Back in February, state Rep. J. Paul Brown (R-Ignacio) took heat from ColoradoPols for standing alone in a 64 to 1 vote against a bill that would, among other things, allow homeless youth shelters to temporarily house children ages 11 to 21. Today, only homeless kids ages 15 to 18 can be defined as “homeless youth” under state law and be served by youth shelters.

On Monday, when the bill returned to the state House from the Senate, where it was approved 34-0, Brown wasn’t as lonely.

Ten of Brown’s colleagues changed their minds and joined him in opposing “Reduce Homeless Youth” bill, which was essentially unchanged from the version that passed 64 to 1 in February–except for the addition of reporting requirements which were unanimously adopted.

What happened?

“I struggled with it a little bit the first time because of that extension of age,” said Rep. Don Beezley, R-Broomfield, who had originally favored the measure but voted against it Monday. “As we look at the budget and as we look at the situation in the country overall, we have to at some point ask ourselves, when are we going to call ourselves adults and hold people accountable and look at their personal responsibility.”

“When are we going to require folks to be adults?” Beezley said. “They vote at 18. They go to war at 18.”

I asked Beezley about the part of the bill that expands the definition of “homeless youth” under Colorado law to include kids ages 11 through 14. Would he have favored the bill if the 18-to-21-year-olds were excluded?

“Yes, potentially, but I’d have to look at it again,” he answered, adding that he had fiscal concerns about the bill too.

“Extend those definitions and you expend more dollars over time,” Beezley said.

That was the primary reason Rep. Brown gave for opposing the bill–and the reason for his solo stand was not reported in February.

“I have a hard time expanding government,” Brown said.

For the 11-to-14-year-olds as well?

“I didn’t have as much of a hard time going in that direction, but I think there are other programs for those kids,” he said, acknowledging that he hadn’t researched it and didn’t know for sure.

It turns out that Brown’s hunch is correct. Social services do, in fact, exist for homeless 11-to-14-year-old kids, even though they can’t currently be defined as homeless.

But the system would work more efficiently and effectively under the Reduce Homeless Youth bill, according to Kippi Clausen, Director of Policy and Population Strategies at Mile High United Way.

The United Way, through its “Bridging the Gap” program, spearheaded efforts to pass the bill, which was actually broadly conceived two years ago by a group of young adults working with the United Way, according to Clausen. The young adults advocated for the bill’s passage by organizing support and writing testimony about their own experiences in foster care or homeless themselves.

To focus the effort, the United Way convened meetings among representatives of state agencies serving homeless youth.

“If you were 11, 12, 13 or 14, and you showed up a homeless shelter, it by law couldn’t serve you,” Clausen said. “That was a big deal because of how dangerous it is for a child to be on the street.”

Shelters could call social services, which could lead to long-term placement in foster care, but experience shows that a temporary solution benefits children who may not ultimately need to be separated from their families, but need help, according to Clausen.

So the bill allows the state to license “host homes,” houses where trained families provide a room for a homeless youth for 21 days to figure out “what’s the best solution for that family and child,” according to Clausen. She adds that the host-home option works well for small communities that don’t have big facilities serving youth.

I asked Clausen about the provision in the bill allowing kids 18-to-21 to be considered “homeless” and remain in foster care.

Why shouldn’t these young people be treated as other adults and fend for themselves?

She said that, under the bill, to remain in foster care between ages 18 and 21, young adults have to be working or enrolled in and educational program or be “medically fragile.”

“Intact families spend an average of $44,500 after the age of 18,” Clausen told me, citing Pew Charitable Trust report, “Time for Reform: Aging Out and on Their Own.“

“At the age of 18, many young adults find themselves homeless after leaving foster care, because it’s very hard for 18-year-olds to support themselves on their own. A kid coming out of foster care has no one to go back to.”

I also asked Clausen about the fiscal impact of the bill, which would cost state government nothing, but could possibly cost local governments some money, though such expenditures would be discretionary.

“We do know that some counties were concerned that this would cost a county more money, because if a child shows up at a runaway homeless youth shelter, this would require them to call the department and let them know they have an underage child there – and this might require them to open more cases,” said Clausen.

