Pueblo County’s Republican Chair, Becky Mizel, isn’t known for pulling her punches, but she hit particularly hard at her fellow Republicans in a recent interview on KNUS’ Peter Boyles Show.

The fight roiling the state GOP is reaching a frenzy leading up to the March 14 vote on whether to retain Republican State Chair Ryan Call, and Mizel, who says “people are leaving the Party,” thinks a leadership change “at the top” is required to align the money wing of the party with the “majority of the GOP that thinks like we do.”

Mizel told Boyles (hear it below) that she’s been “calling around to counties all over the state,” and she’s found out that progressives are out-organizing Republicans, with  groups like Colorado WINS and ProgressNow “well-established,” even in “counties like Ouray,” not known to be a lefty outpost.

The GOP’s zeitgeist, embodied in Mizel, is largely flowing under the media radar, even though the stakes are high. A shift in leadership at the state party could have a huge impact not only on the amount of money raised by Republicans in Colorado but also where GOP money flows. It’s a story that deserves more attention.

Mizel: That’s what I really hate about the GOP. There’s that segment of the GOP that controls all of the money, the messaging, and the data. But then there’s the majority of the GOP that thinks like we do. And so, it’s really kind of a sad thing. And people are leaving the party. If we don’t do something to change the leadership at the top, I don’t think there’s not a 3rd party strong enough to win. And so, we’re destined. And the other thing, I’ve been calling around to the counties all over the state, Peter, and, boy, I can tell you, the Democrats have all of their people in place through groups like Colorado WINS and ProgressNow. They are well established in counties like Ouray and Silverton. We don’t even have a clue! Our Republican leadership comes in. They could care less. They only caring about the top of the ticket. They want to control messaging. They want to control dollars. They think your candidates aren’t good enough It’s all about getting the RNC candidates in. It’s not about the county-up. And so we just have to start taking control from the Grassroots up…And people are leaving the Party.

Boyles: Well, they should.

Mizel: I’m not saying the Party is great. But it’s their vehicle to get other people elected.

Boyles: …I’ve said this many, many, many times:  if the Republican Party puts Jeb Bush as the Presidential hopeful, I WILL vote for Hillary Clinton.  I swear to God, I will!  I mean, if that’s the best that they can do, and I think it is what they’re going to do.  But as an aside, he is– did you see that great line, that “The Bush family really believes in No Child Left Behind.  They’re going to run Jeb.”  I thought it was a great line.  What can people do to help you dump Ryan Call?

The Colorado Statesman’s Marianne Goodland offered up a good tidbit of reporting in an article published yesterday, in which she aired out State Rep. Patrick Neville’s complaint that his gun purchases were twice denied because he failed a background check.

But Goodland put the problem in context by also reporting that Neville’s denial, due to a clerical error, was resolved in fewer than eight hours.

Goodland also reported the testimony of Ron Sloan, Director of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation:

Sloan cited statistics showing that almost 6,000 sales and transfers were halted because the buyer failed the background check. Some of the checks failed, Sloan said, because the buyers had convictions for crimes such as homicide, kidnapping, sexual assault, burglary and drug offenses.

So, in a post last week, I was wrong to write that no gun was denied to anyone who was legally entitled to one. It appears, in Neville’s case, an eight-hour delay occurred, due to a clerical error.

Isolated mistakes like Neville’s will inevitably happen, but is it worth it to keep thousands of real criminals from buying guns? That’s the question that flows from the facts reported by the Statesman. Are we willing to tolerate Neville’s rare nnninconvenience to keep guns out of the hands of murderers?

Conservatives are still wondering around, from interview to interview, saying they want to dump Obamacare. And here’s “the key thing,” as articulated by freshman Colorado State Senator Tim Neville on the radio Saturday:

Neville: “The key thing is the Republican Party, and those of us up in the Senate and the House, need to make sure we have something to replace it, and we’re working on a little bill along those lines this year.”

Neville didn’t spill the beans on his Obamacare alternative right away, but he circled back to it later in the interview, aired on KNUS’ Weekend Wake Up.

