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Valor Christian High’s MaryBeth Sant ran the fastest 100 meters this season by a U.S. schoolgirl. Can she run even faster? »1B
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100s of parole errors found A TRIO OF TROUBLES
President Barack Obama seemed to lose control of his second-term agenda even before he was sworn in, when a school massacre led him to lift gun control to the fore. Now, as he tries to pivot from a stinging defeat on that issue and push forward on others, the president finds himself rocked by multiple controversies that are demoralizing his allies and emboldening his political opponents. It’s unclear how long he will be dogged by inquiries into last year’s deadly attack in Libya, the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups and now the seizure of Associated Press phone records in an investigation into a leak.
LIBYA
IRS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Many conservatives stayed focused on the attack last September in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Republicans have spent the past eight months accusing the Obama administration of ignoring security needs before the attack and of revising subsequent “talking points” to play down the role of Islamic terrorists in the assault, which occurred at the height of Obama’s re-election campaign. »18A
The Justice Department is investigating the Internal Revenue Service for targeting Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. Ineffective management at the IRS allowed agents to improperly target Tea Party groups for more than 18 moths, concluded one investigation by the Treasury inspector general. The report does not indicate that Washington initiated the targeting of conservative groups. »17A
The government obtained the records from April and May 2012 for more than 20 separate telephone lines used by The Associated Press and its journalists, including main offices. Federal officials have said investigators are trying to hunt down the sources of information for a May 7, 2012, AP story that disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen to stop an airliner bomb plot around the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden. »21A
Judges are reviewing cases so they can decide who should be returned to – or kept in – prison. By Christopher N. Osher The Denver Post
Corrections officials are alerting judges throughout Colorado that errors appear to have resulted in early, improper prison-release dates for hundreds of prisoners they sentenced. The judges are reviewing the case files so they can decide which of those already released from incarceration should be returned to prison to serve out the longer sentences required by state law. Other cases involve prisoners on the verge of release but who may now see their sentences extended. These are early results of an audit still underway by the Colorado Department of Corrections. Gov. John Hickenlooper ordered the department to conduct the audit after it was disclosed that a parolee who is believed to have murdered a pizza-delivery driver and the state corrections chief was released from prison early because of a clerical error. So far, the audit has found “serious questions” in the sentences of 349 individuals either already released from prison or scheduled for release, corrections officials said. Of those, judges have amended sentences in 56 cases. The errors occurred for a variety of reasons. In some cases, judicial clerks may have given incorrect sentences to the corrections department. In others, corrections officials may have interpreted sentences incorrectly. A full breakdown is not yet available on how AUDIT » 7A
Source: The Associated Press | Photos: Esam Al-Fetori, Reuters; Daniel Acker, Bloomberg News; Jon Elswick, The Associated Press
D R U N KEN D R IV IN G
Safety panel urges states to reduce BAC limit to 0.05% By Denver Post staff and wire services
Two Colorado Tea Party groups suspect being targeted by IRS The Colorado Tea Party Patriots and the Western Slope Conservative Alliance have yet to receive 501(c)4 status. By Allison Sherry The Denver Post
washington» At least two Colorado Tea Party groups believe they were caught up in a politically targeted campaign by the Internal Revenue Service to make it hard for small, conservative groups to incorporate as tax-exempt organizations. The Western Slope Conservative Alliance
and the Colorado Tea Party Patriots applied for 501(c)4 — a nonprofit, “social welfare” — status in 2010 and, more than two years later, both groups are waiting for official permission to operate under the tax code. Under this special (c)4 status, organizations are explicitly prohibited from engaging in political campaigns but are able to “promote social welfare … in some way for the common good and general welfare for the
people,” according to the tax code. Grand Junction’s Western Slope Conservative Alliance says it has gone back and forth with the IRS since 2010, answering pages of questions about the organization’s website and its board makeup. The alliance was also asked to provide detailed agendas for every meeting and all the printed materials it distributed. The organization’s chair, Kevin McCarney, called the combination of the inquiries burdensome. “They were fishing for answers,” McCarPOLITICS » 11A
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States should cut their threshold for drunken driving by nearly half — from .08 percent blood-alcohol content to .05 — matching a standard that has substantially reduced highway deaths in other countries, a federal safety board recommended Tuesday. That’s about one drink for a woman weighing less than 120 pounds and two for a 160pound man. More than 100 countries have adopted the .05 standard or lower, according to a report by the staff of the National Transportation Safety Board. In Europe, the share of traffic deaths attributable to drunken driving was reduced by more than half within 10 years after the standard was reduced, the report said. NTSB officials said it wasn’t their intention to prevent drivers from having a glass of wine with dinner, but they acknowledged that with a threshDUI » 8A