Last week, The Denver Post’s Curtis Hubbard wrote a blog post with the headline, “Four reasons Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora, saw the light on the DREAM Act”.

But Coffman has not seen the “light” on the DREAM Act. He may be inching his way toward the light, but he’s still in the dark.

The Dream Act of 2010, which Coffman voted against, would have granted a citizenship path to some undocumented immigrants brought to this country as children, who graduate from high school or enroll in the military. (Other versions of the DREAM Act would make citizenship contingent on military service or graduating from college.)

Now Coffman is saying he supports one of the DREAM Act’s paths to citizenship (military enrollment) not the second path (high school or college graduation). So, he hasn’t flipped on the DREAM Act. Based on his current positions, he’d vote against it again.

In fact, on the key issue of citizenship, Coffman hasn’t moved much from the position he took last year, when told The Post:

“I certainly don’t support a path to citizenship for those that have violated our laws.”

Coffman doesn’t support a citizenship path for our country’s 10 million undocumented adult immigrants, preferring the approach of giving them “legal status” and thus creating an underclass of workers with no political voice.

And his citizenship path for young immigrants, through military enrollment, appears to be unworkable, because, based on the numbers of undocumented immigrants who might enroll, the armed forces could probably not handle so many new recruits. Which makes the argument for two citizenship paths (education and military), as envisioned in the DREAM Act, even stronger.

Here’s the bill summary from 2010 DREAM Act, which Coffman voted against. I include it partially because I reported it incorrectly in a recent post of mine.

This bill would establish a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants under the age of 29 who were brought to the U.S. by their parents before the age of 16 and have graduated high school or promise to serve in the military. Applicants for citizenship under the DREAM Act would have to meet certain criteria designed to prevent the bill from being exploited and to weed out applicants that have been in trouble with the law. Immigrants granted conditional citizenship under the bill, pending final status adjustment, would not be allowed to receive federal benefits like food stamps and Medicaid.

Republicans sitting on the State House’s Health Insurance and Environment Committee apparently didn’t hear the post-election groaning of Josh Penry, Rob Witwer and others as they begged Republicans to be more inclusive and tolerant.

They voted 6-5 (party line) today against killing a measure that would have banned nearly all abortions in Colorado, with no exception for a woman raped by her father, for example.

Reporters groping for evidence of a post-election move to the middle by Colorado Republicans should look elsewhere. In fact, this legislation shifts the Colorado GOP further to the right on abortion than it’s been in years.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Stephen Humphrey, was apparently the most restrictive anti-abortion legislation Colorado has seen since 2007, when Sen. Kent Lambert and Scott Renfroe sponsored a similar abortion ban modeled after a South Dakota measure. Doug Lamborn’s attempts to ban late-term abortion in the late 1990’s and early 00’s look moderate by comparison to Humphrey’s bill today.

Still, Republicans Conti, Humphrey, Joshi, Landgraf, and Stephens voted against killing Humphrey’s legislation, with Conti voting both ways by joining Democrats (McCann, Schafer, Fields, Ginal, Primavera, Young) in also voting against passage.

Reporters should track down Rep. Kathleen Conti and get her thinking on the measure, because voting both ways might constitute a more inclusive tack and be a sign of a both-ways moderation strategy that’s in the works.

As it is, in the absence of Republicans inside or outside the Capitol speaking out against the abortion ban, and with the party-line GOP support of the measure in committee, reporters have to wonder if there’s any real passion for change among Colorado Republicans, even among those advocating for it.

Why aren’t Penry and Witwer organizing a news conference, for example, denouncing Rep. Humphrey’s bill, crying out for GOP inclusiveness, and pointing to a poll just released by Project New America and Keating Research showing that 62 percent of Colorado voters agree that, ‘A woman should be allowed to have an abortion based on her personal values and her doctor’s advice.’

As it is, reporters should cover the absence of news conferences like that one.

Correction 2-22-13: The Dream Act of 2010, which Coffman voted against, would have granted a citizenship path to some undocumented children who graduate from high school or enroll in the military. College enrollment was not one of the Dream Act’s paths to citizenship, as erroneously stated below.

Here’s the bill summary from 2010:

This bill would establish a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants under the age of 29 who were brought to the U.S. by their parents before the age of 16 and have graduated high school or promise to serve in the military. Applicants for citizenship under the DREAM Act would have to meet certain criteria designed to prevent the bill from being exploited and to weed out applicants that have been in trouble with the law. Immigrants granted conditional citizenship under the bill, pending final status adjustment, would not be allowed to receive federal benefits like food stamps and Medicaid.

It is true, as written below, that Rep. Mike Coffman does not support the Dream Act, because he only supports one path to citizenship (military enrollment) not the second path (high school graduation).

