Set your Staffords on "stun"

You can just imagine what's left of the Republican Party faithful scratching their heads over "why in the world" would state Rep. Debbie Stafford ditch the GOP? And why now?
Stafford rocked her former party yesterday when she announced she was joining the Dems for her final year in office as state representative to House District 40 in Aurora.
She was elected as one of the last of a long line of moderate Republicans in the state. Before her, the likes of Gary McPherson, Paul Schauer, Martha Kreutz and a gaggle of Jeffco moderates had pretty much run the state government for eons. I can remember a few years just after Stafford was elected that she was the Republican Party darling, embodying what they considered to be "compassionate conservatism."
Then came the run for the right. Politics as usual in Colorado mirrored politics as usual in Washington. The likes and antics of Dick Cheney and Karl Rove not only became irresistible to some state GOP lawmakers, they became business as usual. The former far-right-wing fringe of the party took control.
What's a moderate to do? Jump.
As GOP party leaders pointed out yesterday, Stafford had nothing to lose by changing parties. She's term limited and she's made it clear her tenure in the House wasn't a stepping stone to something bigger.
They missed the point. She had nothing to gain by switching parties. There is no new balance of power in the House, where Democrats now hold 40 of the chamber's 65 seats. The move not only restricts Stafford’s political future at the Capitol, it pretty much ends it. As a term-limited Republican, she could at least ran for the Senate District 28 seat in two years. The seat is held by Democrat Suzanne Williams. Come next May, Stafford is pretty much out of a job.
So why tempt scorn from the leaders of a party known these days for not only making their own walk the plank, but yelling at them to hurry it up?
Could it be that Stafford was telling the truth when she said that her decision had everything to do with her own values clashing with those of her political leaders? Could it be that she thought it was unconscionable to vote in support of homebuilders at the clear expense of homeowners?
I think so. I think Stafford's bolt was a slap in the face of political party that used to enjoy the ranks of Elsie Lacy, Al Meiklejohn, John Love, and Tony Grampsas.
I don't see anyone like that leading the party these days. Stafford didn't either.

Craig tap dancing back into the limelight

While just about every American has an opinion as to whether the now famous Idaho Sen. Larry Craig likes men, women or both, no one can deny that Craig seems to prefer himself more than anyone in the world.
Craig, whose unremarkable career in Congress exploded a few weeks ago when he was busted during a gay-sex sting in the men’s room at the Minneapolis airport announced yesterday he was rescinding his previous decision to resign.
"I have seen that it is possible for me to work here effectively," Craig said in a written statement yesterday.
He may certainly be as effective as he has been in the past.
But the decision makes it clear that Craig thinks very highly of himself and his work at the Senate. He believes no one could replace him, or should replace him.
Besides, he pointed out, who would defend his soured reputation if he left the Senate? Good point, but other than Craig, who cares?
So now, Craig is going to stay in Washington so he can effectively work, even though he’s been tossed off of all the committees he sat on.
He’ll continue to collect his $165,000 salary to spend his days trying to persuade fellow senators that they’re all safe from his “wide stance” in the men’s room.
He’s likely to find it pretty lonely at the Senate during the next year and a half, and even lonelier in Senate bathrooms. Then again, maybe not.

Fencing a dangerous sport for Chertoff

There’s one thing the famed Homeland Security Mexican Border Fence is keeping out these days: wacky weed.
And it looks like top leaders of the Bush administration are smoking plenty of it.
What else would explain Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff’s remarks yesterday about how good for the environment hundreds of miles of fences would be between the United States and Mexico.
He said illegal immigrants sneaking into the United States through Arizona and Texas are terrible litter bugs and the billion-dollar fence will save many a desert from their candy wrappers and piles of doody.
"Illegal migrants really degrade the environment. I've seen pictures of human waste, garbage, discarded bottles and other human artifact in pristine areas," Chertoff said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "And believe me, that is the worst thing you can do to the environment."
Really?
Since when has ANYONE in this administration shown so much concern for the environment that they would lose sleep over litter?
This is the administration that would rather turn the country into one giant Texas rather than slow the development of oil, gas and coal.
This is the administration that will stop at nothing in its quest to get at oil in the Alaskan wilderness.
This is the administration that gave up coyly looking the other way at giant polluters and outright fights environmentalists in court to shut them up.
This is the administration that has taken greenhouse gas cases to the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to keep the government from regulating industries that may well end human life on Earth.
And now all of a sudden the Bush team is wringing its hands over stray pop cans?
Straighten out immigration laws by providing work visas and we can keep the garbage out of the desert and save taxpayers a few billions dollars by making it so people don’t have to sneak into the country.
Dave Perry is editor of the Aurora Sentinel. Reach him at 303-750-7555 or dlperry@aurorasentinel.com.

