In March, The Denver Post let us know that Sarah Palin will share a podium with Lt. General William G. Boykin (ret.) at “Tribute for the Troops” rally Monday at Colorado Christian University in Lakewood.

But The Post didn’t mention—and neither have other local media outlets—that this isn’t just any run-of-the-mill General Boykin.

It’s Gen. William “Holy War” Boykin, widely known for describing the war on terror in religious terms, saying America is fighting “Satan,” —views President George W. Bush disavowed when Boykin first voiced them in 2003 as an active member of the U.S. Army.

It seems Boykin got in the most trouble for delivering a speech at a church in which he discussed his battle against a warlord in Somalia in 1993. In a memorable quote, Boykin said, “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.” Boykin later said he meant no offense against Islam and the warlord’s god.

Boykin left the Army in 2007, and during his retirement, he’s unapologetically stepped up his attacks on Islam.

For example, in an article published by the Centennial Institute, an arm of Colorado Christian University, where he’s scheduled to stand with Palin Mon., Boykin argued that full First Amendment protections should not apply to practitioners of some forms of Islam because “Islam is not just another religion,” but, “in its fullest form, Islam is a complete and totalitarian way of life.” This, he writes, “is a huge problem for the nation’s future.”

He argues in the article, titled, “Sharia Law or the Constitution: America Must Choose,” 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.”

“Islam does have a religious component,” Boykin writes in the article, “but it has many other components, which should not be entitled to the same level of constitutional protection. Islam is foremost a legal system, called Sharia law. The Koran is unequivocal in its directive to Muslims to establish a global Islamic state, or Caliphate, over which the Islamic messiah, or Mahdi, will rule with Sharia as the only law of the land. That is the intent of many influential Islamic elements in America. But it is the exact opposite of what the First Amendment was designed to protect.”

“We have taken for granted that Islam deserves the same constitutionally protected status afforded to Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and other faiths,” he wrote, in asserting that we should do re-think our view of Islam.

Boykin is a familiar figure at the Colorado Christian University, where he’s spoken three times previously.

In an a short essay titled “A Clash of Loyalties” and published in Feb. with Boykin’s article, John Andrews, President of Colorado Christian University’s Centennial Institute, asks:

“Can a good Muslim be a good American,” and he concluded that “the answer is not so simple.”

Andrews writes that some may find Boykin’s article “unwelcome or offensive” but Andrews says Boykin’s “warning here is a plea of a patriot; we should listen well.”

Andrews is a former GOP President of the Colorado State Senate. The President of Colorado Christian University is Bill Armstrong, a former U.S. Senator from Colorado. Boykin spoke previously at Colorado Christian University, as part of its “Sharia Awareness Project” lecture series.

In the conclusion of his article, Boykin warns: 

“Americans can no longer afford to operate from a position of ignorance about Islam…. Relying on political leaders, opinion elites, and the media to inform us is unfortunately not an option. When Americans realize the threat of Islamic law, they will certainly sense a call to action. Europe failed to answer that same call [to take action against Islam], and it may now be too late for them to reverse the inevitable Islamic domination of their continent.”

When you read these types of  lines by Boykin, you see that his attacks on “manifestations” of Islam bleed into all people who practice any form Islam.

I’ve tried to figure out how he distinguishes one manifestation of Islam from another, and I don’t see how he does it. So you have to interpret Boykin’s views as attacks against Islam, period. How else can you read his words except as a condemnation the entire religion?

I mean, we have plenty of laws to protect us from any religious person who commits a crime, but Boykin isn’t proposing using the criminal code. He’s proposing a radically different approach, albeit vague on specifics, targeting a religion.

Imagine the uproar if Boykin wrote, “America can no longer afford to operate from a position of ignorance about Christianity….” Or that Judaism “is a huge problem for America’s future.”

Seriously, what if Boykin condemned Judaism or Christianity in this way?

Can you imagine Palin getting anywhere near him, much less speak together with him at a public event? I don’t think so.

Makes you wonder whether Palin agrees with Boykin.

Reporters should ask her when she’s with him Monday. And if she disagrees, they should ask her why she’s comfortable speaking with him at all.

If you’re a political reporter, when it comes to redistricting, there’s allegation after allegation after allegation, and you probably wonder if, by reporting on it, you’re confusing readers rather than helping them understand things.

One obvious way to clarify the debate is to correct false accusations, if they’re actually false. An outsider might think that’s easy, but as we know, the facts in politics are often in dispute, leaving even the best of reporters as frustrated as the rest of us.

