help for the middle class was killed over one lawmaker’s concern that his rich constituents wouldn’t like it. Read it here: Upper Class Protected During Debate about Saving for College. 

Great in-depth reporting by the National Journal’s Nora Kaplan-Bricker about Colorado’s latest birth-control battle and teen pregnancy program. Read it here: The Big Battle Over a Little Device.

And finally, I can’t resist adding the Aurora Sentinel’s outstanding editorial on the failed teen-pregnancy prevention measure. (Sorry for the repeated citations of coverage of this legislation, but it generated the most inspired reporting.) Read it here: The birth of ignorance; get science right before voting on teen pregnancy bill.

Hey, the three of you out there who were following the state legislature. How many of you thought state senate President Bill Cadman was going to be able to control his own caucus this session? Seeing no hands, I’ll say none of you.

Still, if you’re a reporter, you can’t just say, “No one in their right mind thought Republicans would get along with each other and compromise with their leader. Are you kidding me? The party is ripped apart by wild ideologues who would rather see Cadman go down in flames than face the wrath of tea-party talk-radio hosts Ken Clark, Randy Corporon, and Kris Cook.”

If you’re a reporter, you don’t say it that way. But you can say that GOP infighting was surprising. That’s what Denver Post reporter John Frank said on The Denver Post’s TV video program, DPTV: On the Spot.

Denver Post Politics Editor Chuck Plankett: John, what were some of the biggest surprises you saw this session?

Denver Post reporter John Frank: At the start of the session, all eyes were on the senate Republicans. They had just taken power for the first time in 10 years in the senate, and President Bill Cadman was in the spotlight, trying to lead a caucus that had numerous divisions. So one of the surprises that I saw throughout the session was how many times his caucus split on major bills. It actually took President Cadman and the GOP leadership [help from] the Democrats to pass a number of these measures, whether it was major efforts on red lights or major fiscal bills. And how many times that caucus fractured was something we didn’t quite expect going in but there certainly wasn’t a lot of caucus discipline.”

In a great article summarizing the death of a bill, changing the definition of the “hospital provider fee” under TABOR and thus freeing up $167 million for transportation and education, the Colorado Statesman’s Marianne Goodland reported that the Hickenlooper Administration hopes to bring the legislation back early next session possibly using a dramatic double-budget visual to spotlight the importance of the measure:

By next year, this will be more of an “on the ground” issue for legislators, [Hickenlooper budget director Henry] Sobanet said Tuesday. Once the budget request for 2016-17 comes out in November, people will start to see the impact of the hospital provider fee on available dollars. “It will be more real than an intellectual issue.”

Sobanet said the 2016-17 budget will be developed based on current law. However, he said he would work with the governor throughout the fall and decide if they would do a “budget A” and “budget B” that would show the impact of changing the provider fee.

Unfortunately, it looks like Hick’s dual budgets will have to be extremely persuasive to convince Republican Senate President Bill Cadman, whose party sent the bill to a kill committee after it passed the Democrat-controlled House on a party-line vote.

Goodland didn’t quote Cadman, but the GOP leader told KNUS 710-AM’s Krista Kafer Tuesday that the hospital-provider fee was the number-one bad idea proposed by Democrats.

Kafer:  I’m so glad Republicans have the state senate…  What is the number one bad  idea you guys stopped?

Cadman: Oh my god. How much time do you have left? Let me put my list together and come back on. I will tell you though, my predecessor said, you’re better to be known for the things you defeated here, than the things that you pass. I’d hate to say it right now, but probably wouldbe  the hospital-provider fee, as written, which was a multi-hundred million dollar hit into the TABOR situation, that died actually just as I was calling in.

Listen to Cadman discuss his opposition to the Hosp Prov Fee on KNUS 5.5.15

Goodland reported on a committee hearing Tuesday, during which the hospital provider fee won the support of most everyone who testified, including business interests. Those opposed? Only entity: the ideological anti-tax Colorado Union of Taxpayers.

Goodland reported on what’s at stake:

Hickenlooper’s budget director, Henry Sobanet, told the committee without passage of HB 1389, three out of four general fund dollars available in 2016-17 will have to go to K-12 education, to keep the negative factor from growing. The negative factor is a budgetary device, first employed in 2010, to allow the state to cut funding to K-12. The total cut was about $1 billion; it was reduced by $100 million last year and will be reduced by $25 million in the recently passed 2015-16 budget.

