A sampling of recent editorials from Colorado newspapers:
NATIONAL:
Loveland Daily Reporter-Herald, Oct. 18, on killing of an American allegedly at the hands of Mexican drug gangs:
Yet another American has died at the hands of Mexican drug gangs. David Hartley and his wife, Tiffany Young-Hartley, who both grew up in Colorado, were riding Jet Skis Sept. 30 on Falcon Reservoir, which straddles the U.S.-Mexico border. According to Young-Hartley, David Hartley was gunned down by apparent pirates connected to a Mexican drug cartel.
His body has not been found.
Some Mexican authorities were at first skeptical of Young-Hartley’s story. But any doubt likely was put to rest last week after the severed head of Rolando Armando Flores Villegas was delivered in a suitcase to a Mexican Army base. He was the state police commander investigating the case.
Drug-related killings in Mexico are increasing not just in numbers. They are increasing in brashness and barbarity. Civic authority in parts of Mexico, including along the border with the United States, has been ceded to outlaws who dispense a medieval style of violence. Imagine the response in this country if a suspect murdered a Denver police commander. This kind of intimidation occurs on a regular basis in Mexico, often with the assistance of corrupt law enforcement officers themselves.
This is not just a Mexican problem. It is also an American one, as Hartley’s murder and others demonstrate.
Mexican drug violence is so horrific, and the authorities sometimes appear so compromised, that the situation can seem hopeless.
But some success stories have recently emerged. Tijuana several years ago was racked by drug violence on an unspeakable scale, and the city’s corrupt police force was central to the problem. Then Julian Leyzaola Perez was installed as the new police chief. With the help of Mexican federal authorities, he boldly went after drug cartels and his own outlaw officers. He’s been accused of using brutal tactics, but violence in Tijuana is down.
American intelligence was vital to this success. The improvements in Tijuana could serve as a model for other parts of Mexico.
It is unacceptable for large swaths of a country that shares a 2,000-mile border with the United States to be ruled by narco-psychos. It is unacceptable for border waters to be controlled by drug pirates.
The violence will continue to claim American lives unless the drug gangs are countered with a force commensurate to their threat.
Editorial: sign)29835
———
The Denver Post, Oct. 18, on why Congress should overturn ban on gays serving in the U.S. military:
A federal court judge’s decision last week to issue a broad injunction against the U.S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is a victory for gay civil rights and equality.
But even if the ruling withstands legal challenges—and we hope it does—federal lawmakers need to step up and do the right thing where this law is concerned.
They should overturn it, and soon.
Gay members of the military should not have to give up their rights of free speech and due process in order to protect the freedoms the rest of us enjoy.
Our nation should be thanking them for their service, just as we thank every other soldier, not telling them to keep quiet about who they are so they can be allowed to serve.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell” limits the ways in which the military can inquire about a service member’s sexual orientation. And it prohibits gay members of the military from disclosing their sexual orientation or speaking of gay relationships.
The injunction last week came in a 2004 lawsuit filed by the Log Cabin Republicans, an organization of gay and lesbian Republicans. The lawsuit challenged the constitutionality of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
The injunction was not only the correct legal conclusion, but it also is in keeping with the opinions of a large majority of Americans who favor allowing gay people to serve openly in the military.
President Obama has said he favors doing away with the policy and has urged Congress to repeal the 1993 law. The president, as the military’s commander in chief, arguably has the power to enact changes to Department of Defense directives that would effectively lift the ban.
While we wish the president would exercise this discretion, we understand why that would be controversial. And it could be reversed by a future president. We think congressional action is the best way to make sure the policy is abolished.
Another way to get rid of the policy would have been for the Obama administration to decline to appeal the injunction. However, late last week the administration asked for an emergency stay of the injunction, saying the abrupt repeal would cause logistical problems the military is working to solve.
That move is not surprising. It jibes with the administration’s strategy of mustering broad consensus among military chiefs, lawmakers and the public in repealing the policy.
As legal challenges grind on, we think federal lawmakers ought to repeal the law. Just last month, Congress came close to overturning it. A broad defense spending bill, which included a repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” passed the House.
Senate Democrats failed to round up the votes necessary to overcome largely Republican opposition to the measure.
Moderate senators, including Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, have said they’d be willing to reconsider repeal once they have an opportunity to review a Pentagon study, due Dec. 1, that assesses the potential impacts of lifting the ban.
After the midterm elections, there will be a short amount of time to take this measure up once again. We hope there is the political will to do so.
It is time for the nation to relegate the shameful “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy to the history books.
Editorial:
———
STATE:
Aurora Sentinel, Oct. 13, on why Michael Bennet is the better Senate candidate:
What drives U.S. Senate candidate Michael Bennet to keep his Senate seat is what drives the need for a careful decision in this race.
Bennet has long demonstrated a genuine and passionate calling to improve the lives of children, seniors and families in Denver, and then students in Denver Public Schools. Moving to the U.S. Senate was a natural progression of that path.
It’s the critical needs of those same constituents, struggling families, the unemployed, the small business owner and especially the forgotten middle class that have become paramount in Congress. As goes the middle class, so goes the country.
While both Republican challenger Ken Buck and Bennet both profess to have the interests in the middle swath of Colorado residents foremost in mind, Bennet is candidate who’s made good on those promises in deeds and rhetoric.
While we’ve come to appreciate his thoughtful, deliberative approach to Senate bills, Bennet has made it clear that America desperately needs change, and he’s willing to be its agent.
