Denver Post did right thing by reporting Coffman backpedal–and how he did it
I reported last week that Rep. Mike Coffman said on a radio show that America is in a “Constitutional crisis,” because of Obama’s “abusive interpretation of the Constitution.”
Sounds bad, even in the paranoid and crisis-filled world you find on conservative talk radio.
When asked for a solution by KHOW host Mandy Connell, Coffman talked about filing a lawsuit, maybe a personal one, against Obama!
Yesterday, The Denver Post’s Allison Sherry reported that Coffman’s spokesman “tried to soften the congressman’s assertion last week that he is looking into whether to sue President Barack Obama on abuse of power, saying, ‘litigation, legislation — all of it is on the table.'”
Coffman is becoming known for walking back statements made in front of friendly microphones, most memorably his repeated sort-of apology for his assertion that Obama isn’t an American “in his heart” and his statement that he didn’t know whether “Obama was born in the United States of America.” (He later said his birther moment was overblown.)
In this week’s case, I appreciated that Sherry noted not only that Coffman’s backpedal was made by a spokesman, not Coffman himself, but also through a statement by the spokesman, not the spokesman himself.
What’s more, Sherry did the right thing by informing us that the Coffman spokesman “wouldn’t elaborate beyond the statement.”
Sherry’s reporting allows us to understand the different ways Coffman deals with these situations.