Conservative talk radio is reverberating with misrepresentation, confusion, and falsehoods about the gun safety legislation moving through the State Legislature.

Now would be a good time for fact-based listeners to call into these fear-based shows to straighten out the hype-based hosts and their back-scratching guests.

For example, Sen. Kevin Lundberg said the following on KFKA’s Amy Oliver Show Feb. 11:

“You know, I remember decades ago, somebody said, ‘I will not give up my gun rights, you know, until you pry my cold dead hands away from it.’  We all thought, ‘Well, That will never happen.’ Well, boy, we are so close, so close to that.”

I hope Sen. Lundberg isn’t digging a bunker in preparation for his own death in a final righteous gun battle, which he believes to be “so close.”

In reality, no proposed bill in the Colorado Legislature would make it illegal for Lundberg to own a gun. Ditto for any law-abiding Republican talk-show host, despite the cries you’re hearing on the airwaves.

Lundberg continued:

“PBS NewsHour asked me: ‘Can’t you find a middle ground?’  And my answer was, ‘Yeah, it’s what we have in place now.  We have a concealed/carry law. We don’t have a Vermont-style carry, where every citizen is allowed to carry, just by virtue of being a legal citizen.  But So we have a permit system.’  Okay.  I can accept that as being a middle ground.  But the Left believes the only solution is pretty much a total ban on everything.  And so they’re just going for everything they can get.  It’s a very, very extreme position.”

Heading toward similar extremes, House Minority Leader Mark Waller told KHOW’s Michael Brown Wed.:

“And there’s no evidence that universal background checks, in any way, enhance public safety.”

No evidence? Zero?

Last month, the Washington Post’s Brad Plumer interviewed a University of Chicago Professor who studied the issue in-depth and concluded that universal background checks would likely enhance public safety, by requiring checks on the gun buyers who aren’t currently required to get them (up to 40% of gun purchases. The NRA believes the figure is 10%, but, still, Ludwig’s argument, below, still holds up.)

Ludwig cited studies in the late 1980s showing that 80% of people who committed a crime with a handgun acquired it from an unlicensed gun dealer and therefore didn’t have a background check.

“Most people who own guns are middle-class, law-abiding citizens,” he says. “If you tell them to do a background check, I think they’ll do it voluntarily.” And for those who prefer to evade the law, the government might have to provide more resources for police to do undercover gun buys on the secondary market—in order to ensure compliance. “That’s never going to be perfect, but anything you can do to tighten the secondary market will help.”

That’s fact-based, common sense. It makes a good starting point for a reasonable discussion on costs and benefits of background checks.

Waller’s and Lundberg’s hyperbole sends us in the opposite direction and should be called out by talk-radio hosts–or you, if you listen in.

Denver Attorney Randy Corporon is one of those Tea Party activists who thinks Republicans are losing elections because, as he said on the radio recently, they’ve “gotten away from the conservative values that make Republicans win.”

If that’s true, then why not talk about “conservative values” until you turn red, and Colorado reddens up right along with you?

Maybe it’s because Republicans are listening to consultants who tell them to shut up about what they really believe.

When he arrived at the Legislature, freshman State Rep. Justin Everett was told not “to go to meetings, and not fill out surveys, and not really take strong stances on anything,” Everett told Corporon last month on KLZ radio’s Grassroots Radio Colorado.

“Obviously, I didn’t do that,” Everett said on the radio in January, saying essentially that he won’t be silenced and pointing to issues he discussed right there on Grassroots Radio Colorado as proof that he will continue to speak out. (Apparently, other GOP lawmakers whose legislation was featured in a Denver Post article over the weekend, won’t back down either.)

You’d think the good folks on Grassroots Radio Colorado would want to know who told Everett to tone it down at the Legislature, because it sounds like the Grassroots Radio Colorado hosts are the ones whom Republicans are trying to keep guys like Everett from chatting with. But the question wasn’t raised, so I asked Everett who told him to avoid meetings, not take strong positions, etc.

“I think it was some of the consultants that were hired,” he wrote, adding that he filled out every survey he had time for, and attended every meeting he could possibly make.

“I’m not going to turn my back on Tea Party people,” he said in one interview during the campaign, during which he certainly came out with some strong positions against, for example, providing grade-grade school education to undocumented children.