Turns out, he was referring to his bill requiring hospitals to list the prices of common procedures, when third parties aren’t paying for it.

Neville @10:45 below: “Going back to the health care, what do we have that’s going to replace this? I have a pretty moderate bill requiring transparency and requiring–and I hate to require any business to do anything–but allowing people to actually get prices so that if they want to pay for a health-care procedure, they actually have an opportunity to get a price instead of having to go through the billing department. And if they don’t have insurance, they really don’t know what they are going to get charged, if they just want to pay for their procedure. We have so many people in high-deductible plans–$6,000 deductibles or higher–and so many people who have decided, ‘I’m not going to mess with it.’

…”If we allow the forces of the marketplace to be unleashed, I’m a huge fan of high-deductible programs, health-saving accounts that are tax-deductible, and the ability for people to have skin in the game to make important decisions, rational decisions.”

A price list, so people without insurance know exactly how much they probably can’t pay? Skin in the game!

Maybe the idea has merit, but Neville is overflowing with audacity to frame this bill as anything related to the Obamacare alternative that conservatives are desperately seeking. And of course, if he says it in front of a real reporter, or even if he doesn’t, he should be asked about it.

In Neville’s case, the anti-Obamacare passion runs deep. He said Saturday that he challenged fellow Republican Jim Kerr for the Jeffco Senate seat after Kerr went “off the rails” and supported the bill (SB-200), which established Colorado’s market-based health-insurance exchange and had the support of the business community and GOP leader Rep. Amy Stephens, among others, at the time.

Neville, beginning at 4:50 below: “Senate bill 200 was what put me over the edge to be involved in politics, when I was running for a vacancy. There was a Republican legislator that wanted to move up from the House to the Senate. I actually campaigned for him, considered him as a friend. But he kind of got off the rails, along with the other people who voted for 200. And people weren’t getting it. Sometimes you can send a message with a phone call or a letter and sometimes you’ve got to have a little bit more involvement…. One of my first bills was to repeal the state health care exchange, and, of course, it fell one vote short.”

You wouldn’t expect KNUS talk-show host Chuck Bonniwell, who interviewed Neville Saturday, to ask about the GOP’s real alternatives to Obamacare, but other reporters should pick up the slack, whether it’s Neville or Sen. Cory Gardner.

ColoradoPols did us a favor yesterday by trotting out some of the ridiculous misinformation delivered in 2013 by opponents of gun safety laws. And Pols pleaded with local reporters to correct such falsehoods if they pop up this year.

As a example of what should be done, I direct your attention to a 2013 Post editorial that corrected GOP Sen. Kent Lambert’s statement, cited in the Pols post yesterday, that that lawmakers had “effectively banned gun ownership.”

Labert’s statement, The Post wrote, was “not supported by the facts.”

Dahh, you say, but as Pols pointed out, that’s what we need when our elected leaders stray from the obvious facts.

And it’s also what we need when elected officials stray into wild hyperbole, that may not be demonstrably incorrect, per se, but should be called out as… wild hyperbole.

Last time around, for example, we heard this from respectable people under the gold dome:

Lambert: And now, you know, with everybody having their guns confiscated or taken away here over the next couple years, almost completely overturning the Second Amendment, what’s going to happen to our crime rate? [BigMedia editorial comment: two years have passed! Every legal gun owner still has her gun.]

And this in 2013:

State Rep. Kevin Priola compared banning some ammunition magazines to putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps during WWII.

And this in 2013:

Rep. Kevin Lundberg said on the radio that Colorado is getting “so close” to the point where he’ll be having his gun pried away from his “cold, dead hands.”

It’s bad when a guy like State Sen. Randy Baumgardner claims falsely, as he did in 2013, that “hammers and bats” killed more people in America in 2012 than guns did.

His facts should be corrected.

But the scare tactics about gun confiscation should be confronted as well,  with the simple fact that it’s been two years now and not a single legal gun holder has lost her weapon.

Most people groan when media figures toss soft-ball questions at public officials, but not all softballs are created equal.

