With the historic passage of Senate Bill 11, which will authorize civil unions in Colorado, local LGBT activists and their supporters will be popping the champagne cork tonight.

According to a press release from Colorado Springs Pride:

Civil Unions has passed in Colorado and history has been made!

Come join the celebration Tonight, Tuesday, March 12th, 5pm at the Tim Gill Center for Public Media!

There will be guest speakers, music, wine, beer, food and fun. All to celebrate the passage and legalization of Civil Unions in Colorado!

Invite your friends, family, and co-workers! All are invited to come and celebrate with us!

The public is welcome to come out and celebrate Colorado's joining league on this issue (once Gov. John Hickenlooper signs the bill) with states such as Vermont and Hawaii.

Fresh off their victory in moving forward a package of gun bills in the House, Democratic leadership has introduced the Assault Weapon Responsibility Act.

• Sen. John Morse

The lead sponsor on Senate Bill 13-196 is Senate President John Morse, the Colorado Springs Democrat. The Denver Post first reported on the likely introduction of this bill earlier this month, interviewing horrified Republicans and an incredulous Democrat.

Senate President John Morse, a Colorado Springs Democrat, announced he was working on a bill that would hold manufacturers and sellers of assault-style weapons legally liable for damage inflicted with such firearms.

Even some Democrats shook their heads.

"That's crazy. That's absolutely nuts," said Rep. Ed Vigil, D-Fort Garland.

...

Senate Minority Leader Bill Cadman, a Colorado Springs Republican, predicted the liability bill will help his party pick up "three-plus" Senate seats in the next election.

"He's out of his mind," was Morse's response.

"The country is clamoring for solutions and new ideas. Politically, this is more helpful than it is hurtful. We need to figure out how to make sure we don't have 6-year-olds being killed by military-style assault weapons."

Below is the Bill Summary:

The bill concerns liability for the discharge of an assault weapon.

It defines an assault weapon as any firearm except:
• Handguns;
• Shotguns; and
• Bolt-action rifles.

The bill establishes strict liability against a person who discharges an assault weapon for damages caused by the discharge. It creates an exception for damages occurring within a dwelling if the assault weapon was used to defend the person or others from another person who was about to use physical force against the person or another person within the dwelling. The bill establishes certain exceptions to liability for an owner of an assault weapon.

The bill establishes liability for a person who owns, obtains, or possesses an assault weapon for damages caused by the discharge of the assault weapon by a third person if the person was negligent in storing the assault weapon or allowing a third party to come into possession of the assault weapon.

The bill establishes liability for a seller and transferor of an assault weapon for damages caused by the discharge of the assault weapon by a third party if the person:
• Negligently entrusted the assault weapon to a third party whom the person knew or reasonably should have known might use the weapon to cause bodily injury to the third party or others; or
• Sold or transferred the assault weapon in violation of any state or federal law.

The bill establishes liability for a seller, distributor, or manufacturer of an assault weapon for damages caused by the discharge of the assault weapon by a third party if the person sold or transferred the assault weapon in violation of any state or federal law.

The bill requires sellers, distributors, and manufacturers to:
• Use the highest degree of care in selling, transferring, distributing, and storing assault weapons; and
• To receive information to have reasonable grounds to believe that the weapon will not be possessed by a person who may use it dangerously or unlawfully.

The bill specifies that failure to do so constitutes a violation of state law.

• Sen. Owen Hill

Legislation that will provide in-state tuition to Colorado high school graduates, regardless of their residency status, passed out of the state Senate Monday on a 23-12 vote.

Sen. Owen Hill of Colorado Springs was one of three Republicans to vote in favor.

We reported on Hill's supportive vote in the Senate Education Committee, which signaled that he would be breaking with many of his Republican colleagues over SB 13-033.

At that time, Hill shared an op-ed he had written explaining the free-market reasoning behind his vote.

It is time for liberty-loving individuals everywhere to champion the solutions free markets have to bring. To date, they have led to the creation of trillions of dollars of real wealth, released billions from poverty, and spawned millions of innovative businesses and ideas. However, the success of free markets is not complete. We must champion free-market based immigration reform that includes workers as well as goods, and if we are successful, we will continue the trend of wealth creation, equal opportunity, and the success of the American experiment.

ASSET, as SB 13-033 is known, would “classify a student as an in-state student for tuition purposes if the student attends a public or private high school in Colorado for at least 3 years immediately preceding graduation.”

The Democrat-controlled Senate passed ASSET last session, as well, only to see it die in the Republican-controlled House. This session, however, the Democrats hold a strong majority in the House, making it likely the bill will make it to Gov. John Hickenlooper’s desk.

Read Hill's full op-ed after the jump.

Is it possible that state Rep. Joe Salazar knew the size of shitstorm he was about to cause Monday Friday when he launched into his impolitic diatribe over House Bill 1226, banning guns on college campuses? Probably not.

Here's what he said:

Maybe he has never heard of U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, ’cause why the Thorton Democrat decided to frame his vote in favor of the bill using the mythical response of women to rape is anyone's guess.

But he did. And now Twitter is punishing the rest of us with an onslaught of "jokes" based on the various ways liberals might suggest women avoid being raped.

If you've ever wondered if the majority of Twitterers are funny or insightful, just visit #LiberalTips2AvoidRape for confirmation. They're not. Far from it.