Another way reporters can shed light on allegations is to add factual information to help readers gain a broader perspective.

A case in point is Frank McNulty’s allegation that Democratic maps were designed to further the political careers of Senate President Brandon Schaffer and Sen. Morgan Carroll.

McNulty’s allegation was reported in The Denver Post, Durango Herald, Longmont Times-Call, and elsewhere.

In The Post, a response to McNulty’s allegation was offered by Sen. Rollie Heath (D-Boulder). Heath was quoted as saying he resented McNulty’s remark. In a second Post story, in which McNulty’s allegation was repeated, The Post reported that Schaffer was not thinking about a run for Congress now.  The Post also reported that Schaffer said the proposed Democratic districts were competitive.

The Time-Call, in a longer article specifically on McNulty’s allegation, offered a number of responses to it, including Health’s statement that the 4^th District would “still be very heavily weighted Republican” and Shaffer’s view that Democratic proposals are “fair and competitive.”

The Herald stated categorically:

“Under Heath’s map, voters in Shaffer’s 4th congressional district would be 27 percent registered Democrats and 37 percent Republicans.”

As the redistricting debate moves ahead, I hope journalists include specific facts in their reporting to put allegations  like McNulty’s in perspective, even if those allegations can’t be proven wrong per se.

In this McNulty case, to my way of thinking, the Herald’s numbers were the most informative, though an entire article could, and should, be dedicated to different types of voting numbers.

Overall, we’ll benefit more from in-depth coverage of specific aspects of the redistricting debate than he-said-she-said reporting and more he-said-she-said reporting after that.

In a short article in Saturday’s Denver Post about a bipartisan forum on the federal debt/deficit, former CO Sen. Gary Hart was referenced as saying that, to close the budget gap, federal leaders should focus on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the military.

As the Colorado Statesman pointed out in a longer article about the event, Hart also said that increasing revenues should be part of the equation.

This may seem minor, but at the same forum, former GOP Sen. Alan Simpson called for a tax increase, as the Statesman pointed out. This was picked up nationally.

Hart’s agreement with Simpson on a tax increase should be noted here in Colorado and nationally.

I reported Saturday that Secretary of State Scott Gessler was on the Mike Rosen Show April 8, and he had some harsh things to say about The Denver Post.

Asked by Rosen about The Post’s request to review Gessler’s list of 4,947 people who could possibly have voted illegally in recent years, as well as the 106 people Gessler believes are likely to be actual illegal voters, Gessler said:

“It’s just crazy to publish people’s names. I mean, I can’t even believe The Denver Post even asked for that. I mean, they want to get the names of these people and then start calling them. I don’t know if they want to post them on their website and publish the names as well. If you have someone who’s suspected of being a noncitizen and improperly voting, the last thing you do is immediately publish their name publicly and try to embarrass and humiliate them. I’m not in that type of business. I’m just amazed, and it’s not just The Denver Post, I mean, the Huffington Post as well, and I think there’s another newspaper too, and they wanted names of people so they could start calling them and publishing their names.”

I speculated Saturday that Gessler had apparently assumed The Post planned to publish these names. But maybe that’s what The Post told his office?

I mean, I was pretty sure The Post wouldn’t want to mindlessly embarrass and humiliate people. But I thought I’d check.

So I emailed Nancy Lofholm, the Post reporter who wrote that she asked Gessler’s spokesperson for his lists of names.

She sent me a response from her editor, Chuck Murphy:

“Thanks for the opportunity to respond. At no time did we ever even contemplate simply publishing a list of names. We are interested solely in reporting on whether these individuals are former green card holders who have since become citizens and lawful voters, as immigrant rights advocates surmise, or unlawful voters as Secretary Gessler has implied to both the US Congress and the Colorado General Assembly.

Had Secretary Gessler or his staff ever asked whether we intended to publish all the names with no effort at verification of citizenship status, I would have happily told them no.”

Lofholm wrote:

“We wanted to find proof that there are illegal voters in Colorado – or proof that Gessler’s fears about these voters are unfounded. We thought that next step should be taken given that proposed legislation hinges on numbers that thus far have not been corroborated by looking at individual cases.”

So it turns out, as you probably suspected, that all The Post was trying to do was get the facts are on the table, so lawmakers and the rest of us could make informed decisions about what should be done.

As it is, not even Gessler is willing to say definitively that a single person on his long list voted illegally. If The Post could review Gessler’s lists and dispose of even a tiny bit of the pervasive uncertainty that’s underlying Gessler’s numbers, it would just be doing its job, helping clarify the debate, which you’d think would please Secretary Gessler.

