President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Kamala Harris
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
50%
50%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
70%↑
30%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
April 07, 2010 07:20 PM UTC
19 Comments
Prosecuting someone for following a state law is almost certainly (state) unconstitutional. And IMHO using this threat should be actionable by the State Bar.
How fun it must have been to roam the Earth with the dinosaurs. It’s the 21st century though, and studies on teen sex and contraceptives hold precedent over Bible-thumping conservatives.
Everything was fine until someone started explaining sex to them, and then they got all promiscuous and passed around dinosaur STDs.
Once Eve ate the apple, she started telling the dinosaurs about that sex thing and it was all downhill from there.
That’s the company that started selling condoms through the mail from North Carolina in the early ’70s — back when it was still technically illegal, a violation of the Comstock Laws:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A…
The book Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market by Eric Schlosser touches on that history.
In the old days if you didn’t agree with a law, one could ask the legislature to amend or repeal it or go to court and challenge the constitutionality of the law.
Apparently, this DA doesn’t like those traditional avenues of changing or challenging a statute. He believes he can take the law into his own hands and threaten prosecution and thereby, at least in his district, repeal the law. In essence, he is accusing the entire Wisconsin legislature and the Governor of contributing to the delinquency of minors. I wonder if he is going to indict them on that charge.
He has no authority to prosecute anyone based on his personal morality based opinions. If he did then another district attorney somwhere who thought it was morally wrong to prohibit seven year olds from drinking could prosecute liquor store owners who enforced the age laws.
I’m ready to send a check to this guy’s re-election campaign.
I’d take this guy over my DA any day of the week.
The definition of that is dictatorship. And I have a feeling that if anyone in the Obama administration did anything like this you would scream bloody murder.
If we’re not enforcing religious law in our Midwest Sharia courts, the terrorists have won.
And kudos for droppin’ the G! Remember that when you’re signin’ that check you’re sendin’ to the crusadin’ DA!
There is nothing in OBR’s response that even vaguely addresses the ethics or legality of the DA’s action, his duty to uphold the laws of the state (which include mandatory sex education including contraceptives), or the constitutional questions that would arise should he carry out his threat.
Simply “sounds great to me”.
It’s the same reason that district attorneys shouldn’t be criticized for pursuing the death penalty if it is the law in their state. It’s not up to them to decide which laws are morally just and which ones are not.
That’s right, that’s up to juries!
…mandates that the DA seek the death penalty in any case. That decision is left to the discretion of the DA in those instances where the penalty is permissible.
Prosecutors have enormous discretion to decide who to prosecute for what, including whether to seek the death penalty. Saying that they are above criticism for how they exercise their discretion is ridiculous.
But a DA can’t say that he won’t seek the death penalty because he doesn’t believe in it.
Prosecutorial discretion is practically unbounded in taht regard. Some discretion is prudential (“I can’t win this case”) and some is moral (“I shouldn’t win this case”).
This is not at all what the Wisconsin DA is doing–he is essentially threatening to prosecute for a not-existent crime that he is making up. The exercise of charging discretion is not making up a law, it’s enforcing those that are on the books (since part of the law is that prosecutors have discretion in such matters).
Parents have an opt out form they can sign if they don’t want their kids in a sex ed class. Abstinence only programs have been proven ineffective. Honestly, how many decades are we going to have to have this argument?
The DA ought to be removed for threatening false prosecution.
The age of consent in Wisconsin is 18…