As you’d expect, during a Jan. 27 interview, KNUS talk-radio host Krista Kafer thew a bunch of eye-roll-inducing questions at Colorado’s new Republican Senator, Cory Gardner, like has he been surprised by anything?

But one of Kafer’s softballs was illuminating. She asked, “Who ya hanging out with?”

As his emerging Senate BFFs, Gardner first mentioned some of the most radical right wingers in the chamber.

Gardner spotlighted his budding relationship with Tea-Party leader Ted Cruz of Texas, saying he “sat next to Sen. Cruz over the past several policy meetings that we’ve had, talking about issues like what we’re going to do on health care….” (Cruz, of course, led the charge for a government shutdown to stop Obamacare.)

Also cited by Gardner, in answer to Kafer’s question, were anti-environmentalists John Thune (R-SD) and Jerry Moran (R-KS).

You know a Senator by the company he keeps. And in Gardner’s case, his company of obstructionist right wingers reflects what we’ve heard from him in Washington as well. The name of a moderate Republican or Democrat did not come out of Gardner’s mouth.

Good on ya, Krista Kafer, for at least one of your softballs.

The Ft. Collins Coloradoan advanced a story Monday that Boulder Rep. KC Becker is working on a bill to provide $5 million in funding for a state teen-pregnancy prevention program that, in a privately funded multi-year pilot phase, reduced teen pregnancies by 40 percent and teen abortions by 35 percent–and saved Colorado tens of millions of dollars to boot!

The Coloradoan quoted Sen. Kevin Lundberg, who’s the Assistant Republican Majority Leader, as objecting to such funding because the program relies on the distribution of free or no-cost intrauterine devices (IUDs) and other long-lasting pregnancy -prevention implants, and Lundberg (along with twice failed gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez) believe IUDs cause abortions.

But IUDs work before pregnancy occurs!

“Any statement that IUDs aren’t contraception simply isn’t medically or scientifically accurate,” said Dr. Jennifer Hyer, a Denver Ob-Gyn, in a statement distributed by NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado. “As a licensed, practicing Colorado OB-Gyn I recommend IUDs for my patients all the time. They are among the most effective forms of contraception, especially for at-risk women, because they automatically prevent pregnancy. That’s why Colorado’s program was so successful, and access to long-acting contraceptives needs to continue if we want to keep reducing the teen birth and abortion rate.”

The Coloradoan correctly pointed out that the “definition of pregnancy used by CDPHE and other scientists has pregnancy beginning at the implantation of the fertilized egg.”

The definition of pregnancy is so central to the debate around this teen-pregnancy-prevention bill that the Coloradoan should have been even more explicit, saying that the mainstream scientific community, meaning the scientific establishment of nerdy medical people, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have defined pregnancy as beginning at implantation, not before.

Pregnancy: Is established only at the conclusion of implantation of a fertilized egg.
34 This scientific definition of pregnancy is also the legal definition of pregnancy, accepted by governmental agencies and all major U.S. medical organizations.

So Lundberg’s personal belief that IUD’s work by “stopping a small child from implanting” is not only wrong, but it’s not relevant.  (By “small child” Lundberg was referring to zygotes, or fertilized eggs, which are formed prior to pregnancy, which starts once the egg implants in the uterus.)

In an RH Reality Check piece yesterday, I reported:

Under the Family Planning Initiative, about 30,000 IUDs and other long-lasting contraceptive implants were distributed during a five-year pilot program. Participating clinics in 37 of Colorado’s 64 counties serve 95 percent of the state’s population.

The initiative saved $23 million in Medicaid costs since it started five years ago, and continuing the family planning initiative will save $40 million in Medicaid funds, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has estimated.

Republicans hold a one-seat majority in Colorado’s senate, but observers say the teen pregnancy program funds may still clear the chamber, even without the support of Lundberg, who chairs the Health and Human Services Committee. Becker, the state house sponsor, has said her bill has a Republican co-sponsor, who has yet to be named.

Scientists used to think that birth control worked, in some cases, by stopping implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterine wall. But scientists now say that not only emergency contraception but other forms of birth control prevent implantation.

