Bloggers like me see it as big win if a serious journalistic entity like The Denver Post credits them for breaking a news story.

People read about your blog in the newspaper, and your audience might increase from three to five.

But the best part is the credibility. Most bloggers still flail on the margins of the media world, hoping more people will take them seriously.

Even bloggers who don’t like The Post have to admit it represents the finest Colorado has to offer, journalism-wise.

So when The Post acknowledges a scoop by your blog, you just gained some standing in the journalism world, making your blog a little harder to ignore, even by reporters who hate bloggers.

So the blog Complete Colorado, a project of the right-leaning Independence Institute, is probably feeling pretty good right about now.

It’s been mentioned by The Post as the “first” to make public the evidence allegedly showing that Denver mayor-elect Michael Hancock was a client of a local prostitution ring.

Post reporters didn’t say Complete Colorado broke a news story.

But Post reporters have repeatedly referred to Complete Colorado as putting the story in motion, even if words like “broke the news” were not used.

To my way of thinking, this amounts to crediting Complete Colorado for breaking the Hancock news story even though The Post doesn’t consider the allegations published by Complete Colorado as a legitimate news story.

In fact, after Complete Colorado published the allegations, Post Publisher Dean Singleton said that no “reputable” news organization would touch the story. It didn’t pass muster as news story because the facts were not verified and the sources not adequate, Singleton said on the Caplis and Silverman show, where Post reporter Chuck Plunkett made similar comments.

It didn’t rise to the level of a legitimate news story, in The Post’s eyes, until later, when Hancock allegedly reneged on a promise to turn over cell phone records to The Post, according to an op-ed by Post Editor Greg Moore, who wrote that the campaign was “stonewalling.”

That’s when the Hancock story was deemed news, as Moore explained in his op-ed on Sunday.

So Complete Colorado deserves credit for nothing in this case, except irresponsibly spreading unsubstantiated anonymous rumors. Nothing resembling journalistic triumph for Complete Colorado.

In an email to me, Post Editor More wrote that his reporters didn’t credit Complete Colorado, but instead cited its action as “a fact in the narrative timeline.”

More wrote me:

As you noted in your email, The Denver Post has not described what Complete Colorado did as “breaking” a story. We simply described the fact that it posted the documents purporting to contain Hancock’s name and that represents nothing more for us than a fact in the narrative timeline.

He’s right.

But here’s an example showing how Complete Colorado was included in a front-page Post news story.

Nine days ago, as those records from Denver Players were first made public by the blog Complete Colorado, Hancock vigorously denied any association with the service. His campaign pledged to The Denver Post and 9News that it would produce cellphone records showing no calls to or from the service, and bank records that would show whether he made cash withdrawals on or near the dates in question.

You can see why I think most readers would mistakenly believe that The Post, above, is giving Complete Colorado credit for breaking a news story, even though if you read carefully, you see The Post isn’t doing so.

So here’s a proposed solution:

Going forward on this story, if an irresponsible outfit like Complete Colorado must be mentioned for background, The Post and other Denver outlets should state clearly that Complete Colorado published unsubstantiated information, which reputable news outlets would have left in the garbage can, at least until more credible information was found.

Continuing to give de facto credit to Complete Colorado encourages it, and other bloggers, to act irresponsibly in the future.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m really glad The Post is trying to give credit where credit is due to lowly bloggers for breaking news stories.

The Post’s proper acknowledgement of the fine work of bloggers will help journalism and good bloggers survive. But rewarding bad blog behavior, like rumor-mongering, hurts journalism, bloggers, and everyone else.

Some carnival barkers and radio chatterers are saying there was some sort of agreement between the Michael Hancock campaign and The Denver Post that went something like this: The Post wouldn’t print the story about his alleged liaisons with prostitutes, if Hancock agreed to turn over his cell phone and bank records to reporters.

I was glad to hear Denver Post reporter Chuck Plunkett, on the Caplis and Silverman Show yesterday, deny that any such agreement existed, because this obviously would have constituted journalism at its worst.

“We made no such commitment,” Plunkett told Caplis and Silverman. “If we could have gotten, for example, through our other research and other journalistic efforts, some kind of third party corroboration, one way or the other, that was unimpeachable, you bet we would have gone to press with it.”

So Plunkett confirmed on the radio that if The Post had a credible story about Hancock prior to the election, they would have rushed to publish it. But, as Plunkett’s big boss Dean Singleton told Caplis and Silverman June 7, no “reputable” news organization would have published a story based on the information they had on hand at the time.

