Conservative talk radio is probably at its worst when bigotry against Muslims fills the air.

You don’t hear it all the time, or on all the Denver shows, but it’s out there.

I thought I’d see how long it would take me to find an example, and within an hour of looking online, there it was, in the form of Dr. Robert Greer, being interviwed by Doug Kellett, who was subbing for Jon Caldara on KOA Aug. 25.

With nothing but encouragement by Kellett, Greer said:

The way that the religion of Islam has been presented in our country, and unfortunately even with President Bush, who I admire, but in this case I think he made a mistake, is that it presented Islam as fundamentally a peaceful religion, and it was only the fringe elements, the extremists, that were the problem people, who we had to be concerned about. And therefore it left a false impression about this religion.

Kellett didn’t ask Greer what we should do about “the problem people,” but you do have to wonder, especially later when Greer tells us that the Quran leads Muslims to Sharia Law, which, in turn, leads to jihad, stoning, extreme subjugation of women, and more.

As I’ve discussed before, Muslim scholars refute this. They say literal interpretations of Sharia are practiced by extremists and tribalists, and that, in reality, Islam is much like other major religions, and the vast majority of the two billion or so Muslims worldwide are not extremists at all.

You’d never know this, if you listen to some talk radio, because differing views aren’t presented. That’s no surprise, and the one-sidedness of right-wing radio is frustrating to a progressive/socialist/bleeding heart like me.

But when bigotry is in full swing during a one-sided conversation on the radio, your feelings change from frustration to fear pretty fast.

That’s why the mainstream media shouldn’t overlook these subterranean views. Somehow I don’t think they’d be ignored if Judaism or Christianity were under attack in the same way, even on the radio.

Yet, when I searched for the word “Sharia” in The Denver Post, I came up with only one staff-written news story in the last year. Only twice has the word appeared in staff-written news stories in the last five years, and one of those was just a passing mention.

A few opinion articles addressed the Sharia topic, and it was mentioned in an excellent Post editorial and some columns by Ed Quillen.

The Post editorial, published after the GOP presidential debate in June, called out GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, who made anti-Muslim statements during the debate. He later sort of backed away from these.

But I particularly liked  The Post’s observation that, “Maybe the low point of the debate was that none of Cain’s rivals bothered to challenge him.”

This is exactly why news reporters should find ways to write about the undercurrent of anti-Islamic sentiment that’s out there. To air it out, so it can be challenged.

There are different ways to do to this, but one is to raise the issue when the Presidential candidates start traipsing through Colorado. If reporters have any access to them, that is.

Mitt Romney, for example, who’s coming through town this week, doesn’t condemn the Muslim religion. As he said in a 2007 speech:

Merely closing our eyes and hoping that radical Jihad will go away is not an acceptable answer. And American military action cannot change the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of Muslims. Only Muslims will be able to defeat the violent radicals. But we can help them. And we must help them. For the consequences – for America and for all nations – of a radicalized Islamic world, possessing nuclear weapons, are unthinkable.

I’m not sure what Romney means here. He could be saying that there are hundreds of millions of Muslim jihadists out there. Or he could be saying there are hundreds of millions who are on the fence, who are potentially jihadists? Or, if we win the minds of these hundreds of millions, out of the worldwide population of over 2 billion, then we’ll stop the extremists. And, in any case, what’s Romney’s plan for winning the hearts and minds of Muslims overseas? I’m not sure what he’s thinking, but I’d like to know.

And what do he and the other GOP presidential candidates say to those bigots who denounce Islam and say that Muslims, not just extremists, are a threat to our country?

On the Caplis and Silverman show Aug. 19, Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) accused the Obama administration of speeding up the citizenship process for illegal immigrants, so they can become U.S. citizens in time for the 2012 election.

Even in today’s world of nonstop political attacks, that’s a serious accusation.

It came as Coffman was discussing Obama’s decision to de-prioritize deportations of illegal immigrants who pose no security threat. This, Coffman said, was just “one piece of the puzzle.”

“There’s another piece of this puzzle,” Coffman continued. “What the Administration is doing, is taking a very aggressive move in the people that have illegal status and moving them through citizenship and waving all the fees and waving anything they can to get the process done in time for 2012. That’s something I would love to see the media focus on.”

I thought I’d take Coffman up on his request, since Caplis and Silverman let his salvo fly out the window unchallenged.

If you take two-minutes to glance at the basic guidelines for becoming a U.S. citizen, it’s immediatly clear that illegal immigrants need not apply to be citizens, much less get their immigration fees waived. With rare exceptions, you have to be a legal permanent resident (also known as a holder of a “green-card“), for three-to-five years to meet our country’s citizenship requirements.

So, unless I’m missing something, Coffman’s allegation about about Obama rushing “illegal immigrants” onto the voting rolls has to be a pure falsehood.

