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.

Asked by the Colorado Independent July 22 why $112,500 of his income from the Hasan Family Foundation was paid to “Invest 2, LLC,” McInnis said, “There is no reason.”

Of the $300,000 he got for his water fellowship, $112,000 was paid by the foundation to “Invest 2, LLC,” not to McInnis directly.

Reporters should investigate 1) how this came to pass and 2) whether McInnis used the arrangment to avoid paying income tax or evade taxes completely.

Today, I’ll shed a little light on the first question.

Dr. Aliya Hasan, who’s a board member of the Hasan Family Foundation, told me last week that McInnis requested that the foundation secretary pay the $112,500 to Invest 2, LLC.

“He just randomly asked us one day to do it,” Hasan told me. “He asked our secretary.”

Hasan said she did not know why McInnis did this.

Reporters should ask McInnis why he requested that the Hasan Foundation  pay Invest 2, if, as McInnis told the Independent, there was “no reason” for it.

With respect to the questin of whether McInnis paid income tax on this money, as I wrote before, Invest 2, LLC, was not listed among McInnis’ assets in The Denver Post back in April, when the McInnis campaign allowed a Post reporter to review portions of McInnis’ tax returns starting in 2005. Companies with similar names were listed in the Post article as assets, but Invest 2, LLC, was not among them. The Colorado Independent also looked at the McInnis tax returns in April and at his congressional disclosures, and did not see Invest 2 as one of McInnis’ assets. (McInnis did not allow reporters to make copies of his tax filings, so the Independent couldn’t check his returns again as of last week.)

Invest 2, LLC, was dissolved in 2006, so if McInnis was an owner, the entity should have been listed on his tax returns. McInnis told the Independent he paid taxes on all the Hasan foundation money.

If McInnis was not an owner of Invest 2, then the big question is why he paid the Hasan money to owners of Invest 2. The owners of Invest 2 are not known, but Lori McInnis, Scott McInnis’ wife, is named on the Colorado Secretary of State’s website as the registered agent for the corporation.

The Post reported that other McInnis LLC’s, like “Invest 1,” were partnerships with his five siblings and his wife.

Reporters should ask McInnis for proof that Invest 2 was included on his income tax. And, if he was not an owner of the company, why did he pay others the Hasan money?

This is basic follow-up reporting on a major story that has yet to be done.

I love it when any candidate (Democrat, Republican, or American Constitution Party) tells a reporter to prove him wrong and the reporter proceeds to prove him wrong. You’d think even talk-radio hosts would jump at such opportunities.

Back in May, and I apologize for getting to this so late, Scott McInnis threw down such a challenge during an appearance on the Jim Pfaff show on KLZ radio.

McInnis said:

“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.”

He’s right, it is very easy to look at, and Pfaff himself should have gone and looked for it, but he didn’t. So I did, like others have done, at least partially, in the past.

It turns out McInnis indeed got a zero NARAL rating for five of 12 years in Congress, but for seven years he did not, meaning he got a greater-than-zero rating (between 7% and 45%) more times than he got a zero rating.

Here are scores from NARAL Pro-Choice America’s Congressional Record on Choice for McInnis when he served in Congress, and please email me if you want documentation: 1993, 25%; 1994, perfect record (Same as Pat Schroeder); 1995, 45%; 1996, 33%; 1997, 13%; 1998, 22%; 1999, 7%. Then he got a zero rating in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. Even McInnis campaign strategist Mike Hesse told the Denver Post back in November that McInnis got a zero NARAL rating only near the end of his time in Congress. So Hesse was more clear than McInnis.

Pfaff is known to ask pointed questions to all his guests on the abortion issue, so I asked him if it occurred to him to check McInnis on his assertion that when he was “in Congress,” he got “zero rating by NARAL.”

“I believe that you see a pattern with him of moving forward on the issue and realizing he needed to come to better conclusions,” Pfaff told me. “He was wrong on that issue for many years.”

I pointed out to Pfaff that, regardless of McInnis’ evolving position on abortion, he made a misleading statement on his radio show, and Pfaff is the host.  I suggested to Pfaff that on his next talk-radio show, he set the record straight for his listeners, who might think McInnis got a zero rating by NARAL throughout his career in Congress, not just for five of 12 years.

“We’ll have to see,” he responded. “I mean, we’ll talk to him about whatever is most important to talk about. As a conservative, and I have a strong track record in the pro-life pro-family movement, I don’t limit my viewpoints to those opinions.  I believe in free market economics. I believe that we should protect life from conception to natural death, but I also believe we should protect life all the way in the middle by keeping government off our backs. I’m going to question candidates on a whole range of issues.