And here’s the strange part. After a series of front page stories in The Post, warmed with hot air out from some local TV stations, the facts of this story haven’t changed much. A piece of paper with Hancock’s misspelled name povided by a pimp, plus his cell phone number and some dates.

That was’t much then or now.

Yet, the story went from unreportable to the front page because, according to Plunkett, Hancock decided not to honor, as Plunkett put it yesterday, a “gentleman’s agreement,” to hand over his unvetted bank and cell-phone records?

On the radio, Plunkett sounded offended that Hancock didn’t turn over all his records, per the gentleman’s agreement, which Hancock’s campaign manager denies making.

But even if the gentleman’s agreement was broken, that doesn’t make this petty story all that big a deal, if you look at the facts on the table. Giving it so much hype, and assigning The Post’s top writers to it, and continuing to do so, is a journalistic embarrassment.

I’m not saying Hancock’s alleged shift in stance regarding the documents wasn’t news. The Post made the right call to air the story, along with the news that Hancock’s laywers asked for police evidence. There’s a little news there. But this might have merited a few paragraphs because the core of the story remains empty.

Going forward, The Post should take a breath and distinguish between significant advances in this story from next-to-meaningless, but titillating, developments.

There could be potential big news here, like real evidence proving Hancock is lying about paying prostitutes, but spare us the hype.

Last month, Sarah Palin made a joint appearance in Denver with retired Gen. William Boykin, who believes Islam shouldn’t be given the same first-amendment protections as other religions.

Palin came and went, and most major local media didn’t mention Boykin’s anti-Islamic views, which would surely have been reported if Boykin had made similar attacks on Christianity or Judaism.

It’s the kind of omission you might try to forget about and move on, even though it’s classic religious bigotry.

But I listen to a lot of talk radio, and ideas like Boykin’s ooze out all the time.

I know if I were a Muslim, I’d be scared. As a matter of fact, I’m not a Muslim, and I’m scared.

On the radio, the argument reflects what Boykin writes in a Colordo Christian University essay, that the “Koran is unequivocal in its directive to Muslims to establish a global Islamic state…with Sharia as the only law of the land.”

Sharia, Boykin argues, echoing what you hear on talk radio, “demands death for those who renounce Islam” as well as “marital rape, female genital mutilation, and severing of hands and feet.”

This leads people like Denver Post columnist John Andrews to ask, “Can a good Muslim be a good American? …the answer is not so simple.”

So I interviewed an expert on Islam, to offer a countervailing view.

“The Taliban takes one bit of the Sharia, the harsh and literal interpretation, and leaves out the most important part, the compassion,” Akbar Ahmed, Chair of Islamic Studies at American University and author of Journey into America, told me. “In Islam, god in the Koran has 99 attributes, 99 names, and the two names that god uses all the time to define himself, and we use to define god, are compassion and mercy. So god’s justice reflects god’s compassion and mercy, which the Taliban overlook in their interpretation.”

Ahmed said that some literalists, like the Taliban, interpret Sharia exactly as written in the Koran, but the vast majority of Muslims believe Sharia should not be interpreted literally.

He cited the example of stoning to death, which he says was inherited from the Judeo-Christian tradition, like other brutal laws in the Sharia. 

“Do Christians go around stoning adulterers and so on?” he asked. “They don’t. They don’t use the literal interpretation of the Bible for their law.”

Some Muslim groups, like the Taliban, do rely on the literal interpretation, he says, but this is mostly “tribal.”

 “If you look around the Muslim world, you will see that there is no question of stoning in countries that are on the path to modernity, countries like Malaysia, Egypt, or Indonesia, even Pakistan and Bangladesh. By and large, you will not get people advocating the stoning of women or the chopping off of hands. You will not get that.”

“If you took a vote in the vast majority of the Muslim world, Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt, and they have a population of 90 to 98 percent Muslim, and if you took a vote on the Sharia, they would overwhelmingly turn it down,” he said.

He told me journalists aren’t reporting enough about Sharia, so the hate-filled and inaccurate statements of talk-show hosts and right-wing extremists like Boykin are defining the term, unfairly, for Americans.

“If journalists take this on, you will see others jumping up and saying it’s time to call a halt to this,” he said. “It’s not being American at all, in terms of the religious pluralism that is at the heart of the American character.”