“I think at the end of the day, if you have a kid out there who needs help, and budget is tight, these are still kids. I can’t imagine being a 14-or-15-year-old and not have a home, and not feel like you can go back to your home. There’s a lot of misunderstanding about what it means to be a homeless youth in the United States.”

The “Reduce Homeless Youth” bill, HB 11-1279, has been sent to the Gov. Hickenlooper, who will decide if it becomes law.

Sometimes you want political change soooo much that you refuse to acknowledge the legal status quo, even if admitting to legal reality might help your own cause.

That’s where extreme anti-abortion activists find themselves today with the fetal protection bill, which has been withdrawn by State House Republicans.

The Denver Post did a good job Friday illuminating that Republican lawmakers objected to language in the bill that simply stated the reality for fetuses in Colorado. They are not considered “persons,” despite two failed ballot initiatives and other failed legislative actions. The bill stated that nothing in the bill “shall be construed to confer the status of ‘person’ upon a human embryo, fetus or unborn child at any state of development prior to live birth.”

That’s the reality for fetuses, whether they like it or whether you like it. And that’s what killed the bill, according to The Post.

You might argue, why did the legal status of the fetus need to be spelled out in the bill at all?

Well, because the bill’s purpose was to criminalize hostile acts against the fetus. To do this, to express this bipartisan idea, you have to refer to the fetus as something. You have to use your words!

So lawmakers apparently got together and used words that tried to be sensitive to those who wish fetuses were considered legal persons but also recognized fetal reality in Colorado.

Colorado representatives wrote a fetal-protection bill, with bipartisan support, whose title and language use the words “unborn child,” the term favored by those who support “personhood.”

Ari Armstrong pointed out Friday that the bill’s

-title and language explicitly refers to an “unborn child.” As I’ve argued, this “vague, non-objective” language “obscures the important distinction between a fetus and a born child.” Given that ambiguity, language clarifying that a fetus is not in fact legally a “person” is absolutely essential to the bill.

Now, for a bill with a neutral title, such as “A Bill to Protect Embryos and Fetuses from Criminal and Reckless Harm,” specific language about “personhood” would not be necessary, so long as the bill’s provisions unambiguously refrained from restricting abortions.

But it appears that referencing an “unborn child” for the narrow purpose of protecting a fetus, while acknowledging the fetus’ legal status in Colorado law, was not good enough for the extreme anti-abortion group, and so the bill was killed.

You may despair and think there’s no hope for a bill like this to ever pass due to the inability of one side to recognize the (as they see it) horrible legal reality that confronts them.

But how about moving back to the days before we had written words? This might work for the anti-abortion right!

Diagrams pointing to the thing legally called the fetus could be inserted in the bill wherever the word “fetus” should rightfully appear.

We could respect the fantasy world occupied by the zealots and still protect the fetus, which is the word those of us who abide by the rule of law accept and respect.

The Spot blog reported yesterday that a bill making it a crime if you kill an unborn child is on life-support after Republicans withdrew their support yesterday.

Why? Democrats quoted in the blog post said state GOP leaders gave in to pressure from anti-abortion extremists.

But the article doesn’t explain why anti-abortion activists would oppose a bill that would put someone behind bars who kills an unborn child through reckless or criminal action.

Ari Armstrong explains on his blog what happened on the right-wing side:

On March 14, the Colorado Catholic Conference sent an action alert via email opposing 1256. This Catholic group offered two main arguments. First, the “bill fails to recognize an unborn child as a separate victim of homicide or assault,” as the bill explicitly states that a fetus is not a person under law. Second:

“The Colorado Catholic Conference also opposes the fact that this bill seeks to repeal the criminal abortion statute that is still on the books in Colorado. The pro-life community looks forward to the day when Roe vs. Wade is overturned, and there is no benefit to the pro-life community to repeal our criminal abortion statute, even if currently it is not enforceable.”

I take it this refers to statutes 18-6-101 through 18-6-105, which bill 1256 would have repealed. Statute 18-6-102 outlaws the ending of a “pregnancy of a woman by any means other than justified medical termination or birth.” The key, then, is what constitutes “justified medical termination,” which 18-6-101 defines. The measure severely restricts abortion to cases of likely death of the woman, “serious permanent impairment of the physical health of the woman” (including mental health), serious fetal deformity, cases where the woman is under sixteen, rape, and incest.

