Burns
Let it be known that no one from the Denver Post political team played a role in the selection of this morning's front page picture of Gov. Bill Ritter. In fact, we completely missed his impression of Monty Burns of Simpsons fame during yesterday's press conference.

Sen. Evie Hudak, D-Westminster, says she's not bumping a Republican appointee off an interim legislative committee to study new ways to fund public education.

As former Sen. President Peter Groff, D-Denver, left the legislature in May, he surprised Democratic colleagues by appointing Republican Sen. Nancy Spence of Centennial to the interim education committee.

Returning the favor, Minority Leader Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, chose newly appointed Michael Johnston, D-Denver, as his appointee.

Both Spence and Johnston are seen as education reformers more likely to support less traditional forms of education funding. 

But when Senate Presisent Brandon Shaffer, D-Longmont, took power, he said he was considering undoing the cross-party appointment and bumping Spence for Hudak, a former state Board of Education member. 

Hudak said that, in the interest of bi-partisan harmony and balance on the committee, she told Shaffer she would not seek a committee position, though she will remained involved in education finance discussions over the summer. 

The Capitol press corps has been saddened for months, knowing that longtime reporter Charles Ashby would no longer be The Pueblo Chieftain's correspondent in Denver after the end of the session.

This session marked the 12th for Ashby and his fifth at the Chieftain, which, like a number of smaller papers in the state in recent years, has chosen not to have a full-time correspondent. Ashby, a veteran of newspapers in Colorado, Virginia and Florida, is seeking other reporting opportunities, and his colleagues hope to see him stay at the Capitol in some capacity.

Today was his last day working as the Chieftain's correspondent, and the event did not escape the notice of Gov. Bill Ritter's press office, which put out a hoax statement from the governor filled with Ritter-isms about Ashby's departure.

Here's the hilarious, but fake, statement:

"We really believe that, at the end of the day, Charles Ashby struck the right balance and moved the conversation forward in a 21st century way for his readers in Pueblo. 

“We very much believe we’re in a place moving forward where we will need to find a solution that’s uniquely Colorado as it relates to the lack of media coverage of Pueblo lawmakers. Moving forward in a 21st century way on the New Energy Economy requires the notion of a robust state Capitol press corps.  

“Therefore I have convened the Blue Ribbon Ashby Commission. It will convene on July 15 to have a conversation about utilizing Charles Ashby’s sunny disposition to help power the New Energy Economy forward, as it relates to the New Energy Economy.” 

It started after Sen. Bill Cadman ribbed Sen. Evie Hudak over the volume of her voice, known for being loud enough to wake up anyone who might be nodding off in or near the Capitol.

Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, on Tuesday passed around a plastic bag with ear plugs, or "Hudak Helpers" as they were labeled on the bag.

"We're running low on these," he said, tossing them onto the Senate press table.

The next day, Hudak, D-Westminster, showed up with a "helper" of her own: a small black megaphone she brought to the microphone.

"Can you hear me?"  she boomed from the mic as Cadman and others laughed. "If you can't, I have Hudak's Helper here."

When Sen. Greg Brophy joked that he wanted to get a vanity plate for his car that says ACLUSUX, the Wray Republican got a letter from the head of Colorado's American Civil Liberties Union.

"If you apply for that license and are refused, please contact the ACLU because we stand ready to represent you if you want to pursue your right to have that license plate," director Cathryn Hazouri wrote.

"After all, censorship is censorship and the ACLU doesn’t draw any distinction between speech with which we agree and speech we may not like. That would be content discrimination and would violate one of our major principles of protecting free speech."

Brophy was pretty amused by the letter.

He had joked about wanting the license plate after the civil-rights group asked the Colorado Department of Revenue for records of those who applied for vanity plates but were rejected because what they wanted on their plate was considered "offensive to the general public," or "offensive to good taste and decency."

Rep. Karen Middleton brought doughnuts today for the House as a thank you from her daughter, 9-month-old Zoe, who has been a fixture at the legislature.

Zoe's been known to be hanging on to mommy when Middleton, an Aurora Democrat, goes to the mike to talk about a bill. And she just learned to pull herself up on her mother's filing cabinets underneath her desk on the House floor.

House Minority Leader Mike May is wearing his special tie reserved for the last day. It has martinis on it.

That should give you a clue what the Parker Republican will be doing tonight after the session ends.

You've got to love Rep. Gwyn Green, who once admitted that her sense of direction is so poor that on cloudy days she had no idea which way is west.

The 70-year-old Golden Democrat, known as the "fighting granny," today consented to an interview but only after she had finished text messaging for another lawmaker.

It turns out her younger colleague has no idea how to text, but Green is a whiz so she does it for her.

What was going to be a glorious bar set up in the spacious women's restroom in the Capitol basement for the last 24 hours of the session is no more.

Apparently someone dropped a dime on the State Patrol, who investigated this afternoon and found a case of 7-Up along with the hard stuff. The troopers were planning to pour out the evidence, but luckily at that exact moment  Sen. Lois Tochtrop, D-Thorton, made an unscheduled pit stop.

She volunteered to handle the hootch.

Colorado voters may get a chance to play ballot-box bingo in 2010 with a referred measure that would ask whether regulation of that favorite game of gamblin’ grannies and church fund-raisers moves from the secretary of state’s office to the state Department of Revenue.

Currently, Colorado’s secretary of state oversees the regulations of bingo and raffles, considered “games of chance” in the Colorado Constitution. The secretary of state also oversees elections and business licensing, among other things, and supporters of the referred measure say that’s just too much regulating for one person to handle. They say it makes more sense from the state Department of Revenue to be the bingo boss.

The state Senate approved the measure unanimously today. (It has so far had only one legislator out of 100 cast a vote against it.) It must be re-approved by the House because the Senate made a small change.

Once it clears the legislature, the measure will appear on the 2010 ballot.