In another exemplary radio interview on the Glenwood-Springs Cari and Rob Show yesterday, hosts Rob Douglas and Cari Hermancinski grilled Rep. Scott Tipton, whom they call a House-freshman “canary in the coal mine,” about his daughter’s job with technology company whose licensed products are sold by other companies to congressional offices.

The two hosts were particularly direct with Tipton about the offer and start date of his daughter’s job with the Washington DC firm.

On April 7, on the same radio show, Tipton said the company “offered it [the job] to her [his daughter] before the election.”

To make sure he had it straight April 7, host Rob Douglas asked Tipton if his daughter had started her job “before the outcome of the last election.”

Tipton said, “Yes.”

But The Denver Post reported Friday that Tipton’s daughter started full-time in January, when Tipton took office.

Douglas tried unsuccessfully yesterday to get the story straight.

Douglas: Your daughter went to work for Broadnet officially when?

Tipton: I think she started right after the Christmas term.

Douglas: When was she offered that job?

Tipton: It was my understanding after she had done her internship here a year or so ago, that when she was getting ready to graduate from college, that they had a job for her.

Douglas: Was there an official offer made to her from Broadnet?

Tipton: You know Rob, I can’t tell ya. We’re getting into the weeds of family business and her personal business as well. I can’t give you the date because I don’t monitor it that closely.

Douglas: Can you get us that date after you get to Washington?

Tipton: I can probably ask her if she chooses. This has been very difficult on her because she hasn’t done anything wrong.

Douglas is right to be annoyed by the strange squirrelliness on Tipton’s part. (And he expressed his frustration in greater detail to the Colorado Independent.)

Douglas  should ask Tipton directly if his daughter’s job was tied to his congressional victory. It’s a reasonable question, given that Tipton’s daughter has been using her father’s name in letters to members of Congress.

You might think Douglas is going nowhere with his questions about when the job offer was made to Tipton’s daughter, and you may be right, especially since Broadnet is owned by Tipton’s nephew and Tipton’s daughter had a part-time job with the company before she started work full-time.

Still, it’s a reasonable question and Douglas should stay after it.

My guess is that Douglas will follow-up, especially because his show apparently was the first media outlet to question Tipton, in an April 7 interview, about his daughter’s job with Broadnet.

Instead of crediting the Cari and Rob Show with raising the issue first, Tipton’s spokesperson blamed Democrat Nancy Pelosi for sending a “lap-dog” to Colorado to “fire up the rumor mill with a cheap Washington political attack on a 22-year-old girl,” according to Politico.

Asked by Douglas and Hermancinski for evidence that Pelosi was pushing the story about his daughter and Broadnet, Tipton acknowledged he had no such evidence. “Maybe it was an assumption,” he said.

The Cari and Rob Show’s questioning of Tipton is getting noticed. Last month, Tipton admitted he’s lost trust in House Speaker Boehner, after he agreed to a budget compromise opposed by Tipton.

Tipton later backtracked, saying to a national blog that has confidence in Boehner, but he never returned to the Cari and Rob Show to explain why he has a more positive view of Boehner, despite promises by both Douglas and Tipton that he would do so.

Back in November, Scott McInnis told The Denver Post that he’d clear his name within a few short months. It wasn’t clear what he meant, but you had to assume something would show that he didn’t deserve the harsh treatment he got as he ran for governor in the last election.

He couldn’t show that he really did not commit plagiarism, could he? I mean, the exact words in McInnis’ water articles, written for the Hasan Family Foundation for $300,000, were lifted from another writer’s work. This was clear and irrefutable, right?

McInnis couldn’t blame the media? Or Dick Wadhams? Or even The Tea Party.

What could clear his name?

I waited impatiently, and no name-clearing happened. I was getting real desperate to know WTF was in McInnis’ mind, and today rolled around.

It turns out that an attorney connected to the Colorado Supreme Court conducted an investigation, at the behest of Colorado Ethics Watch, on whether McInnis’ behavior meets the lawyerly snuff test.

His investigation, indeed, cleans up McInnis a bit, but it doesn’t clear his name, unless you believe throwing people under buses is a good idea.

John Gleason, who conducted the investigation, aired his conclusion in documents quoted by the Grand Junction Sentinel (posted previously here)  this morning:

“Based on the sworn testimony of Mr. Fischer and his contemporaneous emails, personal notes and other documents produced by him, it is clear that in 2005, Mr. McInnis both disclosed to Mr. Fischer that his draft articles may be published by the Hasan Family Foundation and instructed Mr. Fischer (a water law expert but inexperienced author) that he must not plagiarize anyone’s work. …”

So Gleason clears McInnis of dishonest lawyerly conduct.

