Here in Colorado, we've got our own nasty little version of Senator George Allen...none other than the infamous Marilyn Musgrave, who has a penchant for worrying about what gay folks are up to while she continues to reap the benefits of her endorsement by the KKK. More on that below the fold.
In her spare time, when Musgrave isn't diagnosing coma victims, she takes time out of her busy schedule to make sure we get some legislation passed that ensures the year 2007 will be named The Year of the Bible.
And then we get to the 3rd "G". Marilyn believes it's a huge waste of time and money to install a mandatory trigger lock on guns. Who cares if "unintentional shootings cause 20 percent of all firearm-related deaths among children ages 14 and under." The cost is just so damned prohibitive (about twelve bucks) and hey, the children can fend for themselves once they're out of the womb.
Along with her good buddy
Rep. Richard Pombo, the dynamic anti-environmental duo spends their spare time gutting wilderness designation for Wild Sky in Washington and Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.
This is the same Pombo who accepted $209,488.00 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. Then again, our own representative isn't doing so badly in that department either--Musgrave has received $117,700 from oil & gas, mining, and utilities. This is the same Richard Pombo who worked with Jack Abramoff to protect the slave labor and prostitution rackets on the Marianas Islands.
But hey, a girl's gotta have money to run from a voting record like that. And...those nasty ads against her opponent Angie Paccione cost dollars. With a record lot that, Musgrave needs serious cash to sidetrack the voters.
Let's take a quick peek at some of Musgrave's finer endorsements and contributors, shall we?
Let's start with the Ku Klux Klan, a full page KKK endorsement, devoted entirely to Musgrave's outstanding positions on home schooling and those pesky gays that insist on equal rights.
Where's the moral outrage from Musgrave? Where's the immediate denouncement of such a vile "endorsement," particularly when Musgrave is running against Angie Paccione, a bi-racial candidate?
Oh, here it is. Here's Musgrave's moral outrage:
"Al Gore may have fathered the Internet, but he obviously didn't teach his liberal cohorts a valuable lesson, so take note political bloggers: not every website is legitimate, especially those created by psycho-backwoods racists," said Aaron Johnson, Musgrave's spokesman.
Those damn crazy liberal bloggers...
And then we have Larry Pratt, a former elected government official in Virginia, who now runs Gun Owners of America, an innocuous enough sounding group on paper. Pratt is a man who mingles with some serious hate groups. He has been credited as being one of the main organizers of the "Religious Right" in the 1980s' and his curious blend of militia and God has not been overlooked. In 1996, Pat Buchannan dropped Pratt from his campaign, due to his right-wing and extremist ties, for fear Buchannan would be perceived as too far to the right.
Pratt works for English First and Border Patrol. Pratt has been a guest speaker at Pastor Pete Peters church, a White Supremacist who "advocates the killing of homosexuals as a splendid Biblical mandate for modern America."
In 1992, Pratt set out for Estes Park, Colorado to preach to the choir about his peculiar views of guns and God. Pratt claims he didn't check the guest list at the rally-a rally that was organized "by the leader of a virulently racist, anti-Semitic group." The organizer was none other than...Pastor Pete Peters.
In 2002, Musgrave received "$4,956 from the Gun Owners of America Political Victory Fund - $2,500 in cash and the rest in-kind donations of mailing list rentals or printing," according to the Rocky Mountain News.
Better yet, after he maxed out on his donation limit, Larry Pratt also used GOA's website to urge others to give to Musgrave. And give they did, to the total tune of $9,956.00, according to Open Secrets.
Larry found himself back in the spotlight recently when Musgrave showed up, innocently enough of course, with Kris Kobach at a UNC gathering in Greeley, CO and drew the wrath of the local college paper:
The significance of Kobach's appearance - and the fact that he accompanied Musgrave - comes from Kobach's relationship ties to leaders of extremist groups.
In 2004, Kobach ran for Congress in Kansas and took money from a special interest Political Action Committee run by the wife of John Tanton, who works with Wayne Lutton to publish white supremacist literature. Lutton now edits The Social Contract Press, which sponsors publications that claim America has a biblical right to kick people out.
...Kobach is also affiliated with the right wing Gun Owners of America (they think the NRA is a bunch of socialists), whose executive director is Larry Pratt. Pratt used to edit an anti-Semitic publication, participates in militia activities and addresses white supremacist and Christian Identity organizations. Kobach took money from these people to go to Congress.
Not only that, Marilyn Musgrave has close ties with the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, and she's in the line-up of a "Values Voters" meeting in Washington. This is the same Tony Perkins who paid David Duke for his fundraising list:
Perkins addressed the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), America's premier white supremacist organization, the successor to the White Citizens Councils, which battled integration in the South. In 1996 Perkins paid former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke $82,500 for his mailing list. At the time, Perkins was the campaign manager for a right-wing Republican candidate for the US Senate in Louisiana. The Federal Election Commission fined the campaign Perkins ran $3,000 for attempting to hide the money paid to Duke.
Just to put this all in context for you, Angie Paccione just broke the one million dollar mark for contributions raised on this campaign. And where do Angie's contributions come from? From Angie's website,
The fundraising data reveal that her campaign is one of the healthiest grassroots campaigns in America, with more than 7,000 individual contributions, and with the average contribution totaling $140. More than 91 percent of contributions came from Colorado. Eighty-three percent of contributions were for $100 or less.
From the look of Angie's contributors, voters don't share Marilyn Musgrave's radical, narrow-minded intolerance. The more they know about Musgrave, the less they like her.
We need your help to get the word out about our current representative and what Angie offers as an alternative.
Visit Angie's website or head over to ActBlue and help us send Angie to the House. We can't take two more years of the kind of hate and bad representation Musgrave and her friends offer.