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Freedom Unaffiliated: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Independence Institute
Did you know 46% of the voters in Colorado are unaffiliated? Have you ever wondered why? Hear from the experts at Independence Institute talk about the issues important to Colorado and how to bring some sanity to this increasingly leftist state.
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- 1 weeks ago5 min
Step Recovery: The legacy of Bob Coté continues on today
About 35 years ago, Steve Schuck, a good friend and political ally called me and proclaimed, “There’s someone you must meet.” “Who, why and when,” I asked. “Immediately, he replied, “time is of the essence.” So, a meeting was arranged for the next day. The man was Bob Coté. We met at Bob’s workplace, a somewhat dilapidated building at 21st Street and Larimer St. in what was then Denver’s skid row. The building housed Step 13, a tough-love, sobriety-first recovery community for homeless men in Denver.Bob had been a successful salesman but succumbed to alcoholism and wound up hitting bottom, homeless on Denver’s skid row. Step 13 helped him rebuild his life. He returned the favor by taking a job there to help others and was soon running the place and determined to save it. This was a tough neighborhood and Bob was a tough hombre, a former Golden Gloves boxer. There were days he’d have to defend his turf armed with a baseball bat from vandals and drunks.Bob explained the program he’d crafted and why it works, based on three pillars; Sobriety: Detox, mandatory abstinence, and random testing. Work: Residents have to be employed and pay rent. Accountability: No excuses, strict rules, peer support and bonding.And no connection with or funding by government. The politics and bureaucracy associated with that is poison. To this day, Step has never taken a nickel of government money. Bob sold me and we became fast friends for many years. He was one of a kind, larger than life and overflowing with charisma. Bob would boast he had a doctorate in “streetology” and could see through any wavering resident’s phony excuses. An article in American Enterprise magazine described him as “a one-man alternative to the welfare state. Take one part Florence Nightengale, add three parts John Wayne, and one part cowboy poet…running a shelter that turns homeless junkies into productive citizens.”So, I asked how I could help. Bob said, look around at the building, Denver is threatening to close us down for code violations, turn off the water and electricity, and we have a lot of bills to pay. I said its December, a good time to be charitable. How about we do a remote broadcast on my KOA radio show from your building for all three hours? You can tell everyone about your program, your philosophy, and your mission. I know my audience would love what you’re doing. We’ll call it a radiothon and raise a few bucks.A couple of days later we did just that. My first caller that day, a personal friend with a business in Parker, Dave Stump, pledged $5,000. Other businesspeople offered jobs for Bob’s residents, checks poured in for days and we raised about $50,000 in all. And for the next three decades we did an annual Step 13 radiothon each December. Other philanthropists like Joe Coors, Cort Dietler, and Phil Anschutz were very generous to Step 13 especially in its early days of need. And Peter Boyles was a major supporter.Bob Coté passed away in 2013. In 2017 Step 13, changed its name to Step Denver so it could differentiate its venues as it expands into other communities, like Step Springs in Colorado Springs, which will celebrate its first anniversary as a new 50-bed residential program on October 28 with an Open House. Here’s an opportunity to check out this facility for yourself or a loved one. Meghan Shay joined Step in 2019 and is now the CEO of Step Recovery, the parent organization for Step Denver, Step Springs, and future sites to come. (If Step Denver is more convenient for you, Meghan would be pleased to arrange for a visit there.)What remains constant is Step’s dedication to Bob Coté’s vision. Numerous Step alumni have joined the staff after their personal recovery, most notably Bob himself, all of the Denver staff and more than half of the Step Springs staff, including Andre Podpolucha, now the Chief Operating Officer of Step Springs, who just four years ago was living under a bridge. This speaks volumes about their belief in the program, their ability to empathize with residents and serve as role models.The fatal flaw of government-run “homeless” programs for substance addicts is their insistence on “housing first.” This is compassion without common sense. Without a commitment to personal responsibility and accountability on the part of addicted residents such programs reward bad behavior and become little more than storage centers for permanent addicts.Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.