But does it clear him of slimy, squeezy, mean politican conduct? Does it make his conduct look, ah, gubernatorial, if I can use that word there.

No way.

No one but a lawyer would believe it means much, in the political name clearing business, if emails stated that Rollie Fischer was told not to plagiarize. And he apparently forgot or didn’t read the fine print.

That’s no reason for McInnis to go on TV and blame the plagiarism on Fischer. He should have taken responsibility himself. His name was on it. Fischer was confused, and so were the Hasans, according to the story in the Grand Junction Sentinel today.

Still, we don’t know if today’s news was, in fact, the name-clearing event that McInnis was referring to in November. You have to guess that it was, or at least that he had found correspondence with Fischer and the Hasans that put the blame for the water plagiarism on Fischer.

If so, if McInnis thought this would Shyne up his image, McInnis still doesn’t get it.

His mistake was throwing his research assistant under the bus. He could have survived the plagiarism, probably. But his handling of it sunk his campaign.

He can’t clear his name of those mistakes. That was his problem then, and that’s what he’s going to have to live with.

A while back, The Denver Post’s  Editorial Page Editor Dan Haley provided me a website page listing the names and bios of each of the newspaper’s editorial board members. Here’s the link, and below are the names, which I couldn’t locate using The Post’s search tool. They usually appear at the bottom of The Post’s column of editorials:

William Dean Singleton, chairman and Publisher;
Dan Haley, editorial page editor;
Gerald Grilly, president and CEO;
Vincent Carroll, columnist;
Mike Littwin, columnist;
Alicia Caldwell, editorial writer;
Mike Keefe, cartoonist;
Barbara Ellis, news editor;
Cohen Peart, letters editor.

If you’re thinking, who cares, then you’re reading the right blog post, because you should care for a number of reasons.

This group, or portions of it, meets regularly with muckety-muck public figures, and theoretically decides on which candidates to endorse and which positions the newspaper should take in the political fray.

As a practical matter, the board doesn’t vote on every issue or candidate race. And Post chairman Dean Singleton has veto power but doesn’t participate very often. (Singleton told me in 2006 that he reversed only two endorsements up to that time: for Bush in 2004 and Owens in 1998.)

Here’s what Post Editorial Page Editor Dan Haley recently wrote, in response to my question about how the board makes decisions. (He pointed out that this isn’t very exciting.)

“The board meets routinely to talk through the issues of the day, and what we might want to write about. We generally reach a consensus about what the house editorial should say. If we can’t, I’ll make the decision for us. We rarely have actual votes because they’re not really necessary. And as I noted in my column, our opinion isn’t always my opinion, and that’s as it should be. Singleton doesn’t weigh in that often, but he certainly can. As publisher, he sits on the board.”

Haley had just written a column about how The Post came around to endorsing Chris Romer for mayor, despite Singleton’s preference for Mejia.

In any case, back to why this matters.

This indeed a deadly boring topic for a blog post,  but I’m continually amazed at the inability of people to distinguish the news and opinion sections of The Post.

If you don’t like something about The Post’s opinion page, or think something’s missing, contact the people on the editorial board, not a news reporter. (Of course, you can also write a letter to the editor.)

Conversely, you don’t want to complain about editorials to reporters or news editors, because they will say it’s not their purview. Contact them about problems with news stories, or, again, write a letter to the editor.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that no one reads this stuff. The Post still has hundreds of thousands of subscribers, a dedicated following of political elites, plus online viewers.

I think the makeup of the editorial board, and how it functions, lends credence to those who argue that the newspaper’s opinion page is basically centrist, with left and right represented. I don’t mean to open up an endless debate about how you define “left” and “right,” but the editorials don’t look like they were written by Littwin or Carroll very often. (OK, maybe they look like they reflect a bit more of Carroll’s thinking, but I haven’t done my bean count yet to see if this is provable with evidence.)

I know from experience that many people, if they make it to the end of this blog post, will just not believe it. They can’t accept that a newspaper’s editorial page, along with the news section, isn’t under the day-to-day thumb of the owner. I know the owner has an impact, sometimes a huge one, but to write off The Post as controlled by one side or the other is not demonstrably true.

It’s worth saying again, given that about 30,000 newspaper layoffs have occurred in the past three years, how much a community loses when a veteran journalist loses her job.