If HB 1389 were to pass, Steadman told the committee, it would free up $167 million for appropriations in 2016-17. That could go for transportation projects or to reduce the negative factor. Otherwise, in 2016-17, the budget will be bleak. “This isn’t how the state’s budget priorities should go,” he said.

KOA 850-AM Morning News anchor Steffan Tubbs wouldn’t be expected to know all the ins and outs of the state legislative session, which ends Wednesday.

But if you’ve been following Colorado’s Republicans at all over the past three months, you know they’ve used their new-found Senate leadership to prioritize legislation (anti-choice, anti-immigrant, anti-working class) that’s divisive, at best.

Yet, Senate President Bill Cadman told Tubbs this morning:

“In a split legislature, you have to stay focused on the things that matter to both sides, and frankly to the 5.3 million people  who we represent,” Cadman told KOA at 2:45 below.

But that’s not what Cadman did.

Recall Cadman’s Republicans opened the legislative session by stripping money from the budget for a program to provide drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants–a program widely thought to make driving safer in the state.

Next, Republicans–upset over the use of birth control–deleted funds for an award-winning state-run program that reduced teen pregnancy by 40 percent and teen abortions by 35 percent.

They went on to block legislation to forcing corporations to pay taxes on profits currently hidden in overseas tax havens–and spending this money on schools. Similar legislation received bipartisan support in other states, yet it was torpedoed by the GOP here.

Onward Cadman went, finishing things off by taking advantage of a horrible Longmont murder to introduce fetal personhood legislation, modeled boiler-plate style, after a bill promoted by a national anti-choice group.

Democrats had partisan legislation of their own, for sure, but for Tubbs to let Cadman say he “focused on things that matter to both sides” defies how Republicans actually used the power handed to them by voters in November, when control of the state senate went to the GOP.

On Facebook Saturday, Derrick Wilburn, who’s Vice Chair of the Colorado Republican Party, linked to a New York Times opinion article suggesting that pedophilia may have “neurological origins” and may not be “a choice.” The piece suggests ways to treat people with pedophilia to stop them from molesting children.

Wilburn posted the following comment about the article on the American Conservatives of Color Facebook page:

Wilburn: And here we go. I have discussed many times in the past how we stand at the top of a very slippery slope. The LBGT community itself readily admits that “marriage is just the beginning.” The “I was born this way” label is one they apply to any and every form of sexual behavior – multiple partners, cross-dressing, beastialty, you name it. Including pedophilia. “I’ can’t help it, I was born this way. I’ve just always been sexually attracted to children.” This reasoning is the doorway to acceptance. Why should we have laws & punishments in place for people who have/had no control of the way they’re wired? It’s not fair. It’s discriminatory. Yadda.

It’s coming, folks. Just as sure as the sun rises in the east, it is coming.

I called Wilburn to confirm that he was comparing gays to people with pedophilia:

Wilburn: “I wasn’t saying the two are comparable,” he said. “What I’m saying is, as a society, we are moving in the direction of, ‘how I believe I was born makes my behavior normative and therefore acceptable.’ We have to be very careful. At what point do we, as a society draw a line, or is there no line? I try to post stuff more as a topic of conversation than as my personal viewpoints, though of course I do have my views. If you read it like that, it’s really just more, this is something we need to talk about. “People are already saying, ‘Look, I was born with a genetic disposition to sexual attraction toward other men,’ if I’m a male. ‘That’s just how I was born.’ Okay, I’m not going to make that a point of dispute or argument. But then what do we do when someone ways, ‘I was borwith a propensity toward being attracted to children. I was born with a propensity toward being attracted to German Shepherds’.’

I don’t get it. By trotting out the slippery-slope argument, Wilburn is actually factually comparing pedophilia (a mental illness) to homosexuality, a healthy sexual preference. The two are not on the same slope! Here are a few of the comments on Wilburn’s Facebook post:

Jim Maerk Pandora’s box was opened with society’s approval of Homosexuals as a special class of people and now, the Demons are coming!

