•Why Mark Udall welched on an online debate to be co-moderated by SvU and liberal blogger and all-around stand-up guy David Thielen (one of the few), after Bob Schaffer had already agreed to the blog-centric showdown.
This is the first in a series of articles responding to three front-page articles in the Denver Post by reporter Michael Riley which attack former Congressman and current Senate candidate Bob Schaffer for a fact-finding trip Schaffer took to the Northern Marianas Islands (“CNMI”) in 1999.
Ross is up to part 6--here are the links: Part 1 2 3 4 5 6
The lottery to win permits to demonstrate at the Democratic National Convention screeched to a halt this afternoon when an organization claimed it wasn't being given a fair shot at a five-day permit to rally in Denver's Civic Center.
The mayor's office stopped the lottery just 45 minutes after it had begun. It was scheduled to resume about 2:20 p.m.
The lottery, held on the second floor of the Wellington Webb Building in downtown Denver, featured dozens of business cards sitting on a table, waiting to be selected in a random process.
But Barbara Cohen, representing the Recreate '68 group, noticed that only one business card from her group was on the table. There should have been five, because the application was for a five-day permit, she said.
"Something got screwed up, and screwed up badly," Cohen said. "It's very distressing. This is supposed to be a city-run lottery."
Chantal Unfug, special assistant to Mayor Hickenlooper, said "Obviously, there was a clerical mistake in transferring the information from the application forms onto the business cards."
City officials are cross-referencing the application forms with the cards, and doing it in the open, in front of all interested parties, to help re-instill faith in the process, she said. They hope the lottery can be completed by the close of business today.
Barbara Rivera wants to "stand for peace" on behalf of the U.S. Department of Peace and Nonviolence.
Duke Austin hopes to hold a five-day "this is what democracy looks like" rally with the Students for Peace and Justice.
Adam Jungk proposes to set up a Tent State University. Barbara Cohen applied for a "festival of democracy;" her husband, Mark Cohen, for a "celebration of democracy."
They're just five of the people who submitted more than 200 applications to occupy 14 centrally located Denver parks during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. The catch is, they are all associated with the same group: Re-create 68. . . . But R-68's Glenn Spagnuolo, who also filed for a permit for "The Free Speech Zone" as an individual, and who freely admits knowing Duke, Adam, Mark and the two Barbaras — and, in all, as many as 40 other applicants friendly to his group — says it's the city that's not playing fair.
"It's the city's fault," Spagnuolo said. "I don't have any remorse about this at all."
Spagnuolo says the city's new permitting rules, which it overhauled to prepare for the deluge of interest in the convention, are meant to exclude protesters.
R-68, as an umbrella group for a variety of protesters, wants to use Civic Center outside city hall as its main staging area for the week of the convention, Aug. 25-28.
Spagnuolo objects to the lottery because it gives equal weight to private and free-speech interests, and because it gives precedence to groups, such as A Taste of Colorado, which have historically sought permits for particular days. The food festival will begin setting up in Civic Center on Aug. 28.
Good news today. A representative from the Bob Schaffer for Senate campaign has expressed the candidate's agreement in principle to an online debate versus Mark Udall, a debate co-sponsored by David Thielen on the Left and by us here at Schaffer v Udall on the Right.
I wanted to let you know that Congressman Schaffer would be interested in participating in an online debate with Congressman Udall. As we move closer to June and July, please let me know the potential dates of the debate. We’re very flexible and willing to work with you to find a date and time that works for all involved parties.
Mormon leaders were at a loss Sunday to explain three young missionaries' alleged vandalism of a Catholic shrine in the San Luis Valley. The three unidentified men, ages 19 and 20, face punishment from the church and possibly Costilla County.
"We have a history of people doing things like this to us, so we're mortified that our missionaries would do it to someone else," said Robert Fotheringham, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints mission president who oversees the region that includes the San Luis Valley. "It's beyond embarrassing. It's inexcusable."
Fotheringham said the act was "completely out of character" for the three, who had distinguished themselves serving poor and elderly people in the valley.
The Sangre de Christo Parish council, based in San Luis, voted 7-0 Sunday to turn the matter over to Costilla County authorities.
The LDS church has chosen not to identify the men, but their names will become public record if local authorities file criminal charges. Calls to the Costilla County Sheriff's Office were not returned Sunday.
The incident happened in 2006 but erupted into a controversy last week when a member of the parish discovered three photos of the missionaries mocking the shrine on the photo-sharing website Photobucket.
One photo shows an LDS missionary holding a head broken off a statue in the Shrine of the Mexican Martyrs at the Chapel of All Saints on the butte above the town of San Luis.
The damaged statue depicts martyr Manuel Morales, the 28-year-old president of Mexico's National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty who died before a Mexican firing squad in 1926 for refusing to recognize laws he saw as anti-religion.
Another photo showed a missionary appearing to preach from the Book of Mormon at the altar inside the All Saints chapel. A third photo depicts one missionary pretending to sacrifice another at an altar.
Members of the Sangre de Cristo parish of the Roman Catholic Church voted Sunday to pursue criminal charges against three Mormon missionaries who allegedly vandalized a shrine and committed sacrilegious acts in the church.
The Pueblo Chieftain reported that church members saw photos on the Web showing the Mormons in the shrine. Although the incidents occurred in 2006, they came to the attention of the parish only when they were seen on the Internet site Photobucket.
Alonzo Payne, a parishioner and lawyer, said he was asking the Costilla County sheriff to pursue charges on behalf of the parish.
Sheriff's Cpl. Scott Powell told the Chieftain the men, who were not identified, could face up to six charges, including felonies for criminal mischief and conspiracy.
Costilla County Sheriff Gilbert Martinez said his office would begin its investigation today. Possible charges include desecration of a venerated object, criminal trespass, defacing property and bias-motivated crime.
Whoops. Probably not the sort of outreach the LDS had in mind--but most certainly confined to the three hoodlums in question.
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