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A politician can change his or her mind. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but when it happens, a reporter should obviously ask about it.

And so it goes with the all the politicians, like Rep. Mike Coffman below, who are now acting nice to undocumented immigrants when not long ago they were big-time meanies.

Just today, Coffman announced that he wants to open military service to so-called “Dreamers,” young people brought to America illegally by their parents.

Trouble is, Coffman voted against the Dream Act in 2010, which would have allowed these same young people to attend college in the United States and eventually become U.S. citizens.

Today, Coffman sings a sweeter tune on Facebook:

Coffman: I am pleased that the President‘s immigration proposal included a plan aimed at expanding the eligibility for military service to the young men and women who were brought here as children through no fault of their own. Today, I introduced the Military Enlistment Opportunity Act that seeks to do just this. Regardless of the final outcome of the larger comprehensive package being discussed by the Senate, I strongly believe this piece of the plan must be adopted. This is a critical issue, not only because it gives these young people an opportunity to earn citizenship through service to our nation, but it will also broaden the pool of eligible recruits for our military.

What’s the evolution of Coffman’s thinking. Why the change of heart?

Would he still vote against a law allowing Dreamers to attend college in the U.S.? Or is military service the best fit for young immigrants, in Coffman’s mind, with no college opportunity?

Correction Jan. 31, 2013. Michael Brown’s quote below was imprecise. The actual quote should read: On Denver radio station KHOW Jan. 16, Michael “Brownie” Brown, George W. Bush’s FEMA Director, told his talk-show listeners, “You hear these sob stories…. I don’t care whether they were two years old or they were 16 years old when their parents brought them across the border. They’re here illegally…. I really don’t have any sympathy.”

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As civil-unions legislation hits the home stretch at the State Capitol, along with a bill granting in-state tuition to undocumented college students, let’s take a moment to encourage reporters to recall a jump-up-and-down-arms-waving op-ed that appeared in The Denver Post, just days after the election:

Rupublican thinkers Josh Penry and Rob Witwer wrote about the problem with the Colorado GOP:

Now, two short months later, most Republicans at the State Capitol are lining up against the ASSET bill, offering reduced tuition to undocumented college students.

The Post’s Lynn Bartels is calmly pointing out that even fewer Republican lawmakers appear to support a civil-unions bill this year than last year, because the GOP moderates were booted out by voters.

Rep. Cory Gardner is proudly telling the media how much he’d love to fill the GOP tent with women and Hispanics, without saying he’s against all abortion, some forms of birth control, as well as comprehensive immigration reform. Ditto for the rest of the CO GOP delegation, at least with respect to a path to citizenship.

Republicans are NOT jumping-up-and-down-arms-waving to denounce bills, introduced by fellow Republicans at the State Capitol, attacking abortion rights, including a bill banning all abortion, even in the cases of rape and incest.

On the radio, you have Michael “Brownie” Brown, W’s FEMA director with deep Republican connections, effectively thumbing his nose at Penry and Witwer by saying: “You hear these sob stories… I don’t care if they were two-years-old when they came. They’re illegal.. I have no sympathy.”

Secretary of State Scott Gessler may not see the irony that, just as ASSET is debated in Colorado, he’s scheduled to join a panel tomorrow at the Heritage Center with Kansas SOS Kris Kobach, who played a big part in creating the much-maligned anti-hispanic, anti-immigration law in Arizona. They’ll be talking about how to get tough on voting, but tough talk about immigration may pop up given the venue and the audience.

I could go on here, but why make a blog post long when a short one makes your point–and you have other stuff to do, like go on a walk with your 83-year-old mother in Commons Park, where you can relax and watch the GOP self-destruct?

I’m launching a project this year called “Still Standing: Journalists at Work.”

I’ll be tweeting and blogging photos of CO journos on the job.

To  start, some photos of reporters covering the ASSET news conference today at the State Capitol.

AP’s Ivan Moreno (left, front) and The Denver Post’s Tim Hoover (center, front) and other reporters cover the introduction of the ASSET bill

Fox 31’s Eli Stokols conducts an interview after ASSET news conference.

You’d think the upcoming deadline to extend the U.S. debt ceiling offers the perfect moment for one, just one, congressional Republican from Colorado to pull on his big-boy pants and say something like, “Hey, we created stock market gyrations and induced the first-ever U.S.-credit downgrade when we held up the debt increase in 2011. We caused similar instability last year. Let’s get real, extend the ceiling, and debate budget cuts during the budget process.”

Which is what Democrats and Republicans have done over 100 times since 1940, with little opposition (until 2011). Reagan did it 18 times; G.W. Bush seven.

Instead, it looks like Coffman (here), Gardner (here, here) are readying themselves for a fight that could lead to an economic mini-tizzy if not a large one.