Emily Cantrell It seems like you are saying homosexuality and pedophilia are the same. Two things: 1)Those are not the same. And 2)Being hateful to gay people is going to lose us the election in 2016 so quit it!

Nick Bosco Did anyone actually read the article? Nowhere in it was there any suggestion, or even allusion, that child molesters should not be punished “because they can’t help it”.

Jeffrey Hickey And this is why liberals have as much power as they do; you conservatives prove them right every time you open your ignorant, bigoted mouths. Equating Homosexuality to Pedophilia and Bestiality is just pure and utter ignorance

Trish Mann Herbert Wow, comparing Pedophilia to homosexuality is ridiculous. One is between two consenting adults the other is preying on children who have no choice. You are relying on fear to perpetuate your idealolgy

Carla Salomone Rowland Then there should be no punishment for murderers because they can’t help them selves…they were born with a disorder..right?

After being investigated by Washington DC authorities for having an AR-15 assault rifle in his Washington office, freshman Republican Congressman Ken Buck said he intends to be part a congressional effort to weaken DC gun-safety laws, which are among the nation’s toughest.

Asked on NRA News’ “Cam and Co” Show April 23 if his experience gives him “added impetus” to address DC’s gun laws, Buck replied, “Yes, it does,” noting that the issue falls under the jurisdiction of two committees on which he sits: the Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform Committees.

“It’s something I will look at,” said Buck on the podcast, noting that it’s not “on the top of the heap,” but he’s already talked to other Members of Congress about it.

“There is going to be an effort to look at what DC does and to try to rein in the really irrational–if you’re an honest law-abiding citizen, you want to have a means to protect yourself,” Buck said on air, discussing Washington’s gun-safety laws. “And it’s just unbelievable that people in DC believe that honest people should not be able to protect themselves. They should be victimized.”

Buck revealed the presence of the assault weapon in his office last week, when he tweeted a photo of it along with: “My friend Trey Gowdy stopped by the office — had to show him my AR-15 to commemorate the occasion.”

The tweet was first reported by the progressive blog ColoradoPols, which Buck referred to as “knuckleheads” in his NRA news interview.

“There were some knuckleheads back in Colorado that decided they wanted to cause some problems, and so they forwarded the picture to the Attorney General here in DC,” Buck said, when asked how Washington authorities became aware of the assault weapon in his office.

It appears that Buck did not break Capitol-Police rules by having the weapon in his office, but the Metropolitan DC Police have apparently not commented. The Washington DC Attorney General looked into the matter and referred it to the DC police,

“As conservatives, we are more cautious [with their weapons], because we understand that there is a double standard,” Buck said on air. “But in this case they ate crow, and I hope they continue to eat crow for a long time. I hope other Congressmen see that they can have a gun in their office and follow the lead.”

“I have a very patriotic AR15 hanging in my office. It hangs directly above my Second Amendment flag,” Buck said in a statement, as reported by The Denver Post.

It’s not for everybody, but if you’re me, you can’t help but be curious about a guy who asks Azucar Bakery, on Broadway in Denver, to make cakes shaped like an open Bible with the these messages:

One cake: God Hates Sin, Psalm 45-7. Homosexuality Is a Detestable Sin, Leviticus 18-22.

The other cake: God Loves Sinners. While We Were Yet Sinners, God Died for Us. Romans 5-8.

It turns out that Bill Jack, the man who placed this cake order, is also a sometime talk-show host, which gives a radio aficionado an opening to find out more about him.

After listening to a few hours of his shows on “Generations Radio,” a fundamentalist Christian outlet, and talking with him on the phone, I would describe him as a deeply religious individual who feels so besieged and alienated by cultural norms that he has to carve out an extreme path to function in everyday society.  His path has an internal logic to it, but to the rest of us, it can be hateful and discriminatory.

For example, on a podcasted “Generations Radio” show in January (below), Jack and co-host Steve Vaughan got angry about Planned Parenthood teaching sex-education in public school.

They read an article alleging that a student felt “pressured to have sex” by the lessons. This led to some harsh words about Planned Parenthood and public school education.

Vaughan: (@23:45 below): “The reason why, especially with Planned Parenthood, tthe more sex these kids have, the more business [Planned Parenthood] has in aborting the babies.

