Progress Now Action

So you think you've seen everything there is to see about the Independence Institute and their endlessly fascinating staff. And then...

I've been blogging here at ProgressNow since 2004, and in that time I've discovered all kinds of things -- from the II's blatant disregard for election law in 2004 and 2005, to Jon Caldara's truthless singularity of a campaign against Referendum C, to their ugly affronts against minority college students.

Through it all I've had a special place in my heart for II "Campus Accountability Project" director Jessica Peck Corry. Ms. Corry was one of the main operatives on the Auraria Campus organizing conservative students to entrap my professors in 2004. After that battle was over, I discovered she was running for the state senate in my district. Dutifully researching, I came across some fascinating details about her fifteen-years-senior husband Robert J. Corry -- to wit, why Jessica was running for office and not Robert J. Corry.

You see, drunkenly pointing a shotgun at a crowd of people in Washington DC tends to adversely affect one's chances at higher office. Good on Robert Corry for realizing that and putting Jessica up instead, though you might argue the damage was already done.

Well, here we are in 2006, and other than a note or two from Jessica in the Arvada Sentinel lamenting the attacks of a few 'radical activists' on her almost-there senate campaign, I'd considered the Robert/Jessica follies put to bed. Jessica landed her laugh-track seat on CU Diversity Panel, Robert was busy defending medical marijuana patients pro bono (a far better use of his time than trying to single-handedly bring down affirmative action), and life seemed to be once again spinning in greased grooves.

Then I discovered something. Something that floored me. Something that should be in the press but isn't. It appears that "civil rights" attorney Robert J. Corry was arrested last fall in Arvada, and is now facing multiple felony charges of sexual assault. There is a restaining order against him contacting an unidentified defendant, and he'll be arraigned next month. Without any additional information it's tough to be conclusive, but either way I'm feeling a most unexpected sympathy for Jessica Peck Corry right now.

Case Number: 2005CR004142

There are plenty of questions in the aftermath of this disclosure, some of which are answered by the fact that all reference to Robert Corry has been removed from the Independence Insititute's website. But it remains to be answered how someone so prominent could be accused of something like this with zero media footprint.

Oh, wait a minute, now it has one!