He added later: “I want to know why media critics aren’t criticizing the media for not pointing out that Democrats shut out pro-lifers, shut out free-market- thinking blue dog Democrats. They get shut out. The media never point out that there’s an assault on pro-life free market Democrats.”

I told Pfaff I would not criticize the news media for this because I don’t believe it’s true, but I said I’d talk to him more about it sometime.

Excerpt of Interview with Scott McInnis, May 17, Jim Pfaff show, KLZ radio, 560-AM.

Jim Pfaff: What is, though, very important is the discussions that have happened regarding your position on the life issue and your participation in an organization that’s been called Republicans for Choice. Your name showed up on a letterhead in 1998 while you were in Congress. And you’ve obviously taken some steps to try to explain what all this meant. First of all, how did your name end up on that letter? Explain that first.

Scott McInnis: Let’s start at the very beginning by saying I’m pro-life. I’ll be a pro-life governor. And when I become governor I will do just exactly like Gov. Owens did and that is we will defund the funding that Ritter and Hickenlooper would keep in place in regards to Planned Parenthood. So there’s no question about that. Second, in regards to my record, which is the beauty of what I have. Nobody else out there, they all say they are pro-life, but nobody has a record. 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.

In an interview aired Wednesday, Colorado Public Radio asked gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis if he had kept his promise, which he made 14 days ago, to give back the $300,000 he got from the Hasan Family Foundation for his bungled two-year water fellowship.

McInnis said he had not given the money back yet, but he might do so later.

“I’ve got to make it right,” he told Colorado Public Radio. “That’s my point. What shape that takes, whether it’s the funds or whatever it is, it’s going to have to be done. I have got to make it right.”

So what is the Hasan Family Foundation’s thinking about the situation? That’s what journalists should be asking, given that it doesn’t look like McInnis is necessarily planning on returning the dough, as promised.

To find out, I spoke with Dr. Aliya Hasan, a foundation board member who eloquently defended the foundation July 16 on KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman show.

I asked Hasan whether McInnis had contacted the foundation about returning the money.

She said that McInnis called to apologize to her father, Malik Hasan, on Tuesday morning, July 13, after the plagiarism story hit the news on Monday. They didn’t discuss repayment at that point, but the foundation put out a statement by the end of the week that it wanted its money back. McInnis announced on the same day that he would honor the foundation’s request and return the $300,000.

The foundation was ready to work with McInnis to get the money back, as he had promised publicly, but McInnis never contacted the foundation to work out the details, according to Hasan.

“We didn’t hear anything from him at all,” Hasan told me. “So finally we asked our lawyer this week to send a letter formally asking for our money back.”

“We heard back from Scott’s lawyer,” she continued. “There was nothing in his letter about paying us back or about proposing a way to pay us back. The letter said that Scott wants to meet with you to make this right. You know, what he always says, I want to make this right.”

She told me the foundation doesn’t want to be mean or hurt the Republicans, but McInnis’ evasiveness has forced the foundation to consider legal action.

“The general consensus was that he is trying to wiggle out of this,” Hasan told me.  “He’s spoken to my dad already, and we’ve made it quite clear what our position is. There’s nothing more to discuss except the terms for how he is going to pay us back, which we felt our lawyer could do. And our lawyer advised us that it’s probably not a good idea to meet with him, since we are considering legal action, and we agreed. It’s one of those anything-you-say-can-be-used-against-you situations.”

“And so we’ve basically said that we are not going to meet with him,” she said. “We want our money back. Tell us how you are going to do this. And if we don’t hear back from you, then we are going to proceed to legal action. There’s no point in dragging this out further.”

Hasan said that the foundation wants to use the McInnis money for projects that benefit the community, which is the purpose of the foundation, and that’s the underlying motivation for the potential legal action.

“We’re not vindictive about what happened,” said Hasan. “We’re upset, yes, but we just want our money back.”

There’s no firm date for filing the lawsuit, Hasan told me.

It’s been six days now since Scott McInnis promised to repay $300,000 in water-fellowship funds paid to him by Hasan Family Foundation, but it appears that McInnis has not returned any money yet and that he hasn’t even contacted the foundation about returning the cash, according to Muhammad Ali Hasan, the eclectic film maker, former political candidate, and Hasan family member.

