Last week, the Colorado Department of Health and Ennvironment (CDPHE) blasted a news release to reporters crediting a pregnancy-prevention program for reducing teen abortion and pregnancy rates by 50 percent in Colorado, an increase of over 10 points from a year ago.

The program provides free or reduced-cost intrauterine devices (IUDs) and other long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) to teenagers and low-income women.

But  as I reported for RH Reality Check today, Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt says the program, called the Colorado Family Planning Initiative, is “killing children” and health officials are “science deniers.”

“Although CDPHE’s science-deniers try to spin this increase in early-term abortions as a decline in late-term surgical abortions, they are killing children nonetheless, just sooner, and with your money,” Klingenschmitt said in an email, echoing the belief of other Colorado Republicans.

“Setting aside the injustice of making all Colorado taxpayers fund these so-called ‘free’ contraceptives for teens with or without their parents’ authorization, the LARC program is clearly a taxpayer-funded abortifacient, which violates our state Constitution’s prohibition on direct or indirect taxpayer funding of abortions,” wrote Klingenschmitt, pointing to a footnote in an Obama Administration legal brief stating that LARC implants may prevent fertilized eggs from attaching to the uterine wall. “These unethical methods increase abortions substantially, by preventing conceived and living embryo babies (with unique human DNA) from implanting in their mother’s uterus, often without telling the mother she is doing so.”

Reflecting mainstream scientific thinking on the subject, Larry Wolk, Colorado’s chief medical officer, has pointed out that it’s “not medically correct” to say that LARC implants cause abortions.

Under the widely accepted scientific definition, pregnancy occurs after a zygote (fertilized egg) implants in the uterine wall, and because these methods of contraception work prior to implantation, they do not cause abortions….

“This initiative continues to prove its effectiveness,” Wolk said in a news release with the latest statistics about the Colorado Family Planning Initiative, referring to data showing adouble-digit decrease in the teen pregnancy and abortion rate over last year’s composite data. “Thousands of low-income Colorado women now are able to pursue their dreams of higher education and a good career and choose when and whether to start a family.”

Colorado Republican lawmakers, during the 2015 legislative session, blocked funding for CDPHE’s Family Planning Initiative, which was grant-funded from 2009 to June of this year. Wolk subsequently procured more private funding to run a scaled-back program for another year.

You have to admire the Republicans for going to Boulder for their debate Wednesday.  It took some serious conservative backbone to descend on a town that stands for so much that Republicans do not.

But then what happened? Republicans rented a giant 11,000-seat auditorium for their debate and are treating it like a big giant bunker, keeping Boulder out.

Showing their generosity and love of the youth vote, Republicans are giving students a whopping 100 tickets for the debate, even though it will be held on the campus of the University of Colorado. A total of only 1,000 tickets total are being distributed, with most apparently going to insiders and operatives.

This has left journalists asking how many tickets do Republicans have to distribute, if they wanted to give out more? And’s who’s responsible for allowing so few people in?

The Republicans won’t tell, and you wouldn’t expect them to, given that they don’t want to offend the students, who are signing petitions and clamoring to attend. Everyone knows Republicans don’t need to give young people more reasons not to like them—beyond the existing turnoffs of the GOP positions on choice, gay marriage, climate change, etc.

And CU won’t give out the ticket number either, only saying CNBC, which is airing the debate, set the audience size and the Republicans are in charge of ticket distribution.

So, in an ironic twist of journalism, the answer to the question of how many tickets are theoretically available resides within a news enterprise. That would be CNBC.

And CNBC, modeling the behavior journalists hate most, isn’t commenting. And in so doing, CNBC is covering for Republicans, allowing them to shift blame elsewhere and more easily avoid divulging how many tickets are available and why they aren’t being distributed.

So you have the Republican National Committee saying only that the debates are designed for television–and the leader of the Colorado Republican Party even blaming the “networks” for narrowing down the number of available seats to a “very small number.”

Any CNBC reporter, or any self-respecting journalist for that matter, would want to report the truth.

But in an upside down twist on journalism, CNBC has it, if they’d only tell. It knows how many people Republicans could have allowed in their bunker in Boulder.