For example, someone like me has to spend hours poring over Nexis to discover that former Gov. Dick Lamm and former GOP chair Bo Callaway secretly agreed in 1980 that Colorado should have competitive congressional districts.

But Post reporter Lynn Bartels simply has to check her brain, not Nexis. She was a Rocky reporter when it published the story back in the year 2000. After having asserted that Bartels failed to report the Lamm/Callaway story Friday, I regret to report today that, in fact, Bartels wrote a piece about it in December.

“I didn’t need to pore over LexisNexis,” Bartels points out. “I worked with Michele Ames and read her story at the time.”

And not only that, she quoted the current Colorado GOP chair, Dick Wadhams, openly saying he supports competitive districts, like Callaway did scretly:

“I think you get better elected officials that way, but I’ve never figured out how we get there,” [Wadhams] said. “You’d have to split El Paso County and Denver County, and I’m not sure either side would go for that.”

So my assertion that The Post, and other local media, had not reported what Colorado Republicans think about competitive districts was also wrong.

We’re fortunate we’ve still got Bartels and other veteran journalists in town. I wish we had more.

A wire service article in the print edition of today’s Denver Post informs us that Sarah Palin, in a speech yesterday, slammed the endangered-species act and called for more domestic oil drilling, but there was nothing more about her appearance tonight with Gen. William Boykin (U.S. Army, ret.).

An Associated Press story on The Post’s website, however, lets us know that, while in the Army, Boykin “disparaged” Islam but apologized later. The AP story was picked up by a handful of Colorado media outlets. AP reported:

Retired Lt. Gen. William Boykin said that America’s enemy was Satan and that one Muslim Somali warlord was an idol-worshipper. Boykin later apologized and said he did not mean to insult Islam. He retired in 2007.

It’s good to see that a drip of Boykin’s attacks on Islam have entered the vein of the Denver media, on the day Palin is scheduled to speak here. But there’s a river of hatred waiting to be aired, including Boykin’s condemnation of Islam and those who practice it. He writes that segments of Islam should not receive 1st Amendment protections like other religions, but his narrow and sweeping condemnations of the Koran and Islamic beliefs make his distinctions between one form of Islam and another meaningless.

At Palin’s event tonight, neither Palin nor Boykin is going to discuss Islam, according to the event’s organizer John Andrews. Reporters need to find the courage to ask Boykin and Palin about their views toward Islam anyway. 

Boykin’s disparagement of Islam is not ancient history, and he’s not apologizing for it now.

And Boykin will be sharing a stage with a former vice presidential candidate who could possibly be the next president of the United States. The fact that these two people are standing together is significant to everyone who cares about tolerance in America.

She and Boykin should be asked the question that the organizer of tonight’s event posed but refused to answer, “Can a good Muslim be a good American?”

If you study Boykin, you’d think he’d answer that question with a no.

And Palin? Well, she’s ok with sharing a podium with Boykin. So it’s reasonable to ask what she thinks.

In fact, journalists wouldn’t be doing their job if they don’t question Palin about Islam. As for Boykin, I’m not saying journalists should condemn him. I can do that. Just tell us what he’s stood for in the past and what he thinks about Islam today. And note that Palin agreed to appear with him at the same event.

Reporters don’t have much time to pore over Nexis, like I do, and they might argue that even if they had extra time, they wouldn’t want to spend it researching stories about redistricting, which seems to end the same way every ten years anyway.

But I found an old news article about redistricting that reporters would benefit from knowing about.

Rocky Mountain News reporter Michele Ames interviewed Colorado GOP Chair Bo Callaway and Democratic Governor Dick Lamm about the redistricting process of 1980, during which they occupied parallel universes and otherwise didn’t concur, like we’re seeing of the partisans today.

But Ames discovered that, twenty years after their legislative battle, the two were willing to admit they secretly agreed on redistricting, even though the Colorado legislature deadlocked on the redistricting matter and it was sent to court.

Lamm told the Rocky (Dec. 29, 2000):

“Bo approached me during this battle and he said, ‘Let’s divide up this state in as close and as even districts and make all the candidates earn their elected office,” Lamm said. “He was right and I admire him for it.”

 Callaway was also quoted:

 “The best thing for the state of Colorado is more competition,” Callaway said. “Make them really run. Make them win your vote. I believed it then, and I still do.”

This became known as Callamandering, and the Rocky supported it in an editorial about 10 years later, saying competitive districts “give life to the proper spirit of politics” (Rocky, May 28, 2001).