- 3 weeks ago5 min
Class envy disguised as tax policy on the Colorado ballot
GAWD, I hate the rich.The top hats. The monocles. The dinner jackets. The way they twirl their mustaches while evicting orphans.Before we drag them into the public square, though, we should probably define “rich.”Amendment 87, the temporary “graduated” income tax, defines rich as earning $500,000 a year.And yes, it is temporary. Unlike the federal income tax brackets, 87’s brackets aren’t indexed for inflation, meaning over time all of us will creep into the new top 8.4% tax rate.Clever scam. Con Coloradans who aren’t good at math that they’re getting a tax cut and then let inflation do the mugging.Sell a tax increase on working families as a tax cut. You can almost hear the maniacal laughter.Rich bastardsBut back to punishing the rich — those trophy-wife-collecting, umbrella-drink-swilling bastards.Why should they drive Maseratis while I putter around in my 2010 Nissan Altima?Sure, we use the same roads, sit in the same traffic and can reach the same destinations. But that’s hardly the point. His cup holder has Italian stitching.Henry Ford democratized the automobile. Before mass production, cars belonged only to the wealthy. Now ordinary people can live where they can afford a home and work where they can earn a living.Unfortunately, Ford became rich in the process. Would we have been happier if he hadn’t? Of course we would have! We’d still be stuck in tenements, but he would have been poorer. Totally worth it.The rich get private jets. Why? I mean, I fly private too. We all do. I simply have to share my private plane with 130 strangers.While trapped in middle seat 34B, I use high-speed internet delivered by satellites launched on private rockets. Elon Musk uses the same service on his plane too, the showoff.Fine, he puts satellites into orbit. Fine, his rockets have rescued astronauts stranded at the International Space Station. Fine, his satellite internet has connected every remote community around the world, empowering the poorest of the poor and least powerful.But should he be rewarded for any of that — with money?The iPhone in Elon’s pocket is the same as the iPhone in mine. Steve Jobs helped put a supercomputer, camera, map, library, newspaper, television studio and argument factory into billions of pockets.But he became rich, so presumably the whole project was morally suspect.Sam Walton drove down the price of countless things working families buy. Jeff Bezos built a system that can bring those things to our doors, sometimes in 30 minutes.But Bezos is easy to dislike because his wife is mostly plastic, or rendered by Pixar or something.Fine, he’s easy to hate. But does his wealth matter more than the value created for us?Class envy on the ballotAmendment 87 has generated plenty of talk about forcing rich people to “pay their fair share.” It has generated considerably less discussion about class envy, which is doing the political heavy lifting.“Fair share” sounds principled. “I resent that guy’s boat and trophy wife” sounds childish.Yet the boat is doing more campaigning than the tax tables.We rarely stop to consider how much of modern life exists because somebody took an absurd risk.That somebody might be a famous billionaire. It might also be the developer who built your home, the employer who created your job so you can afford it or the real estate agent who found your house.Their success is part of your higher standard of living.I am not claiming rich people aren’t douchebags. For efficiency’s sake, let’s stipulate that every last one of them is unbearable.The question is whether our lives are nevertheless better because of what they created.And do we want to chase them out of Colorado as progressive income taxes have chased them out of California, New York, Massachusetts and elsewhere? Massachusetts is now dead last in the nation for new business creation. That’s our future.What have we sacrificed in exchange for the greatest improvement in quality of life throughout all of human history?Mostly, we have had to endure the sight of successful people having more than us.That seems like a remarkably small price to pay.Amendment 87 asks you to treat envy as policy and punish people we dislike, while inflation quietly expands the definition of whom we’re punishing.The sales pitch is “soak the rich.”The fine print is “eventually, that means you.”Jon Caldara is president of Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.