So the Colorado Catholic Conference admits the abortion statute is unenforceable, but that doesn’t stop it from undermining a law that would protect unborn babies, as recognized by enforceable law.

The Colorado Christian Family Alliance explained its opposition to the fetal homicide bill as well:

If passed this bill will virtually undo all of Colorado’s pro-life laws, including parental notification for minors to receive an abortion.

HB 1256 specifically removes the status of “person” for pre-born children and codifies taxpayer funding for abortion mills in spite of article V section 50 of the Colorado State Constitution that forbids any direct or indirect tax payer funding for abortion.

HB 1256 is so anti-life it’s even sponsored in the Senate by the radical leftist senator from Denver, Pat Steadman, formerly a leading lobbyist for Planned Parenthood!

The bill was also sponsored by Republicans Matt Waller (CO Springs) and Laura Bradford (Collbran).

I’ll try to find out if the GOP offered any way forward for the Dems, but it looks like this was a one-sided torpedo by the anti-abortion extremists, for the reasons illuminated above.

As Armstrong later concludes, “So the next time a criminal gets away with killing a woman’s fetus, feel free to blame the anti-abortion crusaders who killed bill 1256.”

In a public discussion Wed. of media coverage of the 2010 election, The Denver Post’s political editor Curtis Hubbard said if The Post reports on a news story that’s appeared previously in another outlet, the newspaper is committed to giving proper credit to the news outlet that broke the story.

The Post is “trying very hard to give credit where credit is due,” he told the audience of about 50 people. He said that, for his newspaper, this is a “sea change” in culture, but it’s only fair, he said, given that The Post wants credit for its work.

I called State Bill Colorado Editor Don Knox, who previously quoted Post a post editor saying the same thing, to discuss Hubbard’s statement, and he told me Friday that he’s seen “positive signs” at The Post lately.

“What I sense is that everybody is getting a bit better about it,” he told me. “But in the end, there’s no police, so you have to have the integrity to want to attribute.”

That’s the bottom line, and as Knox points out, if reporters do a Google News search prior to starting a story, they can usually determine if their story has been reported previously.

That part is easy, which isn’t meant to imply that reporters or bloggers or others always do it. Or that it always works for various reasons.

But this issue has layers of complicating factors.

When does a news story become sufficiently established as to become a fact of life, free for the taking without requiring a tip of the hat or a wag of the finger to anybody?

Knox says the length of time you continue to give credit for a scoop depends on the circumstances. “If you come in a month later, and write a story about it, and act like you’re breaking it, that’s where you should recognize other people’s entrepreneurial journalism.”

Semi-retired Post columnist Fred Brown, who’s written on journalism ethics for the Society of Professional Journalists, told me that once the “candidates are making a big issue of the story, the originating organization loses ownership of it.”

He also said: “I think one of the ways you make the story part of the accepted history of the campaign [so as to no longer require credit] is to further it. If you turn up a new fact, you credit the originating organization once, but after that, it’s as much your story as theirs because you’ve done reporting.”

What about a reporter who gets a story idea from another publication and then confirms the story independently from the same or a different source?

Knox says this is a “red herring.”

“It doesn’t matter whether I got it from an individual source or a publication, I still acknowledge the publication that had it first,” he said.

I asked Brown what he thought a news outlet should do if it discovers later that it failed to credit the work of a publication that reported on a story first.

He first said he sympathizes with reporters who might miss something due to the large number of news sources out there.

Then he said he’d first have to be convinced that another news organization had the story right. If so, he said, to be fair and credible, he’d write a clarification, possibly for the archive, or mention it in a follow-up story, if there were one.

“It’s not a huge ethical issue,” he said. “It’s more a matter of manners, to go back and give credit to the originating organization.”

Brown goes on to say that the public doesn’t care about who got it first.

And even big scoops can’t do much for newspaper sales these days, when news consumers get the same big news instantly as it spreads across the media.

But scoops are far from meaningless. In fact, they’re really important. They show people that a news organization is doing its job, doing reporting, breaking news.

Giving a news organization proper credit for its work, and abiding by reasonable fair-use policies, displays a basic understanding that journalism isn’t free. Proper credit helps the outfit that dug up the news pay its bills, through its ads that you see when you click through to its website to read more.