Everett said on the radio Jan. 11: “We’re going to go through this battle every two years, about, ‘Yeah, we need to move to the Left, further left, further left.’ And then of course, there will be those of us who will push back. ‘Actually, we need to move further right,’ because it seems that we’re always compromising with the Democrats, much to their side, and that’s how we end up with $17 trillion deficits, and you know, our Constitution basically being used as toilet paper.”

The Constitution as toilet paper? Ouch.

“And all those [state legislative] races that were supposedly competitive races ended up not being competitive races because our candidates just weren’t taking strong stances, on anything,” Everett told Corporon, who was a guest host on Grassroots Radio Colorado.

Everett’s comment about being advised not to fill out surveys might explain why so few Republicans bothered to fill out The Denver Post’s 2012 candidate survey, which had basic questions about candidates’ stances on key issues, during the last election. Do GOP candidates plan on ignoring The Post’s basic voter guide again? (Hint: If I’m The Denver Post, I might want to check on this.)

Everett, by the way, filled out The Post’s survey, and my guess is he’ll do it again. Listen for him on Grassroots Radio Colorado.

The idea of having a voice in government is so central to the ideals of America that you wonder how politicians like Rep. Mike Coffman can contemplate giving millions of undocumented workers “legal status,” without offering them the hope of becoming citizens and participants in the democracy that surrounds them, such as it is.

But reporters apparently haven’t asked Coffman the question of whether an underclass of workers should reside in America with no political voice. It would be interesting to hear what he has to say.

When questioned on this topic, conservative Helen Krieble, who advocates the “Red Card” guest-worker program for undocumented immigrants, surprised me by saying that political representation for immigrants is necessary but, she said, it can wait, perhaps years.

On KBDI Channel 12’s Studio 12 program last week, in response to Attorney Aaron Hall’s assertion that this class of workers needs a voice, and access to representation, and that citizenship would give them this protection, Krieble said:

(@ 48:45) I couldn’t agree with you more on that. I just think that it’s important to have that citizenship piece – it’s just so broken, and it is such a very serious issue, that there will be huge numbers of regulations and requirements that are associated with that….

(@ 53:45) Citizenship will be the tough part. At least a year more, two or three years, to get the citizenship part right. Work permits can be addressed this spring or fall… Let’s get this done. There is a pathway to citizenship currently, it is not linked to guest worker program. The pathway to citizenship is coming, but we’re going to take our time to get it right.

Recognizing the need for a path to citizenship is new territory for Krieble, whose plan has been endorsed by GOP strategist Dick Wadhams. There’s no mention of it on her website, and a recent Denver Post article explicitly points out that a path to citizenship is not part of her plan.

Krieble, who resides in Parker, said on KBDI that the need for legal workers is so great, and the complications of figuring out how to offer citizenship so numerous, that we should get going with work permits.

If you’re looking for proof that delaying a decision about citizenship will smooth things out, you better erase from your mind the debate about immigration reform over the past decade or so.

Still, especially in light of Krieble’s new thinking, it’s worth finding out what Coffman and others who are opposing a path to citizenship think about Krieble’s point, that new immigrants deserve a political voice.

Reporting on town a hall meeting in Aurora on Sunday, The Denver Post’s Nic Turiciano did a nice job focusing on what’s emerged as the central issue in the immigration debate: whether to grant a path to citizenship to the 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

Turiciano reported that Rep. Jared Polis supports a path to citizenship, with or without beefed up border security, Sen. Michael Bennet said he wants border security and a “real pathway,” and Rep. Mike Coffman said he supports offering citizenship path to children brought to the U.S. illegally, but is still mulling over what to do about the adults.

After voting as recently as 2010 against citizenship for the so-called dreamers, who are children brought to America illegally by their parents, Coffman has now proposed legislation that would grant citizenship to them after they complete basic training for U.S. military duty (not for going to college).

If all the eligible undocumented young people took Coffman up on his proposal, he’d be looking at 1.4 million new recruits, potentially swamping the U.S. military, which currently has about 1.5 million active-duty personnel. So, how does Coffman’s proposal work, logistically?

But even if Coffman comes up with viable path to citizenship, and let’s hope it’s a highway, for undocumented young people, he’s still got to deal with the 9.5 million adults whose citizenship fate he’s mulling over.

Right now, Coffman is ready to give these 9.5 million people legal status, which essentially means he’s giving them the right to taxation without representation. (So you’d hope, that the Tea Party would be dumping their mini-Constitutions all over Coffman’s door matt.)

That’s the next layer of reporting that’s needed on the immigration beat. What does America look like with an underclass of 9.5 million?