- 3 weeks ago6 min
The gangster-style government under Colorado’s gold dome
The issues on your ballot aren’t just questions about trains, taxes and spending. They are exhibits in a larger case: dishonesty, intimidation and political bullying have become standard operating procedure at the Colorado Capitol.The message from lawmakers is increasingly simple: Vote however you like — we’ll make sure it turns out the way we like.When voters might say no, they rewrite the question. When elected officials won’t cooperate, they replace them. When citizens organize an initiative, they sabotage it. And when the law becomes inconvenient, they exempt themselves from it.The kings of ColoradoConsider the legislature’s devotion to “democracy.”Lawmakers exempted themselves from Colorado’s open-meetings law. Why? Because transparency is vital — right up until we want to see what they’re doing.They warn President Donald Trump threatens democracy, then strip authority from democratically elected officials. They removed two-thirds of the elected Regional Transportation District board so their own appointees could take over.Nothing protects democracy quite like replacing the people voters chose.Then there was Initiative 175, citizens petitioning to vote on road funding. So, lawmakers passed a bill to neutralize the initiative before ballots were even cast. Its supporters finally had to pull their now impotent citizens’ initiative.The legislature didn’t defeat the measure. It kneecapped voters’ ability to even vote on it.That same attitude is stamped all over this year’s ballot.Take Issue 7A, the latest choo-choo tax.Never mind taxpayers are still waiting, and paying, for rail promised in 1971. Never mind we’re still waiting, and paying, for the train to Longmont promised in 2004. Never mind public money is being used to promote the cuckoo CoCo choo-choo tax.The truly impressive part is the “rail” voting district. Areas considered friendly to the tax — such as Boulder and Denver — were gerrymandered into the district. Less enthusiastic communities gerrymandered out.Apparently, when you can’t win the vote, you choose the voters. Call it “curated democracy.”Gunning for TABORThen there’s Proposition NN, which asks us to surrender our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) tax refunds, naturally, “for education.” But after 10 years, the earmarks disappear and the money goes, well, we don’t know.Unlike previous tax-refund grabs, Prop NN tinkers with the TABOR spending formula. This is a first in anti-taxpayer arrogance.If excess revenue ever threatens to produce refunds again, NN gives lawmakers the power to change the spending formula, so those refunds disappear.Your refund isn’t being stolen. It is being legislatively relocated.The graduated income-tax proposal offers another clever trick: Its brackets aren’t indexed for inflation. As wages rise with inflation, taxpayers drift into higher brackets even when their real purchasing power hasn’t increased.Their plan? Over time we will all be paying the top 8.4% income tax rate.Why the relentless attack on TABOR? Because TABOR is inconvenient for people accustomed to taking.Legislative leaders blame TABOR and Trump for Colorado’s budget squeeze. Yet their own analysts have identified the real problem: Legislators themselves treated temporary federal COVID money like permanent income and built continuing obligations around it (like Medicaid expansion to illegals).Other states used one-time money for one-time expenses. Colorado behaved like someone who won a scratch ticket, leased a yacht and then blamed the bank when the bills arrived.As voter-hating Sen. Jeff Bridges runs around leading literal cheerleading sessions against TABOR (really, check out the videos), he refuses to let people know his own Joint Budget
- 3 weeks ago6 min
The Crimefighting Case for Flock License Plate Readers
One of the most popular formats on network television and streaming services like Netflix and Prime Video has been police and federal-agent crimefighting dramas like Law & Order, Blue Bloods and NCIS. Within that category are formats like Chicago PD and FBI that routinely include high-speed car chases (and foot chases on FBI) that especially feature forensic investigative, pursuit and capture technology. Showrunners aren’t making this stuff up. Their production staffs obviously retain experienced expert consultants with state-of-the-art technical knowledge.If I were a fugitive on the lam from a serious felony, I’d now be well aware to instantly get off and staying off the grid. That means no credit card use. No cell phone calls, lest I’m “pinged” at a tower. Staying away from my LKA (last known address). Abandoning my own car on which there’s a BOLO (be on the lookout for) alert. Better, I should steal a car, although that info will be put out over the police network soon enough. Then there are the omni-present surveillance security cameras in airports, stores, businesses, hospitals, homes, and government buildings that Chicago PD and the FBI access to track where I’ve been and where I’m at.Anti-Flock paranoiaTo make matters even worse, criminals have to contend with the dreaded Flock cameras, an invention of the Atlanta-based Flock Safety Company whose crimefighting systems are highly-valued by law-enforcement agencies nationwide as force multipliers for solving homicides, kidnappings, assaults, vehicle thefts, jewelry store robberies, missing persons, human trafficking, and