I also couldn’t find any proof that Obama is waiving fees to speed up the naturalization process for legal immigrants, in a secret effort to influence the 2012 election.

If Coffman were right about this, Obama’s co-conspirators would be found at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), the branch of the Department of Homeland Security that handles immigration, including fee waivers.

Asked whether her agency was speeding up the processing of citizenship applications in advance of 2012, Angelica M. Alfonso-Royals, Deputy Chief of the USCIS Office of Communications, stated via email:

The suggestion that USCIS has accelerated either the processing of citizenship cases or the processing of fee waiver requests for any reason is without merit. To this point, USCIS, back in 2009, solicited feedback and heard stakeholder concerns regarding a standard and consistent fee waiver policy. This feedback informed the creation of a new fee waiver form in 2010 that provides transparency and consistency, allowing us to better serve financially disadvantaged individuals seeking immigration benefits. That said, each individual case is unique and decided based solely on its merits.

Alfonso-Royals sent me figures showing that her agency, under Obama, has granted more fee waivers for people seeking to be full U.S. citizens than it did under Bush. So far this fiscal year, about 45,000 fees for the citizenship application (the N-400 form) have been waived , 19,000 were waived in FY 2010,  7,000 in FY 2009, 8,000 in FY 2008, and 5.000 in FY 2007.

The USCIS charges fees, which cover 90 percent of the USCIS budget, for lots of other immigration-related applications, not just for the application for naturalization. For example, there’s an application, with a fee, to obtain a green card. Waivers for all types of fees have increased during the Obama Administration (150,000 total waivers in FY 2011, 101,000 in FY 2010, 64,000 in FY 2009, 51,000 in FY 2008, and 35,000 in FY2007, according to the USCIS).

Fees are waived for individuals facing financial hardship and other criteria, including household income of below 150% of the poverty level. (Here’s the fee-waiver form. Prior to 2010, applicants could receive fee waivers, but there was no official fee-waiver application form.)

The increased number of fee waivers does not translate into more people actually becoming U.S. citizens with voting rights. The total number of people who went through the naturalization process has decreased during the Obama Administration (about 676.000 in FY 2010, about 744,000 in FY 2009, about 1,047,000 in FY 2008, 660,000 in FY 2007, and 702,000 in FY 2006), according to USCIS data.

So in the comfort of the Caplis and Silverman Show, Coffman asked the media to spotlight his accusation about the Obama Administration swelling the voter rolls with illegal immigrants. The radio hosts didn’t do it, so I did, and no matter how you look at it, Coffman’s attack looks like misinformation, based on wrong or incomplete facts.

Caplis and Silverman should set their audience straight on this matter–and other reporters should air out this apparent misinformation further.

Here’s the audio clip of Coffman on KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman Aug. 19:

The Chairman of the El Paso County GOP Eli Bremer appearted on Grassroots Radio Colorado Tuesday to disucss various issues roiling El Paso Republicans.

For those of you who’ve been following the story of the El Paso GOP, nothing has changed much there, but El Paso GOP Secretary Sarah Anderson is hoping that an upcoming mediation session among her, Bremer, State GOP Chair Ryan Call, and others will resolve the issues.

A chunk of Tuesday’s segment with Bremer was dedicated to discussing the definition of a “country club Republican.”

Here’s a partial transcript below. You may think as a progressive, I’m just trotting this out with amusement. Yes, there’s some of that, but having voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, I understand why people fight the party establishment, and no one would dispute that Democrats have their own “limousine liberals.” So I think you’ll find this discussion thought provoking no matter where you sit on the political spectrum. And it made for a great radio segment.

The day after this discussion occurred, on the same radio show, Anderson said Bremer himself was a country club Republican.

Bremer: We had a caller [on another radio show] who mentioned country club Republican. And this has been something that, to a certain extent, I’ve scratched my head over for a while and questioned what is it that people are attacking. So there was part of that, but I kind of wanted to get to the root of, who are we attacking as a country club Republican, and so I raised the question, somewhat in jest, would Dagny Taggart, in some people’s minds, be considered a country club Republican.

Now I actually went on to Wikipedia afterwards and looked this up, because it was the best definition, or the only definition I could find, and it said, a country club Republican is an expression emplyed, usually pejoratively, to describe certain members of the United States Republican Party. Some of the characteristics attributed to a country club Republicans are a higher than average income or wealth, a lack of sympathy with the lower income citizens, and liberal views on abortion, gay rights, and other social issues. They are also said to put less emphasis and value on religion and have attended more prestigious colleges than most other Repbublican Party members.

And so I was trying to open up the debate of, what does this actually mean? Are we turning on ourselves in a way we shouldn’t be. And who is it that we are opposed to with these folks? More to open up a debate than anything else.

Jason Worley, Grassroots Radio host (KLZ 560-AM): Then, let me ask you. Is that what you think is a country club Republican, Wikipedia’s definition, because I have my own.

