Get More Smarter on Friday (Jan. 22)

Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., voted in support of overriding the president’s veto of Senate Joint Resolution 22. The measure would have nullified the proposed changes to the definition of “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act.

“The responsibility for managing Colorado’s water should be left to state and local governments along with our water districts, not with the federal government through overreaching regulations like WOTUS,” Gardner said in a statement soon after casting his vote. “I will continue to forcefully oppose WOTUS and take any steps possible to block its implementation.”

The 52-40 vote came short of the 60 votes needed to override the president’s veto. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., voted against overriding the veto.

The anti-WOTUS resolution, of which Gardner was a co-sponsor, passed the U.S. Senate in November on a 53-44 vote. Last week, the House of Representatives voted 253-166 in favor of the resolution, sending it to the president.

He’ll probably never admit it, but it says here that Cory Gardner just really likes saying the word “WOTUS.” It is fun to say.

Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► Congressman Scott Tipton completed a two-day tour of Western Colorado with a stop in Glenwood Springs on Thursday. As the Post Independent newspaper reports, there was a whole lotta fist shaking’ going’ on:

Garfield County commissioners have supported an alternative that would create partial limits on future leasing in the Thompson Divide, forcing permanent withdrawal of about 39,000 acres. And commissioners have encouraged the Thompson Divide Coalition and energy companies to work together, possibly toward a lease exchange for leases outside of the Thompson Divide.

Tipton is not opposed to a lease exchange, but he has said he cannot support permanent withdrawal of divide lands from leasing…

…Much of the conversation hinged on opinions about whether the oil and gas companies’ leases in the area south and west of Glenwood Springs constituted private property.

Some also questioned whether the leases were approved legally in the first place.

► At least he’s not your statistically-challenged Congressman.

► The FBI is “negotiating” with the #YallQaeda terrorist group that continues to hold a visitor’s center hostage in Oregon. If you stopped paying attention to these heavily-armed flakes, you might want to start getting more involved; as Charles Pierce writes for Esquire, it is you — Joe Taxpayer — who is really getting hosed by these yokels:

The people of Harney County are fed up. The governor of Oregon is fed up. A group of armed jamokes—some of them with long criminal histories outside of the crimes they are committing at the moment—has seized federal property on federal land and the only people who seem sanguine about the whole business are the federal authorities. The thieves have been allowed to come and go fairly at will. They’ve been allowed to state their case at town meetings. And they’ve been allowed to return to the scene of their current crimes over and over again. Enough. If the FBI is still gun-shy about Ruby Ridge and about Waco, it has had enough chances to arrest these people without storming their winter clown encampment…

…Nothing good can come of waiting these people out anymore. By their lights, they’ve already won, the way Ammon’s deadbeat father, Cliven, won when itinerant gunmen faced down lawful authority, an episode that led directly to the one in Oregon that already has gone on too long. (By the way, the elder Bundy is still a scofflaw who owes you and me $1 million.) And it’s important to remember that they are only the shiny object shock troops of a general conservative movement to destroy what’s left of the commons by taking over the public lands, especially in the West.

In the meantime…send more dildos.

► Officials with the town of Silverton have finally — finally — agreed to seek federal “Superfund” status that will provide significant resources for cleaning up abandoned mine sites throughout Colorado.

► Former President Bill Clinton made a quick, unannounced visit to Denver on Thursday to stump for Hillary Clinton.

► FOX 31 Denver takes a look at some of the education bills being discussed by Colorado legislators.

► Some Colorado Republican lawmakers are finding themselves in quite the lonely spot when it comes to their continued opposition to making changes to the Hospital Provider Fee.  As the Colorado Statesman reports, Senate President Bill Cadman is trying to withstand pressure from numerous business groups that would like to see a change to the fee to open up more money for state infrastructure projects.

“(The hospital provider fee) never should have been categorized as anything other than an enterprise,” Christian Reece, executive director at Western Slope business advocacy organization Club 20, told The Colorado Statesman between lawmaker presentations.

Club 20 has come out strongly in favor of the hospital provider fee change. So has southern Colorado’s Action 22 and Progressive 15, which advocates for 15 counties in northeastern Colorado.

The three groups this year descended on the Capitol together for a two-day tour in which they are meeting with lawmakers, hosting panel discussions and generally networking. Sponsors of the trip include Chevron, Kaiser Permanente, the Colorado Contractors Association, BNSF Railway, Tri-State Generation, Colorado Rural Electric and Black Hills Energy.

On the other side of everyone else sits Cadman, a handful of GOP lawmakers, and the Koch Brothers-funded group Americans for Prosperity.

OTHER LINKS YOU SHOULD CLICK

► A Republican vacancy committee meets on Saturday to select a replacement for Rep. Jon Keyser, who is resigning his seat in the legislature after a little more than a half-term in order to focus on campaigning for a U.S. Senate seat. From the Colorado Statesman:

Applicants for Keyser’s seat, which covers the Jefferson County Foothills, include Evergreen real estate developer Tim Leonard, activist and “lifetime volunteer” Judy Merkel, also of Evergreen, and small business owner Derec Shuler, who lives in Golden Gate Canyon. Jeffco Republicans said there was another applicant named Kevin Allen and potentially a fifth candidate for the vacancy but couldn’t provide more information about either of them by press time.

You might recall that Leonard lost a close race to Democrat Jeanne Nicholson (SD-16) in 2010.

► Republican Ben Carson’s former campaign manager is now helping Donald Trump with his effort to win the GOP Presidential nomination. We’d guess that Trump is largely being advised to do the opposite of whatever Carson was doing.

ICYMI

► Make sure you read this compelling editorial from Aurora Sentinel editor Dave Perry on the reality of the gun safety debate in America. 

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