Dave Kopel, research director at the right-leaning Independence Institute, slapped a pat on the back of left-leaning ProgressNow Colorado, on the latest edition of Colorado Inside Out, agreeing with the state’s top online progresive organization that Republicans should let more people, especially students, view their debate in Boulder Wednesday.

“I think ProgressNow is correct that it is ridiculous that they have this 10,000-seat arena, and they’re only letting a 1000 people in,” said Kopel on Colorado Public Television’s Colorado Inside Out Oct. 23 (@31:34 here).  “If you want to do it in a TV studio with hardly any audience, go ahead and do that.  But if you’ve got it there, it should be opened up to the public.”

He’s right. It’s crazy ridiculous to limit the seating to 1,000 people, with only 100 tickets going to students at the University of Colorado, where the debate is taking place.

Kopel has clashed with ProgressNow, especially on gun issues, so it’s good to see him call out the truth as he sees it, in his role as pundit on the TV show. If you watch the show regularly, you know Kopel doesn’t always align himself with conservatives. Recently he’s praised Democrat Morgon Carroll and dissed conservative school board member Julie Williams.  It makes the show, which can get a bit sleepy sometimes, more interesting.

I asked a few of my progressive friends, who think conservative talk radio spreads the plague through the airwaves, whether they think the hosts fill air time by discussing whether they’d execute Obama.

Most said, yes, they could see talk radio hosts saying this.

But actually, I’d never heard a radio yapper say it, and I listen to a lot of talk radio.

That is, until it came from the mouth of KLZ 560-AM’s morning-show host Steve Curtis, a former chair of the Colorado Republican Party and death penalty advocate.

During a show earlier this year, he asked his co-hosts what they’d do with Obama, if they could “take over the government today.”

Curtis: I’d imprison him. I might execute him, if I were to take over the nation today. This is just, you know, one of the things I think about. What does this man deserve for the hatred, the bitterness, the division, the lack of strength with which he has led this country, the way that he has weakened our defenses, the way that he has excused the bad behavior of our enemies — and I mean the enemies of the country from both within and without?

I emailed Curtis, told him I was writing a blog post, and asked if he wanted “to explain or clarify your recent comment that you might execute Obama if you were in charge of the government?”

I was hoping he would say he was joking, but, instead I got:

“I think the statement and the question that follows stand on their own within the context in which they were made,” replied Curtis, and he invited me to talk about it on his show. I accepted this offer.

I can’t figure out what context Curtis is referring to, except the context that he actually thinks Obama might deserve execution.

You can read a transcript of the conversation for yourself below, and listen here:

HOST STEVE CURTIS:   If you are able to take over the government today, what would you do with Obama?  What would you– I mean, what would you do with him? Would you do anything?  I’d imprison him. I might execute him, if I were to take over the nation today. This is just, you know, one of the things I think about. What does this man deserve for the hatred, the bitterness, the division, the lack of strength with which he has led this country, the way that he has weakened our defenses, the way that he has excused the bad behavior of our enemies — and I mean the enemies of the country from both within and without?  What would you do with this guy?  And then, what would you do with his administration?  And what would you do with the Congress of the United States? I mean, if you if you could just wave your wand today, any ideas?

CO-HOST DAN MUERER:  Well, I don’t know if I’d go as far as execution, but I’d sure – I’d like to throw them all in prison.   I mean, or send him back to Kenya, or Indonesia. He’s not a traditional American. Not at all. He doesn’t have the point of view of a traditional American.

CURTIS:  Well, I’m not sure that he’s an American.

MUERER:  He’s – he’s –. [laughs] Well, –.

CURTIS:  No, I’m serious.

MUERER:  It’s true!

CO-HOST ANDY PETH:  There’s only one reason I question him being an American citizen. Okay?

CURTIS:  What’s that?

PETH:  And I’m not a birther or any of this. Because he claims to be. I mean, this guy–he lies!  Everything he says is a lie!  And the simple fact that he claims to be an American citizen, that’s the only thing that actually makes me question if he is. Who seals their birth records?  Who even does that?  I mean,  what, did he –

CURTIS:  And college records and everything else. Yeah!

MUERER:  They’re all sealed.

PETH:  Yeah!  Is he trying to cover up for a crime?  Did he knock over a 7-Eleven on the day of his birth?  I mean, what is he trying to cover up here? This is ridiculous. And do I know he wasn’t born [inaudible] I have no clue!  I don’t care!