Follow Jason Salzman on Twitter @bigmediablog

Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s spokesperson, not Gessler himself, spoke to The Denver Post for a story Thursday reporting that Gessler doesn’t need legislative approval to make sure noncitizens aren’t voting in Colorado elections.

But Gessler found time Friday to join Mike Rosen on KOA radio for a friendly chat on his radio show about the article.

Rosen said The Post story read more like a editorial than a news story, though he never proved this, and he asked Gessler about some of the points raised in it.

He started by asking if Gessler was familiar with the studies, referred to in The Post, which show that noncitizens don’t vote illegally in significant numbers, because the penalties (e.g., deportation, 10-year prison term) are so severe that voting isn’t worth it to them.

“You know, I’m not familiar with these studies,” answered Gessler. “I’m sure they dug something up. But I can tell you something. That conclusion is absolutely untrue. In Colorado alone, in the last few years, we had over 150 people who were noncitizens who were registered to vote. Some of them actually voted. And then they withdrew their registration. They voluntarily realized that they had goofed up, and they withdrew their registration. So, I mean, that’s absolutely untrue, that conclusion in this news story.”

Rosen did not ask Gessler why he wasn’t familiar with the studies, given that he’s launched a time-consuming initiative to stop the very problem that the studies claim is not significant.

Neither did Rosen ask Gessler if he’s sure the 150 weren’t citizens by the time they voted, of why Gessler’s not working with county clerks make sure noncitizens are not voting.

Rosen then asked Gessler whether Rep. Charles Gonzales (D-TX) was correct when he told Gessler that Gessler’s claims were unsupported and his case about illegal voting would not hold up under legal scrutiny.

“Well, that’s just silly,” Gessler told Rosen. “I would suggest that people go up there and look at the exchange between myself and Congressman Gonzales. And he said, you can’t prosecute someone on this evidence. And I said, of course not. That’s not why we’re doing this. I’m not looking to prosecute people. This is an investigative tool. We’re looking to administratively make sure that our voting roles are clean. I mean, I started off as a prosecutor. And I think at the end of the day Gonzales looked a little bit silly with his questioning.”

Rosen told Gessler that The Post reported that Gessler does not need legislative approval to investigate whether noncitizens are voting.

“Well, that’s really sort of interesting,” said Gessler. The backdrop behind that, I went into The Denver Post editorial board, and they sort of beat me up during the interview, and they said, why don’t you just do this already, and I explained the legal framework.  And their editorial the next day was, this was a power grab by Gessler. First they suspected I should just do it. Then they called it a power grab. And now they are reporting, as a matter of fact, that I have the tools to do it. So, I guess I should take that article and go forward and do whatever I want.”

Gessler implies here that he does not, in fact, have the power to identify noncitizens on the voter rolls, as The Post claims he does.

To his credit, Rosen followed up with a direct question: “Do you think you have the tools to do it?”

“You know, it’s ambiguous,” said Gessler. “We may, but there’s couple areas here. You have the civil rights aspect of it. You’ve got the privacy of information. And in part, that’s why we have not done anything right now, because we get this information from the Department of Motor Vehicles, and we really have to keep that stuff private. There’s a lot of rules governing that, too. And then, of course, you have the controversy of reaching out to people and asking for more evidence and placing them in a suspended status or if you have clear evidence that they are not citizens, removing them from the roles. So there’s a legal thicket here, and we’re working our way through it. My thumb in the air, not thumb in the air, but our initial analysis is pretty ambiguous. And so I think there’s a pathway where we can do that [BigMedia emphasis], but I’d much rather have legislative authority and just clear things up and go forward and do it.”

So, it took a while, but Gessler confirmed the thesis of The Post’s piece.

Rosen asked Gessler about The Post’s assertion that Gessler would not provide the names of the 4,947 people who, according to Gessler, may have voted illegally.

“It’s just crazy to publish people’s names,” said Gessler, apparently without knowing whether The Post actually planned on publishing them. “I mean, I can’t even believe The Denver Post even asked for that. I mean, they want to get the names of these people and then start calling them. I don’t know if they want to post them on their website and publish the names as well. If you have someone who’s suspected of being a noncitizen and improperly voting, the last thing you do is immediately publish their name publicly and try to embarrass and humiliate them. I’m not in that type of business. I’m just amazed, and it’s not just The Denver Post, I mean, the Huffington Post as well, and I think there’s another newspaper too, and they wanted names of people so they could start calling them and publishing their names.”

