Last night, a helpful post on redistricting went up on DailyKos. askew provides historical context, an overview of the Democratic playing field, and a call to action, all in one little paragraph:

In 2001-2... Because the Republicans controlled so many state houses during the restricting process, they were able to create gerrymandered districts that resulted in historic gains for the Republicans in the 2002 midterms. The Democratic Party is determined to not let that happen again. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) (help elect state Reps/Sens), The National Democratic Redistricting Trust (legal team to fight redistricting) and Foundation for the Future (a 527 funded primarily by unions to provide data to the Democratic Party on how to draw maps to favor Democrats). However, they will need our help to GOTV and raise money for the 2010 midterms.

This morning, Alex Burns’ Morning Score gave us a nice little plug:

COMING SOON – THE DLCC’S MAP: The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, charged with waging state House and Senate campaigns this fall ahead of the next round of redistricting, is preparing to release a memo to Democratic stakeholders outlining the most urgent targets for the party this fall. “Of the legislatures with the power to draw congressional maps, 23 chambers in 17 states are within five seats of changing hands. These 17 states will draw 198 Congressional Districts,” DLCC executive director Michael Sargeant writes. “The bottom line: The results of the 2010 state legislative elections will define how key reforms and policies are decided for the next decade.” The DLCC’s top defensive targets: the Alabama Senate, Colorado Senate, Indiana House, Nevada Senate, New Hampshire Senate, New York Senate, Ohio House, Pennsylvania House and both chambers in Wisconsin. And its picks for offense: the Michigan Senate, Kentucky Senate, Tennessee House and Texas House.

Tune into this space next Monday for the memo to which he refers.

With questions beginning to fly concerning specific states, the DLCC is pleased to present, via RedistrictingFacts.com, a state-by-state breakdown of how redistricting actually works in each.

For example, did you know that an Independent Redistricting Commission administers the redistricting of both state legislative and congressional districts in Arizona? Check out the website to learn how the Commission members are appointed!

Were you aware that Governors have no veto authority over the maps drawn by the state legislatures in Connecticut and North Carolina?

Have you heard about the various states in which state Supreme Courts have some authority over the redistricting process?

Learn about all these things and more at http://redistrictingfacts.com/redistricting-by-state/!

Ever since Democrats won control of the Colorado Legislature in 2004, the state has become a leader in pushing for clean energy investment. And that leadership was recently recognized by U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, who described Colorado as a model for national action.

Aldo Svaldi and Drew FitzGerald at the Denver Post wrote about Locke's remarks a few weeks ago:

The country could miss a key opportunity for growth if it doesn't soon follow Colorado's example in pursuing the new-energy economy, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke said Monday. (...)

Colorado earlier this year required that utilities obtain 30 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020, one of the nation's strictest mandates.

That was an increase from an earlier voter- approved requirement of 20 percent by 2020, and the mandate has helped the state attract thousands of jobs in wind, solar and other technologies.

Republicans in both legislative chambers voted near-unanimously against HB 1001, which established the new standard – presumably because they’d rather see more job creation in China, instead of Colorado and elsewhere in the United States.

As Secretary Locke explained, Republican intransigence on clean energy is already causing the United States to fall behind:

China, by contrast, is investing $9 billion a month in the clean-energy field, and not just to meet its own internal energy needs or improve emissions. The Chinese want to export the technology to other countries and reap the millions of jobs that could come from doing that, Locke said.

"If we don't act soon on an energy policy . . . we will wake up and say, 'How is it that Shanghai, China, or Berlin, Germany, have become the next Silicon Valley of clean energy?' " he said.

Colorado, of course, is hardly alone in the push for clean energy. 2009 saw a surge of activity in several states, almost always led and supported by Democratic lawmakers.

It’s an open question whether Republicans will eventually come around to supporting clean energy legislation. But no matter what they do, you can expect Democrats to continue making it a priority in Colorado and across the country.

The end of the Colorado legislative session also marked the end of another Democrat’s historic reign as Speaker. Terrance D. Carroll, who is unable to run for re-election because of term limits, served his final day as State house Speaker last week:

The grandson of a sharecropper, Carroll has the distinction of serving as Colorado's first black House speaker. Although his term doesn't expire until early January, he banged the gavel on Wednesday for the last time during the regular session. (…)

Carroll became a lawmaker in March 2003, when he was appointed to the seat held by Rep. Peter Groff, who resigned to take Penfield Tate's seat in the Senate.