Or maybe not. Can a Colorado Republican step up and be reasonable? Any of them? That’s what editorial writers at The Denver Post and elsewhere should be asking.

In just the latest example of extreme craziness, Gardner used the debt-ceiling debate to raise the specter of the rise of Nazism in America. Here’s what he said on KFTM radio’s Big Morning Show Jan. 14:

Gardner: I think you’re going to see a whale of a fight over the next two months….

Host: Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And really, how is this any different than what Germany went through in the 1930s when you had to literally have wheelbarrows full of German Marks in order to even buy a loaf of bread?

Gardner: Well a period of hyper-inflation, of course, we all know what that led to, the instability economically and what that led to. And we see quantitative easing taking place in the United States. We see devaluation of the dollar. We see inflationary pressures and threats and how that’s being dealt with. And yet there is no clear path to address those concerns. This nation faces the real possibility of a debt depression if we don’t get a hold of the financial situation right now.

Listen to Rep. Gardner on KFTM Radio 1-14-2012 raising specter of Nazism in America .

Coffman has more incentive than Gardner not to go Nazi. Yet he told Fox 31’s Eli Stokols in early January:

Coffman: “But the real big deal is what’s upon us and going past the debt limit. I have to see a way out of this, real spending cuts, before I vote to raise the debt limit.”

The Denver Post’s Curtis Hubbard wrote a column recently pointing out that normal people in Aurora expect normal behavior from Coffman. Hubbard wondered if they’ll get it.

Hubbard was right about the expectation that Coffman should change his behavior.

But the same could be said of any of the Colorado Republicans serving in Congress, if they want to raise their party’s standing in blue (?) Colorado.

On the debt limit, which CO Repubulican Congressman will break from their comrades and act like a grownup?

I posted The Denver Post’s policy regarding the use of the term “illegal immigrant” last week.

As you can see here, The Post favors the use of “illegal immigrant” over “undocumented immigrant” but accepts “undocumented immigrant” as less precise synonym.

That makes sense to me when it comes to describing the group of millions of people who entered this country illegally. I agree with the New York Times‘ reasoning on this.

But when it comes to an individual, I wouldn’t use any label (illegal or undocumented) unless there was actual factual evidence that the individual in question was, in fact, an illegal immigrant.

This approach would be in keeping with what Post City Editor Dana Coffield told me last year, that The Post only refers to someone’s immigration status “when it becomes part of and material to the public record.”

This seems really obvious, but it wasn’t spelled out in The Post’s published policy.

I asked Denver Post Politics Editor Chuck Plunkett about this, and he more-or-less affirmed the policy Coffield articulated:

Plunkett: If we are talking about an individual, then it would have to be a judgment call based on information that we have. If the person admits she is here illegally, or if police say that is the case, that’s pretty straightforward. Otherwise it gets murkier. My answer has to be that we would deal with the description on a case-by-case basis. Dana Coffield’s answer to you last year follows the same kind of logic that I would follow.

So I’m thinking it should be really rare for The Post to describe a person as an “illegal immigrant” or an “undocumented immigrant” unless that status is confirmed by an official source, on the record, or the person has stated this themselves. You can dream up exceptions, like an off-the-record source used in an unusual situation, but you wouldn’t expect to see this very often.

On his profile on his Facebook page, Denver Post Politics Editor Chuck Plunkett writes:

Please note. As a journalist using social media, my following or friending or liking — and in some cases even retweeting or reposting — is not always meant as an endorsement.

This is a shorter version of a post Plunkett wrote shortly before the election on Facebook:

To me, that’s common sense, but it’s good Plunkett spells it out for us.

You say, still, what if a guy like Plunkett “likes” or “friends” 100 right-wing groups and 25 lefty ones? What if he re-tweets Scott Gessler (as if Gessler doesn’t tweet his own horn often enough)? Does it mean he favors the right?

It means little or nothing. You don’t know what Plunkett is up to or where he’s getting information, unless you’re a mind reader, and mind readers are the worst kind of media critics–though they are a common kind.

Re-posting, retweeting, even “likes,” by other public figures, like politicians, invites questions, however.

The bottom line is, for journalists, if you think they lean one way or the other, evaluate their actual factual work. Is it fair? Is it accurate?

As an addendum to a shrill column by Ruben Navarette arguing that the term “illegal immigrant” should not be replaced by a phrase like “undocumented worker,”  The Denver Post Perspective section published its own guidelines on how Post journalists should use the terms.

Unfortunately, the explanation apparantly only appeared in the print edition.