Rosen went on to day that “the game that The Denver Post is playing here is the Joe McCarthy card…This is what The Post is trying to do to you: ‘Gessler claims 4,947 people voted illegally. I want their names. We want to know who they are.’”

Rosen made a mistake here, smearing The Post really, because The Post never made this claim. It accurately reported Gessler’s statement that 4,947 legal immigrants may have voted illegally.

Overall, as you can see, Rosen was off his game with Gessler on his show Friday.

Normally, Rosen’s show is much better than many conservative shows, and even Friday, Rosen, who’s smart and sometimes reasonable (even if he’s at times a gratuitous bully) asked a few decent questions.

But the Mike Rosen Show did not deserve to be named “Best Talk Radio Show” for 2011 by Westword. That honor should have gone to the Caplis and Silverman show, which arguably played a role in changing the course of Colorado history last year.

As someone who’s organized many a rally, I’m biased in favor of any group of people who can turn out around 1,000 people for any political cause, whether it’s the Tea Party’s agenda or a union’s.

But it’s a bias you’d think journalists would have as well. I’d say any self-respecting news outlets should cover big political rallies, even if they’re just another rally with speakers and such.

Maybe rallies are boring at face value, but a journalist or photographer should be able to find some excitement among 1,000 people.

So it was great to see that Denver’s Fox News and The Denver Daily News covered yesterday’s pro-union rally at City Park, which was organized to show that the basic goals of unions (fair pay, decent working conditions, healthy economic growth) are broadly supported, according to promotinal materials.

But where were Denver’s other TV stations and media outlets? The Denver Post ran a brief AP story about the rally before it occurred, and the newspaper deserves credit for this.

But there was no coverage of the event itself from The Post or channels 4, 7, or 9.

If reporters don’t care about legitimate political expression, then you can be sure that more and more people will stop caring along with them.

David Harsanyi left The Denver Post last week, and it’s natural to wonder if the newspaper should replace him with another conservative columnist.

So I took a look at the political leanings of The Post’s staff columnists, and it turns out that with Harsanyi gone, the page is more balanced than it was before.

Hiring a new Harsanyi would tilt the newspaper’s opinion page markedly to the right, and that’s not good for The Post, which wants a balanced opinion page, or for us readers.

Here’s what I did: I categorized all The Post’s in-house columnists according to their political bent (as “centrist,” “left,” “left-leaning,” “right,” or “right-leaning”). I included only the columnists who write on political issues, so I excluded folks like historian Tom Noel and Mary Winter. I put columnist Ed Quillen in the “leans-left” category, even though many of his columns are not political. I counted all of Rosen’s columns, even though conservatives might object to this as unfair, pointing out that each of his columns should count as a half, given that he might re-use them a few times.

My final count was 22 columns/month from right or right-leaning columnists and 23 from left or left-leaning columnists. (I counted one column as “centrist”.)

I did not include the in-house editorials, which lean right. Nor did I count the editorial cartoon, which appears to lean left.

In any case, if you add a new Harsanyi, and you focus on in-house columnists only, you have to add a whopping twelve more columns/month to the right side of the ledger, which would make the count 34 righties to 23 lefties. Unfair.

I sent my bean count to Post Editorial Page Editor Dan Haley. I asked if he agreed with me that, with Harsanyi gone, the page looks more balanced, in terms of local columnists.

I also asked him about the pundit gender gap among staff political columnists. (Over a month, the count is about 45 columns by men versus 1 by a woman.) I also pointed out to Haley that, as of the end of last week, Mike Littwin wrote 10 of his last 12 columns on national topics, leaving a bit of an advantage to righties when it comes to opinions on local topics from staff columnists.

Here’s Haley’s response:

I think you’re trying to turn this into a science, and it’s not. It’s a daily balancing act. We try every day to give our readers a balance view of Colorado and the world: Opinions from left to right, written by men and women, locally and nationally, from varying ethnic backgrounds. Is it always a perfect mix? Of course not. But we try to offer up a diversity of views and authors as best we can.

Locally, as of next week, we will have two main op-ed columnists (Carroll/Littwin) who will write 12 columns a month from the right and left. That’s balance.