We're all collecting nuts for winter

I don’t get why Americans are so bewildered by the president of a big country beings so ridiculously mistaken, so lame-brained, so smug and such an all-around disagreeable schmuck.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad didn’t create his farcical personality from scratch, he simply based it on George W. Bush and Co.
Americans were nearly rolling in the aisles earlier this week when Ahmadinejad starting spewing his personalized brand of lunacy at Columbia University. We all wondered how Iranian citizens keep a straight face when he launches into craziness about the Holocaust being staged or women liking the way they’re abused in Iran.
It’s not so funny when Bush and Dick Cheney parade around the world that the problem of greenhouse gas emissions and “alleged” global warming needs more research before can decide whether to do anything about it.
And the lies, lies, lies. Like when Cheney and Bush made the media circuits for weeks telling people that Iraq was al-Qaida Central, and that we should all shudder in fear of Saddam Hussein’s finger being on the button.
How about the lies, lies, lies Bush and Co. told about secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe? Lies about buying prescription drugs from Canada? What about his crazy talk about Social Security and the lies he told trying to persuade Americans that the checks would stop coming unless we listened to him? And the lies about Haliburton? The oil companies?
And what about the craziness? The craziness about stem-cell research? Craziness that somehow some forms of torture should be acceptable? Craziness that somehow things weren’t as bad in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina as the media was making out? Cuba? About Guantanamo? About “Old Europe” and our fabulous coalition?
Ahmadinejad wasn’t trying to make Americans mad. He’s just been watching TV for lo the past few years and thought that we liked political leaders spewing hate, lunacy and making it clear that he was just dead wrong.
It smacks of global hypocrisy if we scold Iranians for keeping around their hi-level nutballs even though we don’t seem to be willing to let go of our own.
Dave Perry is editor of the Aurora Sentinel. Reach him at dlperry@aurorasentinel.com.

GOP nervous in the service over Craig's stall

Just when you quit worrying about your stance in the men’s room stall, the tap-dancing senator from Idaho is back in action — in court, not the restroom.
Has anyone since Rock Hudson tried so hard to be outed so he could deny it?
Sen. Larry Craig got his day in a court of law rather than the court of public opinion yesterday in an effort to persuade a judge to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea for looking for love in all the wrong places back in June.
The good senator was accused by an undercover cop of approaching him for sex in a men’s stall in the Minneapolis airport.
Craig, who’s been running from rumors about his sexuality for years, pleaded guilty to the charges and when the mess went public, said he shouldn’t have done it. Plead guilty that is.
All of Craig’s now very former fellow conservative Republican pals were hoping Craig would stop explaining how he accidentally nudged the cop’s foot, didn’t really run his hand back and forth under the wall of the stall, and how he is in the habit of picking stray sheets of toilet paper off the stall floor.
Now, Craig wants a chance to tell it to the judge and all of America at least one more time.
Make it stop. We already know that Craig doesn’t flush, and only his fellow Republicans care whether he likes boys.
Given that the veteran lawmaker is so good with words and has used a great number of them to insist he’s not gay, maybe it’s time to ask whether the senator enjoys working both sides of the aisle, so to speak. Then we can allow American men to go back to men’s room to stall for time rather than a date.
Dave Perry is editor of the Aurora Sentinel. Reach him at dlperry@aurorasentinel.com.

Wrong turn choosing the write stuff

Ah, the follies of youth.
I’m sure what seemed like an excellent idea last week to embattled CSU student newspaper editor J. David McSwane, now seems a notion obviously fraught with flaws and peril.
McSwane decided to cash in his 15-minutes of fame last week when he launched the F-bomb in a headline over an editorial. At the time he made the decision to pull the stunt — reportedly as a way to draw attention to how apathetic we have all become regarding our right to free speech — “F” could have stood for freedom or fearless. Impetus for the editorial came from the Tasing incident of a college student who verbally attacked Sen. John Kerry during a Q&A session.
McSwane thought that exercising his right to write any damned thing he pleased would be a good way to draw attention to his newspaper’s opinion that too many students are too cavalier about their First-Amendment rights.
Now, “F” stands for, well, just what McSwane wrote, but in a different tense.
And tense is certainly what he must be feeling as most of the college and apparently half of the country clamor for his ouster.
There’s no doubt that the CSU junior defined sophomoric with his little stunt, but it’s a college newspaper where mistakes, even on this grand of scale, have happened before and will certainly make their way into print again.
Should McSwane see the light that what he did was a cute advertising stunt and a very poor editorial decision, it would be entirely wrong to fire him. It’s the second mistake that should draw lightning when it comes to human beings. Sure, the gaff brought a great deal of embarrassment to the school, the newspaper and to McSwane. But no lives were lost. No one was maimed or scarred.
As long has he admits the mistake, let him stay.
If he refuses to admit what a foolish error in judgment he made, then by all means, send him to the school’s marketing department where he will probably enjoy a brilliant career in advertising.