It’s not apartheid, to be sure, or Jim Crow. It’s not straight-up slavery or indentured servitude. It’s kind of like the relationship between South Africa and the country of Lesotho post-apartheid, when the Lesotho miners would go to South Africa to live and work. But the closest model might, ironically enough, be the colonists, though it’s an imperfect fit.

In any case, what does a guy like Coffman have in mind? How would it work? What rights and responsibilities of citizenship would be granted? And what rights (voting?) and responsibilities (military service? taxes?) would be denied?

The picture of millions of “legal” immigrants with no voting rights gets ugly, doesn’t it, when you start thinking about it in the context of those pesky American values, like democracy.

Or maybe not? Maybe this is what American opportunity looks like to Coffman (and Tipton, Gardner, and Lamborn, all of whom oppose the path to citizenship). Maybe legal status is good enough.

If so, fair enough. But let’s hear about their vision of what America looks like with an entire class of pseudo-citizens who are fundamentally unequal to the rest of “us.”

You probably heard that GOP strategist Karl Rove pissed off lots of fellow conservatives this week when he unveiled a plan to prop up Republicans deemed more electable by Rove, when Rove’s candidates are under attack in primaries from more conservative upstarts

The New York Times Jeff Zeleny reports:

The strategist Karl Rove and his allies are under withering criticism for creating the Conservative Victory Project, their effort to help rebuild the Republican Party and win control of the Senate. Their pledge to take sides in primary races in an effort to pick candidates they see as more electable has set off a fierce backlash from conservative activists.

“This is not Tea Party versus establishment,” Mr. Rove said, defending his new project on Fox News. “I don’t want a fight.”

Yet a fight has broken out this week across the conservative media spectrum, with Mr. Rove drawing the ire of Tea Party leaders and commentators who suggest that he and other party strategists are the problem, rather than the solution, to the challenges facing Republicans.

Here in Colorado on Wed., former Larimer Country GOP Chair Tom Lucero reflected the sentiments of other conservative talkers when he told his listeners on KFKA’s “AM Colorado:”

“I think what Karl Rove is doing is absolutely, incredibly wrong-headed…The beltway politicians, those guys are telling Steve King, ‘You better not run for that Senate Seat in the state of Iowa. We will get behind the other guy.’ …I think Steve King would be a great U.S. Senator.”

Added Lucero’s co-host Devon Lentz, also a former Larimer County GOP official:

“Well, we’ve seen it in CO, when the establishment tries to vet the candidates, there is a lot of backlash, and that never ever benefits the party as a whole.”

Lentz continued on air that it’s unfair for the Republican establishment to focus on derailing conservative candidates because “any candidate can say something stupid.”

Lucero, a former CU Regent, responded:

“Thank you! Exactly! That’s the point. That’s why people are upset right now with Karl Rove and this group, trying to say, ‘We will determine the candidate most electable in a primary…’

But the reality of it is, –Let’s be honest about this, candidates all over the place — Joe Biden does it all the time, but the mainstream liberal media protects him. It’s when a Todd Akin or a Richard Mourdock says something stupid that the mainstream liberal media jumps all over it and tries to bury those candidacies. So there’s a double standard when it comes to ‘opening mouth and inserting foot.'”

Lucero then referenced an article by Matt Lewis in the Daily Caller, titled “Really Want to Stop the Next Todd Akin:? Don’t Attack Conservative Candidates, Train Them.”

Lucero liked Lewis’ suggestion that Rove and Company offer basic candidate training to all Republicans on how to answer questions, talk to the press, and not make “idiotic” comments like Missouri’s Todd Akin made [about “legitimate rape,” your recall].

“Wouldn’t that be the better solution than starting an intra-party war between conservatives and establishment?” Lucero asked.

The good folks on Grassroots Radio Colorado have a strong opinion on gun safety issues. They like to bounce it off guests like Sen. Vicki Marble, who bounces it right back at them.

From there, it goes out over the radio, where it ricochets off canyon walls or wherever it’s heard. And then it returns into the studio from the mouths of callers, who utter similar if not identical sounds to hosts Jason Worley and Ken Clark.

The obvious way to add excitement and air to this closed loop would be to bring in fresh ideas that don’t match the sounds bouncig around the KLZ offices.

To do this, bring in someone to counter folks like Marble, who appeared on the show Tuesday.

