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Civil Rights

Judge adds 60 years to Andrade’s life sentence for transgender slaying

A judge sentenced the man convicted of killing transgender Greeley teen Angie Zapata to an additional 60 years in prison on top of a life sentence without parole already handed down last month. Finding Allen Andrade, 32, guilty of habitual criminal charges based on his six prior felony convictions, Weld County District Court Judge Marcelo Kopcow on Friday afternoon quadrupled the maximum sentences for each of Andrade's convictions on three other crimes surrounding the murder, including a bias-motivated, or hate crime.

‘Joe the Plumber?’ Don’t know him

Roger L. Simon of Pajamas Media and PJTV reacts to their conservative commentator Samuel Wurzelbacher’s Christianity Today interview:
It should go without saying that this view in no way reflects the views of Pajamas Media or Pajamas TV. Speaking personally, as a very public supporter of gay marriage, I couldn’t disagree more with Mr. Wurzelbacher’s position on this matter.
But will they get rid of him?

Napolitano ducks on undocumented immigrant legalization

At the Senate Judiciary Committee’s oversight hearing this morning, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano carefully skirted repeated questions about her views of whether longtime undocumented immigrants living in the United States ought to get a chance at legalization.

Gender gap ‘off the charts’ in current recession

Missing in much of the coverage of the nation's financial meltdown are the kitchen table economics, or the gender-based effects of job loss, wage disparity and stagnant credit markets that historically have disproportionally affected women. As Zach Carter at The Media Consortium Economic News Ladder notes that's not necessarily the case in this deepening recession.

SCOTUS ruling on identity theft could affect arrested Weld County workers

A U.S. Supreme Court decision handed down today may have implications for a contentious identity crime prosecution that resulted in 100 charges of criminal impersonation by undocumented workers and more than 5,000 personal income tax records seized in Weld County. The ACLU of Colorado charged that the raid conducted by Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck and Sheriff John Cooke, dubbed Operation Numbers Game, was overly broad and violated the privacy of the clients of Amalia’s Translation and Tax Service. That case is now before the Colorado Court of Appeals.

From tiny-little ideas, high-flown rhetoric, Brophy makes a point

In the era of torture memos, government spying and secret rendition, Republican Sen. Greg Brophy is blogging about "surrendering liberties" in response to laws that would regulate phoning-while-driving. "It’s all about liberty and logical thinking," he writes, reaching for the stars. "The banning of cell phone usage is an affront... Liberty cannot be surrendered without careful consideration. Society must benefit greatly from the surrender of liberty and in this case society doesn’t, so it is just an unwanted and unnecessary infringement."

The politics of purity balls and virginity fetishes

The myth of sexual chastity is not a topic for the faint of heart in as puritanical a society as 21st century America remains. Witness the "purity ball" phenomenon that evolved from the conservative evangelical movement in Colorado Springs. Jessica Valenti, editor of the blog Feministing.com, is out with a new book, The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women, and she pulls no punches.

Ritter says he expects to sign bill granting benefits to same-sex partners

Gov. Bill Ritter said he will probably sign a bill passed Tuesday that extends health insurance benefits to gay and lesbian domestic partners of state employees. "I expect to sign that but I haven't heard from the opposition on that," Ritter, a Democrat, told The Denver Post's Tim Hoover. "If there's a request to do that, I'll certainly let them do that."

Coffman bucks GOP caucus, votes for hate crime law

District Six Republican Rep. Mike Coffman joined the entire Colorado Democratic delegation and 17 GOP colleagues in a rare moment on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday — a bipartisan vote on a controversial issue among conservative activists.

Hate-crimes prosecution could yield ‘mixed bag’ for Senate candidate Buck

Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck's landmark hate-crime prosecution of a man accused of murdering a transgender Greeley teen could prove "very much a mixed bag" for the Republican, who emerged Tuesday as a candidate in the 2010 U.S. Senate election, political observers say.
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