The name recognition for getting proper credit also helps. The links help. The respect helps. It adds up, and gives everyone, bloggers and legacy media, a chance to survive based on their own work.

Paul Teske, Dean of UCD School of Public Affairs, will make short welcoming comments at next week’s panel on “Colorado Journalism and the 2010 Election.”  The event takes place Wed., Dec. 8, at 2 p.m. at the Lawrence Street Center, 1380 Lawrence Street, 2nd floor.

Some have been critical of the panel makeup, pointing out that it lacks “new-media” representation. I agree with this, to a degree. The problem is, if you added someone from the influential new media in Colorado, (among others, ColoradoPols, the Colorado Independent, Face the State, and possibly some elements of the People’s Press Collective), you’d have to have added two people to maintain balance. That would have made the panel too big. And if you removed a couple people, I think the panel would have been less interesting.

Also, “new media” and “old media” are blurred nowadays. The “old media” are doing a much better job of using new-media technology than they used to. 

And finally, at least at this moment in time, the “old media” in Colorado have a much greater impact on elections than all the new media combined. This isn’t as true at the national level, but that’s how I see it here in Colorado. I’m not saying CO new media didn’t have an impact on the 2010 elections. They did, but “traditional media” still rule here.

At a campaign stop in 2006, the former Senator (R-VA) was repeatedly referring to a young man of Indian descent–who was volunteering for Allen’s rival Jim Webb–as “macaca.” Webb won. Allen’s videotaped “macaca moment” may have cost him the election.

Allen’s “gaffe” was serious–the term is a racial slur.

Still, with video cameras rolling at events large and small, from the beginning of a campaign to the end, we should take candidates’ gaffes with a grain of salt, because political campaigns shouldn’t be won or lost with the single slip of a tongue.

However, the ubiquitous video cameras on the campaign trail do more than catch gaffes.

They also show how politicians change their messages in front of different audiences.

That’s particularly important, nowadays.

Fewer journalists are assigned to trail political candidates, which makes it harder for us to know how candidates are fine tuning their stump speech and talking points as their campaigns progress.

This past electoral season here in Colorado, GOP Senate candidate Ken Buck was caught on video early in his campaign making statements that arguably later led to his narrow loss to incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet.

But Buck’s video-taped statements weren’t slips of the tongue. They weren’t “macaca moments.” They were policy positions that appealed to conservative voters in the GOP primary.

Republican primary voters were deciding between Buck and his Republican rival Jane Norton. Norton was viewed as more of an establishment Republican, while Buck was embraced by Tea Party groups.

With backing from the GOP’s  far right wing, including social conservatives, Buck narrowly defeated Norton.

But after Buck won the Republican Party primary, videos of Buck’s right-wing statements came back to haunt him.

They were used both by national groups and state campaigns to paint Buck as “too extreme” for Colorado.

In assessing his Senate bid after his loss, Buck told The Denver Post that Democratic trackers recorded video of him at 600 public appearances and took his words out of context.

A review of his statements, however, shows that videotapes of Buck mostly illuminated straight-forward policy positions that voters in the general election, as opposed to conservatives in the GOP primary, found disagreeable.

Many of the videos that hurt Buck weren’t shot by his opponents at all, but by his supporters, eager to spread the word about Buck’s ultra-right conservative views.

The statements that damaged Buck in these videos for the most part weren’t  gaffes but policy statements, which may never have come to light had they not been recorded on the campaign trail.

Video clips showed Buck telling various conservative audiences that Social Security is a “horrible policy,” the Veterans Administration and big chunks of the federal government should be privatized, and the Department of Education abolished. He also questioned the federal separation of church and state and the federal student loan program.

One clip aired repeatedly in TV ads showed Buck telling a Tea Party group during the primary: “I am pro-life, and I’ll answer the next question. I do not believe in the exceptions of rape or incest.”

The passion in his voice on the video contrasted with his statements later that he wasn’t campaigning on social issues, like abortion.

So campaign-trail videos, at least in Colorado’s U.S. Senate race, helped bring to light Buck’s policy positions–and also illustrated his heart-felt dedication to them.