Bremer: This is what I wanted to bring out in the discussion is, what does it actually mean? Because, by that definition, which is the one most people would look to first. When you Google something, that’s what you do in this day and age. By that definition, Dagny Taggart would be a country club Republican. But I don’t think that’s how a log of people are using it. But I do think there is so much confusion out there that we in the conservative and Liberty movements could potentially  run the risk of running into class warfare as opposed to saying, you know what we want, whether you are a high earner, a medium earner, or a low earner, we want government to get the heck off our backs and get out of our way.

Worley: …If you honestly just think the government to get out of our way, I’m kind of surprised at some of the people who come out of El Paso County. But let me just say, a country club Republican is someone who votes Democrat most of the time because they’ve made their money. They are all for the kind of corporate welfare or government schemes…You know what, they don’t care if they have to pay slightly higher taxes. Thatt’s not a big deal to them. What they care about is they have their position, and pretty much to hell with everybody else.

Bremer: Well, I think that’s a valid critique. I don’t think it’s the most common colloquial definition that the average person would know. Because the average person would go Google it, and see what’s out there. And, again, I’d agree with you on that. Republicans who are out there pushing for bigger government are bad Republicans. I’m totally with you on that. But one of the concerns I have, is are we looking at people like the Dagny Taggarts and saying if you are out there and you run a big business, and you’re successful, and you’re putting hundreds of thousands of people to work, you must be somehow bad. I don’t agree with that. I think the people who are out there leading industry and providing goods and services. They are good people. So long as they are in agreement with us that want less governmentr and they want the freedom to do what they want with their business.

Worley: That I would agree with…but when you talk about big-government Republicans, it seems to me that we’ve got some of those coming out of El Paso County in the form of Rep. Amy Stephens putting SB 200 down our throat. …

Bremer: The less confusing term would then be big-government Republicans, as opposed to country club Republicans. Because what my concern is, is that it’s fair game, and one of the best things that’s come out of the Liberty Movement and Tea Party, is to hold Republicans’ feet to the fire and say, you all should be for smaller and more efficient government. But what I’ve seen ocassionally, and what I don’t want to see this converted into, is class warfare, saying if you’re a country-club Republican, you have a lot of money, you drive a nice car, you live in a nice house, somehow you’re a bad person because of this.

Worley: Eli, I can guarantee you that nobody in the Liberty movement or Tea Party is making that argument…. We have a problem with Romneys of the world…

Bremer: If you guys got Internet, I just pulled it up on my Blackberry, Google country club Repbublican and one of the first hits you are going to get is an accusation that Rand Paul is a country club Republican, which, again, the term is not being used in the same way, and you can see the damage that can be done by a term being misunderstood. Look no further than Congressman Lamborn and I think he would tell you how destructive that can be at times. My point was to bring up the discussion of what we stand for. And I think we stand for less government. We stand for people going out and being entrepreneurs, creating jobs, creating goods and services that don’t exist and doing it without the help of the government. And if you Google country club Republican, which I think most people would do, that’s the definition you’re going to find of a country club Republican. So i think it’s important maybe to change the lingo or to make sure people get it because the average person who hears it thinks if you belong to a country club, or if you’re a fiscal conservative, and that’s your point for being in the Republican Party, you’re somehow a bad Republican.

Worley: And let me be very clear why the term country club Republican has been used by the Liberty Movement. It is because the old school Republicans who don’t want new players in the field, like the anarchists, out there…You have a Representative, Larry Liston. I stood within 10 feet of Larry Liston and heard him put down as losers who shouldn’t take part in the Party, and I am paraphrasing. Now that’s a Republican? That’s a Republican at an Independence Institute event? Seriously Eli…I’m getting worked up here because this is a straw man..

Bremer: I would agree with you. I think the whole idea of a country club Republican is a bit of a straw man. And that’s my concern. I am totally with you, big government Republicans are bad folks to have out there.

Worley: Then why are we going after people who attack big-government Republicanism within the El Paso Country Republican Party?

Bremer: We’re not. The short answer is, we’re not. The long answer is, I view, and many others view, that the party’s job, and  that I as the head of the Party, and that the party establishment, should not be out there as an unaccountable arbiter of ideology. You know, dictatorships seem like a great idea when you first set them up. If you set up Mother Theresa as a dictator, 30 years later you’re going to come back and people are getting their heads cut off. …

You could probably think of a lot of ways I could spend my time more productively than debating  KOA’s Mike Rosen about whether The Denver Post has a “liberal bias.” 

I mean, I could check Twitter. Then I could check Twitter again. And again. Or I could pet my unbelievably annoying cat. Or there’s a podcast of  Grassroots Radio Colorado on KLZ 560 AM waiting for me.

But I exchanged emails with Rosen anyway.

I started the thread by sending him a post I wrote about his former KOA colleague Steve Kelley.