more. It was a Flock camera in Boulder that quickly located the car and aided police in the arrest and conviction for murder of the Islamist antisemitic terrorist who firebombed a crowd on the Pearl Street Mall.Flock’s automated license plate readers, installed at intersections all over town with the consent of local governments across the country, photograph the plate and record details, including GPS locations, of every passing vehicle and compares the data to a “hot list” stored in the Flock system of all wanted plates nationwide. Local police can be notified of the hot plate vehicle in as little as 16-seconds.Despite the claims of anti-Flock paranoids, their cameras don’t record your Social Security number or what takes place in the privacy of your bedroom.One critic equated Flock’s cameras with Big Brother’s mass surveillance of the entire populace in George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, “1984.” But BB’s cameras were hidden in two-way TV screens in everyone’s homes! Flock’s cameras are only in public venues. As a law-abiding citizen who roots for the cops and FBI agents, I’m grateful for this modern technology. I have nothing to hide in public places. This technology makes me safer by helping to capture the robbers and other bad guys.As for personal privacy, don’t be naïve. We live in a technological era that already compromises much of our privacy through our own behavior in internet interactions with countless servicers, retailers, unknown scammers, and on social media. We’re easy prey for sophisticated computer and email hackers. Your only sanctuary is to become a recluse.Invoking the fourthAnother silly ploy of the anti-Flockers is to falsely invoke the Fourth Amendment’s protection from unreasonable search and seizure, and the requirement of a warrant supported by a probable cause. This is beyond Flock’s capabilities. And the Fourth Amendment isn’t absolute; gray areas have forced many exceptions. Like allowing mass searching of travelers by TSA agents at airports without “probable cause.” This is a rational tradeoff to protect travelers from getting blown up in flight by terrorists or crashing into the World Trade Center and Pentagon again. Will the next contrivance to handcuff crimefighters be outlawing fingerprinting and DNA evidence?A large element of those who oppose Flock cameras are sanctuary-city activists who want open borders, and who coddle and defend illegal immigrants. They don’t want data from those cameras to be shared with federal authorities like ICE because they don’t want these people or any illegal immigrants (including the criminals among them) to be deported, even if Flock technology will assist crimefighters in apprehending criminals of all kinds. The organizations and lawyers that support those here illegally describe themselves as defenders of the rights of “undocumented immigrants.” More accurately, they’re defenders of “illegal immigrant aliens.” If you drive a car without a license, that’s illegal; you’re not an “undocumented driver.”This is another example of the mentality of Denver’s progressive prosecutors, judges, and juries who pander to criminals at the expense of their victims. Like rewarding, with multimillion dollar settlements and awards, violent left
- 4 weeks ago6 min
Mike Rosen’s 2026 Colorado election ballot measure picks
Amendment 81 – Law Enforcement Reporting Requirements to Federal AuthoritiesRecommendation: YESIn essence, the purpose of this is to assist the Dept. of Homeland Security and ICE in doing their jobs. It would allow Colorado law enforcement agencies to cooperate with DHS and ICE when a person charged with a violent crime or with a prior felony conviction has an unverified immigration status. Currently, Colorado’s “sanctuary” policies handcuff police and sheriffs from doing so. If this passes it could result in outlawing sanctuary policies that protect illegal aliens and obstruct ICE.Amendment 82 – Right to Natural Gas Recommendation: YESCommon sense to curb anti-fossil fuel radicals.Amendment 83 – Constitutional Right to Hunt & Fish Recommendation: YESOf course.Amendment 84 – Mail Ballot Voter Identification Recommendation: YESRequires mail voters to provide a signature and identification number. Discriminates against illegal voters, so progressives will call it racist.Amendment 85 – Plain-Language Ballot Questions Recommendation: YESRequires all ballot questions to be written in understandable language (not lawyer jargon) at no more than an 8th grade reading level. Good idea, even if most Denver Public Schools grads still wouldn’t understand it.Amendment 86 – Congressional RedistrictingRecommendation: YESWould prohibit congressional redistricting unless approved by the Congressional Redistricting Commission and the Supreme Court.Amendment 87 – Graduated Income Tax Recommendation: NOWould replace Colorado’s flat income tax, in place since 1987, with progressive income tax rates. Ever since Democrats gained one-party rule in Colorado, government spending has been spiraling out of control. Facing huge budget deficits, this is yet another tax increase, and a mammoth one at that, driving an additional 2.7 billion dollars a-year flowing into government coffers and none of it subject to TABOR refunds. With this measure, Democrats are buying the votes of taxpayers in lower brackets with a slight tax decrease, while lowering the boom on individuals and corporations with incomes over $500,000, almost