Colorado Supreme Court Invalidates Sectarian Voucher Program

* The Colorado Supreme Court has struck down a Douglas County School Board voucher program that would have used public funds to pay tuition for sectarian schools.  Most justices voting to kill the program relied on a provision of the state constitution which has been on the books since 1876 that prohibits such programs in no uncertain terms, although justices reached the same conclusion for different reasons.

The program was enacted when the local Republican party ran a slate of partisan and ideological candidates for the Douglas County School Board that won and implemented a slate of conservative proposals for the district, which has mostly led to a dramatic decline in quality of the public schools in Douglas County.

* Meanwhile, Colorado Public Radio reports that the Denver Public Schools will be asking for more money to build schools and operate schools in 2016, although the exact details have not been finalized.  District enrollment has surged from 70,000 to 90,000 in recent years, making Denver the fastest growing urban school district in the nation, through a combination of increasing population and an array of non-sectarian charter schools and special programs in public schools that have convinced families that live in the district to send their children there, rather than to private or suburban schools.

* Conservatives at the Western Conservatives Summit in Denver held a straw poll for President that decisively backed candidates with no serious hope of winning the GOP nomination, while scorning the front runners in the race.

[Ben] Carson, a retired surgeon, won the straw poll for the second year in a row with 224 votes to beat out former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who received 201 votes. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was third with 192 votes, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was next with 100. While most national polls have Jeb Bush as the front-runner, the former Florida governor finished 14th out of 18 candidates on the GOP straw poll ballot Sunday. . . . In 2011, Herman Cain received 48 percent of the votes in the summit's straw poll to eventual Republican nominee Mitt Romney's 10 percent.

Ben Carson is also notable for being the only African-American candidate in the GOP Presidential race.