The 10 Commandments always make for good conversations. For example, do you prefer the version that includes “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife?” Or the version that shortens this to “Thou shall not covet?”

Trouble is, most everyone I ask, except my mother-in-law, can’t recite the Commandments. Most people remember some of them, but the middle group trips them up. The ones like, “Remember thou keep holy the sabbath day.”

In any case, I was asking people about the Commandments last week because a U.S. Court of Appeals in Ohio ruled Wed. that a county judge violated the constitutional separation of church and state by hanging a  poster listing the 10 Commandments in his courtroom.

Not a huge story, of course, but one that’s been dragging on for a while and has developed a following.  And it’s a story with a Colorado angle that local reporters missed.

During the 2010 primary U.S. Sen. candidate Ken Buck, U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner,  State Sen. Ken Lambert (SD 9), State Sen. Kevin Grantham (SD 2), Rep. Mark Barker (HD 17), Rep. Jon Becker (HD 63), Rep. Ray Scott (HD 54), and Rep. Libby Szabo (HD 27) apparently  filled out a survey indicating that they support “public posting of 10 Commandments.” It was the Christian Family Alliance Candidate Survey.

Buck’s back in Weld County, but the ones doing people’s work, do they still favor the public posting of the 10 Commandments, even though it looks even more definitively like the law does not?

Maybe you’re thinking this is a waste, and we should move on to a more timely topic.

But it’s obviously worth a reporter’s time to track back and find out what candidates are thinking about their election pledges, especially when the issues involved are in the news.

Much has been written about the trap Colorado Senate Ken Buck fell into when he positioned himself on the far right of the political spectrum, advocating, for example, a ban on common forms of birth control. These far-right positions helped Buck beat his opponent Jane Norton in the GOP primary, but they tied him in knots later, as he tried to say no one cared about the social-conservative issues that Buck had passionately endorsed in the primary.

Compared to a far-right pledge on abortion, a promise to support posting the 10 Commandments may sound like a throw away.

But just in case you’re like me, and you can’t seem to remember the Commandments, here’s one common version:

1. I am the lord your god.
2. Thou shalt not take the name of the lord, thy god, in vain.
3. Remember thou keep holy the sabbath day.
4. Honor they mother and father.
5. Thou shalt not kill.
6. Thou shalt not commit adultry.
7. Thou shalt not steal.
8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.

So, as can see, we’re not just talking about, Thou shalt not steal, here.  

My own atheism biases me, but can anyone explain how it possibly doesn’t mix church and state for the government to post this religious list. They best argument is, well, the government already allows public displays of religion on government property with government funds. But this is more extreme than, “Merry Christmas.”

Messages to Gardner, Szabo, and Becker were not returned on Friday.

One of the core functions of journalists, when you think about it, should be to track campaign pledges.  It helps people understand the election process, the dyanamics of a primary versus the general election, for example. It helps illuminate candidates’ commitments to doing what they say they’ll do, which is clearly a major concern of voters these days. Generally, reporting on campaign promises helps voters make informed decisions, which is, again, a big part of what journalism is about.

Regardless of where you come down on this, journalists should be in the business of tracking campaign pledges. And this is an interesting one.

The ranks of the Personhood 33, as I’ve been calling the top 33 Colorado candidates who’ve endorsed the Personhood Initiative, are diminishing.

First, as you know, Ken Buck un-endorsed the measure, though he still supports personhood “as a concept,” leaving me and others wondering what’s changed. His hard-line abortion stance still puts him in opposition to common forms of birth control and abortion even in the case of rape and incest.

Still, I’ve been wondering if the other 32 members of the Personhood 33 will follow Buck’s cue. (See list here.)

So this week, I phoned up some more of them, after determining previously that Dan Maes and Tom Tancredo were standing with the Amendment.

Colorado Senate (SD 16) candidate Tim Leonard, who…-like Buck…-believes that life begins at conception, told me he never endorsed the Personhood measure, and the Christian Family Alliance website erred in listing him as an endorser.