And here’s another interesting piece of the article.

In 2000, then House Speaker Carl Bev Bledsoe (R-Hugo) openly supported the concept of competitive districts. He told the Rocky:

“If you’re interested in good government, you’re interested in competition. It makes both parties stronger,” Bledsoe said. “Then, whoever wins, it holds their feet to the fire.”

Despite this nod toward good government, the Colorado Legislature couldn’t agree in the year 2000, and the congressional map was again drawn by the courts.

But it did make me wonder, this time around, are Colorado Republicans saying they don’t want competitive districts? I realize, of course, that competitiveness is in the eyes of the beholder, and it obviously can be used as a smokescreen for partisan manipulation, but still, it’s hard to disagree with Callaway, Lamm, and Bledsoe above.

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but The Denver Post has yet to report, in its print edition, what the GOP thinks about competitive districts. Numerous Democrats are on record as supporting it. (The search function on the Spot blog is down, but I couldn’t find anything there.)

Clearly, The Post, should find out what GOP lawmakers think and let readers know.

We’ve seen some comments about competiveness from GOP lawmakers in other news outlets, and they are not consistent.

In December, GOP Senate Minority Leader Mike Kopp told the Colorado Statesman, “Citizens want a fair and open process with competitive districts.” The Coloradoan reported that Rep. Amy Stephens favors competitive districts as well.

The Colorado Senate website, run by Democrats, quoted Sen. Mark Sheffel (R-Parker) as saying  at an April 20 hearing, “I wanted to raise the point that if we’re talking about this competitiveness that I would urge caution.”

Sen. Greg Brophy (R-Wray) was quoted from the same hearing:

“I think we already have a competitive state and I worry that on the other side of that competitive coin, that it just breeds more polarization among the electorate.”

But fellow Republicans reportedly disagree with that:

“It’s the lack of competitive districts that have led to the polarization of politics,” said Sen. Steve Ward, R-Littleton, told the Associated Press (April 24, 2008).  He was running to replace Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo at the time.

Denver journalists would be doing democracy a favor if they would do some reporting and find out if there’s any agreement, somewhere, some way, between Colorado Dems and Republicans on the competitiveness issue. The first task is to get the thoughts of both sides on the table.

I called former GOP State Senate President John Andrews today, to find out more about William Boykin’s appearance Monday with Sarah Palin at Colorado Christian Univeristy’s “Tribute for the Troops” rally.

I wanted to know if anyone had grumbled to Andrews, who’s organizing the rally, about booking Boykin and Palin together at the same event, given, as I pointed out yesterday, and the Colorado Independent advances today, that Boykin essentially condemns Islam as a valid religion. I mean, imagine the rumble if an outspoken opponent of Christianity appeared in Colorado with a rumored presidential candidate.

But first I asked Andrews about whether it was true, what Andrews himself wrote in his Institute’s publication, that “the answer is not so simple” to the question, “”Can a good Muslim be a good American?”

I told him that maybe I was reading too much into his statement, and did he really mean it? His use of the word “can,” I thought, left open the possibility that no Muslim could be a good American. Does Andrews really believe this?

“I’m not going to expand on what I wrote or comment further on what the general wrote,” he told me. “Both articles speak for themselves. They attempt to challenge thinking. I believe that’s one of the functions of any university. Some universities are better at challenging thinking in one direction. Some are better at challenging thinking in another.”

I told him I wouldn’t ask any more questions about that, but I wondered if Palin signed off on appearing with Boykin at the same event.

Andrews said he told Palin’s staff that CCU’s Centennial Institute has worked several times with a “distinguished retired general” and wanted him to be part of the “uniformed services element” of the program, and Palin’s staff accepted this. It was agreed that Boykin’s remarks, as well as Palin’s, would be nonpolitical, Andrews said, adding that Boykin’s theme will be the sacrifice required to serve in the armed forces.

“He’s entitled to say whatever he wants to say, but the entire thrust of this occasion is patriotic not political, and I believe that’s the approach that both Palin and Boykin will both be taking.”

I asked Andrews if any of his people had objected to Boykin’s appearance at the event. I was thinking someone must have rushed into Andrew’s office and begged him to un-invite Boykin.

“Boykin has a trendeous appreciative and supportive following amongst our constituencey, and so I think there’s only been a sense of gratification from our folks that he’s once again appearing on our platform,” Andrews said.