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The Beats

A short list of select topics

Fix blogger thinks — no, seriously — Beauprez most likely to take on Bennet

The question must be asked: Is Chris Cillizza high? At the very least, the prominent Washington Post political blogger, whose The Fix column is a must-read inside the Beltway, is cruising along at such an altitude as to call into question whether he knows what's going on down here in fly-over country. In Cillizza's Friday Senate Line, he accurately frames next year's Colorado Senate race, where appointed neophyte Michael Bennet is a virtual unknown who can't dodge major issues, like the Employee Free Choice Act, forever. But there's no sign of a credible Republican challenger, able to raise the big bucks and storm a state that's been trending increasingly Blue. But Cillizza so clumsily blurs the details, we wonder whether whoever has been feeding him his Colorado scoop has been on vacation.

Judge orders CSU to release recordings of chancellor search meeting

A Larimer County judge this afternoon ordered the Colorado State University Board of Governors to make public further recordings of a closed-door session last month during which it secretly interviewed candidates for the university's new chancellorship and decided to select its vice chairman Joe Blake as sole finalist for the position. Judge Stephen Schapanski's ruling comes in a case brought by The Colorado Independent, the Fort Collins' Coloradoan and the Pueblo Chieftain, which argued the university violated state open meetings laws in its search for a chancellor.

Proper apology for slavery might have finished Fox News

The U.S. Senate's resolution apologizing for slavery yesterday was "nonbinding," unlike slavery itself, which was all about binding. The nonbinding part of the resolution means it doesn't have to go to the president for a signature. In other words, the Senate in considering slavery has decided not to bind our first black president, which is a semantic victory if nothing else. The resolution also includes a clause securing the government against any financial responsibilities for the thing it's apologizing for, which of course was one of the most oppressive systems of financial gain in world history.

Independent Streak: Friday, June 19 headlines, snark and breaking news

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State’s top ethics panel moves toward more open, transparent procedures

Six weeks after an investigation by The Colorado Independent found repeated violations of the Colorado Open Meetings Law by the Independent Ethics Commission, the panel charged with enforcing ethical standards among public officials across the state has taken dramatic steps toward greater transparency and disclosure.

Spox: Polis got an RBI but didn’t boycott gay benefits signing ceremony

While U.S. Rep. Jared Polis was less than thrilled with the memorandum President Barack Obama signed Wednesday extending some benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees, the openly gay Boulder Democrat emphatically did not boycott the Oval Office signing ceremony, a Polis spokeswoman tells The Colorado Independent.

EXCLUSIVE: Iranian Dissident Akbar Ganji on the Iranian uprising and Obama

I’ve just conducted a phone interview with Akbar Ganji, one of the leading Iranian dissidents and most prominent voices in the international community for a more liberal Iran. He knows its brutality in a deeply personal way: the regime imprisoned Ganji for five years after he wrote a series of articles exposing its human rights abuses. Although the Bush administration sought to fund Ganji’s efforts in the hope of encouraging his fellow dissidents, Ganji took a high-profile stance against American support, arguing that even the suggestion of U.S. backing would set back the cause of human rights in Iran.

Democratizing federal contract process with sunlight

This is kinda cool. Über transparency advocates the Sunlight Foundation is crowdsourcing a federal contract bid to redesign the economic stimulus oversight Web site, Recovery.gov, through it's open source development lab.

Senate committee passes clean energy bill, environmental group unimpressed

Colorado’s environmental community wasn’t exactly singing the praises of the Senate version of clean-energy legislation passed by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee Wednesday. Environment Colorado issued a release saying the American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009 “does little or nothing to spur renewable energy in this country. The proposal risks sensitive coastal ecosystems [in Florida] to pollution and spills from off-shore drilling, while worsening global warming by opening the door to high-carbon fuels such as liquid coal, tar sands and oil shale.”

Tancredo linked to Minuteman group accused of Arizona double-murder

Shawna Forde and members of Minutemen American Defense -- an anti-illegal immigration vigilante group charged in the double homicide of an Arizona man and his 9-year-old daughter and the attempted murder of the man's wife — shared a stage, if not their vigilante streak, with former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo.
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