“I’ve taken no position on any citizens initiative or anything that’s on the ballot that doesn’t have to do with me,” he said, adding that activists were asking him about it during the primary but he never took a position.

Colorado House (HD 35) candidate Edgar Antillon also told me he shouldn’t be on endorser list anymore, having un-endorsed the Initiative during the GOP primary before Buck did.

“Obviously, I don’t get attention like Ken Buck does, but my stance changed on that,” he told me, primarily because he supports abortion to save a women’s life, putting the life of the mother first.

So the Personhood 33 was down to the Personhood 30 by the time I called Colorado House (HD 34) candidate Brian Vande Krol, who told me that he also never endorsed Personhood Amendment. The Colorado Right to Life website claims he supports “Personhood”.

“Mr. Vande Krol was reported to support Personhood by a volunteer who said he spoke to him, but this is not a reliable method of knowing of someone’s stand, and he has also not responded to our survey,” Bob Kyffin, custodian of the CRTL blog, emailed me in response to my questions. “We have tried to make it clear that the only way we know for sure where someone stands is if they respond to the survey.  When we do, we make note of that.”

Kyffin added: “Your articles are helpful to us in determining who sincerely supports Personhood and who is just pretending — historically a major difficulty with Republicans.  It is our hope that most of those you communicate with will affirm support for Personhood in full knowledge that the only forms of birth control it would ban are those that cause a chemical abortion (i.e. abortifacients).”

I left a couple messages over the past week at the campaign of U.S. House candidate (CD-4) Cory Gardner, who’s endorsed Personhood, but I didn’t get a response yet.

Gardner told the Coloradoan a couple weeks ago that he supports the proposed personhood amendment, confirming his past endorsements.

Abandoning Personhood would be a major change of direction for Gardner, given that, you may recall, he bragged at a February candidate forum about circulating petitions to put the measure on the ballot this year.

“I have signed the Personhood petition. I have taken the petitions to my church and circulating them in my church. And I have a legislative record that backs up my support for life,” said Gardner.

But Gardner, like Buck, has changed his position on one issue dear to the hearts of social conservatives. The Coloradoan reported Oct. 3 that Gardner will no longer carry legislation to outlaw abortion, despite what he previously told Tea Party groups.

Given the prominence of social issues in past CD 4 elections, the Coloradoan is right to be asking Gardner about these topics, even if he resists them.  (You can hear the Gardner’s exchange with the Coloradoan here, toward the end of the clip. It’s a great example of a journalist pressing a candidate to answer a question directly.)

But especially given Buck’s statements on Amendment 62, journalists outside of Ft. Collins should be asking the personhood endorsers what they think nowadays about the measure. But they’re not. Hence this blog post, to fill in the journalistic gap.

We have some first-class TV reporters in Denver, but even they would admit that local TV stations are known to take what’s in The Denver Post and regurgitate it.

That’s not what Fox 31 did last night.

The station took information from a front-page Post article Tuesday and told us something The Post didn’t report.

The Post’s article, impressively researched, focused on Colorado state legislative candidates (15 Republicans and 7 Democrats), who have criminal records. It listed the candidates and their criminal records in a handy box, along with a response from every candidate. The easy-to-read format provided lots of factual information for voters in a limited space.

Fox 31 advanced the story a bit last night by reporting that one legislator, Republican Clint Webster, running for House 24 in Wheat Ridge, threatened to shoot a gun at his ex-wife. This tidbit had not been included in The Post, which reported that Webster was simply arrested “in 1991 after an incident involving his ex-wife and the Jefferson County sheriff’s office.”

But Websters behavior was actually worse than both Fox 31 and The Post reported.

In 1991 Webster shot two bullets at his ex-wife and someone else, and he eventually pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and felony menacing (which The Post had reported).

Interviewed by Fox 31 last night, Webster claimed he only threatened to fire a gun at his ex-wife. But the police record shows that this is not true.

Asked why the information about Webster shooting at his ex-wife was left out of story, Post Political Editor Curtis Hubbard wrote that it was an “oversight.”

