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%
February 15, 2011 08:51 PM UTC
11 Comments
It’s a generic “defense of others” bill, but includes explicitly “unborn child”. They’re opening up a can of worms, here…
What if I hear someone’s going to go out and bomb an abortion clinic? Can I kill that person instead, to defend the people at the clinic? What about going after the whole Army of God group?
Can an abused wife kill her abusing husband if she thinks he’s going to kill her? Can he kill her if she goes out to Planned Parenthood for care, thinking she’s going to terminate a pregnancy?
The possibilities are endless. The bill is just endlessly stupid, poorly thought out.
Well, maybe to rational, reasonable people but clearly not to the 22 state reps and 4 state senators that are co-sponsoring it.
But despite what they think, that doesn’t alter the reality that the bill is craptastic.
Same goes for the idiots in 12 states proposing to re-fight John C. Calhoun’s state nullification battle. We’ve been there, done that, hated it, and all they can think is, “even if it’s unconstitutional, it’s important to try it, just once.”
“craptastic”
Heh. Yep, that is a succinct summation of this proposed bill.
… at least they’ll still be able to prosecute clinic bombers on mayhem charges. So maybe that will be enough of a deterrent…
/snark
There’s always Disorderly Conduct.
Murder would be better, though.
Certain Republicans demonstrate that property is more important the people. They certainly can’t tolerate that!
It reminds me of how, after Kristallnacht, the Nazis persecuted some of the participants for rape because it violated the laws against Germans and Jews having sexual relations, but no one was charged with murder.
They think it’s worth, oh, maybe 2 or 3 pennies.
As a general rule, there is not a constitutional requirement that a state protect people from private violence either with police or with legal prohibitions, although the recent U.S. Supreme Court holding in Heller, the case that recognized an individual right to bear arms for self-defense under the Second Amendment arguably also holds that a right to personal self-defense, at least in one’s home, has constitutional stature subject to reasonable definition under state law.
The U.S. Constitution generally governs what a state must not do, rather than what a state must do.
Similarly, it isn’t at all obvious that a state is constitutionally prohibited from removing criminal and civil sanctions under state law for “honor killings” as a form of justifiable homicide.
There are equal protection arguments, the state law justification might not apply to violations of a federal homocide crime, and this could be interpreted as an undue burden on the rights of the woman seeking an abortion, but the legal arguments involved are very different from those involved in a state law prohibiting abortions.
is the legislative record discussing the bill and its intentions.
Your analysis is excellent; in case anyone has any doubts about my criticisms of the bill above, I didn’t mean to indicate that the bill was necessarily unconstitutional, or that there wasn’t at least some thought put in to it by those on the right who think they’re geniuses for coming up with this approach. The problem they have is that, having coming up with some way to get around the constitutional and abortion rights questions, they’ve crafted a bill so generic that it falls somewhere between “Wild West Revisited” and “Honor Killings for Christians”.
Does that mean you can shoot a bartender serving a pregnant woman?