During an obscure appearance Jan. 16 on KLZ 560-AM’s nooner show, Freedom 560, State Rep. Justin Everett and host Ken Clark lit into the progressive blog, ColoradoPols, for its recent blog post listing fictitious names for Republican-sponsored bills in the state legislature.

Everett and Clark spent a good chunk of the show bashing the most-excellent Pols post, which, for example, offered names like “The ‘Right to Discriminate’ Act,” SB 15-069 (Sen. Laura Woods) and “The ‘Felons in Child Care’ Act,” SB 15-070 (Sen. Kevin Lundberg).

They read the make-believe names of the bills. They laughed. They got mad at “the left.” They patted themselves on the back.

Everett addressed Pols directly on air: “[Pols is] very good at spinning things to make them into something they are completely not. All these things, especially the guns bills here on ColoradoPols, it should be ‘Restoring Freedom Act.’ That would be a better definition. ‘Restoring Personal Liberties.’ But apparently you guys are pretty far off the reservation, but we’ve known that, and that’s why you’re not relevant. 

So, they choose to dedicate a segment of the show to Pols, and they say the blog isn’t relevant? How does that work?

Maybe they lump themselves in the non-relevant category, too, allowing them, as non-relevant entities, to focus on another non-relevant entity without worrying about their own relevancy?

I doubt it. Those two are awfully head strong to see themselves as lacking relevancy. So maybe they secretly think Pols is relevant? I called and emailed Everett to find out, but he didn’t get back to me, leaving me feeling no more or less relevant than usual.

Even if you’re a just a talk-radio host, you shouldn’t just say “Yap,” as KHOW 630-AM’s Mandy Connell did yesterday, when your special guest, in this case, Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), insults the President.

“He’s a wonderful orator,” Buck told Connell during her morning show yesterday. “And he makes everybody happy. The reality is, that he has no intention of flattening the tax code. He has every intention of making sure that he is creating a majority vote, a 51 percent vote, of people who are receiving benefits from the government that they wouldn’t otherwise receive.”

As I noted, Connell’s reply to this was the utterance of “Yap.” My own thought was more along the lines of WTF.

Where’s Buck’s proof that Obama has a political agenda to create a “51 percent vote” of Americans “receiving benefits from government that they wouldn’t otherwise receive.”

Is he reading Obama’s mind? If Buck has evidence for this wild and insulting accusation, we’d all like to see it. But if he doesn’t, it’s more grossness from our new Representative from Colorado.

Buck isn’t a lonely District Attorney anymore–or a candidate making yet another gaffe that reporters don’t have time to dig into. Now he’s a Congressman who should be held accountable–even by radio hosts–for his insults and baseless mud slinging.

Would the Republican-controlled Congress shut down the Department of Homeland Security to halt Obama’s program delaying deportation of undocumented immigrants whose children are U.S. citizens?

Colorado’s own Rep. Ken Buck would do it.

KLZ radio host Randy Corporon gets a moment of respect for putting the question directly to Buck during an interview Jan.14 on his “Wake-Up” show. (Beginning at 1:50:30 here)

Corporon: Republicans in the past anyway have shown a willingness to cave in the face of public pressure and media assaults. When the President says, ‘Hey look, Congress is messing with the security of the United States,’ are you guys in Congress ready to make the case that we’ve put the bills on his desk…and are you going to have a message that keeps you guys standing together and actually lets this thing play out.

Buck: I can tell you this: Ken Buck will. I will make the case, and I will make sure that we are not funding those portions of his executive action that are so repugnant.

So repugnant? Keeping parents together with their American kids?

Buck told “Righty” Corporon the Republican-controlled House is ready to shut down the government to stop this repugnancy (not a word, but I used it anyway to highlight Buck’s own grossness.)

Obama has used his executive authority to temporarily halt deportations of young undocumented immigrants who came here illegally as children. He’s also launched a program delaying the deportation of immigrants whose children are American citizens..