Jack: It’s conflict of interest [for Planned Parenthood to be teaching sex education], I would think.”

Vaughan (at @26:15 below): “If you are a Christian, you should not have your kids in public school anyway. This is not a place for them to be witnessing to other people. Bad company corrupts good morals. And your children are going to be the ones to get changed. If you hug a pig, the pig doesn’t get cleaner. Your kid gets dirty. [Laughs]

Jack: I never heard that one before. [Laughs] But everybody needs a hug. But this is what Planned Parenthood does. They want your children to be pigs.

Vaughan: Yeah.

Jack: They want them to wallow in the muck. And what we need to is, we as Christians need to expose evil…Shine the light of truth and grace on such activities. And so I urge you, as home schooling parents, to investigate what’s being taught in the public schools.

I told Jack that my kids go to public school, and even though rats were discovered at East High School in Denver this year, the place is full of beautiful kids. Why call my kid a pig?

Jack: That’s an illustration. It’s an analogy, and the analogy is fairly succinct and pithy, and makes it clear. You don’t want to entrust your student to someone who has an opposing worldview. That’s not as pithy, as punchy.

Salzman: But it’s mean. Would you agree?

Jack: No. it’s not mean. It’s a statement of fact.

Salzman: I take it as mean. I respect what you just said about not sending your kid to public school. That’s your right. But you’re telling me my kid is dirty?

Jack: No. I didn’t say your kid’s dirtier. Your kid gets polluted by a secular worldview.

Jack’s war against the “secular worldview” is key to understanding where he’s coming from.

“For a Christian, your faith dictates your economics, you view of science, of art, of education,” said Jack, who’s a founder of Worldview Academy, which “trains Christians to think and live in accord with a biblical worldview.”  “It’s not compartmentalized.”

Jack has produced a video, showing one way he applies this thinking. It’s titled, “Biblically Correct Tour of The Denver Zoo, The Denver Museum of Nature and Science, The Denver Museum of Art, Law and Order at the Colorado State Capitol, and Dinosaur Ridge outside Denver.”

Which brings us back to Jack’s cake order, with the anti-gay message.

When we spoke, Jack was upset that The Denver Post characterized what he’d asked the baker to write on the cake as “gay slurs” and “hateful words.”

I told Jack I agreed with The Post’s decision to report, in a news story, that the phrase “homosexuality is detestable sin” is a slur, even if it’s in the Bible. Our laws and cultural values affirm this, and so did Colorado’s Civil Rights Division when it rejected Jack’s complaint that his civil rights had been violated when Azucar Bakery refused his order for a cake emblazoned with “homosexuality is a detestable sin” and other phrases.

But Jack believes the “the Civil Rights Commission is acting like the Nazis. They are acting like those who want to re-educate the public.”

It’s a bible verse, Jack has said in numerous interviews about homosexuality being a sin. He emphasized that if the Civil Rights Division is going to force one baker not to discriminate against gays who request cakes for their weddings, then it should force another baker not to discriminate against Christians who request an anti-gay Bible verse on another cake.

“So the Bible is an illegal, immoral book to be censored from the public arena?” he says. “That is offensive. It’s censorship. It’s tyranny. You either believe in the First Amendment or you believe in tyranny.  My bottom line is that this is an effort to censor God from the public square.”

But there are competing rights, I told Jack. Colorado’s public accommodation law bars businesses from discriminating based on sexual orientation and religion, among other things. Even Colorado Republican John Suthers agreed that, under Colorado law, a baker must serve gay costumers. Or it’s discrimination.

But, under the law, a baker isn’t discriminating against a Christian if he or she refuses to make a cake with slurs on it. Civil society can reject the hateful words in the Bible, and still protect Christians from legitimate discrimination.

“We are gutting the First Amendment,” Jack said. “I’m talking about Bible verses, and suddenly they are being labeled gay slurs.”

So for Jack, his religion, his practice of strict adherence to the Bible, no matter how archaic and out-of-step with how most people practice Christianity, is the trump card, his license to do things that most people—as well as Colorado law—see as hateful and discriminatory.