That’s a role that journalists used to play in covering a campaign. They’d write about these kinds of policy shifts and nuances from start to finish. But with their ranks depleted, more of that role, especially in the early part of a campaign, is left to individuals, holding small video cameras near candidates in church basements or back-yard picnics.

I’d rather see professional journalists doing this. But at least we’ve got cameras on the candidates–even if some of them are operated by paid political operatives.

This op-ed was distributed by the Other Words syndicate.

As a lowly blogger, I’ve of course followed the Bartels-stole-my-story controversy. How could I not, even with the election raging around me?

You recall a ColoradoPols blogger, Half Glass Full, first wrote Sept. 9 about the possibility that the GOP would become a minority party in Colorado, if Dan Maes’ gets less than 10 percent of the vote in November. Great story, and funny.

Then The Denver Post’s Lynn Bartels blogged on the same topic Sept. 11, and The Post ran a story Sept. 13.

Half Glass Full then posted a blog, eloquently titled, “Lynn Bartels stole my story.”

The story was advanced by State Bill News, which contained the Associated Press’ and Post’s guidelines for credit and attribution.

State Bill News also quoted Half Glass Full’s blog post,  “Gee, thanks Lynn.”

But neither Glass Half Full, nor State Bill News, checked with Bartels to get her take on the story theft.

She claims today, in a blog post, that she got the story independently and didn’t see it first on Pols. (I know Pols readers may find this incomprehensible.) She didn’t apologize, like I would have, but that’s ok.

To her credit, she invited Glass Half Full (and by extension ALL bloggers) to email her (lbartels@denverpost.com) if they have questions in the future.

Asked why State Bill News didn’t contact Bartels for its piece, Editor Don Knox wrote:

I felt I got the Post’s (and Lynn’s) side in by citing and linking to their ethics policy, which is silent on attribution except in cases of plagiarism. The Post didn’t attribute because it doesn’t have a policy explicitly requiring attribution. Lynn is following her company’s rules — which are weak.

AP’s policy is much stronger.

Of course, it would have been even better had I called her AND she had responded. But I think the issue of knowledge beforehand is sideshow at this point. As soon as this was brought to Lynn’s attention, she should have amended her reports to reflect the earlier story. Even to this moment, she hasn’t done that. And that’s where the blogger’s point has merit.

I’m hoping this story ushers in a new era, in which bloggers feel comfortable contacting reporters directly, if they find an error in their work OR if they’re own work isn’t properly attributed by a reporter.

And I hope we enter a new era, in which reporters err on the side of giving too much attribution to bloggers (like me!) and not too little. And they do it, as Knox suggests, even after the fact.

The 9-11 tragedy had nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with criminal mass murderers.

But today, on the anniversary of 9-11, you wonder how many of us understand that, as anti-Islamic hatred connected to 9-11 appears to be growing and polls show outright bigotry toward Muslims rising.

Against this backdrop, you want reporters to cover the story about a pastor threatening to burn a Quran. I know it becomes a spectacle when you see the small-time religious figure hopping from one national media appearance to another, but I’d rather see stories like that overplayed than ignored.

Denver’s media should take extra steps to air out signs of bigotry toward Muslims in our own community. The stories are out there, I’m sure. They just have to be told.

Here’s the kind of story I mean.

In an Aug. 2 column in the Huffington Post, Republican Ali Hasan asked his “fellow conservatives” to “quit lying,”

“If you are against the mosque,” he wrote, “then call yourself a bigot and give us the gift of an honest dialogue, the kind we carry on so proudly here in America.”

As you might imagine, this wasn’t received very well in GOP circles, and the anger reverberated on talk radio, blogs, and, of course, Facebook.

Writing on her friend Nikki Mata’s Facebook page the day Hasan’s column appeared, prominent 912 activist Virginia Young expressed her view.

Young is the founder of the IN GOD WE TRUST 912 PROJECT and the Broomfield 912 Project , which is apparently one of the most influential 912 groups in Colorado. Tea Party groups like hers had a major impact on the Republican Party this election cycle, producing GOP candidates like Ken Buck and Dan Maes.

“I am bigot,” she wrote. “Latisha I am still waiting after 9 years for American Muslims to take to the streets and denounce the events of 9/11. Why hasn’t that happened? Taqiyya perhaps?”