“If [Obama] vetoes the appropriations bill, he is shutting down that segment of government. And that will be on the President,” Buck told Corporon. “He did his best to put that on Republicans last time when we wanted to de-fund parts of Obamacare. With a Republican Senate, this will clearly be on the President’s watch, that he will be shutting down the Department of Homeland Security. “

Buck: I can tell you, I don’t know what the Republicans in the United States Senate will do. And I’m not sure they can get the six votes that they need from the Democrats in the United States Senate to actually move a tough DHS appropriations bill forward. I do think there are the votes in the House to continue down this path.

Buck is in a decent position to know. He’s not only the president of the freshman Republican class in the U.S. House, he’s also on the House immigration subcommittee.  (He got the assignment just after saying, “I don’t owe people who are here illegally anything.”)

Corporon set up the conversation by asking Buck how congressional Republicans could design a bill that would ensure no funds would go toward deferring deportation of select immigrants, while allowing the Department of Homeland Security to carry on its other work, like securing the border that causes Republicans such consternation.

Corporon: If this bill got through both houses of Congress, got on the President’s desk, how would that work to just de-fund only specific areas and activities and programs within the Department of Homeland Security? Don’t you just write them a check?

Buck: No, we don’t write them a check. They receive line-item authority, and the authority may be for a broad area, like processing the applications for work permits. But then Congress can put in that language that work permits cannot be granted to people who’ve lived in this country, or whatever language we want. And so really, the key is, this is an appropriations bill. And we’re arguing about language that will go in the appropriations bill.  When the Senate passes their version, and it will come back, we’ll work on it in conference, and we’ll send the appropriations bill to the President. 

Click here to listen to Buck Call Obama’s immigration programs “repugnant.”

Republican Sen. Cory Gardner took his slippery interview tactics to the national stage of PBS’ Newshour yesterday, responding to questions with predictions of the future, not answers to the questions, leaving us thinking we got answers from our new Senator. When we really didn’t.

In a re-wind of what we heard from Gardner during his election campaign, the Newshour’s Al Hunt asked Gardner about immigration. Hunt acted as if he’d gotten an answer from Gardner, since he didn’t follow up, but in reality, he’d gotten little or nothing from him.

Hunt: There are some House Republicans who are proposing now, with the Homeland Security authorization, that they would deny funding for Obama’s executive action in November. And some would go and deny funding. And some would go even and deny funding for the DREAMer’s action in 2012. Is that helpful? Is that constructive?

Hunt: …You supported the DREAMers’ action, didn’t you?

Gardner: That will ultimately be part of the solution, but we have to start with a secure border. We have to start with a guest-worker program. Those are things the American people support. They want it to be proven that we can actually handle some of these bigger issues, like border security now.

Hunt: Do you think it’s possible to get some kind of accord that includes some kind of legal status or citizenship for almost all of the 11 million undocumenteds who are here.

Gardner: I think at some point that will be one of the solutions that is reached. But right now, I think Republicans should put forward a bill that starts with border security, addresses a guest worker program, because without a workable guest-worker program you do not have border security. Let’s put those pieces in place, make sure they work, and then move forward to additional solutions that must be part of the overall fix to immigration.

You’d might from reading this that Gardner supports the DREAM Act, as well as offering legal status to undocumented immigrants. But he doesn’t. Except for momentarily (during the election campaign) voting against halting the deportation of Dreamers, he’s been against the DREAM ACT throughout his career. He even opposed offering in-state tuition rates to undocumented young people, brought into our country illegally by their parents.

Gardner smiles and says he’s in favor of immigration reform, that he wants a “solution,” but his record is nearly void of evidence that he’s done anything about it, and he even opposed the bipartisan Senate immigration bill. Most recently, he opposed Obama’s action to halt the deportation of undocumented immigrants whose children are U.S. citizens.

Gardner fooled Hunt into thinking he got answers. And he fooled Breitbart into thinking he’s too moderate on immigration. What a mess.

Reporters can cut through Gardner’s obfuscation by pressing the senator about what he’ll do, specifically, to advance immigration reform. Will he vote for the DREAM Act? Will he vote for a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants? What does he favor? What will he do?