I was going to ask The Post to put it online, and I’m thinking its omission was just an oversight, but before I did, I thought I’d put it out there for people to see:

Newspaper usage     

The Denver Post: The Post uses the term “illegal immigrants” in referring to citizens of foreign countries who are in this country with no passport, visa or other document to show that they are entitled to visit, work or live in the United States. We do not use “illegal aliens” or “illegals” except in direct quotes or in rare cases when the official government term “illegal aliens” is unavoidable. We will not use the nouns “alien” and “illegal” in headlines. The term “undocumented immigrants” or “undocumented workers” is an acceptable synonym but is more vague.

The Associated Press: The AP also prefers the term “illegal immigrant.” Unless quoting someone, the news service does not use the terms “illegal alien,” “an illegal,” “illegals” or the term “undocumented.”

My question for The Post is, what constitutes sufficient proof that an individual doesn’t  have a “passport, visa or other document to show that they are entitled to visit, work or live in the United States.”

If someone admits not having proper documentation? If immigration officials or police make this determination? If someone can’t produce documentation immediately? What’s the evidentiary standard?

It’s one thing to label the group of people who are presumably in the United States illegally as “illegal immigrants,” but it’s another to presume any single individual is an “illegal immigrant.”

Last year, Post City Editor Dana Coffield told me that The Post only refers to someone’s immigration status “when it becomes part of and material to the public record”–unlike talk-radio host Peter Boyles who dehumanizes himself and all of us by implying or asserting that someone with a Spanish surname is an “illegal.”

In his column in The Post, Navarette argued in part:

• The wording is accurate. When you enter the United States without permission or overstay a visa, you break a law. Vargas notes that “being in a country without proper documents is a civil offense, not a criminal one.” True. But the word “illegal” simply means against the law, and civil laws can be broken just like criminal ones.

• The proposed change is, for the most part, about being politically correct. And this is not a good spot from which to practice journalism. My profession isn’t about making folks comfortable. That’s public relations. At its best, journalism is about making them uncomfortable.

• The word police simply want to sanitize the debate, so that immigration reformers don’t get their hands dirty by condoning illegal activity.

Anyway, I’ll ask The Post my question about its style guide next week, and I’ll include a few of the best questions from my readers, if you have any. Shoot them my way, if you do to tips@bigmedia.org.

You may recall one of the most effective organizations supporting the re-election of George W. Bush was Billionaires for Bush!

The billionaires trailed Bush and Cheney around the country, with signs like “It’s a Class War and We’re Winning” and “Widen the Income Gap.” The billionaires liked to say they paid for eight years of Bush, and so throwing him out after four years was a rip-off.

I was thinking about Billionaires for Bush when I saw a roundup of news coverage from around the country of protests Saturday against extending tax cuts for the top two percent.

They weren’t giant demonstrations, but you had 25, 50, 100 people in dozens of venues. In Colorado, there were about 25 folks in Grand Junction and about 50 people in front of Fava’s restaurant in Aurora.

Whether this impresses you or not, you’d agree that what you do not see are the top two percent in the streets, with signs like, “More Tax Cuts for Millionaires Now!” “What’s Good for the Top 2% Is Good For YOU,” “Keep On Tricklin'”, “Another Yacht, for the Good of the People,” or “Why Own Just One House When You Can Have Five?”

The fact that you don’t see those folks demonstrating at all adds news value to the protests by the folks like Fair Share Colorado and Protect Your Care, who were among the organizers of the protest in Aurora. Yet, Saturday’s demonstration got zero news coverage in Denver, as far as I can tell.

Reporters should not only cover events like the one in Aurora but also point out that the super rich aren’t in the streets over this. What’s up with them? Too busy? Embarrassed to put their faces out there?

I’m serious. The Denver Post ran a piece on its Spot Blog yesterday about 50 business leaders who signed a letter to Colorado’s congressional delegation asking them to solve the fiscal-cliff problem. They didn’t even take a position on extending the Bush tax cuts for the super rich. Overall it was a mushy letter, its impact derived from the compiled signatures of wealthy, powerful elites, who call for resolution and compromise. With only vague platitudes, agreeing with overall public sentiment, the letter is more appropriate for a story on the Society Page.

Yet, the Post found the letter more newsworthy than 50 folks actually standing in Aurora, who called on Rep. Mike Coffman, specifically, to prioritize the “middle class over millionaires,” and to end tax cuts for the top 2 percent of income earners.

“Representative Coffman should not hold out for tax cuts for the richest among us,” said Aurora real estate agent Jeanne May, an Aurora real estate agent and member of Colorado Fair Share. “He needs to vote for middle class tax cuts for people like me not tax breaks for millionaires who don’t need them.”

So Jeanne May has thrown down the gauntlet to super rich out there–and reporters. Will there be a response? When will we see the luxury street protests, or somehow, the faces of the top two percent?

Where are those Billionaires for Bush now?

Small business owners, veterans, and others ask Rep. Mike Coffman to end tax cuts to two percent of income earners.