MUERER:  Nobody knows.

PETH:  But, I’m just like, the biggest liar I have ever seen in my life claims to be a U.S. citizen?  That’s the only thing to make me question it.

MUERER:  Well, I like to call him the Keynesian from Kenya!

PETH:  Yeah!  There you go!

Before Wednesday’s Republican debate in Colorado, home of the personhood movement, it’s worth a quick review of the top GOP candidates’ positions on personhood laws, which would ban abortion by giving legal rights to zygotes (fertilized eggs).

The Personhood Alliance, a national anti-choice organization, has made this quick review easy by publishing a micro website with the abortion positions of the top six Republican presidential candidates.

Surprisingly, among the candidates listed on the website, only Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are on record as personhood supporters. Both pledged to co-sponsor federal personhood legislation, called the Life at Conception Act, but neither of them actually did so.

I wondered if Rubio and Cruz went to Washington and discovered there was no such thing as federal personhood legislation.

Of course, that’s what Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner said last year about the Life at Conception Act, even though he was actually factually a co-sponsor of the House version. On the Senate side, the legislation was sponsored by a fading GOP presidential candidate, Sen. Rand Paul.

Unfortunately neither Rubio’s nor Cruz’s office returned my call, so I can’t tell you why they have yet to hop on the federal personhood bill, as promised.

As I wrote Friday for RH Reality Check (here), Personhood Alliance spokesman Gualberto Garcia Jones thinks Cruz is more likely to fully embrace personhood than Rubio, illuminating the limits of Rubio’s careen rightward.

But, still, both Cruz and Rubio are personhood backers, which could prove to be a major vote getter as they work through the GOP primary but also a serious liability if one of them actually wins the nomination and confronts more diverse voters.

In any case, reporters looking for local angles for GOP debate stories might ask Cruz and Rubio  why we need to give zygotes legal protection under the good old 14^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

UPDATE: Coffman spokesman Tyler Sandberg tweeted me that Coffman does support a pathway to citizenship through education — a position that can be learned by using the “Google button.”  I have even reported instances in which Coffman has uttered a sentence to this effect in media appearances (See for example here.), and I should have included this in my blog post. But this issue is an example of the problem reporters have in covering Coffman. Does a sentence buried in the middle of a TV interview actually represent Coffman’s position, when that policy can be contradicted by another vote on the record or lost in the conversation around military enlistment, which is the only bill Coffman’s put forward?

When Coffman took to the Denver Post opinion pages in 2013 to endorse “comprehensive immigration reform,” any number of his supposed policy commitments were left vague enough to give him room to escape supporting the bipartisan Senate bill that actually passed. And by the next year, he had reversed himself on whether “comprehensive” reform needed to be done all at once or in a step-by-step approach. Additionally, all of these back and forth statements on legislative procedure is omitting Coffman voting against President Obama’s deferred deportations for children before reversing and voting for them.

Still, I should have referenced Coffman’s media statements in support of a path to citizenship through education.

———–

Back in 2013, as Rep. Mike Coffman was testifying in favor of allowing undocumented children to gain citizenship through military service, he said:

Coffman: “The first question that we ought to ask ourselves here today is whether or not we believe that the young people, who were brought to this country illegally as children by their relatives, who grew up here, and who went to school here, who probably know of no other county, ought to have a pathway to citizenship and I believe that the answer to that question is yes.”

Reporters covering Coffman need to be sure to note that Coffman’s path is single-track, through military service only. That’s in contrast to the Dream Act, which Coffman voted against in 2010. It would have offered young undocumented immigrants a double-track path to citizenship, through military service or education.

The difference is important, because the Dream Act has long been the focus of legislative efforts to help young undocumented immigrants, who know our country as home. The most common version offers a dual-track path, but, in any case, Coffman’s chosen path should be clearly stated.

So, The Denver Post’s Mark Matthews should have specified the type of path Coffman supports when Matthews wrote over the weekend:

Coffman added that he supports a pathway to citizenship for immigrant children but not adults, although he wanted to create some arrangement for parents, such as “guest worker status.”

Coffman supports a pathway to citizenship for young immigrants through military service. It’s a distinction that means a lot to the young immigrants involved and to those who’ve been pushing for immigration reform for so long now.

