Attend your Republican caucus this Tuesday

Grassroots politics starts here. Do your part! By John Andrews

If you're a registered Republican voter, Tuesday, March 21, at 7pm is your chance to have a voice in choosing GOP candidates for the 2006 elections, and in straw polls on key issues. The precinct caucuses are the basic grassroots level of self-government in our Republic -- and you're invited.

Beauprez vs. Holtzman for Governor, Eid or Steinhauer or Davidson or Wachtel for CU Regent, as well as important local races, are at stake in the road from caucuses to county and district assemblies to the state assembly. Precinct decisions on the 21st are where it all starts.

In the Arapahoe County neighborhoods of Hunter's Hill and Walnut Hills, Precincts 241, 242, 243, and 244, we will hold a single joint caucus at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, 8545 E. Dry Creek Road. Please join us!

For Prec. 241-244, click this email address andrewsjk@aol.com to confirm your attendance or request further details. If you live elsewhere, click www.cologop.org to find the location of your own precinct caucus. Do your part on March 21 -- it only takes an hour -- and our system of representative government and democratic institutions is depending on you.

Ballot issue would deter illegal aliens

Remarks by John Andrews,Co-chair of Defend Colorado Now campaign, Jefferson County Republican dinner, Feb. 21

As a proud graduate of the Dick Cheney School of Safe Hunting, I hold my fire for all targets – except endangered species, liberals, and lawyers. And right now there’s one group of liberal lawyers I’m particularly unhappy with. They’ve asked the Colorado Supreme Court to block the most important ballot issue you will be asked to vote on in this election year.

That issue is called Defend Colorado Now. It is our chance to do something about the silent invasion of illegal aliens flooding into this country – perhaps as many as a quarter-million of them in this state alone.

This ballot issue would establish the simple principle that tax-paid services in Colorado should only benefit law-abiding residents. That’s just common sense, and it’s long overdue.

Yet the liberals want a court order saying we should not even be allowed to vote on this proposal. It won’t work. Our campaign will soon have a green light to circulate petitions. We will then need your help on gathering 100,000 signatures from concerned citizens who agree we must Defend Colorado Now.

Let’s be clear. Illegal aliens are not bad people individually. But when you count them up by the hundreds of thousands, they are bad news for Colorado. We need to send these individuals a message politely but firmly – if you defied the government to come here, don’t expect to live off the government once you get here.

This flood of illegal aliens hurts public budgets, it hurts family budgets, it endangers our national security, it erodes our American identity, and most important of all, it undermines the rule of law. For all these reasons, the flood must be stemmed. It must.

A crisis this big, ignored for this long, can’t be solved by state action alone. Federal action is imperative. But you and I at the state level can do our part by carrying the petitions this summer and then building the majority this fall to say that from now on, tax-paid services in Colorado should only benefit law-abiding residents.

Opponents may play the race card, but we all know that’s baloney. It makes no difference if the lawbreakers are Latino or Eskimo, Norwegian or Nigerian. Defend Colorado Now warns all of them, regardless of ethnicity -- if you defied the government to come here, don’t expect to live off the government once you get here.

We’re gathered for a party dinner, and proud of it – but please understand this is not a party issue. It has the support of former Gov. Dick Lamm and other active Democrats, as well as my support on the Republican side -- along with that of Tom Tancredo and that of Gov. Bill Owens. It is simply the right thing to do.

America will either have the rule of law, or we will be ruled by force and fear. That’s the choice that faces us if illegal immigration continues to run out of control. Please help us defend the rule of law. Please help us Defend Colorado Now.

Liberals' war on religion escalates in Colorado

By Leonidas Editor's Note: Is it simple compassion for victims, or an agenda to smash Christ's oldest church, that motivates three Democrat-sponsored bills declaring open season on sex-abuse lawsuits against Roman Catholics (but not others) in Colorado? "Leonidas," an experienced state-government observer and participant, suspects the latter. The hasty back-pedalling by sponsors to put public schools in similar legal jeopardy comes too late to mask the legislation's real intent. Even if recent editorial heat forces further changes in these bills, the cat's out of the bag. Our contributor is quite right, I believe, in seeing this as evidence of a war on religion by liberals. -- John Andrews

What do you do about a political party that dares not tell the people what they’re really about, a party that knows if they did come clean the only elections they’d ever win would be in places like Boulder, Berkeley, or Greenwich Village?