It’s also the reason why he thinks my public-school-attending children are dirty, polluted by a secular worldview. It’s part of the same continuum.

One wonders if the conservative-run Leadership of the Rockies Program, which schooled GOP operative Lisa Pinto, needs to add a class on how to gracefully ignore anonymous tweets.

In her job as Chief Communications Officer for the Jefferson Country  School District, Pinto has massively more important problems on her plate than complaining tweets directed at her. Yet, she’s wasting time on conservative talk radio whining about her tweets.

You’d any right-leaning talk radio program, normally home base for the get-over-it approach to personal problems, would boot her off the show, but KNUS host Krista Kafer wrapped Pinto in a warm blanket, introducing a April 3 segment on the tweets:

Kafer: “So there are these people out there. I don’t know. Do they not work? Do they not have a hobby? Do they not garden? I don’t know, but apparently they have a lot of extra time just to be mean. I guess being mean is a hobby.”

This opened the floodgates from Pinto, who emphasized that she took time on vacation to discuss the tweets on KNUS 710 AM, not on the taxpayer dime. (Listen below.)

“Thanks for taking up this really important topic,” Pinto told Kafer. “It’s really crazy that this is going on in this day an age in Colorado.”

Really important? Crazy in this day and age?  She’s a communications pro? Maybe she’s under the spell of the Independence Institute, which found recent tweets about Jeffco-School topics so important that it established a website, MeanGirlz.org, to promote them. Read more about this in Westword.

Anyway, Pinto went on for the next 20 minutes or so, making me wonder if she knew anything at all about the content of Twitter.

Pinto: “It’s so personal…I’m a staff member. I’m being paid to do my job. I show up. Sometimes I work 50 hours a week…It’s really hurtful. From day one, I kept hearing this. Unqualified. Had no experience. And if you think back to the civil rights struggle, this is what they always said….Not to brag, but I’m a Yale grad. I’m a lawyer, admitted in the state of New York. I’ve been a veteran prosecutor. I’ve hosted cable TV shows…I’m here for the children…Why don’t we join in doing what’s good for the children, which is modeling mature, kind, spiritual behavior. And when I said spiritual, I don’t mean religious. I mean a path of kindness and tolerance…I marched against injustices in college. I served women and children as a prosecutor advocating for domestic violence victims and children who have been sexually abused. And they don’t know any of that about me, and they don’t seem to care…It’s hurtful. Coming from the east coast, we were really unprepared for this type of name calling…It’s shocking…I have a terrific boss, who’s very supportive…And you know a reporter came up on this, and the tone of outrage in her article, it really made me realize I’m not alone on an island…

Kafer: Racism, to me, is so grotesque, as well as sexism, is so grotesque that when I run into it, which is rare, it’s like running into a dinosaur.

 Pinto: …So that, I guess, would be my ask today. Everyone who sees this stuff say. ‘That is not okay.’ Direct message the site…Unfriend. Direct message. Make your statement. Say it’s not appropriate. That ends the discourse right there.”

Bottom line: These are anonymous tweets! I’ve reviewed the tweets, and I can’t believe Pinto doesn’t have better things to focus on.

As for Kafer, there’s just gotta be better ways to advance the conservative agenda on talk radio than holding the hand of Lisa Pinto.

You’d be excused for assuming, from all the talk about The Denver Post being in free-fall, that the newspaper is shedding writers like a cat in springtime.

But it turns out, when you do the bean counting, that The Post has pretty much maintained its editorial staff over the past year or so. If you count two positions that are apparently waiting to be filled, the departed staffers equal the hired/filled positions.

Many veterans have left, leaving serious memory loss, but some excellent reporters have been hired as well (e.g., the newish politics reporters: John Frank, Mark Matthews, Jon Murray.)

You can argue that the journalistic stability at The Post, such as it is, is the owner’s, Digital First Media, transparent attempt to prop up a sick business that’s currently for sale.

Against a backdrop of stability, even if it’s manufactured, you wonder whether the newspaper has plans to replace opinion writer Alicia Caldwell, who left last month. I asked Post Editorial Page Editor Vincent Carroll about this.

“The position that Alicia vacated has not been filled, and I am not currently looking for a replacement,” Carroll told me via email on Thursday. “Alicia was a valuable colleague and I regret that she moved on, but her new job sounds like a great opportunity for her.”