When you add in our freelancers, I would argue we tilt a little to the left. As for your chart, John Andrews, like Barnes-Gelt, only runs once a month, not twice. That started this month. And I would argue that B-G does more than “lean left,” as you suggest. Also, Mary Winter was brought on board to write a left of center column, and because I thought we needed more female voices. You can categorize her as “centrist” if you’d like, but we’re looking for left of center columns from her. And last year we brought Dottie Lamm back into the fold for monthly columns to bolster our stable of female voices. She also “leans left.” We also run Joanne Ditmer monthly.

The bottom line is we don’t have to be balanced, but we try to because we want to appeal to a broad audience and because we believe it’s fair.

Also, I would argue that the editorials are “centrist” versus “leans right.” We endorsed Michael Bennet for Senate and Hickenlooper for governor. Our political endorsements last fall were unintentionally evenly divided among Rs and Ds. We have argued in favor of civil unions and gay marriage, while leading the discussion on the need for a possible tax hike to help Colorado’s state budget. Yes, we’ve also favored Dougco’s voucher program and have been critical of the teachers union, but that’s balance. We don’t care what’s good for Republicans or what’s good for Democrats, only what’s good for Colorado.

I was relieved to read that Haley apparently agrees that locally in terms of the “main op-ed columnists,” he he thinks the page is balanced. So it appears we won’t see a new Harsanyi on the page to throw the balance out of whack again.

An editorial note on Harsanyi’s final column last week indicated that The Post will continue to run Harsanyi’s syndicated column.

Asked how often he’d run Harsanyi, Haley wrote:

Not sure yet. Guessing it will be once a week for awhile and then whenever he writes about something of interest, or if we need it for balance, etc.

So Harsanyi apparently won’t be treated like he was before, as a staff columnist, which makes obvious sense.

Outside of the staff columnists, which were the focus of my scientific analysis, Haley makes a good point that the balance can change on a daily basis. There are syndicated columnists, guest opinions, Other Voices columnists, and other content that might balance things out on a particular day. And Haley’s efforts to add more voices of women on the editorial page is good. The gender imbalance among newspaper pundits, nationally, is stark, longstanding, and inexplicable.

As to whether The Post’s in-house editorials are centrist, I confess that I don’t have data to back up my impression that they lean right. Someday I’ll categorize Post editorials over a six-month period, so we’ll have some concrete information to discuss, rather than my vague impressions.

Here are the details of my bean count of The Post’s staff columnists:

John Andrews (2 columns per month) RIGHT

Susan Barnes-Gelt (1 column per month) LEANS LEFT

Fred Brown (1 column per month) CENTER

Vincent Carroll (12 columns per month) RIGHT

Dan Haley (4 columns per month) LEANS RIGHT

Mike Littwin (12 columns per month) LEFT

Ed Quillen (6 columns per month) LEANS LEFT

Mike Rosen (4 columns per month) RIGHT

David Sirota (4 columns per month) LEFT

TOTAL

Right — 18

Leans Right — 4

Left — 16

Leans Left — 7

Center — 1

Sometimes you want political change soooo much that you refuse to acknowledge the legal status quo, even if admitting to legal reality might help your own cause.

That’s where extreme anti-abortion activists find themselves today with the fetal protection bill, which has been withdrawn by State House Republicans.

The Denver Post did a good job Friday illuminating that Republican lawmakers objected to language in the bill that simply stated the reality for fetuses in Colorado. They are not considered “persons,” despite two failed ballot initiatives and other failed legislative actions. The bill stated that nothing in the bill “shall be construed to confer the status of ‘person’ upon a human embryo, fetus or unborn child at any state of development prior to live birth.”

That’s the reality for fetuses, whether they like it or whether you like it. And that’s what killed the bill, according to The Post.

You might argue, why did the legal status of the fetus need to be spelled out in the bill at all?

Well, because the bill’s purpose was to criminalize hostile acts against the fetus. To do this, to express this bipartisan idea, you have to refer to the fetus as something. You have to use your words!

So lawmakers apparently got together and used words that tried to be sensitive to those who wish fetuses were considered legal persons but also recognized fetal reality in Colorado.

Colorado representatives wrote a fetal-protection bill, with bipartisan support, whose title and language use the words “unborn child,” the term favored by those who support “personhood.”

Ari Armstrong pointed out Friday that the bill’s

-title and language explicitly refers to an “unborn child.” As I’ve argued, this “vague, non-objective” language “obscures the important distinction between a fetus and a born child.” Given that ambiguity, language clarifying that a fetus is not in fact legally a “person” is absolutely essential to the bill.