Groff would go on to become the first black president of the state Senate. When House Democrats elected Carroll speaker two days after the November 2008 election, Colorado made history.

That history, of course, is as the first U.S. State to have both of its legislative chambers led by African-Americans – at least since Reconstruction and possibly ever.

But beyond making history, Speaker Carroll earned bipartisan praise for his fairness in leading the chamber:

Rep. Amy Stephens of Monument, the House GOP caucus chair, praised Carroll on three fronts: his fairness, devotion to his late mother and fashion sense.

"Terrance has always been one of my favorite people," she said.

At only 41, and with other experience as an attorney, police officer, and ordained minister, we expect Speaker Carroll will continue to find ways to serve the people of Colorado. And we wish him and his family all the best.

Last year, the Democratic-controlled Colorado Legislature passed the Health Care Affordability Act, seeking to extend Medicaid coverage to tens of thousands of Coloradans who would otherwise go uninsured. The law went into effect in April, with impressive results:

The point of the Health Care Affordability Act, considered Gov. Bill Ritter's most significant health care reform, is to create a pot of money through hospital fees that would draw matching federal money. The state is using the additional money — expected to reach $1.2 billion annually — to provide more Coloradans with health insurance, as well as pay back hospitals for treating patients who are either uninsured or on Medicaid.

Many hospitals, especially those that treat a large number of indigent patients or those on Medicaid, actually end up with a net gain of millions of dollars through the program, even when accounting for the new fees. But the plan also does a good job of minimizing any overall losses absorbed by hospitals that see a net loss:

Centura Health's Adventist hospitals — Porter, Avista, Littleton and Parker — will lose a combined $6.3 million through the hospital fee. Still, the 12-hospital Centura system comes out winning, with a net gain of about $4.4 million.

"The state did a very nice job of trying to limit the losers," said Randy Safady, Centura's chief financial officer. "We have a number of losing hospitals and we have a number of winning hospitals."

Overall, the new law is expected to help about 67,500 more Coloradans receive health insurance, filling a key need for many of those individuals until the federal reform law is fully implemented in 2014.

The President’s health reform law is going to save thousands of lives and make coverage more affordable for millions of Americans. It also left some good, progressive ideas on the table. But with the reform bill now law, Democratic state legislators are already stepping up to put those ideas into action.

Colorado, Maine, and Maryland have all passed bills to reinforce or speed up key planks of the federal reform plan, like the prohibition on charging higher premiums for women or the ban on lifetime caps on benefits. Meanwhile Oregon, which created the Oregon Health Authority last year to study ways to improve the affordability of health care, is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the federal reform plan.

But states like Connecticut and Vermont are preparing to go even further. Connecticut will be continuing its SustiNet project, a state-administrated health plan overseen by a board of experts reporting directly to the Legislature. The Vermont Senate has given preliminary approval for a bill requiring the Legislature’s Health Care Reform Commission to develop three separate plans for implementing universal health care, including one plan that creates a state-run public insurance option.

Even before the President’s plan passed, Democratic state legislators were at the forefront of health care reform in America. But now that we have health care reform on a national scale, expect states to continue pushing the envelope – finding new ideas and offering bold solutions.

And expect Democrats to continue leading the way.

New legislation passed by Colorado lawmakers takes aim at making preventive care more affordable.

The law, which took effect Friday, assures that services such as screenings for breast and cervical cancer, cholesterol levels and colorectal cancer; childhood immunizations and flu vaccines; and programs to help manage alcohol misuse and quit smoking are available at low cost to clients, even when the insured have not met their deductibles.

Focusing on preventive care is a key component of any effort to reduce health care costs. Spotting troubling medical condition early makes them far more affordable to treat, and for Colorado, a state where cardiovascular disease are the number one killer, this type of effort holds significant potential to improve the general health of the population.

In the age of Obama, it seems like Republicans’ dog-whistle politics just keep getting louder. A case in point is Republican State Senator David Schultheis of Colorado, who sent out a tweet last week comparing President Obama to the 9/11 hijackers:

"Don't for a second think Obama wants what is best for U.S. He is flying the U.S. plane right into the ground at full speed. Let's roll."

“Let’s Roll” was the signal for United Flight 93 passengers trying to recapture their plane from terrorists on 9/11. The plane ultimately crashed right into the ground, at full speed. The “generous” reading of this is that Schultheis would rather see America destroyed than have a successful, Democratic president.