Rosen: Jason, Just curious: have you ever complained about the left-wing line-up on AM 760? Mike

Jason: Hi Mike. I hope you’re well. I’ve praised the diversity of opinion on The Post’s editorial page. J

Rosen: I don’t think u answered my question.

Jason: Right. I didn’t. Sorry. I have not criticized AM 760 for its lineup. I think it provides a bit of balance in a talk radio world that tilts way right. But I don’t like all the talkers on AM760. I like Sirota, but he’s too hard on Obama and the Dems, even though I relate to him having voted for Nader myself in 2000. I don’t really like Ed Schultz. I think Thom Hartmann is generally excellent.

I’ve pointed out that talk radio on the major stations is dominated by right-leaning shows. I’ve suggested trying more left-leaning shows, maybe a Caplis-and-Silverman type show with a real lefty to counter a rightie like Caplis, though I would not dump Caplis and Silverman because I think it’s a good show. Nor would I suggest dumping your show, though your print column could go.  (I think you’re better on the radio than in print.)

I like diverse opinions, but the far right gets more air across the media spectrum these days than the far left. I don’t think that’s good. I’ve complimented the news department at KOA for its spot news coverage. I also support local programming, so KOA gets credit from me in that regard, even if the lineup is far from perfect for me. J

Rosen: I’d agree that there are more conservatives on talk radio than liberals. But that’s because they tend to attract larger audiences than left-wing hosts.  On the other hand, so-called news programming on network TV is dominated by liberals hosts and a liberal agenda.  Fox’s 3 million cable viewers is overwhelmed by the more than 20 million viewers of evening news shows on ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS.  Have you ever called for more balance there? The lineup on AM 760 isn’t just liberal, it’s radical left; farther left of center than the average conservative on talk radio is right of center.

Jason:  I don’t believe the mainstream media has a liberal bias. You make this accusation about local media, like The Denver Post, all the time, and you don’t have a credible study to back it up. You just assert it based on anecdotes, just like a leftie could do based on anecdotes. I’d say the lineup on AM 760 closer to the center than the lineup on KNUS.

Rosen:  That just says a lot about how far left you sit. For a credible, scientific study, read Tim Groseclose’s new book “Left Turn – How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind.” I’ll make a prediction.  Now that you have the study you’ve asked for, you’ll dismiss it.

Jason: So are you saying that book proves to you that The Denver Post has a liberal bias?

Rosen: No.  Groseclose’s study proves that, what you call, the “mainstream media” have a liberal bias, which you deny.   “Studying” the Denver Post is too small a target to justify a “studier’s” time.  Might be a good project for a grad student who doesn’t have a liberal bias. My thirty-year personal, informal study satisfies me about the Denver Post’s liberal bias.  It’s obvious.

Jason: So, again, you prove my point that your assertion that The Denver Post has a liberal bias is based on nothing, except because you say it it’s so. And you have anecdotes. Someone on the left could say The Post has a conservative bias, and point to anecdotes. You’re not better.

Rosen: That’s right.  It’s based on my credibility and personal observations over many years, which isn’t a formal “study” but it’s based on much more than “nothing.” That you would deny the obvious liberal bias of NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, PBS, NY Times, Time, Newsweek, etc. doesn’t say much for your credibility.  That those radically to the left of the liberal media, perhaps you,  regard them as balanced or conservative doesn’t make them balanced or conservative. Here’s a quote you might find instructive from Evan Thomas (a liberal and grandson of Norman Thomas, six-time Socialist Party candidate for president) when he was Newsweek’s Washington bureau chief in 1996: “About 85 percent of the reporters who cover the White House vote Democratic.particularly at the networks, at the lower levels among the editors and so-called infrastructure, there is a liberal bias.  There is a liberal bias at Newsweek,  the magazine I work for.(then ABC White House reporter, now Fox News anchor) Brit Hume’s bosses are liberal, and they’re always quietly denouncing him as a right-wing nut.” He didn’t conduct a study either.

Jason: So what if they vote Democratic. They can still be fair and accurate as reporters, just like a Republican could be. Judges can be fair, regardless of party. There may be exceptions, but these are professionals. In fact, reporters or judges could over-compensate for their personal view and tilt their coverage in the other direction. So you have to look at the content of the Post’s news pages.

Your view does indeed count for more than “nothing.” Sorry about that. But both right- and left-leaning readers can find anecdotes to prove their point about bias. So why is your opinion more valid than a leftists, unless you can support what you say with data? If you can’t, with due respect, you should tone down the destructive rhetoric and focus on your specific concerns about specific stories, rather than overstepping and asserting overall bias.

Rosen: Newsroom cultures are uniformly liberal and it does influence what they write and how they edit. We’re not getting anywhere. Read Groseclose’s book, then dismiss it just as you would any “study” I’d on the Denver Post’s news pages.