doubling their tax rates to as much as 8.4%. (Since the tax brackets won’t be adjusted for inflation, as federal tax rates are, “bracket creep” would automatically raise taxes on everyone each year.) As has happened in other Democrat-controlled states and cities, this will drive even more successful, taxpaying individuals and businesses out of Colorado, depriving us of any of their tax revenue, innovations, talent, and charitable contributions.Proposition NN – State Public K-12 Education Funding Recommendation: NO NOAnother scheme to drive up government spending and reduce TABOR refunds. Some of it’s earmarked for public schools, so “it’s for the kids.” (Code for: it’s for the teacher unions.)Proposition 132 – Penalties for Fentanyl Crimes Recommendation: YESDiscourages fentanyl sales, use, and related felonies; stiffens sentences.Proposition 133 – Penalties for Human Trafficking of a Minor Recommendation: YESWould further deter this heinous crime by expanding the definition of trafficking and increasing the penalty to life imprisonment.Proposition 134 – Male and Female Participation in School Sports Recommendation: YESRestricts participation on sports teams to members of the same biological sex, except for teams specifically designated as co-ed. This will protect girls from physical injury and loss of opportunity by bigger and stronger boys.Proposition 135 – Prohibit Certain Surgeries for Minors Recommendation: YESProhibits sex reassignment surgeries on minors and bans government funding. Troubled kids lack the maturity to make this irreversible choice and should be protected from irresponsible parents who would allow it. At least, they can wait till they’re 18.Proposition 136 – Income Tax Rate Cap Recommendation: YESThis is the antidote for Amendment 87 (“Graduated Income Tax,” above). Prop 136 would cap the individual and corporate income tax rate at the current level of 4.4% for all. With both measures on the ballot, if they both pass and Prop 136 gets more YES votes than Amendment 87, the top tax rate stays capped at 4.4%, but Amendment 87’s slightly lower tax rates under $100,000 of income
- 4 weeks ago7 min
Colorado Already Has a Progressive Tax?
On TABOR Talk we discuss how Colorado Legislators are trying to get you to give up your TABOR refunds forever. Will you let them have it?
- Oct 2, 20266 min
Colorado ticket splitters say yes to Dems, but no to their policies
My prediction for this election: Voters will vote against … themselves.Voters will elect Democrats to run virtually everything — and then approve ballot measures telling those Democrats to stop doing virtually everything.Democrats for office. Limited government for policy. Colorado has reinvented ticket splitting without the inconvenience of electing Republicans.The new ticket splittingWe used to split tickets the old-fashioned way. The same Coloradan might vote for a Democratic governor such as Dick Lamm or Roy Romer and a Republican senator such as Bill Armstrong or Hank Brown.Voters often made sure at least one legislative chamber belonged to the party opposing the guy in the governor’s mansion.The experts called it inconsistency. Voters called it adult supervision.But that was then. Today, Coloradans just vote for Democrats. Years of one-party control have made the state less affordable, more bureaucratic and less tolerant — and voters are feeling it.That will change how they vote this fall, just not in the way Republicans hope.Coloradans will continue electing Democrats to every statewide office. They could easily hand the party veto-proof supermajorities in both the state House and Senate.And these won’t merely be more Democrats. They will include more socialists disguised as Democrats: woke, economy-crippling, power-hungry leftists eager to engineer our lives for our own good — and charge us for the privilege.So you might reasonably conclude Colorado voters want more taxes, more regulation and more restrictions.I don’t think they do.What they want is “not Republican.” More specifically: not Trump and not religious conservatives. They are repelled by the Republican brand. That’s not to be confused with swooning for Democrats.Their votes on ballot issues will tell the real story.With a baker’s dozen of citizen initiatives before them, Coloradans will say no to Republican candidates but might say yes to freedom, free markets and other suspiciously Republican-ish ideas.Dissonance in the voting boothConsider transgender policy: Voters will elect more progressive lawmakers like those who have outlawed “misgendering,” required schools to conceal a child’s transition from parents and mandated trans indoctrination in classrooms.Those same voters will approve Proposition 134, preventing biological boys from competing on girls’ sports teams.Elect crazed Democrats and then reverse what they do. Because, especially for suburban voters, this is more acceptable than electing Republicans.Proposition 135 could also sneak through, preventing doctors from amputating healthy body parts from children in the name of transitioning. What a middle finger to the candidates they will be putting into office.The message: “We dislike your policies. Please return immediately to the Capitol and make more of them.”Taxes could produce the same routine.Ever since the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights passed, the legislature has regularly returned like a child who has already been told there will be no more ice cream: Can