“Reporting in the original story relied upon interviews with the candidate and the Jefferson County District Attorney’s office,” Hubbard emailed me. “Lynn [Bartels]  missed the mention in a typed portion of the police report and couldn’t make out a portion of the report that was hand-written.

We’ll be running a clarification in tomorrow’s paper that notes the Webster threatened to kill his ex-wife and fired two shots from a Colt semi automatic pistol at her and another person as they drove away from his house.” [This is already on the Post website.]

Fox 31 should also set the record straight.

As I mentioned, Tuesday’s Post article details not just Webster’s felonies, but the criminal records of 22 legislative candidates (15 Republicans and 7 Democrats).

All the violent crimes were committed by Republicans.

Despite this, the Post article’s introduction spotlights Democrat Dennis Apuan’s 2002 conviction for nonviolent trespassing, which occurred during a nuclear weapons demonstration. It is discussed near the beginning of the article, after information about Brighton Republican Tom Janich’s record of five arrests, from 1983 to 1989, one of which involved resisting arrest violently.

Asked if she thought her discussion of Apuan and Janich created a false equivalence between Democrats and Republicans in the article, Post reporter Lynn Bartels wrote:

How people look at these crimes depends on their own value judgments, I believe,” she wrote, adding that she included Apuan because his opponents “have been using his arrest record in their attempt to unseat him.”

“I think someone who has lost a child to a drunken driver might argue that a DUI is more serious than a 20-year-old resisting arrest.”

Bartels clearly has a point that the dates of some of the criminal records and how they are being used in the campaigns make comparisons more complex.

For this reason, you could make an argument that The Post should have just run the criminal records and the responses, without spotlighting any one of them in an introductory narrative.

But because it chose not to simply list the information, it’s probably most fair to rank criminal records by their severity according to known judicial standards. So, even though I could see how fair-minded people could think otherwise, I think the criminal behavior of candidates like Wheat Ridge Republican Clint Webster (1992 felony, felony menacing convictions), Aurora Republican Gary Marshall (1992 misdemeanor child abuse charge), and Pueblo Republican Steven Rodriguez (1996 misdemeanor assault) deserve The Post’s spotlight more than Apuan’s trespass. Wheat Ridge Republican Edgar Antillon (perjury conviction in 2004, failure to appear in court 18 times) was included toward the end of The Post’s narrative.

Moreover, journalists add value to reporting when they analyze patterns in the raw data.  One of the more disturbing trends picked up in The Post’s table of criminal records was a recurrence of domestic or spousal abuse.  Webster’s case of threatening to kill his ex-wife, and going so far as to discharge a weapon twice at her, merits attention for the egregious nature of the offense, but also for the fact that he was one of three candidates listed with a history of domestic abuse, along with Republican Bob Lane of Denver and Republican Steve Rodriguez in Pueblo.  (ColoradoPols named other candidates with a history of abuse, including House Assistant Minority Leader David Balmer.)

But overall I like the way the way The Post reported this complicated information, and the hard work shows.

The Post made a wise decision to include DUIs, because, as Bartels pointed out to, voters may care more about DUIs than a felony conviction, and voters have a right to know about them.

And I like the way Bartels asks readers directly to email her related information, if she missed anything. That’s really smart and even-handed.

If you’ve ever looked at submissions of testimony for a PUC hearing, you know they can fall on the obscure side of things.

And if you’re a reporter covering a hearing, you want to spotlight issues that are understandable and relevant.

Jobs fall into the understandable and relevant category, given that the Great Recession just ended but you’d never know it.

So when The Denver Post’s Steve Raabe was reviewing testimony for a short  Sept. 18 story on the PUC’s hearing about Xcel Energy’s plan to convert coal-burning plants to natural gas, it’s natural that the Colorado Mining Association’s submission on jobs caught his eye.

“There are a wide range of intervenors before the PUC in this case, and much of the testimony they filed deals with relatively narrow subjects,” he emailed me in response to a question about his story. “The issue of jobs, however, is one that I think warrants attention.”

So he included these two sentences to his piece:

Adopting the plan could produce Colorado job losses of 30,000 to 120,000, [the Colorado Mining Association’s Roger] Bezdek said, from coal mining and a ripple effect on other industries. The testimony did not specify how it arrived at that total.

I’m really glad Raabe included sentence number two above, given that he wrote sentence number one.  But the question is, should he have written sentence number one at all, given the information in sentence number two?

In other words, since we don’t know if Bezdek’s jobs figures had any basis in reality, should Raabe have simply picked something else to report in his story, even though jobs are a hot-button issue these days?

I think Raabe should have passed on Bezdek’s employment numbers, until their origin was more clear. And, especially since jobs are such a senstive issue, Raabe should have at least reported job figures from the folks who support Excel’s conversion plan.

According to a study paid for by Xcel Energy and conducted by the LEEDS School of Business at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Xcel’s “preferred” conversion plan would generate an average of 1,250 jobs from 2010 to 2026. The process used for determining this employment figure is cited.

Raabe explained his thinking on the story to me:

“From a timing standpoint, this was a difficult story to cover,” Raabe emailed me. “As you may know, the PUC often sets a Friday 5 p.m. deadline for filings in various dockets. And given the nature of procrastination, most of the filings came in late Friday. There literally were thousands of pages of testimony filed, and I didn’t have the time to examine it all. But I looked at all of the filings that I thought would be potentially relevant, and I did not see any testimony — other than Bezdek’s — that addressed the issue of jobs. I was not aware of a source that I could have reached on short notice Friday evening that could have commented on, or refuted, Bezdek’s testimony on jobs.” 

Raabe’s point about deadline pressure is clearly valid. It took me hours to track down and clarify the job figures I got–and I knew people to turn to.

Raabe also pointed out that PUC hearings on the testimony filed Friday are scheduled for October and November. The LEEDS study was submitted as testimony to the PUC.

So there will be plenty of opportunities to report in more detail on jobs impact of Xcel’s plan–and to confirm that Bezdek’s figures can be substantiated somehow. Bezdek did not return my email asking about this.

On Friday, Colorado State House candidate Don Beezley told me he supports the Americans with Disabilities Act, despite disparaging comments he made about it.

He said he’d like to see the state, not the federal government, make and enforce its own ADA-like law, but he nonetheless supports the act.

On Saturday, someone shot me an email pointing out that Beezley had previously told the Boulder Daily Camera that he opposed the ADA. The Camera reported Sept. 1:

The Denver Post’s Spot blog reported today that Colorado House candidate Don Beezley apologized to members of the Colorado Cross Disability Coalition for his disparaging comments about the Americans with Disabilities Act.

As posted on a Broomfield Democrats website, Beezley said, that the “ADA took other human beings from being someone with a challenge whom it might be a joy to help, and turned them into a burden. An enemy.”

The Post did not ask Beezley if he opposes the ADA. So I asked him, to fill in the journalistic gap.

He told me he supports the government insuring that people with disabilities have “access.” But he’d prefer that the state, not the federal government, make its own laws like the ADA. He’d rather not see the federal government involved.

Nonetheless, despite his frustrations with the federal ADA, he supports it.

Particularly because some Republicans are apparently referring to Rep. Paul Weissmann’s (D-Louisville) redistricting bill as gerrymandering, journalists might be tempted to equate the Democratic effort this year to the GOP “midnight gerrymander” in 2003. If they are compared, reporters should be careful to spell out the big differences. Otherwise, casual readers could be easily confused.

Expect news coverage this week about Weissmann’s House Bill 1408, passed out of committee Tuesday, to repeal a 2004 GOP law that dictated criteria that courts should use …• and the order in which the criteria should be weighed …• to map out Colorado’s congressional districts, if the Legislature does not agree on how to do so before the 2012 election. 

Congressional redistricting will occur in 2011, based on the results of the 2010 census.

The Republicans’ 2004 statute was passed after a 2003 GOP redistricting law was found unconstitutional by the Colorado Supreme Court. The court ruled that the GOP-controlled Legislature didn’t have authority in 2003 to pass an election-mapping law after a judge had already created new legislative boundaries after the 2000 census…-and an election had already occurred.

An April 22 Denver Post article sets up the discussion of Weisman’s bill this way:

In 2003, Democrats lamented a “midnight gerrymander” by the legislature then controlled by Republicans, a plan courts threw out. Now Republicans …• in the minority in both houses …• are complaining that Democrats are trying to ram through a plan to “rig” future elections by marginalizing voters in predominantly Republican rural areas of Colorado.

The Post article goes on to accurately describe how the procedures and tactics being used by Democrats today are different from those used by the GOP in 2003. But you have to read the story carefully to grasp the magnitude of the difference.

To avoid confusion, reporters should lay out a few facts for readers, when Republicans equate the events of 2003 with Weissmann’s legislation:

• Weissmann’s bill is technically called a “late” bill, but it was introduced about a month before the session ends. In 2003, the GOP introduced the gerrymander bill in the State Legislature three days before the session ended, suspending rules and circumventing committees to ram it through in three days.
• Weissmann’s bill has been the subject of one hearing so far, and Republican views are being incorporated into the bill, according to Denver Post’s Spot blog. (Republican Rep. Carole Murray voted for the Weisman bill in a committee vote.) In 2003, debate on the GOP bill was curtailed repeatedly, as the legislation was rammed through without any Democratic support or input.
• Weissmann’s bill would make statutory changes in advance of the 2010 census. In 2003, the GOP passed its bill after the census count occurred, after reapportionment had occurred, and after an entire election had gone by.

Reporters should be clear about the differences between the redistricting debate occurring today and what’s now widely viewed as the gerrymandering that we saw in Colorado in 2003.

Chronology according to the Dec. 2, 2003, Rocky Mountain News:

Jan. 25, 2002: District Judge John Coughlin redraws congressional map after lawmakers can’t agree on one.

May 9, 2003: Gov. Owens signs redistricting plan into law. Democrats file challenge.

Dec. 1, 2003: The Colorado Supreme Court throws out GOP map. (GOP federal appeal was denied in June 2004.)

Education gets big headlines year around, not just when an education law like SB191 is being debated at the State House. There are the CSAP tests, the graduation rates, the international comparisons, school rankings, and so on. The news is mostly bad, and the impression you’re left with, even if the reporting is broad and comprehensive, is that our schools and teachers aren’t doing their jobs well enough, particularly in urban areas like Denver.

But what if we had an annual parade of front-page stories about the success rates of our other public programs on the front lines of the battle against poverty?  What’s the “graduation rate” from public housing? From the “free lunch program?” From drug-addiction programs? From poverty itself? Is Colorado making progress in these areas?

My point is that education gets too much media attention, relative to other problems related to poverty in America. I haven’t done a bean count to document this, if one could be done, but who doubts it?

And with the media spotlight on the schools and teachers, legislation like SB191 naturally becomes a hot button story and issue, with various interest groups clamoring to be heard and seen.

So journalists are right to give serious play to SB191, but in doing so, reporters should take every opportunity to illuminate the big-picture issues of school funding and the effects of poverty on education.

“To get a school that serves truly disadvantaged kids to the point where it could actually focus on teaching and learning is going to require infusions of resources that we haven’t even begun to think about, just into the school, let alone the community,” Rona Wilensky, the former principal at New Vista High School in Boulder told me.

If you look through the news coverage of SB 191, you find one perspective that’s predictably under-emphasized: the view that passing any new education laws isn’t necessarily the way to improve public education in Colorado.

“They are looking for a simple answer to a complicated problem,” Wilensky told me of the legislative effort in Colorado. “Getting rid of bad teachers is not the solution to all our educational woes. We have the schools we have because we want these schools. They serve a function in our society. Why would we have them if they didn’t work for us? And everything in our system supports them being the schools they are. To change this in a really fundamental way, to equalize school achievement, means overturning the effects of social and economic inequality, which we’ve built our society around. ”

Call me a socialist if you must, but don’t you think this perspective should be seen more in coverage of education reform…-because what Wilensky says reflects a reality that you miss in education reporting that too often focuses on the latest narrow bit of education-specific data.

People tell me all the time that The Denver Post isn’t bothering to cover local elections, like State House races, for example. I usually defend The Post by saying that the paper has to set priorities, and just how many local elections are there in the metro area? A ton.

And besides, the newspaper does provide online resources with lots of info about local candidates. In an interview in Feb., Post Political Editor Curtis Hubbard told me that The Post may provide more coverage of local political races in its YourHub supplement. And this seems to be happening, though I haven’t looked at the YourHub coverage in a systematic way.

So with space for local elections at such a premium, it’s a surprise to see stories about State House races in The Post, like today’s piece about three pimaries for House seats.

But the piece was a major disappointment with a focus mostly on minor squabbles and sparring among candidates–without single serious local issue spotlighted.

The article covered the District 4, 5, and 9 State House races.

The coverage of the District 4 race focused on whether Dan Pabon got special treatment. No evidence was cited by The Post, though it reported that complaints had been lodged but no verdict rendered; a Democratic spokeswoman “feared” that the caucus results might have to be tossed.

The portion of the article on the District 5 race centered on a hostile email exchange between a Cristina Duran supporter, not affiliated with Duran’s campaign team, and candidate Jose Silva.

As for the District 9 portion of the article, it focused on a dispute over whether a Republican party official should have pointed out that one candidate was on probation for a petty offense of disturbing the peace.

I think fights among candidates are important for voters to know about. How they are handled by candidates is illuminating.

But with so little ink available for these races, and no money or serious judgment calls involved yet, I think the focus for The Post, especially for the print edition, should be on the issues. And god knows there are many at play at the Legislature, including education, the budget, the environment, and many more. Next time, pick a couple issues tell us where the candidates stand.

In its coverage yesterday of House Speaker Terrance Carroll’s draft plan to modernize election registration rules, The Denver Post stated that “Capitol Republicans have cast the legislation as an attempt by Democrats to skew elections in their favor, and one that could endanger the integrity of elections.”

The Post should take a look at the provisions of the draft bill and report whether, in fact, they would do this.

One provision, same-day registration, doesn’t favor Democrats or Republicans, according to Curtis Gans, Director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University in Washington D.C.  

Gans was quoted yesterday by Post columnist Vincent Carroll, who mocked attempts by liberals to expand voting opportunities as ineffective and inviting fraud. But Carroll did not argue that the draft election registration reforms would benefit Democrats over Republicans, as you might expect, given the initial partisan rhetoric that emerged Tuesday. http://www.denverpost.com/carroll/ci_14832170

Vincent Carroll quoted Gans as stating that high voter turnout (as opposed to same-day registration, specifically) hasn’t helped Democrats more than Republicans and that same-day registration, specifically, increases voter turnout only marginally.

I called Gans today and asked him if he believes same-day registration, specifically, benefits Democrats or Republicans, because this wasn’t clear from reading Carroll’s column.

“I think it’s not predictable at all,” he answered. “We have been shown that it’s not predictable one way or the other. There’s plenty of evidence.”

He added: “So long as a state does not have a history or likelihood of abuse of the registration system…- fraudulent registration, voting in the name of dead people, that sort of thing…-there is no harm and maybe a little good that can come out of election-day registration.”

Colorado has no such history of election fraud, as far as I could find.

I asked Gans, “What’s the little good that can come of same-day registration?”

“The good part is, that if people get interested in the election closer to the election, they don’t have to sit it out because they’re not registered,” he told me. “That’s the good part. It enhances the opportunity to vote.”

If Gans is correct, the election-day-registration component of Terrance Carroll’s draft bill is not the reason Republicans are telling The Post that they think Carroll’s plan is an “attempt to skew elections” in the Democrats’ favor.

As Carroll’s plan is debated, The Post should explain why Republicans think elements of initial draft bill are unfair or inviting fraud and offer different views about whether Republican objections are reasonable. This would be a useful addition to the debate.