Last night Elvira Arellano, who has been living and working in this country as a janitor since 1997, was arrested by ICE and immediately deported to Mexico.  There are a lot of facts that should make this a cause celebre, including that Arellano had taken sanctuary in a Chicago church for about a year, was planning to take part in immigrant rights marches and possibly testify before Congress, and was arrested and taken away in the presence of her eight-year-old US citizen son, Saul.  (Among other things, it gives the lie to right wing hatemongers like Colorado's Peter Boyles and his disinformation about "anchor babies.")

Race, class and gender are the unholy trinity of American power dynamics.  You can't explain any of them solely in terms of the other two, and you can't understand American political psychology without recognizing the importance of all three.  

Eva, Tony and many other couples will get married today, 7-7-07, possibly the most popular wedding date in history.  But what about the happy couples whose union wouldn't be recognized in most of these United States, just because their chosen partner is of the same sex?

I recently went to a "covenanting ceremony" where two people pledged their mutual commitment to each other -- but their covenant won't be recognized as a legal marriage.  It was, however, an expressly religious affair, officiated over by a pastor who made a point of saying that the couple did not seek approval of their union from the state.  It also was a conventional wedding in every other aspect, right down to lenghty toasts, fretting about napkin colors and the fear of giving too much money to the "wedding-industrial complex."  It was a ceremony viewed by the covenanting parties, and by their pastor, as establishing a sacred and permanent bond, but that bond is not recognized as such by the government and that ceremony was of no legal effect.

Serial party switcher and current Democratic primary candidate in CO-04, Eric Eidsness, paid a visit to SquareState last week.  His post, "Winning CD-4" should be screensaved and shown to every campaign this cycle as the paradigm example of how not to interact with progressive blogs.

Crossposted from Colorado Confidential

As Congress considers the comprehensive immigration reform plan introduced last week, it is helpful to remember that the United States is not the only country that is dealing with the related issues of an aging population with a declining birthrate on the one hand, and on the other a large number of foreign-born people who want to enter to the country to work, with varying degrees of commitment to staying.  I've paid special attention to the way Japan has approached these issues, because a friend who went to high school with me in Littleton, Colorado is now a permanent legal resident of that country.  He is part of a trend, because Japan, which has traditionally been far more hostile to immigrants than has the United States, has found itself needing to become more open to allowing migrants to live in the country.

Eric Eidsness, the Reform Party candidate who picked up the Fort Collins Coloradoan's endorsement in CO-04 last year, has joined the Democratic Party and apparently intends to run for the nomination to challenge Marilyn Musgrave in 2008.  Eidsness pulled 11% of the vote in a race that Musgrave won over Democratic State Rep. Angie Paccione by a 46 - 43 margin, making Musgrave the Republican who was elected with the lowest share of the vote in the country.  Eidsness' surprising showing was fueled by his endorsement by the Fort Collins Coloradoan and, most likely, by an exodus of Latino voters who chose Eidsness as a safe haven/protest vote against the strong anti-immigrant message sent by both the Republican and Democratic candidates in that race.

Colorado Media Matters reports that SquareState is the only media outlet in Colorado that reported on Senator Wayne Allard's amendment to abolish the federal minimum wage.  According to CMM:

No Colorado newspapers reported on U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard's effort to abolish the federal minimum wage through an amendment to the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, even though some did publish articles about another Allard amendment to the same bill.

Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado was selected by the Democratic Party to deliver the "preview address" (also known as the "pre-buttal") to the State of the Union address.  Here's a highlight:

En la semana próxima vamos a subir el salario de 13 millones de personas que trabajan en empleos que pagan el salario mínimo, y en los meses siguientes, lucharemos por más:

• Vamos a tener una reforma integral de inmigración,

• Vamos a hacer que todos nuestros hijos tengan la oportunidad de ir a la universidad,

• Vamos a bajar los precios de la gasolina y de las medicinas.

Y también vamos a cambiar el rumbo de los Estados Unidos en Irak.

Denver's KCNC Channel 4 reports that Democrat Ken Gordon officially conceded the Secretary of State race to Mike Coffman at a joint news conference this afternoon.  Gordon's concession came after an earlier report that Gordon was trailing by 21,000 votes with only 13,000 uncounted ballots left in Denver, Pueblo and Adams Counties.  The slow counting of absentee and provisional ballots is unrelated to the extreme waits to vote in Denver on Election Day, but we have to wonder whether Denver voters who were discouraged from voting by the long lines would have put Gordon over the top in this close race.  The good news is that Gordon is taking the opportunity of the botched election to make Coffman commit to support voting reform in Colorado.