Buck, in an interview with the Aurora Sentinel, made it clear that he sees the U.S. Senate as a place to slow or stop change, and he has no intention of moving this dysfunctional government body in any other direction.
That’s what’s made progress on several fronts, including the economy, health care and illegal immigration, so elusive to Washington. The last thing this country needs right now is another “my way or the highway” voice at the Capitol.
While Buck has offered up a host of interesting ideas that deserve fleshing out, including the so-called privatization of Social Security, he’s also indicated that he won’t budge on accepting ideas already enacted by the party in power.
More now than ever, we need true leaders in the Senate willing to at least accept compromise, if not embrace it. Bennet has repeatedly shown himself to be a flexible lawmaker, willing to change his mind but not his ideals.
Bennet is not only on the right side of how to effect change in Washington, he’s on the right side of the issues.
Bennet understands the complexity and necessity for new energies and the economic promise that holds. He understands that the global warming dilemma isn’t just politicized science, and that we have an opportunity to create new jobs and industries and prevent an environmental calamity if the Senate can break free of the death grip that the fossil-fuel industries have on Senate votes, and Buck’s agenda.
Bennet understands that during the past several decades, attempts to tinker with the unworkable health-care system have failed miserably, and that only wholesale change can move the country in a new direction. Americans have long wanted the changes that recent health-care reform promise to bring, but the U.S. Senate must finish creating increased impetus for forcing the interests of health care providers and insurers to take a back seat to the interests of consumers.
That looks to us to be something as radical as a so-called public option, and Bennet has indicated he understands that logic.
He’s the best hope Colorado has to help stop dangerous partisan obstructionists so the country can find solutions that won’t be realized any other way.
Editorial:
———
The Gazette, Oct. 14, on Douglas Bruce disclosing his involvement in Amendments 60, 61 and Proposition 101:
We’re not going to sugarcoat this: We are very disappointed in Douglas Bruce.
Mr. Bruce, Gazette reporters and others have repeatedly asked you what your level of involvement has been in the proposed Amendments 60, 61 and Proposition 101. You have consistently denied any significant role, and have made mockery of legal proceedings intended to reveal the real backers and proponents of the measures.
Now we find out in your own e-mail to your supporters: That you have been involved from the very start; that you’ve spent many hours on these ballot measures; you have knowledge of money being spent on these campaigns, perhaps even your own money.
It has been the worst-kept secret in Colorado: Bruce is and has been the driving force behind these initiatives. Bruce has tried to keep his fingerprints off of them, probably knowing that his brand has been tarnished.
Not long after the measures were approved for the ballot, the public became aware that professional petition circulators had stayed in a house Bruce owned. A campaign finance complaint, filed to determine the organizers and benefactors of the measures, resulted in a witness testifying that Bruce had coached her by e-mail to avoid testifying. The witness said Bruce, a former prosecutor, advised her to destroy the e-mails.
Dozens of efforts to subpoena Bruce for hearings about the ballot measures failed. An administrative law judge ruled in June that sufficient evidence revealed Bruce as one of the main organizers of the ballot measures, even though he is not one of the six proponents listed on the initiatives.
In every way possible, Bruce has deceived the public about his involvement in the campaigns. If the deception wasn’t already abundantly clear, it became indisputable recently when a story in the Denver Post and The Gazette quoted an e-mail Bruce sent in September to supporters of the initiatives. The e-mail criticizes supporters for failing to work hard enough at getting the measures passed.
“I’m asking so little—eight hours of your time in the next week, and they need not be consecutive,” Bruce wrote. “Choose a busy store exit door. Follow exactly the simple attached instructions. Say only two words, ‘Please vote.’ If you’re shy, bring a friend and do this at a TWO-exit Wal-Mart.
“Personally, I hope you will see it’s not hard, and then do it next week as well. I have spent over 1,600 hours on this effort; can’t you spare eight?” Bruce later told the Post his 1,600 hours statement was a typo; he intended to type 160. Really? A typo involving an extra “0” and a perfectly placed comma?
Another passage says: “You have no idea how much time and money has been spent to get in sight of the finish line. I counted on you to help. Will you disappoint me?” So lets’ recap, Mr. Bruce: You don’t want the public to know you are deeply involved with these measures. You don’t want the public to know where the campaign money is coming from, or how it’s being spent.
How good can these measures really be if you don’t want your name associated with them?
Aren’t the best ideas those which can be argued with facts, in the unflinching light of day?
Why should people vote for them if you are going to behave this way?
Bruce claims he is merely a supporter of the measures, no different than those who will vote for them, those who campaigned for them and those who signed the petitions. But the e-mail tells us he has knowledge of money spent that other supporters have “no idea” about. We’ll report you decide, but it seems rather obvious Bruce is in charge. Evidence tells the public he is most likely the mastermind and author of the measures.
And now we have one more reason to oppose 60, 61 and 101: Bruce and his deception has cost us all money and has cost him any last vestige of credibility he might have had with us.
He has played games with state campaign laws and with our taxpayer-funded court system. How does this behavior serve the citizens of Colorado or the Constitution he has twice sworn an oath to uphold?
Right or wrong, state law assures the public the right to know about the organizers, major contributors and expenses of ballot initiatives. Bruce has boldly deceived the public in order to skirt the law, in an effort to amend the Constitution in a manner that would harm Colorado and Colorado Springs. Lies and deception are wrong, just like these hideous initiatives. Mr. Bruce, we are very disappointed.
Editorial:
