“You are among friends here,” Rick Wagner told his radio guest Scott McInnis Thursday. “No one is going to try to pick at you because I know there is a limited amount you can say about it.”

Wagner kept his promise, stroking McInnis for about 15 minutes, even saying that McInnis’ plagiarism “was brought up by his primary opponent in the election, which of course was The Denver Post. I believe they were running for governor.” (McInnis has also blamed The Post for his downfall.)

Feeling comfy, McInnis told Wagner that last week’s regulatory decision not to strip him of his law license was “kind of bittersweet news” but, still, “gave us complete vindication.”

“Just a little too late,” he said.

Why did McInnis wait until it was too late? Why didn’t he release the emails that allegedly instructed Rolly Fischer not to plagiarize? That’s the question everyone’s been asking, and of course Wagner didn’t ask it.

But McInnis seems to think he had provided proof of his innocence all along, but no one listened!

“And at the beginning, we obviously stated exactly what had occurred, and we were vindicated by the Supreme Court that came out with the same kind of findings,” McInnis told Wagner, who interviewed McInnis Thursday on KFKA’ s Amy Oliver Show (1310 AM in Greeley). Wagner was substituting for Oliver.

Wagner should have pointed out that the report of the state’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel, whose record has been questioned by Westword, did not exonerate McInnis. It allowed him to practice law, but it didn’t clear him of plagiarism or of fraud.

As The Denver Post’s Dean Singleton said on KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman show last week, McInnis is still a plagiarist, even if the plagiarism was  executed by his assistant Rolly Fischer. This conforms with the view of Prof. Bob Steele, a journalism ethics guru, who pointed out last year that even if text is given freely to a writer, word-for-word use of it still constitutes plagiarism. And in McInnis’ case, Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregory Hobbs did not authorize McInnis to use his words.

Neither has McInnis been cleared of misrepresenting his water-musings articles to the Hasan Family Foundation, which he described as “original,”  leaving him open to charges of fraud. Seeme Hasan acknowledged on KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman show that contrary to what the Foundation stated last year, McInnis did inform her, on a fax cover sheet, that he had hired an assistant to work on the water project. But Hasan says the assistant could have been answering the phones, for all she know. She did not know he would be writing the water musings, and she would not have allowed this had she known, she told KHOW.

With these issues unaddressed, it was easy for McInnis to tell Wagner, who’s a conservative columnist for the Grand Junction Sentinel, that “Laurie and I are very thrilled” with the attorney-regulation report.

Looking ahead, McInnis told Wagner that he thinks the attacks on him were so successful that they will be replicated.

“Look at the destruction that it did to us,” McInnis said. “And I think you’re actually going to see this tool utilized even more in the future.”

Is McInnis thinking there are more candidates out there who got paid $300,000 for a two-year fellowship, hired a research assistant to do the job, and didn’t have the time or inclination to make absolutely sure the final product wasn’t copied from a Supreme Court Justice? And then tried to blame everything on his research assistant?

We don’t know, because Wagner didn’t ask.

(Click here for the BigMediaBlog transcript of the McInnis interview discussed above. Contact jason@bigmedia.org for a copy of the audio recording of the McInnis interview.)

Follow Jason Salzman on Twitter @bigmediablog.

Transcript of Interview with Scott McInnis on KFKA’s Amy Oliver Show(1310 AM in Greeley), May 26, 2011

Rick Wagner substituting for Oliver. The interview starts at about one hour, 37 minutes.

Wagner: I know that you’ve had some kind of good news recently.  I know there are a limited amount of things that you can talk about it because it had to do with regulation counsel, the State Supreme Court dealing with this alleged issue of plagiarism this thing was brought up during the election when you’re running for governor. And frankly you should be governor. But anyway, I am going to give you a chance to say something on its. You are among friends here. No one is going to try to pick at you because I know that there is a limited amount you can say about it. The story is out that you have been essentially exonerated by the attorney regulation counsel and the Supreme Court, which controls attorney licensing and talks about behavior. We are one of the few states where behavior outside of what happens in the legal case or if you break the law influences what can be shaped or done by the Supreme Court.  Pretty much everything that you do can be looked that by the Supreme Court to see if you are a good person to have a license to appear in front of the bar. Scott had this complaint filed and it has taken a long time to get through the system about this issue involving some writings he had done on water law.  And if all you people can remember how this was brought up by his primary opponent in the election, which of course was the Denver Post. I believe they were running for governor. I’m not sure. I want to let Scott just talk to little bit about it. Scott just go ahead.

McInnis: Just a little history to it. I ran for governor. I always considered that the privilege to have the opportunity. We had a great campaign going. I had big dreams for Colorado and where we, as a team, could take the state.  And out of nowhere popped up these allegations in regarding plagiarism. Needless to say we felt very strongly about this, but allegations were filed with the Colorado State Supreme Court as result of this event. And kind of bittersweet news, for over a year we’ve been in an intense investigation and the results of the investigation were just released last week by the State Supreme Court, and they gave us complete vindication.  It supports, obviously, statements and position that I took from the very beginning with this was first, when we first were aware of it. That was about 4 o’clock in the afternoon the afternoon before it was broke, ah put out, by the Denver newspaper. So Laurie and I are very thrilled by the result. We spend most of our time over Grand Junction and although as I said it was bittersweet because it was year-long. Even the people who filed the complaint which was Ethics Watch, which in my opinion is an arm of the Democratic Party, even they acknowledged the investigation of the Supreme Court was very thorough. The findings of the Supreme Court were probably for someone who is kind of an expert of looking at these kind of things, will tell you that the opinion is very strong and certainly terrific news for us. Just a little too late.

Wagner: Well I read several versions of the opinion and the actual letter that I know is out there from regulation counsel.  And it was a fairly strong vindication of you and they brought up some things out there that had not come out during the original piece of this. That you had made it clear that to your researcher that you wanted him to use as must stuff as original possible. Not be lifting anything. And that he believed that some of the comments out there were in the public domain. Probably was not true. That he put in there. And you put the foundation that you were doing the work for on notice that you had a researcher hired. 

McInnis: Well Rick, I can tell you that I have taken a lot of pride over the years. As you know, you and I are both attorneys. Not only did I practice law but I was in the United States Congress. Not only the United States Congress but was in the Colorado House of Representatives where I was the majority leader, and I was also a police officer. Never in my career, never in my career, have I ever had some question my ethics. Or my integrity.  And that is exactly what they tried to do.  They threw everything that they could at us. And at beginning we obviously stated exactly what had occurred and we were vindicated by the Supreme Court that came out the same kind of findings.  Very strong findings because of course they have an investigative arm and they’ve had a year to investigate this. These are professional people.  The Supreme Court and I think anyone out there is going to acknowledge, look,  it probably has more credibility than any investigative group in Colorado. And they should, rightfully.  So we are pleased with the results.  Nonetheless Rick we have been under this kind of…

Wagner: It’s a cloud over a person’s life.

McInnis:  Yes of course it is a cloud so we are pleased with the results. But it was very unfortunate.

Wagner: I’ve told people at my radio show and I might have mentioned it in Greeley when I have hosted to show for Amy when she was out-of-town. I do not like this political sort of regulatory game that gets played.  This happens to involve regulation counsel which I think is especially off-topic for the governor’s race.  If you want to make a point of this and say look this guy did this and we think that is not a good idea for someone who’s running for governor-that’s fine.  But when people start turning the election laws in this case the regulatory counsel as sort of a diversionary tactic from these. Unless there is some major wrongdoing, I am not interested in doing that to political opponents. 

McInnis: Well look what happened Rick. Look at the destruction that it did to us. And I think you’re actually going to see this tool utilized even more in the future. Politics is a tough game. Unfortunately it diverts from the real issues. Some of the shenanigans that have gone on, I think you’re going to see more of it I think in the race. Just in the congressional race we saw this last week in New York where they threw is a straw man to throw the race.

Wagner: We talked about that last hour. We just mentioned it last hour it was my impression that they threw this former Democrat in the race in New York 26. 

McInnis: Not only, Rick, was he a former Democrat, he was a very very wealthy individual, and then he came in and declared, self-declared that he was carrying the Tea Party mantle, and as a result of that, he was able to pull enough votes from the Republican that the Democrat won the race. Now the Democrats like to say that it’s Medicaid, Medicare excuse me. Certainly Medicare is a big issue out there. But, the combination of the fact that the Congressman had to resign in shame—so that’s a disadvantage for the party to start with. Then you throw in there the money that they were able to come up with the straw man. This guy was a Democrat for a long time. He switched to an unaffiliated so we could run as Tea Party. You know, that’s a, it’s not illegal but it’s certainly what I would consider kind of a strategy that is deploying pretty dirty politics. I think you are going to continue to see that. We have a history of it. I mean, clear back to George Washington. You know, ack in those days, it‘s interesting, because having a quote “illegitimate child.” I don’t see how any child is illegitimate. At any rate, back then they would throw that at each other and so on. So, the unfortunate part of it, it cost us dearly, but I hope that it doesn’t discourage people for running for office. It is so critical that we don’t let them beat us down. And I can tell you that Laurie and I are as strong as ever. The results that we saw here were redeeming nonetheless. We just want people continue to have faith in the system. 

Wagner: It makes a person feel better to be redeemed at some point. You can certainly argue something about choices made during the campaign and how you handle stuff, but setting other people’s hounds loose on you to get outside of the questions of the campaign a little bit is something that I just find disturbing.

Wagner: We are back with my guest Scott McInnis and one of the things that I wanted to get Scott in for which is to talk about politics little bit too.He’s interested in politics. [laughs] So I wanted to get his take on a couple of things. Having been in the state Legislature for awhile, what do you think is going on over there in the last year? 

McInnis: Well this is a difficult year for the Legislature because, one, they only did they have their budget situations, but they have a new governor and probably really critical, although it’s not an interest on Main Street, it is the redistricting and reapportionment.

Wagner: Wow, that’s what I wanted to talk about. You are taking my notes and you can’t even see them.

McInnis: Rick, there’s a difference, and it’s easy to confuse. Reapportionment applies to the State House seats. Redistricting applies to the U.S. Congressional seats. 

Wagner: I use them interchangeably but I know that there is a difference.

McInnis: It is easy to confuse them. Interestingly, I saw where, what’s the Congressman? Kucinich. Whatever his name is out of Ohio. I worked for him. Well not for him obviously. I worked with him. He actually is going to be redistricting out of Ohio. He is going to lose his congressional seat.

Wagner: Because they are losing population.

McInnis: Yes he is now talking about moving to Washington State to run as a Congressman out of Washington State in a very liberal district up there. It’s interesting. He was on the news last night. Another thing is that, in Colorado there is, contrary to popular belief, there is no restriction that a state has to elect Congressman out of a particular district. You can elect your Congressman statewide. Now that doesn’t happen in Colorado, and it’s never happened Colorado. But what we have to be particularly cognizant of here in Colorado; how they carve out these districts and what happens.  As you know the Democratic Party took the official position, and they were down here they put together a bill that would split the Western Slope.  Now the only way you can split the Western Slope for example and have enough population to have the two congressional districts is the population would have to be a big community or a big city on the other side. We don’t have big cities over here.  So there are a lot of political tricks that are going on on redistricting.

Wagner: Our ideological nemesis I call them in the newspaper, Boulder County, was going to be paired up with Mesa County.

McInnis: Yeah, what do we have in common with Boulder? Really, I mean it just doesn’t make sense. So it is a busy year for the Legislature. This will go the courts. That’s, in my opinion, what the Democrats wanted to happen from the very beginning.  They do well in the courts on redistricting. So that’s an issue they’re dealing with. And then at the federal level, of course you asked about the state level, but at the federal level, they have massive deficits that they gave to deal with and the presidential election coming up.

 Wagner: That usually means nothing will get done.

McInnis: Well that’s right. Next year’s session will be very interesting. It will be very short session.

Wagner: Yeah and everyone is going to go home to campaign. You were in Congress for a long time. Ten years I think.

McInnis:  Twelve years.

Wagner: Twelve years. So you see that. You can tell it’s an election year, particularly a presidential election year when there is a lot going on. The business of Congress starts getting truncated right there and everybody tries to get out of town.

McInnis: And now you see it the year before. Next year is the election year. But this year, the Democrats are not going to put up a plan, and let’s delay the hard decisions until after the next election. Which means it will be delayed until after the next election.

Wagner: They didn’t even put a budget up. The Democrats didn’t put a budget up.

McInnis: Reed said he is not going to. Doesn’t intent to. SO the legislature will be out pretty soon.  When is their last day? It’s coming up pretty soon. Isn’t it?

Wagner: Yea I just saw something on that.

McInnis: Unless are called back to special session which I don’t think they will be because they did get their budget done. Then redistricting goes to the court. I’m pretty confident that the court is going to leave the Western Slope…well the Western Slope is defined differently. I’m talking about all the mountains from Vail back. Well because Vail, they stuck it to us. I’m pretty confident. Let me put it this way. I would be totally shocked if the courts decide that the interests of the western Colorado in the community interests and community tie-ins would be better served by splitting the Western Slope.

Wagner: It is supposed to be a continuity of interests. It’s not supposed to be competitive districts which is the Democrat talking points all the time. Our listeners over here in Greeley, the fourth congressional district. They are trying to monkey around with that to, what I read, is that Brandan Shaffer who lives in Longmont can run against Corey Gardner.

McInnis: That is exactly right. Corey Gardner has done a fabulous job by the way. He’s a star over in the Greeley area. But they will look at the rural areas. The two areas, the district on the Eastern Slope and the district on the Western Slope. Which have, by the way, a lot in common. Although their waters are primary aquifer, and so on, and our waters are primary surface, etc. But we have a lot of interests with the rural part of part of eastern Colorado…western Colorado. They are going to do the same thing with eastern Colorado. Try and use it to slice up to benefit the city districts. So Corey has got his hands full. Scott Tipton has his hands full. And by the way the state legislatures, their seats are being realigned too. So they have their hands full.

Wagner: Well it’s going to be interesting and we have to keep on top and pay attention and a lot of it is going to happen in the courts like you said. And then that ends up being done by fiat. The processes is not anything that we see. I know that the folks over in Greeley are worried about how this is going to go. They got a great congressman in there now with Corey, and they need to hold on to him. It’s going to carve that baby up.

Back in November, Scott McInnis told The Denver Post that he’d clear his name within a few short months. It wasn’t clear what he meant, but you had to assume something would show that he didn’t deserve the harsh treatment he got as he ran for governor in the last election.

He couldn’t show that he really did not commit plagiarism, could he? I mean, the exact words in McInnis’ water articles, written for the Hasan Family Foundation for $300,000, were lifted from another writer’s work. This was clear and irrefutable, right?

McInnis couldn’t blame the media? Or Dick Wadhams? Or even The Tea Party.

What could clear his name?

I waited impatiently, and no name-clearing happened. I was getting real desperate to know WTF was in McInnis’ mind, and today rolled around.

It turns out that an attorney connected to the Colorado Supreme Court conducted an investigation, at the behest of Colorado Ethics Watch, on whether McInnis’ behavior meets the lawyerly snuff test.

His investigation, indeed, cleans up McInnis a bit, but it doesn’t clear his name, unless you believe throwing people under buses is a good idea.

John Gleason, who conducted the investigation, aired his conclusion in documents quoted by the Grand Junction Sentinel (posted previously here)  this morning:

“Based on the sworn testimony of Mr. Fischer and his contemporaneous emails, personal notes and other documents produced by him, it is clear that in 2005, Mr. McInnis both disclosed to Mr. Fischer that his draft articles may be published by the Hasan Family Foundation and instructed Mr. Fischer (a water law expert but inexperienced author) that he must not plagiarize anyone’s work. …”

So Gleason clears McInnis of dishonest lawyerly conduct.

But does it clear him of slimy, squeezy, mean politican conduct? Does it make his conduct look, ah, gubernatorial, if I can use that word there.

No way.

No one but a lawyer would believe it means much, in the political name clearing business, if emails stated that Rollie Fischer was told not to plagiarize. And he apparently forgot or didn’t read the fine print.

That’s no reason for McInnis to go on TV and blame the plagiarism on Fischer. He should have taken responsibility himself. His name was on it. Fischer was confused, and so were the Hasans, according to the story in the Grand Junction Sentinel today.

Still, we don’t know if today’s news was, in fact, the name-clearing event that McInnis was referring to in November. You have to guess that it was, or at least that he had found correspondence with Fischer and the Hasans that put the blame for the water plagiarism on Fischer.

If so, if McInnis thought this would Shyne up his image, McInnis still doesn’t get it.

His mistake was throwing his research assistant under the bus. He could have survived the plagiarism, probably. But his handling of it sunk his campaign.

He can’t clear his name of those mistakes. That was his problem then, and that’s what he’s going to have to live with.

Now it’s been almost three months since Scott McInnis told The Denver Post he’d clear his name within a couple of months. And we’ve heard nothing.

I’m sorry to harp on this, but I’m desperate to find out how he’s going to do it. It’s a puzzle in my brain that I can’t shake, even though it doesn’t matter, I know. But how is he going to clear his name?