What do you do about a party whose candidates must pretend to like things they actually detest in order to fool people into voting for them? Remember a helmeted and unhappy looking Michael Dukakis staring at you from the turret of a tank? More recently we had Senator Kerry inviting the press corps on a hunting trip to snap photos of a camouflage wearing, shotgun toting John starring in the role of hunter, outdoorsman, and regular guy.

Now, let’s be fair to Democrats. They’re not all left-wing liberal extremists. Just the ones who run the party, that’s all.

Now, elderly people can actually remember when there were “conservative Democrats,” an extinct species formerly inhabiting the southern USA. Not yet extinct, but definitely an endangered species, are “moderate Democrats.” Long disappeared at the national level, they’re still occasionally found at the local level.

We all remember how embarrassed Richard Nixon was when his "enemies list" was leaked. Now, of course, liberals have their own enemies list (think Hillary’s “vast right-wing conspiracy”) but they usually hide it. However, there are slip-ups, occasions when the public gets an inkling of who the left-wing really hates.

A huge such slip-up has recently occurred in Colorado, and it has exposed one of the liberal extremists' darkest secrets: their War on Religion."

Thanks for this timely exposé (or blame if you’re a liberal) goes to Democratic Senate President Joan Fitzgerald and other Democratic leaders for sponsoring no less than three bills (SB-143, HB-1088, and HB-1090) that would overturn a foundation of American law – the Statute of Limitations – thereby enabling friendly trial lawyers to bankrupt as many churches as possible through an endless series of multi-million dollar lawsuits.

Senator Fitzgerald earnestly protests that she only seeks justice for victims of sexual abuse. Every one would applaud that goal as long as justice is applied equitably, but Fitzgerald’s bill specifically prohibits equity.

Fitzgerald also insists she has no intention of targeting Catholics, but the facts now emerging in the press say otherwise.

Caught in the media glare, Fitzgerald has now admitted that she conferred with California Democrats who succeeded in passing a nearly identical bill that unleashed a flood of over 800 lawsuits mainly targeting the Catholic Church that resulted in settlements in the millions. Coincidentally the same lawyer who helped write the California law is now handling most of the Colorado lawsuits.

Fitzgerald was assured by the California Democrats that there was no political fuss because the churches didn’t fight back. What now has Democrats in Colorado running for cover is that religious bodies are defending themselves -- led by Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput, who publicly urged his flock to resist the blatant discrimination inherent in the Democratic bills.

Backed by supporters in the State teachers union, Democrats at first stoutly resisted expanding their bills to equitably include public schools where statistically there are far more cases of sexual abuse.

Finally they relented and accepted amendments, but their initial logic clearly reveals the anti-religious mindset: It’s okay to bankrupt churches, but not schools. Churches can lose tens of millions, but public institutions are shielded.

So, why pick on the Catholic Church? Any trial lawyer could answer that. Because of its centralized organizational structure (“deep pockets”) a single lawsuit can harvest millions and ruin hundreds of churches – destroy an entire diocese – at one fell swoop.

Archbishop Chaput best articulates the real reason the Democrats have singled out his church: “An attempt to silence and punish her” for opposing abortion, and gay marriage.

Liberals wage their hidden War on Religion – similar to the enviros' “War on the West” or the atheists' “war on Christmas” – because churches – defenders of family values and traditional morality – are the last great obstacle to the left-wing’s vision of a socialist utopia in which “Big Brother” (i.e. big government) is the final arbiter in deciding what Americans can and can’t do.

What can ordinary citizens do to resist this Orwellian nightmare? When next you go to the polls – elections still matter – think what the Democratic “stealth party” is up to. There’s more at stake than you might realize.