“The Amy Oliver Show made national news,” Amy Oliver told her KFKA listeners Aug. 10, reading the headline from The Hill, a Washington-DC blog, “GOP lawmaker OK with dismantling DOT.”

“That’s not exactly what he said,” Oliver explained to her radio audience, apparently forgetting that Gardner was talking with Oliver the day before when he said it’s a “great” idea to “basically turn the Department of Transportation back to the states.” (See transcript here.)

I emailed Oliver to find out why she thought Gardner didn’t say what he said in plain English (and then did not retract).

“Interpret the dialogue as you wish,” she wrote back. ” The only story I see here is that a freshman Congressman is thinking outside the box for solutions to our current budget situation.”

I appreciated Oliver getting back to me, but I wish she’d have answered my question about why she let Gardner off the hook, overlooking sounds and words that she got first hand.

You’d have to assume that Oliver herself supports dismantling the Department of Transportation, given that Oliver works for Caldara’s Independence Institute and all.

So you’d think she would embrace Gardner’s dismantlement position, not deny it. It’s not every day that a Congressman jumps on board with dismantlement of a major federal agency.

I mean, in the same interview with Gardner, before she asked him about the Department of Transportation, Oliver told Gardner that the Environmental Protection Agency is “one agency that I think should be completely dismantled.”

In fact, she asked Gardner point blank, “When are we going to de-fund the EPA.” Gardner answered that the EPA had taken a “significant funding decrease,” and he said he hoped more was on the way.

Later, Oliver told Gadner: “You can’t de-fund the EPA until you get the Senate on board.”

To which Gardner responded, “Right.”

Oliver didn’t get Gardner to agree with her that EPA should be abolished.

But if she had, you wonder if she’d have denied what he said to her, once it was reported in the media.

Steve Kelley, who hosted KOA’s morning radio show for 19 years, is now hosting a morning-drive program on right-wing KNUS (710 AM) weekdays 7 a.m. to 9 a.m.

The show, Kelley says, will be take more in-depth looks at topics than KOA’s morning show, which he called a “news carousel,” but his show won’t be “riding the horse until its legs drop off,” like Peter Boyles can do on KHOW during the same time slot.

“I don’t think you can do justice in a two-minute interview, and KOA is bound by the format,” said Kelley. “I like it. I’ve been in that format. It’s a fast-moving, fast-paced kind of thing. But I’m not doing that.”

He says his show, Kelley and Company, isn’t designed to be political. But he’ll “respond to something that’s edgy,” like an “outrageous comment by Maxine Waters,” which was at topic on the air this morning.

Also today, Kelley lashed out Obama, saying, among other things, “We don’t need a 10-day drum roll for your big jobs plan” and “this president has already played more golf than President Clinton and Bush.”

Still, he says he’ll try to present both sides of political issues, in contrast to the programming currently on KNUS, whose weekday lineup includes Bill Bennett, Dennis Miller, Dennis Prager, Mike Gallagher, Hugh Hewitt, Mark Levin, Michael Medved, and nary a left-leaner.

The hard right view is what you’d expect from KNUS owner Salem Communications, whose founders, Stuart Epperson and Edward Atsinger II, are major funders of evangelical and right-wing causes.

The company owns 95 radio stations, including one or more stations in all but two of the top 25 U.S. markets, according to the company website.

I asked Kelley if there was pressure to push a conservative agenda on his show?

“No, certainly not from management,” Kelley says, acknowledging that it’s a conservative station “without question.”

“I think they like me because I tend to have a more conservative approach. I would call myself a common-sense conservative.”

Kelley’s KOA job ended when he moved to television to anchor Fox 31’s morning program. But at the end of 2008, his contract wasn’t renewed in the wake of the merger between Channel 2 and Fox 31.

What’s Kelley been doing since leaving Fox?

“I’ve been living off the government teet, which was very very difficult,” he says. “I didn’t want to take unemployment for six months. I just thought other people could use it more than I can. I thought I’d land somewhere. It was devastating financially, and then I decided to do this unemployment thing.”

A lawsuit against Fox was settled out of court.

“Ninety-eight percent of all lawsuits are settled out of court,” Kelley says. “I was determined; this one’s not going to. I felt wronged and lied to, and I needed to clear my name. The Settlement was significant, but not nearly what I lost. It cost me, I’m not afraid to tell you, well into a million dollars. It’s tough.”

Kelley had hoped to return to KOA, which he considers “family,” but there were “no openings that I fit.”

“It was KNUS, though, that continued to say, we really, really want you. We need a morning show here. The more and more I kept putting this off, it was pretty clear that it’s good to be wanted. And these guys, hey, it’s a blank page. We want you to do what you want to do. I couldn’t do that on KOA.”

“Anything that occurs to me. Hey, did you see this. Let’s talk about it.”

