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SEE THE VIDEO AT THIS LINK $10 Gas Doesn't Change Dem Senator's Mind on Oil Drilling By Noel Sheppard (Bio | Archive) August 1, 2008 - 17:03 ET There was a rather extraordinary confrontation on the Senate floor Thursday involving offshore oil drilling that got very little press coverage. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kent.) tried to get Democrats to vote on a measure that would open up such drilling if the price of gasoline reached a certain level. Although the "bidding" eventually reached $10 a gallon, Colorado's Ken Salazar continually objected. As reported by the Salt Lake Tribune Friday...

Colorado Democrats caucused in record numbers Tuesday night, clueless about which candidate their party leaders prefer for president. That's because Gov. Bill Ritter, Sen. Ken Salazar, Rep. Mark Udall and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper have refused to make picks ... But where is the backbone in silence? And what is more worthy of a clear stand than the question of who governs our country? "There's a certain responsibility to being a leader in your party. In a presidential race, that means taking a side," said state GOP chairman Dick Wadhams. Though Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama differ only slightly...

It’s irrational for Sen. Ken Salazar to demand that the Bureau of Land Management hold off on a drilling plan for Colorado’s Roan Plateau, while simultaneously blocking confirmation of the person nominated to head the agency. The BLM is less able to respond to such petulant demands, after all, if there’s no one in charge. And it’s laughable to hear the U.S. Senate trumpeted as the “world’s greatest deliberative body” when one senator, using an unwritten “rule” of uncertain origin, can unilaterally halt the confirmation process, leaving a major federal agency leaderless, in order to extort concessions from the executive...

The U.S. Senate recently blocked a bill that would have junked 72 years of U.S. labor law and, for the first time, allowed the federal government to force employers and workers alike to sign union contracts without their consent. The proposal, which passed the House with support from Rep. Mark Udall, contained an offensive and little-known provision that would have allowed a government arbitrator to impose a two-year contract on businesses and workers that actually specified wages and working conditions. Neither the employer nor the workers could appeal the decision. The government has no place mandating how much private employers,...

U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar expressed disappointment this morning at the demise of the immigration reform bill, blaming "poison stemming from some members of the Senate" and predicting continuing crisis for the country's "broken" immigration system. Colorado's other U.S. senator, Republican Wayne Allard, issued a statement calling the bill as proposed "amnesty in its simplest form," and said the American people "demand and deserve better." Allard voted with the majority ... With the bill's collapse, Allard called for a greater focus on border security. "Porous borders and lax enforcement present major security risks to our country," Allard said. "Instead of enacting...

Procedural snares and ``killer'' amendments threaten to disrupt the fragile coalition in the Senate that's holding together the most sweeping overhaul of U.S. immigration policy since 1986. Supporters are scrambling to address the legislative obstacles before debate resumes next week. Opponents plan to try to derail the legislation by using procedural delays and offering poison-pill amendments that may split the coalition that sustains the measure. Passage of the legislation would give 12 million undocumented immigrants a chance at legal status while handing President George W. Bush a victory on his top domestic priority. ``This is a delicate balance. The wheels...

Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar said Wednesday he wants another look at drilling on the Roan Plateau but stopped short of saying he’d press the Senate to prevent it. “I would hope that there would be another opportunity to re-examine oil and gas on top of the Roan Plateau,” ... Salazar’s brother, Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., is seeking this week to have the House include a provision banning spending on Roan leasing during the 2008 fiscal year in an Interior Department appropriations measure... Drilling proponents said John Salazar might be “caving in to pressure from out-of-state special interests.” Most of the...

An immigration reform measure that appeared to die in the Senate on Thursday could return next month, Sen. Ken Salazar, one of the measure's chief architects, said today. At a press conference at his Denver office, the Colorado Democrat said Senators would turn their attention to the energy bill next week, but that he is hopeful they will return to immigration reform in July. "Failure on immigration reform is not an option," he said. "For this Congress and Washington not to deal with immigration reform is an abdication of responsibility." If action is not taken now, Salazar said, immigration reform...

Despite Thursday night's Senate vote shelving a controversial immigration reform bill, the legislation can survive, Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar said this morning "No, it's not dead. Defeat is not an option," Salazar, D-Denver, told CNN on the morning...

1st term Senator says war funding should not be cutColorado Senator Ken Salazar is breaking with Democratic party leadership, saying Congress should not cut funding for the war in Iraq while U.S troops are still there. Salazar, who is viewed as one of the more moderate Democrats in the Senate is also criticizing President Bush, saying the president has worsened "the extreme partisan divide" on the Iraq War issue by questioning Democrats' support for the troops. On Friday, Salazar released the text of a letter he sent Bush and key Senate Democrats, which said -quote- "I do not believe that...

Colorado's two U.S. senators have asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate a dispute between DIRECTV and EchoStar over network channels. News Corp., DIRECTV's parent, last week asked a federal court to stop EchoStar from providing 'distant' network signals to nearly one million subscribers. The signals, which originate from New York and Los Angeles, include both analog and High-Definition TV feeds. EchoStar says it will pay $100 million to local stations to settle the nine-year-old legal battle over 'distant' network TV signals. The local stations are concerned that EchoStar's subscribers will watch the national signals instead of their feeds. However,...

WASHINGTON — Sen. Ken Salazar is in an awkward position after a U.S. Senate primary in Connecticut Tuesday night. Salazar has pledged to work to re-elect incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman in November, even though Lieberman now plans to run as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to challenger Ned Lamont Tuesday. "I am disappointed in the outcome," Salazar said in a statement late Tuesday night. "Sen. Lieberman is a good friend and a good man who has contributed greatly to the nation and the state of Connecticut. He has sought to pursue common ground and worked to transcend the...