The Colorado Republican Party is likely smiling at the news that Ken Clark, former KLZ talk-radio host and GOP thorn-in-the-ass, is leaving Colorado for a job with Citizens for Self Governance, where  he’ll be working to organize a “Convention of States” as allowed by the U.S. Constitution to, as Citizens for Self Governance puts it, “restrict the power and jurisdiction of the federal government.”

“If you believe in what you’re doing, you have to do what you need to do to reach the goal,” said Clark, who repeatedly butted heads with establishment Republicans. “That’s why I was willing to leave Colorado. This is capable of saving the Republic.”

But he  won’t be going away.

“You don’t spend the last decade-and-a-half in Colorado and just shut off the spigot,” he said. “It doesn’t work that way. I’m going to be back a lot. I’m still going to be involved in Colorado politics. This is more of a, ‘See you later,’ than a good bye.”

What’s his best memory as an activist?

“Too many to count,” he responds. “I’ll miss going down to the capitol, fighting for and against legislation, being in front taking the arrows and leaving those who are doing the real hard work to get it done.”

Asked if he likes progressives more than establishment Republicans, Clark said, “It’s hard for me to tell them apart, quite frankly.”

Clark had my kid on his radio show once, talking about arming school teachers. My kid was against; Clark for it. And they had a good conversation, at the end of which Clark offered my kid free gun classes. I was sure he’d take the offer. But I was proud and surprised when my son decided against it, because he’s scared of guns like I am.

Visits by former presidents usually make news in Denver, if nothing else, because these people are major celebrities, known by all. So you’d think an appearance in Denver by a former president, with his brother, a current presidential candidate, plus a cousin, would be high on the news radar.

Yet, I can’t find a Colorado news outlet that covered George W. Bush’s visit on Sunday evening to Denver, where he was apparently joined by brother Jeb Bush and cousin State Treasurer Walker Stapleton.

I asked Denver Post Politics Editor Chuck Plunkett why The Post ignored the event, which was a closed-door fundraiser at the Denver Art Museum.

Plunkett: We reported in advance that Bush would be here for a conference and a fundraiser. Had his appearance at the financial conference been open to press, we would have covered it. Same with the fundraiser.

Here’s The Post’s advance piece.

As it turned out, a loud group of demonstrators were on hand for the event, as depicted by a liberal group, spotlighting the closed doors. With the concentration of Bushes (and power) in one room, it’s surprising the visit went completely unmarked by big media, not just The Post. At least a mention of the secrecy, and the possible explanations for it, would have been welcome.

It’s not an exact comparison, but recall the media conniptions when Mark Udall decided not to appear with Obama last year in Denver. That was a legitimate story, and so was this.

The secrecy (and lack of photo ops) doesn’t negate the issues at play (e.g., Jeb Bush’s fear of his father). In fact, you’d think a reporter would find the closed doors even more newsworthy.

9News, Colorado’s NBC affiliate, is showing the world (Or, let’s hope, at least other Denver TV stations) how to air a longish-form political interview show–and make it interesting and important in the new media landscape.

This week’s interview with Hillary Clinton, which will be aired Sunday on the program, called Balance of Power, shows how it’s done.

The show’s primary host, Brandon Rittiman, landed the interview, he says, in part because having a regular public affairs show “makes us a better sell to get these interviews.”

Rittiman: “They decided that they wanted to do some local affiliates after the debate, and out of the blue sky, after talking to their people back and forth for a long time, they called… We have this hole, this home, for content. It makes us a better sell to get these interviews… It takes a lot of time and effort to put together a regular show on politics and public affairs. And there stations that don’t want to make that resource commitment, because it’s difficult. But it does have its rewards. We got news content yesterday that we might not have gotten otherwise.”

9News rushed the entire interview online, to get maximum love from the 24-hour news cycle, with Rittiman, who’s 9News’ political reporter, pushing it out on social media. And the station aired some of the Rittiman’s questions, which mostly had Colorado connections, on various newscasts. On Sunday morning, the interview will air in its regular 15-minute Balance-of-Power slot on 9News prior to “Meet the Press.”

Rittiman: If you turn on your TV to 9News and you watch a newscast, you’ll get great information, but that’s not the same as having it out in the longer form conversation. It’s not the same as giving a Colorado voice to the presidential election. The two are symbiotic. We get good content for newscasts out of Balance of Power, and Balance of Power gives people a great place to go beyond the soundbite type story.