Of course, Senator Schultheis denies that was the comparison he was trying to make. But the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Colorado Senate both blasted the remarks, as did a spokesperson for the conservative-leaning 9/11 Families for a Secure America, who said “Let's not cheapen what happened on Sept. 11 by making random and/or ill-fated comparisons to current policy.”

This is not Schultheis’s first morally reprehensible statement. Earlier this year, when he voted against a bill to prevent AIDS transmission from pregnant women to their babies, “he said then that infected children would set examples for women against sexual promiscuity.”

Across the country, lawmakers are using new media tools like Twitter to broadcast their views, engage with constituents, and share interesting information.

But it's becoming clear that in the rush to embrace the technology, some have absolutely no idea what they're doing.

Case in point? Republicans in Colorado are racing to ban 'liberal' followers on Twitter:

Apparently the word went out over the weekend that "liberals" are attempting to "follow" Republicans on Twitter. This is being interpreted as a bad, nefarious thing, needing to be stopped, although "following" on Twitter is in most other circles considered desirable.

GOP Senator Dave Schultheis is one of the conservatives who sprung into action, telling his followers that he had blocked three "liberals" on Monday.

The issue here is visible to everyone, correct?

Twitter is designed to be a public forum. All of us 'liberals' can still view Schultheis' feed online, whether we're following him or not.

Twitter: you're doing it wrong.

As Census officials prepare for 2010’s constitutionally-mandated count of every person in America, a coalition of Colorado local governments and non-profits is preparing its own strategy to minimize undercounting in the state:

Community stakeholders are implementing several strategies they hope will produce a more accurate numerical representation of Denver. For one, the city has set a goal to have 80-percent of Denverites mail in their census form by April 1. Doing so ensures people won’t have anyone come to their door to collect the data.

Mi Familia Vota and CPC [Colorado Progressive Coalition] are in the midst of getting people, many of them bilingual, from minority and low-income groups to become census counters. The groups hope the counters and messengers will be able to emphasize to people that any information in the census will remain confidential.

We highlighted a similar outreach effort in New York back in May. Like in New York, Colorado’s effort could have significant consequences for the state over the next ten years, and it comes on the heels of severe undercounting of minorities and inner-city areas during the 2000 Census:

In the 2000 census, approximately 3 percent of the nation’s Latino community was undercounted, according to Jessie Ulibarri of Mi Familia Vota. Because the census information is used to distribute congressional seats to states, make decisions about what community services are provided and as the basis for the distribution of around $300 billion in federal funds, the undercount count resulted in fewer resources for communities that needed them, according to Ulibarri.

“When we’re undercounted, it’s something that hurts all of us,” he said.

Carlos Valverde of Colorado Progressive Coalition (CPC) said underrepresented communities are often undercounted in the census, which then leads to more under-representation. Valverde pointed to the fact that Latinos make up around 25 percent of Colorado but only 3 percent of the state Legislature as evidence that change is needed.

By encouraging Census participation, Colorado and other states can help secure their fair share of federal funding and make sure their residents receive fair representation. With its rapid growth and demographic changes, this Census will likely reveal a very different Colorado than we saw in 2000; hopefully, with the help of grassroots efforts, the coming Census snapshot of Colorado will be more accurate than it was in 2000.

Yesterday was Colorado Senate President and DLCC board member Peter Groff’s last day in the Colorado Senate. With the end of legislative session, Sen. Groff will be resigning his seat to accept a high-level appointment in President Obama’s Department of Education.

Before he left, he urged his fellow senators to pass a bill repealing the death penalty in Colorado. That impassioned plea -– on an emotional issue with no national consensus -– should remind all of us why we put so much effort into legislative elections; why Sen. Groff was so respected by Democrats and Republicans across the state; and why all of us at the DLCC were so proud to have him as a board member:

And here was the challenge: "We will say we did what's right because that's what we're supposed to do. This is our opportunity, yet again, to actually be the moral voice in this state, to actually rise above the politics of the moment, to rise to that one moment where we say, 'You know what, if this costs us the majority, so be it. If this costs us our seats, our titles, our gavels, so be it, because this is the right thing to do.' "

He conceded that it was easy for someone like him, from a safe seat, to make this vote. But he said this was not about saving your, uh, seat, but about "one of those moments when a leader has to rise above politics, when morality has to rise above what is safe and convenient."

It was a fitting sendoff for an inspirational legislator. The bill in question failed by a single vote –- a much closer margin than expected –- after passing the State House, also by a single vote.

Sen. Groff was clearly the right choice for a presidential appointment, and we wish him and his family well in their move to Washington.