Well, it's become quite apparent that U.S. Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) is quickly making a name for himself among the ranks of the slandering, sensationalizing far left. Since I live in Colorado, covered the primaries and election that put Salazar into office, and know some of the principals personally, I thought my take might shed some light onto the underpinnings of this bizarre phenomenon. First, on April 25, 2005, Senator Ken Salazar (affectionately known as "Gollum" by Colorado conservatives) commented that Focus on the Family (FOTF), the organization founded by Dr. James Dobson, has relentlessly and unfairly attacked him. In...

Salazar's Splutterings [Wendy Long 01/26 12:18 PM] Ken Salazar, who has been completely neutered as a political force by his own scheming, twisting, waffling, and blowing whatever way he wrongly thinks a political wind might be blowing, is obviously frustrated. What would be the metaphor? Neutered cat trapped in corner? Never mind.... Salazar is stuck. He can't filibuster Judge Alito, because that would be political suicide with the great majority of Colorado voters who, like the great majority of Americans, want Senators to do their jobs and vote on judicial nominees. But, unfortunately for him, he chose to make his...

Who is this award named for? Judge Elihu Smails, the character in the film Caddyshack who asks of the obnoxious but lovable Al Czervick (played by Rodney Dangerfield), “Good Lord, what has this buffoon done now?” As a special tribute to Judge Smails, every week we will issue this award to the biggest buffoon of the week … the person who, through his or her actions or public statements, has made a buffoon of themselves and everyone associated with them. Please note that since we slammed John "Crushed" Kerry on a daily basis when the site name was "crushkerry", he...

Pardon me while I wipe the egg off my face. Last week I was one of only a handful of conservatives praising the Senate compromise on judicial nominees, which preserved the filibuster while guaranteeing several of President Bush's most conservative nominees an up-or-down vote. I argued that Democrats would be chastened into using the filibuster judiciously -- only "under extraordinary circumstances" in the words of the compromise itself. Boy was I wrong. In less than a week, the Democrats were back to their old tricks, this time filibustering the nomination of John Bolton to be U.N. ambassador.

There's ample cause to criticize Sen. Ken Salazar for reneging on a key campaign promise. But the picketing of his wife's Dairy Queen restaurant by members of the Faith Bible Chapel who carried signs reading, "Salazar is anti-Christian" and "Salazar mocks God" is absurd. This dispute isn't about Salazar's religion; it's about his politics. === Correction Because of an editing error, this column misidentified those picketing a local restaurant as being associated with Faith Bible Chapel. The picketers were from Denver Bible Church. === On the other hand, Salazar's angry diatribe against Focus on the Family's advertising campaign targeting him...

Colorado Springs, Colo. – Focus on the Family today dismissed as "overheated rhetoric" and "suspect theology" comments from U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar that the ministry is the "antichrist of the world." Salazar, a first-term Democrat from Colorado, made the comments during a Tuesday interview with a Colorado Springs television station, in a report reviewing his recent public disagreements with Focus, which has urged Coloradans to question the senator on his support of judicial filibusters. "In my view," Salazar said of the ministry, whose 1,400 employees he represents, "they are the antichrist of the world." Tom Minnery, Focus on the Family's...

DENVER -- Colorado Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar, locked in a bitter tussle with a conservative Christian group over President Bush's judicial nominees, referred to the group as "the Antichrist." He backed off Wednesday, saying he regretted using the term. Salazar attacked Focus on the Family during an interview Tuesday with KKTV in Colorado Springs, saying, "From my point of view, they are the Antichrist of the world." In a statement Wednesday, Salazar said he has been relentlessly and unfairly attacked by the group and that "I meant to say this approach was un-Christian, meaning self-serving and selfish."

WASHINGTON - A freshman Democratic senator urged President Bush on Tuesday to withdraw all of his renominated judicial candidates, a blow to Republicans who had hoped to get the lawmaker's support to break possible filibusters. Colorado Democrat Ken Salazar, who some Republicans had suggested might be willing to vote with them for certain nominees, wrote Bush asking him to withdraw all of the candidates Democrats blocked in the Senate during the president's first term. "The decision to renominate these individuals will undoubtedly create the animosity and divisiveness ... that is not helpful to our nation and will sidetrack our collective...

I'm not sure what the record is, but let's give Ken Salazar, Colorado's new senator, the benefit of the doubt. What we do know is that it took Salazar less than one week on the job to be co-opted by the White House. And that has to be, at the very least, close to the new-guy-in-town speed mark. It happened in plain sight. All you had to do was turn on C-SPAN Thursday morning and watch Salazar introducing Alberto Gonzales to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Gonzales is, of course, the president's counsel and his nominee for attorney general. There are...

...But for the Republicans this is unadulterated good news. It vindicates "Jorge" Bush's hunch that aggressively pursuing the Hispanic vote would pay off. His familiarity with Mexican-Americans in Texas formed in him an instinct.... The Hispanic entry into Republican ranks comes, for many, at an earlier phase in their American journey than for other immigrant groups. Just think of the Irish, Italians and Jews, who generations after arrival on these shores can still reflexively pull the Democratic lever. Their vestigial loyalty is the result of what has been the Democratic Party's strategy for over a century. The bargain back in...

Salazar will run for Senate By Karen E. Crummy Denver Post Staff Writer Thursday, March 11, 2004 - Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar will announce his candidacy for U.S. Senate today, The Denver Post has learned. Salazar will declare his intention to run for the seat being vacated by Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell at a 3 p.m. news conference today, according to his campaign organizer, Mike Stratton. Salazar will be endorsed by fellow Democrat Rutt Bridges, who earlier declared himself a candidate for the Senate but is expected to drop out of the race, Stratton said. Former Gov. Roy Romer...