And it’s clear that long-form TV interview shows, like Balance of Power, are more than just junk food for the political chatter class. They make a difference in the policy debate and in elections, as was demonstrated last year and continues to be evident. In the shrinking media universe, with tightly controlled campaigns, they can actually affect elections and policy.

And simply having a regular political interview show helps a TV station from forgetting about politics in the midst of exciting storms and animal sightings.

Unfortunately, Balance of Power is the only local political TV interview show that remains standing in Denver. Fox 31’s excellent “#CoPolitics at the Source” died with the departure of Eli Stokols. Aaron Harbor’s locally-themed shows usually appear only around election time. And Channel 6’s “Colorado State of Mind” most often focuses on policy not policymakers and candidates. Channel 12’s Colorado Inside Out talks about, not with, public officials and newsmakers.

Rittiman says 9News is committed to airing Balance of Power at least through next year’s election, and points to its regular Sunday time slot as proof of this. Until earlier this year, it was a here-and-there kind of feature. The show is promoted on air on 9News regularly, which is key, and it’s featured on the station’s website.

You might laugh at calling Balance of Power’s 10-15 minute interviews “long form,” but, hey, that’s what it is compared to what’s out there today. As Rittiman says, you can go “well beyond soundbites” in 15 minutes.

And, mostly, it’s hard to argue that anything longer than 15 minutes has much interest to people beyond the chatter class.

“How many people will watch a half-hour discussion about a local or state-level political issue? If people aren’t watching it, did we really help the community that much?” asks Rittiman. “Did it really help voters that much? I would argue that it doesn’t, if you’re not reaching a substantial audience.”

You can make a good case that any interview on the record is important, even with no audience, but Nielsen ratings from February, which was the last month of Stokols’ Fox 31 interview program, show Balance of Power being watched on over 4 percent of Denver TVs, which is impressive. It eclipsed Stokols’ show. Harbor’s program showed no audience at all, which makes me feel like an alien because I watched it sometimes.

“I don’t know if it’s Donald Trump. I don’t know what it is, but I’m getting the sense that politics is beginning to have a bit of a renaissance on TV,” says Rittiman. “Maybe because the presidential race is turning into a quasi-TV reality show. I don’t know.”

“If you put in the work to understand the issues, and the processes involved, and to convert it all into English that people can digest and use to grasp the arguments, you connect with people,” says Rittiman. “And we’ve proved it here at 9News. People want this stuff.

“I don’t think there’s anyone sitting at home who thinks, ‘Oh, you know, I don’t care about the way the world is run.’ As an industry, we think, ‘This is complicated. We have to hand hold people to help them understand this.’ Hand holding pays off. That’s all I would say to that. And people are grateful for it.”

Colorado State Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg will not join the growing field of Republicans vying to take on Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet next year.

Sonnenberg took a serious look at the race, but determined that he needed to focus on other priorities.

“There are issues that are affecting my district that will probably need to be dealt with this next legislative session,” he told me. “And between that and my farming and ranching operation, that has to be my highest priority.”

“It’s always tough to try to figure out how you can be that spokesperson for rural Colorado, and quite frankly, all of Colorado and a national level, and still maintain your real job,” he said when I asked him if he had a hard time making a decision on the run.

Sonnenberg declined to say whom he’d back in the Republican primary, explaining, “I anticipate there may be a couple three more actually get into the race. So it’s hard to say yet.”

Asked if he’d consider state-wide office in the future, Sonnenberg said, “I think that door is always open, depending on how the dominoes fall. If the opportunity arises, and I’m the right person, if that’s the way things fit, yeah, I would again look at a race down the road.”

With Sonnenberg out, two Republicans are left who’ve announced that they are considering the race. Talk-radio host Dan Caplis is “very serious” about a run. And Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith is thinking about entering the race.

Already in are state Sen. Tim Neville, businessman Robert Blaha, El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn, former Parker mayor Greg Lopez, and El Paso County conservative Charles Ehler.

State Sen. Ray Scott is rumored to be a likely candidate. Sonnenberg declined to name the two or three other candidates he cited who are considering the race.

Colorado Peak Politics first reported Sonnenberg’s decision not to run.