Colorado House Speaker Frank McNulty has promised that the Senate-passed civil unions bill will get a “fair” hearing in the House, and on Friday he and House Majority Leader Amy Stephens sent it to the Judiciary Committee. That’s the appropriate committee, given the content of the bill, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it will pass out of committee and make it to the House floor for a full vote.
The dirty little not-so-secret secret in the statehouse, you see, is that bills that legislative leaders don’t like, or don’t want to see make it all the way to the floor, are sent to what are called “kill committees.” Judiciary has been a kill committee for some bills this year.
So does a “fair” hearing mean sending it to the appropriate committee, where it will die anyway, versus sending it to an obvious kill committee? Perhaps. But we hope not. We think this bill to grant civil-union rights to same-sex couples is important enough to debated and voted on by the entire House.
Following the spirit of the law. Sometime last Friday night, a woman dropped off her newborn baby at St. Dominic’s Catholic Church while parishioners were gathered for a Lenten service. Under Colorado law, the mother, who still hasn’t been found, could be prosecuted because she didn’t leave the baby at a fire station or a hospital.
If she is found, we hope she is not prosecuted but instead offered counseling. She may not have followed the letter of the law, but she didn’t leave the baby in the trash to die, nor did she abandon it in some strange place. She sought out a loving community and shouldn’t punished for doing so.
The mild, mild West. If you want to carry a concealed weapon in Colorado, you should have to get a permit. So, count us among those who were happy to see a wild West bill that would largely eliminated permits killed in the Senate.
The bill would have made it tough to screen out those with felonies or other disqualifying factors who shouldn’t be allowed to conceal their weapons.
And a tip of our cap … to a 60-year-old woman known only as Kathy, who was taken hostage Tuesday by a gunman in Aurora. Kathy stayed calm, spoke softly, and even ended up holding the gunman’s hand until he peacefully surrendered to police. The volatile situation could have ended much differently if not for the cool, calm, collected Kathy.
Short Takes is compiled by Denver Post editorial writers and expresses the view of the newspaper’s editorial board.
