A Campaign Quote Raises Questions

Mark Udall was quoted in the Cherry Creek News:

Speaking about the coming campaign and the issues to define it, Udall said “the outlines are clear- Iraq, the economy, immigration.” Udall said that undocumented immigrants must “travel the path to citizenship— pay a fine (for being in the U.S. illegally), speak English, have committed no crimes.” “We must address... the health care system where families are one illness away from bankruptcy.”

Udall, a westerner, said that Colorado issues would play a key role in the Senate race: water, transportation and creating more transit options. He also emphasized that Colorado’s position for renewable energy and the jobs it could create was strong, given our resources and the presence of the National Renewable Energy lab in Golden.

Someday we must remember to ask if Mark Udall considers it acceptable for (as he says) an undocumented immigrant to gain his citizenship if he went through Bill Ritter's agricultural trespass plea bargain mill.

Note that Mark Udall is not all that interested in talking about his part in the bark beetle crisis, his refusal to allow either clear cutting of fire breaks to reduce the size of a probable forest fire or the harvesting of dying trees by lumber companies.

We wonder if Mark Udall will be willing to talk about his part in his staff's railroading of Caroline Bninski into a one year jail term.

Is Mark Udall proud to be associated with Daily Kos to the point that they were setting up his own personal blog on that site?

So many questions and so few answers. Oh, and our favorite, the Department of Peace?

Another Wild Card

The Denver Post is reporting that:

Bob Kinsey, a Denver peace activist who in a 2004 congressional race was able to peel off significant votes from the major parties, says he'll run as a Green Party candidate for Colorado's open Senate seat...

Kinsey declared that he'll focus on a core of issues he says are being skirted by the major candidates — immediate withdrawal from Iraq and the impeachment of President Bush among them. Both issues are top concerns for a narrow group of progressive voters who otherwise would likely support Udall.

The last third party candidate to make the statewide ballot in Colorado was Ross Perot, the man who made Bill Clinton President and who may also have gifted the nation Hillary.

Third party candidates can impact the outcome of an election. It will be interesting to see how and if that happens in 2008. Mark Udall's campaign manager, Mike Melanson, didn't seem very worried, perhaps because having a Green Party candidate in the race gives the impression that Udall has moved to the center without his having to change a single position.

Committed Green Party activists will likely remember publicly the ploy Mark Udall's staff used to get Caroline Bninski a one year jail term. It was doubtless intended by his cynical staff as a Sister Souljah moment, but it was ham handed in its execution.

Udall's staff had made an agreement with Bninski for a peaceful anti-war demonstration that lasted over a period of weeks. Until the last day, she followed the agreement.

She announced that she would perform an act of civil disobedience on that last day. The cops were called about 30 seconds later. Udall's staff reportedly told the judge that she had disrupted office operations for weeks. While that may have been true, her conduct was protected by her agreement with the staff and by the First Amendment's right to petition.

The Denver Post reported the incident in the most deceptive way possible, claiming that she got a $500 fine and a month in jail. She actually got a year in jail, all but 35 days suspended, and a $1,000 fine, half suspended.

It will be an interesting election.

Up On One Foot And Spinning

After this author called for Bob Schaffer to withdraw from the race, we wanted to see if Ben had taken our writing priveledges away.

Foolish individual that he is, he hasn't done so yet.

One of David Sirota's colleagues once described him as trying to gain attention by standing on one foot and spinning. We went one better.

Since it works for David, we are going to give it a try with the following:

Hey Denver Post: Are you going to write about Mark Udall's admission on Thrusday that he was a pot smoker?

Hey Rocky Mountain News: Since when is it not news that sitting US Congressman Mark Udall had his automobile confiscated by the cops as a 20 something for ... carrying a lot of marijanua in the back seat (or whatever)

Hey Gazette: Were you aware that there is a US Senate race in Colorado this year and Mark Udall, the guy whose staff tried to send Caroline Bninski to jail for a year, got kid glove treatment when he was caught with pot?

Hey Boulder Camera we know that you like your pot but why the Silence on your favorite son Mark Udall's admission that he lost his car and got a year's suspension in 1972.

I don't see how David Sirota does this. I'm dizzy already. Follow this link for the whole story. Maybe Google will pick it up now.

On No One's Top Ten Lists

The AP has it's top ten Colorado list out. It is a bit lame. Well, it is more than a bit lame. We thought we could do better with a list of things that didn't make the top ten in Colorado, in no particular order. They didn't make the top ten because they didn't happen. Oh, well!

1. Despite much wishful hoping on the left, the Colorado US Senate race is not a Mark Udall runaway.
2. Caroline Bninski spent Christmas with friends and family, not in jail where Mark Udall and his staff tried to put her for a year. How inconvenient!
3. Neither Mark Udall nor his staff seem to have lied to the public or members of Congress in the last week, setting a new record if not for truthfulness, at least for silence.
4. Rush Limbaugh wasn't humiliated by Mark Udall's Congressional resolution which was written in a way to be an unsophisticated falsehood. No member of the Colorado delegation co-sponsored Udall's anti-Limbaugh resolution.
5. The US didn't cut and run when Harry Reid pontificated "This War is Lost." Nor did Udall object when Nancy Pelosi held useless vote after vote to defund the war.
6. Mark Udall didn't convince Bill Ritter to nix gas drilling on the Roan Plateau.
7. Mark Udall didn't cosponsor the loon in the attic's Department of Peace bill this year, and it is reported that Mark Udall also didn't see a UFO.
8. The Gazette hasn't called Mark Udall an "extremist" for six months, but many of his liberal friends have made certain that he can't claim to be a centrist.
9. Colorado didn't have a roadless wilderness mega forest fire in 2007, but there is still time for one to occur in 2008.
10. The Denver Post hasn't made it's obligatory election year claim that Mark Udall is a "moderate" or "centrist."

List making is so much fun. We're wondering if we are on Bill Ritter's enemies list, yet. We're doing our best.

Observations

We've spent a number of hours doing what we should have done from the beginning - we are cross referencing the posts to make them more useful.

In doing so, we have been reminded of some ongoing and open themes:

1. Ken Salazar used to run interference for some of Mark Udall's wilder, more left wing schemes, and doesn't seem to be doing so as much at the current time.

2. The Denver Post went out of its way to lie to the public about Carolyn Bninski's sentence. Bninski seems to have disappeared from the news. That may be because Mark Udall has very publicly and counter intuitively moved his position on the war leftward at a time when the surge is working.

3. A few months ago, MoveOn.org was publicly threatening Mark Udall that it would cut off donations if Udall didn't move his war policy to the left. It remains to be seen if the move will result in additional money, and more importantly if the additional money it generates will be worth the cost to his chance to reposition himself on the political spectrum as a "moderate."

4. The out of state left wing blogs used to be giddy about Mark Udall's chances to take the Colorado Senate seat. Early in the summer, two days couldn't go by without some over confident comment about how Colorado was turning "Blue." That over confidence is gone.

5. No one is writing about how Hillary and the Democrat convention being in Denver will help Udall. Udall's staff never thought they would, and said so publicly.

6. The very best quote of the fall was from Mark Udall, himself:

Said [ Mark ] Udall, who lives in Eldorado Springs: “It’s wonderful to be home.” He said Boulder County is “home base for me. This is the touchstone; this is where I take my inspiration.”

The cross referencing project is only about half done, and will doubtless generate more observations.

This May Be No Big Deal

Congress apparently requires that when members and staff receive a subpoena, the information is placed in the Congressional Record.

Mark Udall and two staff members were on the list earlier this fall. It probably had to do with the Caroline Bninski Kangaroo Court...er trial, but it might not have. Someone with more resources might want to ask the question.

It does bring to light a very useful site and foundation, the Sunlight Foundation.

10 Days Down, 20 to Go

Today, we can't help but think of Caroline Bninski, a Green Party protester who is rotting in a Boulder jail cell without the press attention and adulation heaped on Paris Hilton. She has served 10 days of her 30 day sentence.

When we first heard the story of her prosecution, we thought Mark Udall and his staff had acted properly and reasonably. We wrote several posts using that take.

As more facts came out, we have come to believe that Udall and his staff set the woman up and called the police seconds after she violated the agreement she and Udall's staffer had made.

We are thinking of sending her a cake. We wonder if the Boulder calaboose has an X-ray machine that they use on cakes.

Caroline Bninski Reports to Jail

Mark Udall and his staff got its pound of flesh on Friday when Caroline Bninski reported to jail. She is the peace activist who staged a peaceful three week demonstration under rules that she had coordinated with the Udall staff.

We at first supported the Udall position against her. Then we discovered that the police were called immediately after she broke the agreed on rules governing her demonstration

If Udall's staff agreed to the terms of the demonstration, and those rules were followed, then staffers had no business testifying in court that the whole demonstration was disruptive to the staff, even if it was.

Since Mark Udall and his staff finds the Constitutionally protected right of petitioning one's government under tightly controlled and agreed on circumstances inconvenient and disruptive, we wonder why he would be running for higher office.

For the record, if Udall's staff had waited as little as 30 minutes to call the police, we would still be on his side and this wouldn't have been written. This whole exercise reminded us of Bill Clinton's Sister Souljah moment when we discovered that there was an agreement and the cops were called only seconds after the agreement was violated. As vicious as Bill Clinton was, Sister Souljah never went to jail.

The 700,000 Club

So, what was Carolyn Bninski and her allies doing at the offices of Mark Udall that got them in so much trouble?

Why, they were reading aloud the names of all 700,000 Iraqis killed since the invasion.

Let's see if we can put that number into perspective.

1. On average, that is about 600 Iraqis a day, every day, for four years. Just the other day, NBC made a big deal when 50 Iraqis got killed by two car bombs. That wasn't 50 per bomb. 600 a day seems a bit much.

2. If one assumes that the names are printed in two columns on a sheet of paper, that is about 250 names per sheet if both sides are used. At that rate, it would take 2800 sheets of paper just to print the names. Carolyn must have some serious muscles if she carries 2800 sheets of paper around.

3. If one assumes that the names can be read at the rate of one per second, night and day, non stop, a difficult task given the language barrier, it would take 8 days. If Bninski only scheduled three weeks of protests, it is hard to see how she could have expected to read 700,000 names.

Can't see the Center has more.

Hmmm

After writing for several days that Mark Udall's staff was justified in calling the cops after a three week protest, more information is coming out that suggests that they operated on a hair trigger. If the latest report is true, it makes Udall, his staff, and the MSM doing the reporting look two-faced.

The demonstration was coordinated with Udall's staff, and for three weeks the demonstrators followed rules that both agreed to:

Bninski, a coordinator at the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, met with Udall's chief of staff in February to facilitate a three-week protest in which constituents entered the congressman's office, filed a complaint about the war, and left within 10 minutes...

Democracy can sometimes be inconvenient. The First Amendment guarantees the right to petition the government but doesn't require those doing the petitioning to do more than behave themselves. This report makes it sound as though the demonstrators went out of their way to behave themselves while presenting their grievances.

On the final day of the protest, March 8, Bninski and five others declined to leave Udall's office after 10 minutes. As the group sat on the floor, Bninski read the names of the 42 (now 49) soldiers from Colorado who've died in the war, and the 700,000 Iraqi civilians who've died in the war...

Just after noon, Bninski informed Bristol that the last group would commit civil disobedience. The press and the members of the CopWatch organization flooded inside. After 10 minutes passed, Bristol called the police.

So, these folks were out of compliance with their agreement for only a minute or perhaps less before John Bristol called the cops, not the three weeks the MSM led us to believe. (Actually, the MSM failed to report that there was an agreement) That doesn't show the amount of tolerance a reasonable person would expect of well paid Federal employees to show.

Two members of Udall's staff testified the protest disrupted the daily functions of their office.

“There had been people coming by every day for weeks,” said John Bristol, a staff assistant for Udall's office. The morning of March 8 “was a very intense three hours” in which the only work he accomplished was recording Iraq-war complaints from about 50 people, he said.

This is not a case that Mark Udall, his staff, or the prosecutor can be proud of pursuing. The judge who sentenced this woman to 30 days in jail for being out of compliance with her agreement so short a time has very little respect for the Constitution.

If the information provided by the Colorado Daily News is accurate, this whole thing has the smell of a Sister Souljah set up with one difference: Sister Souljah didn't go to jail.

Fun With Blog Post Titles

Don't piss off a Democrat...they will throw you in jail. The Green Party is mad as heck over one of their own going to jail. Unfortunately, they don't bother to tell each other that the woman who went to jail was reading names in Mark Udall's office for three weeks!

The Greens assume that Republicans will have them thrown in jail, but this is unjustified paranoia. Only Democrat politicians try to criminalize politics.

Carolyn Bninski: 30 Days, $500

The Green Party's three week occupation of Mark Udall's office has finally been resolved. One anti-war activist got a 30 day jail sentence and a $500 fine. Others paid a $100 fine or community service according to the Denver Post.

Udall issued a statement Friday morning saying [ Carolyn ]Bninski and others have a right to peacefully protest a cause of public importance but that their occupation "had the effect of interfering with the daily duties of my staff" and drew complaints from other building tenants. Police were called when the protesters refused to leave because "needs of other constituents...had to be respected," said the statement from Udall, who in 2002 voted against authorization for the war itself.

More on the Green Party Demonstration

The Denver Post has a writeup this morning that sheds more light on the demonstration that Mark Udall's staff ducked yesterday.

The Post indicates that they conducted a three week long sit in there and finally exhausted Udall's patience so someone called the cops.

The woman facing jail time has a long demonstration rap sheet. Others involved are only facing $100 fines.

"Following a three-week-long occupation of our district office in March, I also met with them for a two-hour meeting in which I listened to their views on Iraq," [ Alan ] Salazar [Udall's Chief of Staff ] said. "No one has a deeper respect for the right of free speech and civil dissent than my boss. He doesn't agree with this group's views on the best way to end the Iraq war, but he will always stand up for the rights of people to speak out."

Closing the office yesterday was an error in judgement. Except for that, this appears to have been handled rationally by Udall and his staff, and by the prosecutor.

Ducking a Demonstration

The Green's held their planned demonstration today but Mark Udall's staff was gone. The office never opened.

Clever, eh?

The Green Party is Protesting Against Udall

This upcoming Monday, there will be a protest against Mark Udall. It seems that someone in his office called the cops about an earlier demonstration. Now, peace activist Carolyn Bninski is facing two months in jail for unlawful assembly. The Green Party isn't happy with that outcome:

The Adams-Jefferson Green Party last evening at its July business meeting passed a resolution in support of a rally Monday at Udall's office in Westminster to express solidarity with peace activist Carolyn Bninski.

The gathering will take place starting at 9:30 A.M., Monday, July 23, in front of Udall's Congressional office at 8601 Turnpike Drive in Westminster, Colorado.