Latisha’s post, to which Young was responding, stated, “I am a Republican and I do not have a big issue with the mosque being built near Ground Zero. It is simply place of prayer. I DO NOT agree with calling people bigots just because they don’t agree with you…”

Young had a different view, and as a 912 leader in Denver, her opinion means something. Was she serious? Is she a bigot? What did she mean?

I emailed her to find out. I asked to interview her about the mosque issue.

Salzman [Sept 1]: I have a copy of something you apparently wrote on Nikki’s Facebook page. I spoke with Nikki about her comments. I’d like to discuss yours with you.

Young [minutes later]: Please forward a copy to me.

Salzman: [an hour later}: You wrote-"I am a bigot," and a few other comments. I don't want to report this without hearing what you have to say about it.

Young [minutes later]: Oh yes, I said I guess I am a bigot then, if that is what Ali Hasan defines us as, if I oppose the Mosque at Ground Zero. What are your thoughts on the Ground Zero Mosque?

Salzman [minutes later]: Where does ground zero mean to you? Do you think mosques should be built anywhere in America?

Young: No response

Salzman [next day]: Did you get this? Thanks.

Young: [no response]

Salzman [a few days later]: Before I publish your “bigot” comment, I hope you’ll give me a more detailed response than you’ve provided below. I want to be fair to you. I also hope you’ll explain the rest of your facebook comment, “Latisha I am still waiting after 9 years for American Muslims to take to the streets and denounce the events of 9/11. Why hasn’t that happened? Taqiyya perhaps?”

If you’d like to talk on the phone, just let me know.

In any case, I hope you’ll have time to drop me a quick explanatory note.

So that was about a week ago, and I haven’t heard back from Young. So I don’t think she wants to converse about it anymore, do you?

But Young’s Facebook friend, Mata, who also wrote in the Facebook conversation that she was a bigot, but with less severe overtones, readily explained herself to me in a phone interview.

“I was being facetious,” she said immediately, explaining that she’s against the mosque personally but doesn’t believe the government should stop it.

“The backers of the mosque say they want to do outreach,” she told me. “If you want to do outreach, that indicates that you want to foster good feelings, but if depending the poll if 60-70 percent are opposed to what you’re doing, how does that foster positive feelings?”

“If it puts people in such an uproar, aren’t you undermining what you are trying to accomplish?” she said, adding that she does not oppose the construction of mosques elsewhere in America.

But plenty of other Americans do. Even if you don’t follow this issue very closely, you probably remember last month’s Economist poll with these shocking results:

• 14 percent of Americans believe no mosques should be built.
• 45 percent of Democrats and 80 percent of Republicans have an unfavorable view of Islam.
• 48 percent agree that “there are some places in the United States where it is not appropriate to build mosques, though it would be appropriate for other religions to build houses of worship.”

Commenting on the poll last month, The Denver Post’s Mike Litwin wrote:

There’s bigotry at work …- bigotry that needs to be called out …- but it’s not exactly old-line religious bigotry. We were attacked by radical Islamists. There are many radical Islamists who say they want to see America destroyed. We have been fighting for nearly a decade against Islamic terrorists but also fighting on the same side as Muslims.

It’s confusing. Obviously, the overwhelming majority of Muslims are not terrorists. Just as obviously, Islam is not a monolith. As far as anyone knows, there are no terrorists involved in the Lower Manhattan mosque/community center/swimming pool. In any case, the hard part of freedom of religion comes when the religion is not popular.

In this blog post, I’m calling out Tea Party leader Virginia Young for being a bigot, until she directly states otherwise. I take Niki Mata at her word that she’s not. I believe her.

Littwin is right that bigotry should be called out. We owe to Muslims and of course we owe it to ourselves and to this country.

It’s also why I called Phil Wolf, who owns the Wheat Ridge car dealership that erected a billboard last year showing President Obama dressed in a turban and stating, “President or Jihad.” His billboard got a lot of attention, as it should have. I had been wanting to call him for a long time to find out if he was a bigot.

I asked Wolf if he supports the construction of mosques in Denver.

“We got to identify who the enemy is,” he said.  ”If the activity of the enemy is building mosques, they shouldn’t be allowed.”

I asked him if he thinks Islam is the enemy.