During a recent recent morning, the show aired a piece on I70 traffic, an interview about Rockies pitcher Nicasio, a stock update from an advertiser, a mention that Anthony Weiner “has been erased from the menu at the Queens Deli,”  a story about a mayor who had a 20-ton boulder dumped on his ex-wife’s lawn. Weather. Traffic.

“It’s still a cake that’s not fully baked. We just put it in the oven. We’ll see how it comes out. I think within 6 mmths or a year we’ll see if this finds an audience.”

“What really is most exciting is the chemistry,” he said speaking of  on-air colleagues Bill Rogan and Murphy Wells. “You can’t force chemistry. You just can’t. I’ve been part of shows where the egos are so big.  The chemistry makes work enjoyable. And I haven’t felt that in a long, long time, certainly not in television. It’s sad.”

The Hill picked up the ball after KFKA radio host Amy Oliver dropped it, and asked Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO) about his statement on Oliver’s radio show Friday that there are “great ideas” floating around to “basically turn the Department of Transportation back to the states.”

The Hill’s Transportation blog reported yesterday:

“When you listen to whole interview it is clear that Rep. Gardner is simply saying there is a discrepancy in transportation funding and Colorado is a net loser when it comes to the money we get back,” Gardner spokesman Rachel Boxer said in a statement provided to The Hill.  “He believes in letting Colorado keep more of the gas tax it collects therefore cutting some of the bureaucracy between the states and Washington.”

Gardner’s office has yet to return my call, so I’m hoping a journalist, or even Oliver, will ask Gardner for details on this, to fill in the journalistic gap here.

First of all, the statement doesn’t actually say anything about whether Gardner believes that the Department of Transportation should be dismantled. So if Gardner’s office is trying to backpedal, he hasn’t done it.

So, the question remains hanging, “Does Gardner think, as he told Oliver, that it’s a great idea to basically turn the Department of Transportation over to the states?” If so, how would he do it? If not, why not?

And Boxer’s statement to the Hill raises a number of other questions, such as: How much of the gasoline tax does he think should be returned to Colorado and other states? How would he cut the Department of Transportation budget to make up for lost funds? How would he determine how much tax money individual states should keep? Does he support the other functions of the Department of Transportation, as described here? Does he believe the Department of Transportation serves the national interest?

Also when you read a transcript of Gardner’s interview with Oliver, it’s not at all “clear,” as Boxer told The Hill, that Gardner was “simply saying” that Colorado should keep more of the gasoline tax it sends to Washington.

That’s what Oliver, the talk show host was saying.

But Gardner got all excited and one upped Oliver. He told her about great ideas to “basically turn the Department of Transportation back to the states.” That sounds like the entire banana to me. Or basically the entire banana. Maybe leave a bite or the skin in Washington DC.

Was this a misstatement on Gardner’s part, rather than a misreading of his interview on the part of The Hill, me, and anyone else in their right mind who heard him on Amy Oliver’s show Friday?

Egged on by radio-host Amy Oliver, Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO) revealed Friday that he favors plans that “would basically turn the Department of Transportation back to the states.”

Oliver, who hosts the “Amy Oliver Show” on KFKA 1310-AM in Greeley, told Gardner that Colorado should keep most of its federal gasoline tax, so “we don’t have to beg or anything like that.”

The sentiment apparently struck a nerve in Gardner, who ran with Oliver’s suggestion:

“Well, I think there are some great ideas that would basically turn the Department of Transportation back to the states, because why do we have this system that says, hey, we’re going to just have you collect money, and we’re going to scrape some off the top. I mean, it makes no sense to have this middleman treated the way it is.”

You’d expect Oliver, who works at the right-leaning Independence Institute, to favor dismantling the Department of Transportation.

But when a U.S. Congressman like Gardner jumps on board, you’d think even Oliver would recognize that she owes it to you, me, and her audience to extract more details from him. Instead, she went, as planned, to a commercial break, Gardner disappeared, and the topic was dropped.

So, what would turning over the Department of Transportation to the states mean?

I asked former Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena for a reaction to Gardner’s notion.

“At first blush it may seem to be an attractive idea to let the states control their own funding, but the reality is that there is a real need to have a national highway system that supports our economy and contributes to our national security,” Pena said, adding that a national entity is needed to provide oversight so that transportation systems from coast to coast run smoothly and support economic development.

“I guess one could say every state should fund its own airports, but we could not have built Denver International Airport without $500 million from FAA,” Pena said. [The FAA is part of the Dept. of Transportation.]

DIA was not built just to benefit Colorado, Pena said, but to help the nation’s airports run more smoothly. Backups at Denver’s old airport, Stapleton, were causing inefficiencies and backups at airports nationwide, Pena pointed out, and it was clear DIA would remedy these problems.

“There was a national need to build DIA,” Pena told me.

The Department of Transportation has played this role, identifying and addressing national transportation needs, including those of less populated regions, since its inception, Pena argued. This role extends beyond airports and highways to ensuring that pipelines and other transportation systems are efficient and meet national safety standards. (Here’s a summary of the Department of Transportation’s responsibilities.)

