Yet not one of these alarm bells - not even Mrs. Mongar's death - prompted the
department to look at Gosnell or the Women's Medical Society. Only after the raid
occurred, and the story hit the press, did the department choose to act. Suddenly there
were no administrative, legal, or policy barriers; within weeks an order was issued to
close the clinic. And as this grand jury investigation widened, department officials
"lawyered up," hiring a high-priced law firm to represent them at taxpayer expense.

A health department representative also came to the clinic as part of a citywide
vaccination program. She promptly discovered that Gosnell was scamming the program;
more importantly, she was the only employee, city or state, who actually tried to do
something about the appalling things she saw there. By asking questions and poking
around, she was able to file detailed reports identifying many of the most egregious
elements of Gosnell's practice. It should have been enough to stop him. But instead her
reports went into a black hole,.....

Bureaucratic inertia is not exactly news. We understand that. But we think this
was something more. We think the reason no one acted is because the women in
question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and
because the subject was the political football of abortion.

Too bad there's not much of a recourse in this matter.  Do you suppose he will recuse himself from certifying any recall petitions?  I don't trust him as far as I can throw him--Colorado's version of Katherine Harris.  Maybe someone will file suit.  The relevant Articles of the CO Constitution:

Article XII, Section 2 states:  "No person shall hold any office or employment of trust or profit, under the laws of the state . . . without devoting his personal attention to the duties of the same."

Article XXIX, Section 1(d) states:  "Any effort to realize personal financial gain through public office other than compensation provided by law is a violation of that trust."

On another matter, I'm even more p.o.'d about the stunt the GOP members of the JBC pulled in refusing to fund school breakfast for our poorest and most vulnerable citizens.  Gutless, heartless, cold b*stards.  

Love this OpEd from the Aurora Sentinel...

No doubt that this year's Legislative Ebenezer Scrooge Award will go to the Republican members of the Joint Budget Committee for refusing to spend already designated state funds to provide school breakfast for poor children.

Now get off their lawn.

Denver Post reporter Tim Hoover got the quote of the season from Republican state Sen. Kent Lambert of the JBC, Colo. Springs and The Moon. Lambert told Hoover that even though the state Department of Education was only asking to spend an extra $124,229 to keep the breakfast program going for almost 60,000 poor children across the state from March through the end of the school year, and even though there's money in the bank that simply needed to be allocated, Colorado's most vulnerable citizens can just eat crow for breakfast...

"As a family guy myself with children and grandchildren, I take a very strong responsibility to earn money to feed my own family," Lambert, one of the three naysaying Republicans, told the Post.

Lambert earns money the old fashioned way: from your tax dollars. He was a lifetime member of the military, now on pension, and he now collects tax dollars as a state lawmaker.