Now, for a bill with a neutral title, such as “A Bill to Protect Embryos and Fetuses from Criminal and Reckless Harm,” specific language about “personhood” would not be necessary, so long as the bill’s provisions unambiguously refrained from restricting abortions.

But it appears that referencing an “unborn child” for the narrow purpose of protecting a fetus, while acknowledging the fetus’ legal status in Colorado law, was not good enough for the extreme anti-abortion group, and so the bill was killed.

You may despair and think there’s no hope for a bill like this to ever pass due to the inability of one side to recognize the (as they see it) horrible legal reality that confronts them.

But how about moving back to the days before we had written words? This might work for the anti-abortion right!

Diagrams pointing to the thing legally called the fetus could be inserted in the bill wherever the word “fetus” should rightfully appear.

We could respect the fantasy world occupied by the zealots and still protect the fetus, which is the word those of us who abide by the rule of law accept and respect.

Here’s one lesson from  a Las Vegas Judge’s decision Friday in favor of a nonprofit group that stole a news story from the website of the Las Vegas Review journal.

Newspapers should defend their own stories from copyright violations, instead of selling their copyrighted stories to a law firm and having it sue on the newspapers’ behalf.

One of the reasons cited by the judge Friday, for ruling in favor of the nonprofit group, was that the article in question was not owned by the Las Vegas Review Journal. He cited other reasons, too, some of which I disagree with, but the judge is right that the copyright protections for an article, like the one in the current case, change dramatically when the article is sold to a law firm like Righthaven, which is suing for copyright violations of Review Journal and Denver Post articles.

This would be remedied if newspapers sued on their own behalf.

Not only their legal case, but also their ultimate goal, to protect online content and help journalism survive, would be better served as well, because newspaper executives would be more likely, I hope, to stand up and explain to the public why it’s so important for people not to violate copyright law and to respect the fair use guidelines that newspapers like The Denver Post publish and ask readers to abide by.

The Spot blog reported yesterday that a bill making it a crime if you kill an unborn child is on life-support after Republicans withdrew their support yesterday.

Why? Democrats quoted in the blog post said state GOP leaders gave in to pressure from anti-abortion extremists.

But the article doesn’t explain why anti-abortion activists would oppose a bill that would put someone behind bars who kills an unborn child through reckless or criminal action.

Ari Armstrong explains on his blog what happened on the right-wing side:

On March 14, the Colorado Catholic Conference sent an action alert via email opposing 1256. This Catholic group offered two main arguments. First, the “bill fails to recognize an unborn child as a separate victim of homicide or assault,” as the bill explicitly states that a fetus is not a person under law. Second:

“The Colorado Catholic Conference also opposes the fact that this bill seeks to repeal the criminal abortion statute that is still on the books in Colorado. The pro-life community looks forward to the day when Roe vs. Wade is overturned, and there is no benefit to the pro-life community to repeal our criminal abortion statute, even if currently it is not enforceable.”

I take it this refers to statutes 18-6-101 through 18-6-105, which bill 1256 would have repealed. Statute 18-6-102 outlaws the ending of a “pregnancy of a woman by any means other than justified medical termination or birth.” The key, then, is what constitutes “justified medical termination,” which 18-6-101 defines. The measure severely restricts abortion to cases of likely death of the woman, “serious permanent impairment of the physical health of the woman” (including mental health), serious fetal deformity, cases where the woman is under sixteen, rape, and incest.

So the Colorado Catholic Conference admits the abortion statute is unenforceable, but that doesn’t stop it from undermining a law that would protect unborn babies, as recognized by enforceable law.

The Colorado Christian Family Alliance explained its opposition to the fetal homicide bill as well:

If passed this bill will virtually undo all of Colorado’s pro-life laws, including parental notification for minors to receive an abortion.

HB 1256 specifically removes the status of “person” for pre-born children and codifies taxpayer funding for abortion mills in spite of article V section 50 of the Colorado State Constitution that forbids any direct or indirect tax payer funding for abortion.

HB 1256 is so anti-life it’s even sponsored in the Senate by the radical leftist senator from Denver, Pat Steadman, formerly a leading lobbyist for Planned Parenthood!

The bill was also sponsored by Republicans Matt Waller (CO Springs) and Laura Bradford (Collbran).

I’ll try to find out if the GOP offered any way forward for the Dems, but it looks like this was a one-sided torpedo by the anti-abortion extremists, for the reasons illuminated above.

As Armstrong later concludes, “So the next time a criminal gets away with killing a woman’s fetus, feel free to blame the anti-abortion crusaders who killed bill 1256.”