Will Rolly Fischer be involved? Ali Hasan? Craig Silverman? Dick Wadhams? David Lane? Dan Maes?

An upstanding newspaper like The Post shouldn’t drop puzzlers like this into their readers brains (like mine) and leave us dangling and awake at night thinking about it. (Pathetic, I know, but the editors over there might not realize the impact they have on people.)

Post biz columnist Penny Parker, who wrote about McInnis’ promise to get the truth out there, emailed me last month, in response to my questions, that she thought McInnis’ plan was very much a story, not ancient history. This was a big relief to me.

Then she wrote, “Not sure if that story will go to me or to the political reporters at this point.”

Let’s hope it goes somewhere, and fast. My mind is boggled, and I need to move on.

Just before Thanksgiving, when I was thinking of smoked turkey, I read in The Denver Post: “McInnis back on his feet, open to another office run.”

McInnis has his boots on again, I thought to myself. Who’s surprised, seriously?

But still, a couple sentences in the story made me scratch my head more than I usually scratch it when I read about McInnis.

The Post’s Penny Parker, who snagged the great interview, in an subsequent interview with Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman, said she called McInnis after the article was published to find out if he thought it was fair, and McInnis told Parker that he was ok with it.

I couldn’t locate McInnis at Hogan Lovells, because, you recall, he left the firm and moved to Grand Junction.

I tried calling Rolly Fischer, because it certainly appears, from the McInnis quote above, that McInnis has Fischer in mind for a star role in clearing up his name. A very nice person answered the phone at Fischer’s place Friday and told me he probably wouldn’t call me back because of the “situation right now.”

So I emailed Penny Parker. She replied, “I haven’t heard word one from him since he moved back to Grand Junction.”

So, the clock continues to tick, and the Big Question hangs out there:

How in the world will McInnis clear up this bee-sting-like plagiarism misunderstanding and when will he do it?

Scott McInnis likens his gubernatorial disaster to a sting by a honey bee that he got in his youth, according to a front-page Denver Post article today.

And he apparently believes the ouchy bee is The Denver Post, which he mostly blames for his meltdown this year.

Unfortunately, the Post doesn’t bother to defend itself in its front-page article today, but Post Editor Greg Moore, you’ll recall, published a column in July pointing out that the story was reported fairly and that his newspaper doesn’t have a political agenda.

As for McInnis’ claim that the Post’s reporting is responsible for his downfall, anyone with a brain knows that McInnis himself is to blame–though today’s Post doesn’t offer this perspective.

But McInnis is almost undoubtedly correct that this story would have never seen the light of day had not been for the Post. First, it asked all the gubernatorial candidates to release their tax returns, as part of the newspaper’s usual process of asking for financial disclosures from state candidates. McInnis initially refused. But facing public embarassment about this, McInnis eventually released portions of his tax returns to the media. This revealed income of $150,000 from the Hasan Family Foundation, a fact that was first reported in the Post. Later McInnis told KHOW that the money was used to write water articles, and the story evolved from there culminating in The Post publishing the evidence of plagiarism.

A particularly damaging piece of the story was KMGH’s interview with Rolly Fischer, the octogenarian researcher whom McInnis said was the real copy cat. Yet, McInnis isn’t blaming channel 7.

In any case, the news media definitely spotlighted the plagiarism story, as they should have, but they don’t deserve blame for the series of events that led to McInnis’ early exit from the gubernatorial race.

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.

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.

Some say I’m beating my head against the church wall by critiquing conservative talk radio, no matter how reasonable my criticism is. But KOA’s Mike Rosen and KLZ’s Jim Pfaff, both righty radio hosts, recently responded on their air to issues raised in this blog.

With respect to Rosen, you may recall that I asked him and other talk-show hosts if they thought Scott McInnis should withdraw from the gubernatorial race as a result of his plagiarism, given that Rosen advocated firing Ward Churchill.

Rosen responded via email that Ward Churchill’s plagiarism was completely different than that of Scott McInnis. I asked him why he thought this, and he refused to answer.

But he addressed my question later on the air.

On his KOA show July 14, he said, first, that he didn’t want “to give a leftist fuel to quote me and make a bigger issue out of this.”

