We’ve Got Your Special Session Right Here

The big news of the day is the end to the special legislative session, which saw compromise measures on illegal immigration that didn’t make many Republicans very happy. The measure will force some one million people to prove their residency before collecting taxpayer-funded benefits, but it will not become a ballot measure as Republicans had hoped.

“I thought my party wanted to put something on the ballot,” [Governor] Owens told The Denver Post. “And I got permission to do that, and then they decided it wasn’t precisely what they wanted, and so, if they don’t want it on the ballot, that’s fine with me.”

Republican Rep. Mike May wasn’t happy about many of the proposals, and described one amendment as “a letter to Santa Claus.” It should be noted that Santa Claus would be an illegal immigrant in this country, since he’s from the North Pole and all. LINK

Elsewhere, angry Republican Sen. Shawn Mitchell compared Gov. Owens to Bill Clinton. No, not like that. Get your mind out of the gutter. LINK

Our own Larry Borowsky says that a Bob Beauprez gubernatorial fundraiser with Ann Coulter didn’t earn much money a few months ago. Coulter: Good at making insensitive remarks, bad at raising money for Republicans. CC LINKRepublican congressional candidate Rick O’Donnell is trying to assure voters that he’s changed his mind since writing an old position paper calling for an end to social security benefits, says Rocky Mountain News reporter Chris Barge. If that works with voters, I’m going to call my old economics professor and tell him that I didn’t really support his theory about debt to income ratios. Take that!

Actually, O’Donnell is in deep doo-doo on this one. He can say whatever he wants, but this position paper of his is going to show up again and again in attack ads this fall. All O’Donnell can do is keep saying he changed his mind, which never sounds good. LINK

Karl Rove, President Bush’s top political advisor, was in Colorado yesterday for a fundraiser for the state Republican Party. In an editorial meeting with the Rocky Mountain News, Rove called Colorado “a swing state.” It turns out he thought someone had told him that Colorado was a “swinger state,” which was the real reason he came here to party. Oh well. LINK

President Bush has told Rep. Diana DeGette that he is taking her ball and she can go home. Bush said that he won’t meet with DeGette about her stem cell bill, one day after his top advisor, Karl Rove, said that Bush would veto her bill if it passed the senate. LINK

“Gay Group Bonanza,” says the Rocky Mountain News in one of the stranger headlines of the week. More money is coming in to fund the gay rights campaigns in Colorado. The group called Coloradans for Fairness and Equality has now raised nearly $500,000