The UK's Guardian has sent a pair of bloggers to America in advance of the midterm elections.  Gary Younge and Dan Chung are driving from Denny Hastert's district in Illinois to Nancy Pelosi's district in California to symbolize the possible change of control in Congress, posting video, audio and written blog posts along the way.  In Denver, they decided to crash the special edition of Drinking Liberally that was held to welcome mcjoan to our city while she was here to blog about the Paccione, Fawcett and Winter campaigns.

On the Colorado ballot this year is Referendum I, which will allow same-sex couples to register with the state and obtain many but not all of the basic legal rights associated with marriage.  Polls show the referendum slightly ahead.  Early voting has been going on in Colorado for a week with another week to go.  Colorado Republicans are already laying the groundwork for a vicious civil war after what they expect will be significant losses at the polls in this state.  In addition to making an immediate positive impact on the lives of many Colorado families, if Referendum I passes it will throw fuel on the fire of the Republican civil war and symbolically end the era when conservative "crazies" controlled the political discourse in this state.

The web version of The Nation has an article up about the emerging role of the "netroots" in providing buzz and momentum to candidates who aren't on the radar screen of the DCCC.  The article gives special attention to Jay Fawcett in CO-05 and our merry band of bloggers at SquareState, especially one who blogs there under the name of Zappatero. (I'll leave it to him to ID himself here if he cares to.)

In a year when Democrats are wondering if the Republican base will stay away from the polls, the outgoing Republican in the CO-05 race is calling his supporters to do just that.  The Colorado Springs Gazette reports that outgoing Rep. Joel Hefley has issued a statement urging Republicans not to vote for either Fighting Dem Jay Fawcett or Republican nominee Doug Lamborn.  We always knew there was no chance Hefley would endorse Fawcett, so this non-endorsement is about as good as it gets.

UNITE-HERE announced today that it has succeeded in its efforts to organize employees of the Convention Center Hyatt hotel downtown, and that today Hyatt management officially recognized the union.

I hope you saw pacified's post in the middle of the night about the Rocky Mountain News/CBS 4 poll showing Democrat Bill Ritter leading Republican Bob Beauprez by seventeen points in the Colorado governor's race.  This comes on the heels of a day in which two newspapers on the Western Slope (the vast region of Colorado west of the Continental Divide) endorsed Ritter over Beauprez, which dealt a huge blow to Beauprez' efforts to appeal to Western Slope voters by portraying former Denver DA Ritter as an out of touch city slicker and by selecting a county commissioner from Mesa County (Grand Junction area) as his running mate.  The Beauprez camp has been plagued by rumors that he will drop out of the race to be replaced by someone more electable, as if the Republicans have a better option at this point.

Beauprez thought he had the advantage of campaigning in a Republican leaning state, but that's not Colorado. Some reasons Both Ways Bob is losing so badly below the jump:

I'm here in beautiful Colorado Springs (aka Jay Fawcett country) for the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals' biannual Bench and Bar Conference.  I didn't have high hopes for the afternoon session on "Law Blogging:  The New Legal Journalism" because of the absence of a liberal voice on the panel, which included Professor Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy, journalist Lyle Denniston of Scotusblog, and John Hinderaker of Power Line.  (Note:  I am not criticizing the Tenth Circuit for not having a liberal on this panel, not only because it is never a good idea for a lawyer to publicly criticize the administration of a court in front of which he practices, but also because I would not be surprised if they tried to get someone from the left like Colorado's own TalkLeft but couldn't.)  But as a Kossack I was more than pleasantly surprised when Dennison dissed Hinderaker to his face, right in front of a few hundred Tenth Circuit lawyers and federal judges.

The 2008 Democratic National Convention will begin August 25, 2008, two years from today, and end August 28, 2008.  My home town of Denver is one of the three finalists, along with Minneapolis-St. Paul and New York City.  I just thought I'd pass along some information about the type of weather you can expect in Denver this time of year.

Today, August 25 -- Current conditions 72 degrees, mostly cloudy, humidity 58% (we call that "muggy").  Low tonight 57.

The conventional wisdom is that Republican immigrant bashing is so obviously racially charged that the Latino vote will simply fall into the lap of the Democrats without much effort.  A recent Pew Charitable Trust poll of 2000 Latinos nationwide, reported in the Associated Press, the Denver Post and elsewhere, shows something different and frightening:  The Democrats' weak response to the Republicans is actually reducing Latinos' connection to the party.