But, to Rosen’s credit, he went on to answer my question directly:

Ward Churchill was by profession a supposed scholar. And plagiarism coming from somebody who’s sole profession is based on much more honorable treatment of other people’s work is much more serious than the situation Scott McInnis found himself in, especially since Scott has said he hired someone, he hired a researcher, to provide the expertise in this area…. If I had had my druthers, I would have had the University of Colorado go after Ward Churchill and fire him not just for the plagiarism but for his abuse of academic freedom, for casting the University in a bad light based on his behavior and his comments not only in his classroom but at various speaking engagements. The University decided to play it safe and go after Churchill where they thought they could nail him for plagiarism and didn’t want to open that can of worms regarding the abuse of academic freedom. I would have been delighted to see them open up that can of worms regarding academic freedom- I would have fired Churchill for his general proslyletizing in his classroom and the outrageous statements he made while being connected to the University of Colorado and various other places around the country. So I don’t compare Scott McInnis to Ward Churchill.

So, there you have Rosen’s view on the matter, for which I thank him.

This month, I also asked Jim Pfaff, a conservative activist and talk-radio host on 560 KLZ, if he would please ask McInnis why he claimed to have a “zero rating” from NARAL during his years in Congress.

McInnis told Pfaff:

“My record is pro-life. When I was in Congress, I had zero rating by NARAL. And that’s very easy for people to look at.”

McInnis actually had an above-zero rating more often than not.

To his credit, Pfaff sort of asked McInnis about this, as I requested he do, Aug. 5.

Jim Pfaff: You mentioned that last time we were on the broadcast that you had a zero percent rating with NARAL- [Jason Salzman] pulled out NARAL’s numbers…. A little earlier, 1995 through 1999 you did not have a zero percent rating but, quite frankly, it went from 45 percent to 7 percent and zero from 2000 to 2004. I mean, you and I had talked about the fact that on the issue of protecting life that you had moved from a pro-choice position way back to a very solidly pro-life one. I mean it’s honest of Jason to point out that you did not have a zero rating those early years, but man you had four straight years when that changed. I’d love it if you could remember what you shared with me privately, because we did not talk about it on the broadcast, how important this is.

Scott McInnis: I’d be happy to do that. Well, it’s important. I struggled with the issue. When I was younger, I was never pro-choice, but I was inclined to go that way. I would sit down with pro-life people and I could never answer that question they had, Jim. And the question was, Scott, when does life begin? I thought how can life begin at any point other than conception? And finally I reached the conclusion, as a lot of people have, a lot of people struggle with this issue. Look, life begins at conception. If life begins at conception, how could you be pro-choice? I couldn’t. So, I changed my position.

Thanks to Pfaff, any of his show’s regular listeners who thought McInnis had a zero rating by NARAL during all his years in Congress now know that he did not.

UPDATE: I’ve been informed that the Colorado Statesman previously published the fact that McInnis wanted a fellowship extension. The Statesman reported online July 12:

In 2006, when it came time to consider renewing McInnis’ fellowship, [Malik] Hasan said the former congressman’s job performance made the foundation’s decision an easy one.”The feeling was, if he did a good job, we would review it and extend it for another year or two,” Hasan said. “After two years, Scott called and asked if it would be extended. I said, ‘In good faith, I cannot recommend that to the foundation board.’”  The fellowship terminated after running out its original period, Hasan said.

Even if I got it wrong on the Chieftain’s scoop, and I apologize, you’ll still find your perfect Sunday reading material in the Pueblo Chieftain today.

It’s about the relationship between Scott McInnis and Malik Hasan that led to the Hasan Family Foundation giving McInnis a two-year $300,000 fellowship to write and speak about Colorado water issues.

You won’t find too much that’s earth-shattering in the piece, but one bit of information came out that deserved its own headline: McInnis wasn’t satisfied with his two-year $300,000 deal from the Hasan foundation. He wanted to extend it for a year, according to Hasan.

The Chieftain reported:

“He was interested in an extension” of the fellowship, Hasan said. “So he submitted this flood of articles that I believe Rolly Fischer helped with. At that point, we said, …Scott, you have got to be kidding.’ ”

Other than that news item, today’s Chieftain opens a window on a world, occupied by the Hasans and McInnis, that you know is out there but still you wonder if it really does exist.

I would have liked to have heard from others who knew both the Hasans and McInnis, and different views on the McInnis-Hasan relationship should have been included. But for what this piece is — basically an interview with Malik Hasan–it’s great reading.