“I don’t think he’s [Rep. Gardner] done his homework or analyzed his position very closely, because it [dismantling DOT] would have terrible consequences for national security and for our economy,” said Pena, who also served as Secretary of Energy.

On the radio, Gardner didn’t seem to care about national concerns:

“But if you look at the broader picture of transportation in general, Colorado gets less than a dollar for every dollar of tax dollars it sends in for the package of highway systems. So we are a net loser when it comes to sending a dollar in and getting less than a dollar back.”

Neither Gardner’s Office nor Amy Oliver returned calls for comment.

Listen to Gardner’s views on the Department of Transportation 12 minutes into the Aug. 5 podcast here. A partial transcript follows:

Oliver: I want to ask you about this. It really gets to the philosophy of what the proper function of government should be. Why on Earth should someone from Mississippi, why should federal tax money from any other state, Mississippi, Main, Missouri, Ohio, anybody, have to pay for a runway here in northern Colorado?

Gardner: Well, it really goes to the heart of what’s happening now in the bigger discussion on whether or not we should be trying to do all things for all people. I mean, certain people in the aviation industry do pay user fees to land. They do pay av tax on their aviation fuel. And that comes back to the airport and helps fund projects like the runway extension. But if you look at the broader picture of transportation in general, Colorado gets less than a dollar for every dollar of tax dollars it sends in for the package of highway systems. So we are a net loser when it comes to sending a dollar in and getting less than a dollar back.

Oliver: Well, we actually get less than that because they have their overhead that they have to do.

Gardner: You’re right. The middleman. They just kind cut it off. There’s states like Wyoming that get more money. Alaska gets more money. So the question is, how does this continue and how can we continue it when people are struggling to make ends meat as it is, and we have a government that’s far beyond its means.

Oliver: Let me ask you something, and this might be getting back a little bit to your state capital days. Couldn’t we do something with our federal gasoline tax and just say, hey listen, you guys, what is the federal gasoline tax, I think it’s 18 cents a gallon, we’ll give you two cents. Let us just keep the rest. That way we don’t have to beg or anything like that. We just keep it here in Colorado.

Gardner: Well, I think there are some great ideas that would basically turn the Department of Transportation back to the states, because why do we have this system that says, hey, we’re going to just have you collect money, and we’re going to scrape some off the top. I mean, it makes no sense to have this middleman treated the way it is.

Follow Jason Salzman on Twitter @bigmediablog.

Bob Enyart, a local anti-abortion radio-show host, is planning a national campaign aiming to convince GOP primary and caucus voters of this: “When Mitt Romney says he’s a pro-family, pro-life conservative, he is a liar to the base that he needs for the nomination.”

“We plan on doing again what we did four years ago, starting in December,” Enyart told me. “We began running TV ads in the early contest states, where there’s a significant pro-life voter bloc. We skipped New Hampshire, and we plan on skipping New Hampshire again, and focusing on Iowa and South Carolina. Florida is such a huge state, and it’s very expensive. But we’ll try to get more money for Florida this time, but we had a pretty effective strategy for Florida last time.”

Enyart crusaded for Colorado’s failed Personhood Amendments and similar causes.  Today, for example, his website says he’s in Durango protesting at a Catholic hospital that allegedly allows one of Enyart’s targeted doctors to treat patients there.

Enyart contends that Romney “singlehandedly instituted homosexual marriage in Massachusetts, and he used tax dollars to pay for surgical abortions on demand,” making Romney “low-hanging fruit” for his campaign.

“Romney has done more to further those two goals [gay marriage and government-funded abortion] than Barack Obama has,” Enyart believes. “Romney instituted homosexual marriage, never mind Obama’s uncertainty on the issue. Romney funded abortion on demand with tax dollars. Barack Obama may dream of doing those things but hasn’t yet.”

Enyart, whose radio show airs locally on “Colorado Christian Station” KLTT 670 AM, spent “tens of thousands of dollars” in 2008 and expects to spend more this time. The money went to grassroots educational activities and commercials, which were used other groups as well, he says.

“We’re very effective at convincing rank-and-file Republican base voters that Romney is the enemy,” Enyart told me.

“How so?” I asked.

“The message is effective,” he replied with confidence. “Romney got trounced in Iowa. He had boots on the ground for a year and a state-wide organization, and he got slaughtered. And the number one reason given by Republicans for voting against him in the caucuses was that he was lying about being pro-life.”

I couldn’t find an exit poll showing that caucus attendees though Romney was lying about being pro-choice, but plenty of polls show that evangelicals are a major GOP voting bloc in Iowa.

