(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Not Everyone Can Have 21 Inches. A Colorado State Open Thread. May 18, 2026 [1] ['Thom Hartmann', 'Greg Dworkin'] Date: 2026-05-18 The snow is coming down harder and is projected to give us 3-18 inches over the next 2-3 days. That’s quite a range, but we’ll take every bit of it. As we had last week (21 inches, before it disappeared in two days), the precipitation seems to be concentrating over the northern part of the state. I don’t have a good photo like last time, but I’ll probably post one later this week, maybe in a Good Gnus or a Saturday Morning Gardening diary. Memorial Day weekend is supposed to be lovely, with temperatures in the high 70’s to 80 degrees along the front range, with nice temperatures spread around the state. One of the major events in Colorado politics of the past week was the Friday evening news dump by Governor Polis of his commutation of the sentence of former county clerk Tina Peters. I am angry about this and it has nothing to do with her First Amendment rights supposedly being violated. I’m angry because she was tried by a jury, found guilty and sentenced by a judge. Now Governor Polis has stepped in and imposed his judgement on the sentence to reduce it to a fraction of what her sentence had been – time served instead of the nine years for being guilty of several charges including violation of trust of the voters. I’m also angry because she was the only one to serve time for the crime. Nobody else, especially the guy she let into the server room to copy the hard drive using the stolen credentials, was even charged with a crime. Sure, she never showed any remorse or contrition for the crime until she wrote a letter to the governor asking for clemency, and her words of defiance and insisting through the leadup and all through the trial led the appeals court to believe that this was grounds for considering that this was the reason for this being a “harsh sentence”. Apparently the governor was stupid enough to believe she was really sorry now, when she has never been sorry up until now. I call BS on that. My money is on her not waiting a week until she’s right back to claiming the 2024 election was rigged, that Donald won the 2020 election, that her actions were justified and that she would do it all over again. I will also bet that she is right back to associating with the same people who backed her up in the runup to her trial – Mike Lindell and Donald Trump. For an alternative view to mine, the Denver Post (paywall, I think) has an editorial saying Governor Polis is right to give her clemency. https://www.denverpost.com/2026/05/16/tina-peters-jared-polis-sentence-reduced-clemency/ Now for some speculation: If Jared Polis did this for some sort of quid pro quo and didn’t do it out of sheer stupidity, I hope he got some sort of ironclad guarantee (hah!) that Trump will make things better in some fashion in return for Ms. Peters’ clemency. It would be proper if Trump will restore funding and positions for the various agencies he tried to close in Colorado in likely retaliation for Tina Peters being incarcerated (e.g. NCAR, NOAA, the Chemical Sciences Laboratory, the Physical Sciences Laboratory and the Global Monitoring Laboratory, which monitor air quality, water availability and greenhouse gasses in Boulder, and the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State University in Fort Collins and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.) – thanks to https://www.kunc.org/news/2025-07-16/neguse-leads-opposition-to-proposed-noaa-cuts-that-would-shut-down-colorado-labs Mike Littwin of the Colorado Sun lays out the many things Donald Trump has refused to Colorado for political reasons, at least in part because of his acolyte Tina Peters’ incarceration in jail. I could lay them out again, but he does so very eloquently and it would just be repeating them. It would be nice if Jared Polis received a guarantee that some/all of these would be lifted because Polis is letting Tina Peters have her clemency. https://coloradosun.com/2026/05/10/trump-colorado-revenge-opinion-littwin/ Maybe Jared Polis is trying to fend off future problems, like having a Minneapolis style incursion on Denver with ICE. Sure, ICE may have learned their lesson about not gunning down innocent white citizens, but that would be predicated upon the idea that ICE is capable of learning lessons. Colorado still has plenty of non-white people to go after. If Jared Polis did this with hopes to remain viable for a future in politics, he really doesn’t have any brains at all, says this random voice on the Internet. Now, you and I know that Trump would not do jack squat for Tina Peters in return for this. He has done as much as he would do for her. She has not been fully pardoned for this. She will still have this set of convictions on her record so at least she will not be able to say she was forgiven for having done these crimes. The most she can say is she was given a lighter sentence. Of course, since she has “freedom of speech” she can say “she never committed any crimes” with no repercussions unless it is on some form that specifically says that she must tell the truth or suffer a penalty for lying or in a court of law where she could perjure herself. And frankly, I would not put it past her or anyone else to lie on her behalf. As I’ve been saying recently, would anyone else like to write a Colorado State Open Thread, especially during the month of June while I’m away? I’d like it if someone would like to guest write one so there aren’t any of those one-liner place-holder ones. Just let me know by Kosmail or in the comments below. Until the inevitable happens, the floor is yours… [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/5/18/800040841/community/n/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/