we keep your tax refund now?How about now? Now!?If history is any guide and Prop NN joins the ash heap of anti-TABOR measures, it will again demonstrate Coloradans trust Democrats with a desk at the Capitol considerably more than they trust them with the contents of a wallet.Amendment 87, the graduated income tax, could also fail as voters learn it isn’t indexed to inflation. If it passes, eventually everyone will pay close to double the current income-tax rate.If it fails, voters will have delivered another “kiss my ass” to the left while voting, um, for the left.Energy offers another opportunity as our Democrats have garroted fossil fuels. Yet voters may put a “right to natural gas” into the state constitution while reelecting the team trying to annihilate natural gas.That’s like hiring an arsonist but passing a
- Sep 29, 20265 min
The bodily integrity case for yes on Colorado’s Prop 135
Proposition 135 on this fall’s ballot would prohibit sex-change surgery on minors. Call it “gender-affirming surgery” if that makes the amputation sound more compassionate.I’ll admit, I struggled with how to vote. Not because I think children should undergo these surgeries, but because I’m suspicious whenever government barges into a family’s decisions.The question is whether stopping these surgeries is a legitimate function of government.The sovereign individualOn emotional issues, like this one, it’s worth asking whether your vote grows out of principle or emotion. If you haven’t figured out your guiding principles, you’re just emoting with a ballot.My overriding principle is every human being is sovereign unto himself — his own nation, his own kingdom. As sovereign, an adult has the right to speak, worship, own property, defend himself, associate with other sovereigns or tell them to get off his lawn.He also owns his own body.That includes the right to tattoo it, pierce it, poison it with gas-station sushi or surgically alter it. Other people may consider those choices foolish or grotesque, but it isn’t their body and not their business.Government’s proper job, with very limited exceptions, is to protect individual liberty, not coerce people for their own good.Which, naturally, brings us to seat belts (yeah, I know, but stay with me). I despise mandatory seat belt laws for adults. There is something inconsistent about screaming “my body, my choice” on one issue and then demanding other people’s bodies be strapped down against their will.If an adult wishes to meet his windshield at 80 mph, that is between him and the laws of physics.Further, as a supporter of Darwinism, I don’t want to keep stupid people in the gene pool longer than need be. Seat belt laws do that (note that the Kardashians were not a thing before seat belt laws. Coincidence?).Kids are differentBut I strongly support seat belt laws for children.Infants cannot buckle themselves in.Nor do children naturally yearn to be strapped into place. Why be strapped down when you can run around the car hitting your little sister, playing the “I’m not touching you” game while dodging your mother’s hand as she tries to slap you?Parents should decide what risks their children may take. But no one should put children in danger, even if it’s the parents. Leaving a toddler in the trunk of a speeding car is not an unconventional parenting philosophy. It is child endangerment.Our Declaration of Independence asserts government must protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In other words, protect a child’s life until he’s old enough to have the liberty to pursue his happiness, which may include removing healthy body parts.The case for yesThat brings us back to Proposition 135.It does not prohibit puberty blockers or hormone treatments. It draws its line at the permanent removal of body tissue.That distinction matters.I run Independence Institute. We’ve spent 40 years fighting for parental rights in education. Parents, not bureaucrats, should decide how their children are taught.Shouldn’t parents also have the final say over their children’s medical care? Almost always, yes.Parents may choose a lousy school. They may feed a child an appalling diet. They may inflict violin lessons, youth soccer and matching family Christmas sweaters.Those decisions can shape a child’s life, but they do not permanently remove healthy body parts.A terrible education can be overcome through work and discipline. A disastrous haircut eventually grows out. Piercings close. Even tattoos can be removed.Amputated tissue does not grow back.Children are not miniature adults. We do not let them sign contracts, buy whiskey, smoke cigarettes or get a tattoo merely because they insist they have given the matter considerable thought.We recognize that adolescence is temporary, judgment is developing and some decisions cannot be recalled once made.An adult possesses bodily autonomy. A child possesses bodily integrity. That difference is the heart of Proposition 135.Parents must have broad authority to raise their children according to their own values. Government is a miserable substitute for a mother or father.But parents don’t have the right to place a child in needless physical danger, be it by not belting them in the car or cutting away organs because a young person may be struggling to understand his or her identity.I’m voting yes on Proposition 135.Jon Caldara is president of <a href="http://tjinkfreedom.org/" rel="n
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