Emphasizing that he “cannot speak for the Foundation” because he’s not on the Board, Hasan told me via email that in “discussions with Board members,” he’s gathered this information:

“1. To my knowledge, McInnis has not returned the money as of yet – I have also heard that McInnis has not contacted the Foundation since his repayment announcement – I cannot confirm for sure, but that is what I’m hearing

2. I’m pretty sure the Foundation will inform the public about any returned monies.”

Journalists should ask McInnis’ ASAP about specific plans for repayment, including specific dates and amounts. With the story all over the news, this is basic follow-up that needs to be done.

The question has become more complicated since we now know that $112,500 of McInnis’ $300,000 from the Hasan foundation was paid to a corporation called “Invest 2, LLC,” not to McInnis personally.

This corporation was dissolved on July 27, 2006, raising the question of how McInnis plans to refund money paid to a corporation that no longer exists.

Furthermore, we don’t know if Scott McInnis was even an owner of this corporation–or how many other owners it might have had. If other owners were involved, as is likely due to the structures of McInnis other LLCs, then the question arises of whether McInnis will ask the co-owners of Invest 2 LLC to return the Hasan money they presumably received as partial owners of Invest 2, LLC.

UPDATE: Asked today by the Colorado Independent why he asked the Hasan Foundation to pay him through Invest 2 LLC, McInnis said, “There is no reason.”

The answers to these questions won’t be easy to find, but they obviously deserve further investigation, and certainly questions for Lori McInnis (as well as Scott) are in order, as she is the only person formally associated with Invest 2, LLC.

Invest 2, LLC, was not listed among the corporations mentioned in The Denver Post back in April, when the McInnis campaign allowed a Post reporter to review but not copy portions of McInnis’ tax returns starting in 2005. Companies with similar names were listed in the Post article as assets, but Invest 2, LLC, was not among them. Here’s a portion of the Post article:

Over the years, McInnis listed Invest Partnership, Invest 1 and S & L McInnis LLP as assets. All were various investments with some or all of his five siblings and wife, his campaign said. The partnerships invested in real estate, oil and gas, and water.

So, given that we don’t have access to McInnis’ income-tax returns, we also don’t know whether he paid income tax on the $112,500 of the Hasan money that was apparently paid to Invest 2 LLC.

Reporters should turn to Scott and Lori McInnis for clarity about this complex topic.

Here’s a nagging detail about Scott McInnis’ Hasan Fellowship that’s slipped through the cracks in the media.

Why did McInnis run $112,500 of his $300,000 payment from the Hasan Family Foundation through a company called, “Scott McInnis Invest 2 LLC?”

McInnis was paid $150,000 in 2005, and IRS records from the foundation show the money was paid to “Scott McInnis.”

McInnis was paid $37,500 in 2007, and foundation records show his check was again paid to “Scott McInnis.” (This was for work in 2006.)

But sandwiched between those two outlays was a payment in 2006 for $112,500 to “Scott McInnis Invest 2 LLC.”

There could easily be nothing illegal about McInnis claiming $112,500 of the Hasan money through a corporation that he’s associated with. Even if  the purpose of “Scott McInnis Invest 2 LLC” had nothing to do with freelance writing, speaking, or related activities, the company could take the Hasan money as income, I’m told by accountants, though in other states corporate income apparently has to be related to the purpose of the corporation.  (I can’t figure out what ”Scott McInnis Invest 2 LLC” did or who owned it, though there’s some hints on Google that “Invest 2 LLC” might be associated with Lori McInnis.)

But if the corporation had multiple owners, and McInnis has said that his business activities involved family members and others, there could be tax avoidance issues. In other words, the income from McInnis’ writing activities may have been spread to his corporate c0-owners, like perhaps his children, who had lower tax brackets than McInnis, and thus less tax was paid. This might have sweetened the ”sweet” deal a bit.

In a June 16 posting on the Nonprofit Quarterly blog, Rick Cohen, who’s a former director of the Naional Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, wrote: “It’s pretty rare, we think, that foundation or academic fellows are paid as LLC’s rather than individuals.” Cohen pointed out that the Hasan Foundation’s only other fellow, “a Professor Albar Ahmad, was paid directly rather than as a corporation, albeit for only $30,000.”

Again, there’s obviously no proof McInnis did anything illegal here, but we don’t know enough yet to be sure.

So, does anyone have a clue what “Invest 2 LLC” is? Or “Scott McInnis Invest 2 LLC?” If so, tell a reporter, because none has dug into this.