In 2008, ABC News described its exit poll of Iowa caucus goers this way:

While a range of factors rumbled through the Democratic race, the Republican contest was essentially about one thing: religion. Evangelical Christians accounted for a remarkable six in 10 GOP caucus-goers, and they favored Huckabee, a Baptist minister, over Mitt Romney, who’s Mormon, by a broad 46-19 percent.

And for hard core anti-abortion Republicans, the abortion issue often blows every other concern off the table.

Even rabid anti-abortionist Dan Caplis, co-host of KHOW’s worthwhile Caplis and Silverman show, told Enyart June 21 he wouldn’t vote for Romney, even over Obama, if it turns out he’s not sufficiently anti-abortion. Caplis, who “likes Mitt Romney,” said:

“If I’m missing something about him, factually, historically,  if he truly is not pro-life, well then, I wouldn’t vote for him. So, if there’s a question out there, I want to find the answer to it. There have been all sorts of candidates out there who call themselves pro-life and then don’t act that way. I as a consumer want to make sure that I’m not fooled.”

So are Enyart’s claims about Romney true?

The allegation about Romney instituting gay marriage in Massachusetts appears to be false. I didn’t have time to get to figure it out for sure, but I looked through news coverage around time that the gay marriage was legalized in Massachusetts, and Romney was described as powerless to stop it, and he was quoted as an ardent opponent of gay marriage throughout. It appears that Romney was not in a position to stop gay marriage there.

Enyart says his claims about Romney’s acceptance of publicly-funded abortion are fully documented on his website ProlifeProfiles.com.

I looked through Enyart’s site, but did not have time to determine for sure if Romney had the ability to stop his state-wide health insurance plan, so-called RomenyCare, from covering abortion. I’ll do this in the future, but please inform me, in the comment section below, if you have insight into this issue.

Meanwhile, look for Enyart to stick his face directly in front of the GOP establishement on this issue. Ann Coulter even hung up on him, and I’m sure she won’t be the last.

In an old column for the Rocky, I asked KOA radio-host Mike Rosen about his oft-repeated opinion that The Denver Post has a “liberal bias on its news page.”

Can Rosen cite a study to prove this?

“I’d love to see one,” he said at the time. “I’m never going to have a study because I don’t have the time.” But he had no doubt about the leftward tilt of The Post, he told me, because he’s “documented dozens and dozens of incidents over 25 years.”

That’s the kind of thing conservatives, who go on about “liberal media bias,” tell you when you ask for proof.

The media is biased because they say so.

Lefties make the same undocumented claims about “conservative bias” in the media, I know, but not quite so often or loudly, it seems.

But, to be fair, a lot of lefties and righties don’t seem to understand that sweeping allegations of media “bias” can only be proven with in-depth studies that show a pattern of lapses over time. Not to mention the fact that bias implies a conscious effort to skew you, the reader. So it’s a tall task to prove bias, unless you just assert it because you think highly of yourself.

Good media criticism, which contributes to meaningful public debate and doesn’t mindlessly tear down professional journalism, focuses on specific stories or instances of coverage that we can debate and get our arms around. It points out inaccuracies, omissions, sloppy sourcing, unfairness, and the like, found in actual coverage in an actual news outlet, not alleged stories out there in the “media.”

Statements like the media is biased against “people who believe in smaller government” don’t fall in the category of good media criticism, and are pretty dumb, destructive, useless, and otherwise not befitting of a member of the media or a public figure.

Enter Grassroots Radio Colorado host Jason Worley and Rep. Cory Gardner.

They had the following cozy exchange about the media Thursday on KLZ AM 560, which airs Worley’s (and Ed Clark’s) Tea Party radio show from 5 p.m. t0 7 p.m. weekdays.

Gardner: The press likes to blame the Tea Party for a lot of things, because there’s a bias in the media against people who believe in smaller government.

Worley: You mean people like us.

Gardner: People like us.

I called Gardner’s office to ask what he meant by this but did not get a response yet. Does he really think the media are biased against him?

But Worley quickly answered my request for proof of the bias he and Gardner were upset about:

Worley: I think it’s pretty obvious.  Cutting government can mean a lot of things, but why does the media always run to Social Security and Medicare.  Why not stop all foreign aid, especially to our enemies.  Why not tell the U.N. that instead of America funding 23% of its budget we are going to fund 2%.  The media never seems to mention that the Dept of Energy was created to get the US away from importing oil.  Why do they still exist? There is a ton of waste in Cabinet level depts, but that never is brought up. I will back off on the media bias when they take an honest look at what we are spending and lay off the scare tactics.

Salzman: There are huge generalizations about the news media. Can you cite a report or study to support your view that the media “always run to Social Security and Medicare?

Worley: Turn on ABC, CBS, NBC during the evening news and study.  Do you need a study to be intellectually honest?

If you’re going to throw around the word “bias,” you do. To criticize the media, you should use facts, evidence, proof, and examples of the kind of coverage you’re talking about.

These things allow people to communicate in a meaningful way.