Do you support collective bargaining for Colorado firefighters?

According to a survey conducted by Meyers Research, if you don't, you — and Colorado Springs Mayor Steve Bach — are in the minority of Coloradans.

From the press release:

Results from a statewide survey released today by Myers Research reveals strong voter support (86%) for ensuring collective bargaining rights for Colorado fire fighters. (See attached memo.) The timely results of this survey are arriving just as a firefighter collective bargaining bill, Senate Bill 13-025, passed the Senate on Tuesday, February 6, 2013, and moves to the House.

...

The survey of over 600 voters in Colorado in late January has a margin of error of +/- 4.0. (See attached memo.) Respondents were asked the question:

And as it relates to firefighters in Colorado, do you favor or oppose allowing firefighters to negotiate with local governments over issues like better safety equipment, ensuring safe staffing levels, and health care and survivorship benefits if they are killed in the line of duty?

Collective_bargaining_survey.pdf

• Lee: ready to do some 'gardening.'

State Rep. Pete Lee tried to get his economic gardening bill through the Republican-controlled state House last year to no avail.

This session, with his colleagues in the Democratic Party in charge of the Legislature, the Springs Democrat appears to be having better luck. Yesterday, the bill passed out of the House Business, Labor & Economic & Workforce Development Committee and it's way to the Appropriations Committee.

The bill would create

an economic gardening pilot project in the Colorado office of economic development (office). Through the pilot project, staff members of the office and small business development centers (SBDCs) who have been trained and certified in economic gardening principles and practices provide 12 months of strategic assistance to at least 20 Colorado-headquartered second-stage companies and SBDC clients selected by the state director of SBDCs in the office. The state director reports annually on the results of the pilot project to the general assembly, and the pilot project terminates in 2016.

According to the bill, this pilot project would assist business owners of "companies that are beyond the start-up stage but have not yet fully matured, with innovative products or services that satisfy market needs" by providing them with "specialized business assistance to refine core strategies and from access to in-depth market research, competitor analyses, geographic information systems, search engine optimization, and other strategic information, as well as from relationships with mentors and advisers."

• Secretary of State Scott Gessler

We are pleased to announce that, after reading through Colorado Ethics Watch's 2012 report on the state's most egregious lapses in ethics, El Paso County and Colorado Springs appear to be in the clear.

Ethics Watch, the Denver-based nonprofit that spends its time combing through the Secretary of State's website and otherwise poking its nose into the affairs of elected officials and government agencies, has put out a list of the Top 5 scandals from 2012.

Luis Toro, director of Colorado Ethics Watch, had this to say in a press release:

“The five scandals detailed in this year’s Ethics Roundup are the clearest examples of where our enforcement system is working, and where it is lacking. When a city council is its own ethics panel, or where a public official who has been convicted of crime related to his office and awaits trial for more such crimes is still in office, we know we have a problem. The sooner local governments and our state legislature recognize the shortcomings in our enforcement systems, the sooner we’ll have government that we can all trust.”

Three of these scandals were local to their communities, and while interesting to watch from afar, had no impact on Colorado Springs.

One of the scandals involved the state's 10 public trustees appointed by the governor. From the press release:

This year, Colorado’s public trustees lost the public trust by accepting excessive gifts from for-profit companies for the entertainment of trustees and highly questionable spending of taxpayer money by some individual trustees without sufficient oversight. Following a complaint filed by Ethics Watch, in March, the IEC found that the Public Trustee Association of Colorado violated Amendment 41 and ordered them to pay nearly $3,000 in fines. And in July, Governor Hickenlooper requested the resignation of all 10 of the appointed public trustees amid reports of questionable spending.

Even though El Paso County's public trustee, Thomas Mowle, was one of the 10 forced to resign by the governor, that scandal skipped right over us, too.

As Toro tells the Indy, not only was Mowle not implicated in the complaint, "Mowle was held up as the example of how the office should be run." And Hickenlooper re-appointed Mowle to his position.

The final scandal involves Secretary of State Scott Gessler. From the press release (which you can read in full after the jump):

Controversial Secretary of State Scott Gessler made a name for himself while attempting to reshape Colorado election and campaign finance laws in this election year. He earned fame of a different kind when a review of public records revealed evidence of misuse of public funds by Secretary Gessler, including the use of state funds to cover travel expenses for partisan events, which implicates several laws against public corruption.

Planned Parenthood is beaming.

• Shutterstock / Eggs in a Cup

Colorado's Secretary of State announced this morning that the proponents of the so-called Personhood Amendment failed to raise enough signatures to get it on the fall ballot. According to Denver News 7, advocates came up about 4,000 signatures shy of the threshold.

The amendment sought to prohibit "the intentional killing of any innocent person," even if that "person" was a fetus created through a rape or incest.

From a press release, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains’ CEO and President Vicki Cowart:

Women across Colorado are sighing with relief. Today is a victory for women’s health.

The fact that Personhood Colorado was not able to qualify their measure on the 2012 ballot demonstrates how out of touch their agenda is with Colorado values.

Health decisions should be left to a woman, her doctor, her family and her faith — not politicians— Coloradans know this.

Let today be a signal to personhood supporters who return to Colorado year after year with anti-woman, anti-family, anti-patient privacy ballot proposals—Coloradans have said ‘no’ to intrusion into our personal, private medical decisions and we mean it.