The state seemed to be doing a great job on this regarding fire suppression, evacuations, etc. I was very close to the fire at Canon City and went through Colorado Springs after it had been burning for a couple of days.

It will work out fine, as long as you don't mind eating rat ribs from now on.

Bon appetit!

CCA has had a long record of failures to do all but the most superficial of background checks and of hiring offenders who are clearly unsuitable for prison or jail positions.

They hired a warden in Eloy, Arizona who had killed another motorist while driving drunk. They hired a Appleton, Minnesota guard who had murdered his wife, then fled the state to avoid prosecution. He had also become a police informant to escape criminal charges. After failing a background check mandated by CCA's federal contract at California City, California, he went back to work for CCA at Florence, Arizona. Their Florence warden was chronically accused of sexual assaults on employees and they simply transferred him out of the line of fire. They hired a murderer shortly after he completed 17 years in Alabama prisons, transferred him to Youngstown, Ohio, which closed after the escapes of a number of murders, and transferred him to Tulsa. After two women inmates brought sexual assault charges against him, his background was revealed. The Tulsa World then searched local courthouse records and found 20 other CCA employees who had local criminal charges or domestic violence orders in just the previous five years. When their prison at Crowley, Colorado rioted, two CCA employees were wearing ankle bracelets as a result of their criminal convictions. Dozens of women employees at Crowley successfully sued CCA as a result of the sexual abuse and harassment they suffered.

CCA has prisons and jails with an annual staff turnover of close to 100%. They pay so poorly, they consequently depend on hiring a substantial number of "bottom of the barrel" employees. Background checks often only consider outstanding warrants since so many employees quickly leave and the corporation considers it an avoidable cost.

The sheriff had the decency and took the initiative to hire former CCA employees, but had an obligation to the taxpayers to determine their suitably for continuing employment.

To sue him for doing his job is simply disgraceful. One wonders if the attorney on this case bothered to verify the stories her clients told to her before she took the case and went after those taxpayers whom the sheriff is trying to protect.

These characters have fomented violence for three decades. Nearly all the murderers of doctors, escorts, nurses, receptionists, even an off-duty policeman guarding the premises in Alabama, have been slaughtered by fanatics associated with them. They were campaigning for anti-abortion candidates and using tax-exempt contributions to do so. They used the money to buy properties around Wichita, Kansas. They stalk doctors and pass along the info they gain from stalking to the assassins who target and murder doctors and clinic staff. They go around the country provoking the police and filing nuisance suits and making false reports. They interrupt, drown out and block peace marches. They are not apparently against the death penalty, unless it applies to their own, such as Scott Roeder and Paul Hill.

They're going out of business? Best news I've heard in a week, though it's probably just another fundraising technique by that slimeball, Troy Newman.

Operation Rescue, which was associated with Scott Roeder, is now claiming that it is receiving threats. Unfortunately, the AP has dutifully repeated those claims, though the organization is well known for making false statements. After first trying to distance itself from Doctor Tiller"s assassination, it is pretending to be the victim.

This is an extremely dangerous bunch of individuals.

They exist to raise unaccountable funds and foment the kinds of violent response represented in this call to the clinic.

Marcy and PattiD are absolutely right! Idaho prisoners were acknowledged to be held in Texas in the worst prison that monitors had ever seen. The Corrections Corporation of America prison at Crowley had huge riots with Washington, Colorado and Wyoming prisoners both in 1999 and then in 2004, when Washington state prisoners were again transported there. Go to www.privateci.orgfor the real story on these for-profit hell holes. Medical care in states such as Delaware, New Mexico, New York and Illinois has also been contracted out with disastrous results.

Although the Governor thinks that privatizing prison food services will be cheaper than using state employees, it's a false economy. There is incredible turnover in the for-profit prison sector, among guards and subcontractors both. Poorly paid, poorly screened and poorly trained employees are much more vulnerable to corrupt relationships with convicts than are long-time state employees. Knives will disappear and be found during shakedowns or in victim's backs. Underpaid workers will bring in cigarettes that they can sell for $100 a pack, then marijanua, then heroin, then cell phones and even other escape tools. Breaking its implied contract with long time workers is simply unwise and immoral. Incompetent CCA staff will make matters worse.