If you look below at the Post’s editorial jobs that have been filled over the past year or so, it’s hard to comprehend why the newspaper wouldn’t hire a replacement for Caldwell, given the impact the opinion page continues to have on civic affairs in Denver. Would you argue with my estimate that 90 percent of political elites, even Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt (here’s proof), read The Denver Post’s political coverage, including its opinions,despite the paper’s serious circulation drop overall.

It’s not feasible to expect other staff on the opinion page to pick up Caldwell’s work. Her position is essential.

So, please-oh-please, Digital First Media, whoever and whatever you are, please add another writer to The Post’s opinion page to allow it to continue to produce informed opinion, with meaningful input from the community.

List of Denver Post Departed and Hired Editorial Staff over the Past Year or So

Departed (15)

Kristen Browning-Blas from features
Alicia Caldwell
Karen Crummy
Adrian Dater from sports/hockey
Mary Idler, an editorial assistant
Nancy Lofholm
Kurtis Lee
Kristen Painter from business
Ryan Parker from police
Howard Pankratz from business
Tim Rasmussen, photo editor (replaced from within by Meghan Lyden)
Allison Sherry in D.C.
Zahira Torres from education (replaced from within by Eric Gorski)
Andy Vuong in business
Kyle Wagner from features/travel

Hired/Filled (13)

Dave Krause (filled the opening when Dana Coffield was named business editor)
Molly Hughes for DPTV
John Frank, politics
Jon Murray, politics
Mark Matthews, (replaced Allison Sherry)
Alicia Walace (replaced Pankratz)
John Aguilar, general
Noelle Phillips, general
Jesse Paul, general
Tamara Chuang in biz (replaced Andy Vuong)
Jean Fields, Features
Brent Lewis, Photography
A replacement for Mary Idler

At the heart of Thursday’s Denver Post editorial supporting a personhood bill introduced by State Sen. Bill Cadman is the argument that Colorado needs a new law to penalize people like Dynel Lane, who faces over 100 years in prison for her alleged attack on Michelle Wilkins, who was pregnant and lost her fetus.

But just last year, The Post argued that existing Colorado law, specifically addressing crimes against pregnant women, was sufficient for cases like Wilkins’. The 2013 Crimes Against Pregnant Women law balances severe penalties for crimes harming fetuses with the preservation of abortion rights and the protection of pregnant women from criminal investigation.

Here’s what The Post said last week in its editorial endorsing Cadman’s bill:

A 2013 law made it a felony to unlawfully terminate a pregnancy, but it is a Class 3 felony with a sentencing range of 10 to 32 years unless the mother dies — when it becomes a Class 2 felony. The Class 3 felony is utterly inadequate.

But when The Post opposed last year’s personhood amendment, the newspaper argued that even a “horrific incident” did not justify a new law because “the state legislature already made the necessary statutory fix.” Here’s what The Post wrote last year:

The horrific incident laid bare a gap in Colorado law that did not allow authorities to charge the drunken driver with anything for the loss of Brady [an eight-month-old fetus].

The Yes on 67 campaign attempts to capitalize on this circumstance, saying the amendment is needed to protect pregnant mothers from violence. Proponents conveniently ignore the fact that the state legislature already made the necessary statutory fix.

It’s because of this 2013 “statutory fix” that Lane faces the 100-year prison term, because the 2013 Crimes-Against-Pregnant-Women law allows charges to be added on top of one another, over and above the Class 3 felony.

This severe penalties of Colorado’s 2013 law were apparently good enough for The Post last year, but now the statute is suddenly inadequate? What gives?

Clearly, both Cadman’s bill and Amendment 67 are attempts to take advantage of nightmarish incidents to pass different versions of “personhood.” Colorado’s 2013 law, considered the gold standard in balancing women’s rights with criminal justice, was a good argument against Amendment 67, as The Post understood at the time.

Newspaper editorials are supposed to be consistent and above-the-fray, so you’d expect The Post to point again to the 2013 Crimes Against Pregnant Women law and argue against Cadman’s personhood bill. But, alas, no, and the logic of the inconsistency escapes me.