Journalists may not like to think of themselves as grade-school teachers for public officials and candidates, but they often serve this function.  Are candidates following the rules? Who’s at fault when candidates fight? Are they doing what they said they’d do?

In the case of McInnis, journalists have fulfilled this role in catching McInnis’ plagiarism. A good teacher, particularly for older students, does basic plagiarism checks regularly.

Grade school teachers also need to make sure their students’ punishments are received and completed.

And that’s where things stand with McInnis. He’s agreed to one punishment (more might come), which is to give the Hasan Family Foundation its $300,000 back.

Now reporters need to make sure McInnis follows through.

There are two questions that need to be answered by McInnis and, if he won’t answer them, the Hasan Foundation.

When will you return the money?

Will you make a public announcement when the money is returned?

I emailed these questions to McInnis spokesman Sean Duffy this morning, and he quickly replied:

 “That’s a matter between Scott and the Hasan family, as Scott said in his statement last week,” Duffy emailed me.

As a grade-school teacher will tell you, it’s not good enough to leave punishments to old friends to work out, even if they are apparently fighting at the moment, particularly if the track record on basic honesty of one of the combatants is questionable.

 Journalists have uncovered information (plagiarism and other alleged lies) that partisans on both sides of the aisle agree raise questions about the integrity of McInnis. In evaluating McInnis going forward, the public needs to know the specifics about how and when he’s making amends for his past wrongs.

It’s not enough for McInnis to say he’ll sit down and make it right with the Hasans in private. This needs to be addressed in the light of TV cameras.

Journalists should track this closely for us by asking McInnis directly about it, and staying on the question.

Should we hold public officials to the same standards as writers when it comes to plagiarism?

I emailed this question to former Rocky Mountain News Editor John Temple,  who’s now leading an online journalism experiment in Hawaii.

As a veteran editor, he’s obviously thought a lot about plagiarism. In what was, I believe, the last major instance of plagiarism in Denver, the Rocky’s Deputy Editorial Page Editor Thom Beal resigned in 2005 after it was revealed by 5280 Magazine that he lifted wording from a Washington Post article. Beal also copied a phrase from the Daily Howler. Temple wrote an item in the Rocky personally apologizing for “this breach of our trust with you, our readers.”

Temple emailed me:

“I don’t think plagiarism is governed by professional boundaries. We saw what happened when Joe Biden plagiarized Neil Kinnock. Nobody should take somebody else’s words and use them without crediting the original source.”

I don’t know who would disagree with this. It’s clear that plagiarism is wrong, regardless of who commits it.

But how big a deal should be made of it? Did yesterday’s news, that McInnis plagiarized a couple passages for an op-ed and floor speech, merit The Post’s front page? I’d say yes, but only because of the context—that he had been caught in a bigger plagiarism scandal the day before, involving hundreds of thousands of dollars of foundation money.  The op-ed lapse would have been news either way, even if accepting opinion pieces from interest groups is common practice in Washington. But I don’t think it would have merited front-page treatment had McInnis’ water plagiarism not been on the front-page the day before.

Today’s news that Former Heritage Foundation scholar Daryl Plunk allegedly gave McInnis permission to use passages of his work does not change the news calculus. As Post Editor Greg More told The Post:

“It is an old ploy to blame the media for bad news. Allegedly having permission to copy someone else’s words or thoughts doesn’t necessarily mean that’s OK, but that is for others to decide.”

I think Moore got it right. And he’s also right that others will decide the fate politicians, while editors dictate what happens to reporters who plagiarize. 

“In my industry, an abuse like this one means you clean out your desk and go begging,” Chuck Plunkett wrote in the Spot blog Tuesday.  

So the immediate fate of a writer who plagiarizes is clear, while the immediate remifications for a politician are obviously not. Witness McInnis.

KHOW’s Dan Caplis isn’t known for surprising us when it comes to conservative issues. He usually toes the line.

But Caplis, who toyed with a Senate run this year, surprised me yesterday, I must say, when he leapt in front of his brethren and said on the radio that gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis should withdraw from the race. He said:

I believe [McInnis] is a man of integrity….

In my view, you have some major mistakes there that raise question marks for voters who don’t know these people the way we do.

And when you look at Scott McInnis, there’s a case when you can bet millions of dollars will go into reminding Coloradans or informing any who haven’t heard yet that Scott got $300,000 to write a handful of water articles that he didn’t write himself and that were plagiarized by somebody to boot….

If you are truly committed to having a conservative elected, you look at that scenario and say, that’s suicide. Why in the world would we do that?