“That’s what’s out there,” he said. “That’s the public perception. As far as the public knowledge is concerned, they are. And if they are, there should be zero tolerance. We should go back to what happened during World War II. Look what happened to the Japanese.  And guess what? There’s a lot of wonderful Muslim and Japanese people. But we didn’t tolerate the enemy. We just don’t call anybody the enemy anymore.”

Wolf is planning to unveil a new billboard at his dealership along I70 in the next few months. Its theme will reflect what he told me above in my interview. And he had a lot more to say in a similar vein.

I hope 912 activist Virginia Young and other Tea Party leaders will join me in protesting Wolf’s offensive views, and his new billboard.

And I hope Wolf’s story, and other signs of bigotry in America, get the media attention they deserve, along with the protests of those who disagree.

Here’s an exchange on Colorado Pols about The Denver Post’s decision to threaten legal action against Pols:

Jason Salzman:  free content

You can understand why The Post would want to try to protect its news content, even if it’s being offered for free.

It’s been almost two weeks since 1) we learned that the Hasan Family Foundation paid gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis $300,000, rather than $150,000 as previously reported, mostly for his “series of in-depth articles on water, Colorado Water” and 2) that the series, titled “Musings on Water,” amounted to 150 pages, according to McInnis’ campiagn (though, mysteriously enough, the Hasan foundation is only in possession of 60 pages).

But I can’t find a single news reporter in Colorado who’s reported a water expert’s views about McInnis’ formerly stealth water articles.

Fortunately, while we wait for basic reporting on the matter, a few columnists and bloggers have weighed in. Here’s what they concluded:

Over the weekend, Denver Post columnist Ed Quillen, who’s definitely counts as an expert on Colorado water issues himself, spotlighted big-time errors in McInnis’ work, including McInnis’ failure to list the South Platte among Colorado’s major river basins. Quillen writes, “We’re not talking arcane knowledge, just the ability to read a map.”

Quillen concludes, “So you may not learn a lot about our water issues from these $12.50-a-word musings, but you could learn quite a bit about McInnis.”

On KBDI’s Colorado Inside Out June 18, Post columnist Susan Greene had a similar view:

“You know, I’ve actually covered the Colorado River for 20 years, and you could Wikipedia this stuff. I’m not saying he did… I’m just saying his name is on it. I don’t care. It’s not edifying at all. It tells me nothing about the Colorado River Compact. It has these sort of flourishes and great moments of insights like, water is very important to humanity. You know, $300,000? I’m thinking, he could have done that much less expensively.”

The blogosphere has also been pretty quiet about the substance of McInnis’s writings. John Orr of the Coyote Gulch blog  was by far the most kind to McInnis: “He’s consistent in his message, bashing government and the Bureau of Reclamation specifically. He embraces the development of water and other resources and laments all the possible mineral mother lodes locked up by wilderness designation. He demonstrates a good understanding of water issues and the history behind Colorado’s present situation.”

Over at Westword’s Latest Word blog, Alan Prendergast has made a complete mockery of McInnis’ own claim in a memo to the Hasan Foundation that his articles were “carefully-proofed.”

In his third article on the topic, published the same day that the National Association of Hispanic Journalists was holding its national conference in Denver, Prendergast quoted a passage from McInnis’ water writings and then pointed out that McInnis got his Spanish translation messed up.

McInnis: “The Colorado River is the primary River of the Southwest part of Our Nation. It is called the ‘River of Rivers’ because of its importance in some of the most arid lands in the Americas… Do you know the name of ‘Rio Colorado’? That was the name, given by the Spanish, to a portion of what we now know as the ‘Colorado River.’ Colorado is ‘Red’ in Spanish. It was called the Rio because of the Reddish color that dominated the River…”

Westword’s Prendergast:  “No, Señor Snore, I’m pretty sure it was called the Colorado because of the reddish color, but who am I to contradict a $2,000-a-page man?”

So, despite some great work by columnists and bloggers, we need more serious news analysis of the McInnis writings. You might argue that journalists don’t need to go fact checking old articles of a former Congressman who’s got a long trail of paper behind him, but with the Big Question still hanging out there (Why was McInnis paid so much for this?), I think reporters should ask more experts about the substance of these articles.