Here’s what Marble had to say about gun safety:

Marble: Pretty soon, we’re going to be left with a pea shooter if we don’t take a stand…

I can honestly say, the bottom line on gun control, it’s advocating for criminals! That’s basically what gun control is. It’s criminal advocacy. Because it’s taking away the gun rights from law-abiding citizens and leaving us defenseless. And the criminals! It’s going to be open season for them…

And the bottom line. You know, all the gun laws they make are not going to stop crime. All the guns that they have made so far have not stopped crime and drugs. Basically, our jails are full, and crime is doing a pretty good business.

In reality, none of the gun safety proposals in the State Legislature would reduce the talk-show crowd to arming themselves with pea shooters and microphones, if they’re law-abiding citizens. Nothing would stop citizens in good standing from buying a gun or owning one. Defenseless? What?

For the sake of safety and decency, why have a one-sided conversation about guns, even on conservative talk radio?

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.

The Gawker’s Max Reed reports:

On August 31, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, FEMA public affairs officer Marty Bahamonde emailed his boss, then-FEMA chief Michael Brown, to make sure he understood how dire the situation had become in the Superdome, the New Orleans football stadium that was housing thousands of evacuees. “[T]he situation is past critical,” he wrote in one of several emails he’d sent colleagues outlining the emergency. “We are out of food and running out of water.” The stadium was overcrowded and undersupplied; there had already been three deaths, and Bahamonde expected more to die “within hours.”

There was no response. A few hours later, Brown’s press secretary emailed some FEMA employees, instructing them to book Brown on Joe Scarborough’s MSNBC show, and to make sure he had enough time to get a good meal at a restaurant, since “restaurants are getting busy” in Baton Rouge. The next day, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco sent in the national guard on local school buses to begin evacuation. On September 2, two days after Bahamonde’s ignored warning, President Bush told Brown he was doing “a heck of a job.” Three more people died before the stadium was fully evacuated on September 4. A week later, Brown resigned.

Anyway, he’s not ignoring the Superdome anymore! The stadium hosted the Super Bowl last night, and Brown was watching:

Reed quoted Brown’s tweet:

Someone just told me there was fighting going on in the NOLA Superdome. #shocked

Brown, who once agreed with a caller who said it was hard to “feel sorry” about New Orleans residents who didn’t evacuate before Katrina, is now the solo host of KHOW’s afternoon drive slot, after his co-host, author David Sirota, departed last month.

Recently, he said on air that he doesn’t have “any sympathy” for undocumented students who graduate from high school but don’t have the opportunity to attend college for the same in-state tuition rates available to their peers.

Brown’s comments and history haven’t aliented him from the Colorado GOP. He was the keynote speaker at the Denver Republican Lincoln Day dinner, and leading Colorado Republicans appear on his radio show.

Brown should explain his tweet on air today.

I reported last week that Secretary of State Scott Gessler was in Glenwood Springs recently telling a local reporter that he’d been working with Denver County Clerk and Recorder Debra Johnson to solve their disagreement about whether voters who’ve missed just one general election should be sent mail-in ballots like other registered voters.

Carbondale-based radio station KDNK quoted Gessler saying that if the State Legislature approves a “solution” that Gessler claimed to have hammered out with Johnson, then “the issue will probably ultimately go away.”

This seemed like a strange statement, given that Gessler is in the midst of suing Johnson to stop her from mailing ballots to voters who’ve missed just one election.

So I called Johnson’s office to get its reaction.

Alton Dillard, a Spokesperson for the Denver Elections Division, told me that Gessler and Johnson agree on a measure to get rid of the “inactive-failed-to-vote” designation entirely, thereby allowing to voters who’ve missed just one election to receive mail-in ballots.

This is “essentially” the same proposal, with a few tweeks, that was considered by the Legislature last year, as Senate Bill 101, but was blocked, Dalton said.

Under the proposal, voters could still be put on “inactive” status if their ballot or another piece of voter communication was returned, Dalton said, adding that voters would have a number of options to return to active status.

This year, the inactive-failed-to-vote measure is believed to be included in a larger bill with a number of election-related provisions, Dalton said, but he’s not seen this legislation.

Dalton emphasized that the Denver Clerk and Recorder’s Office has a “great relationship” with the Secretary of State’s Office, though the two government entities “continue to work through some philosophical disagreements.”

Aspen’s KDNK radio reported this week on a visit from Secretary of State Scott Gessler to Glenwood Springs where Gessler hoped to get feedback from locals on how the last election went for them.

KDNK reported that Gessler was “getting away from the usual talking points and what he called ‘people who are paid to be angry.'”

KDNK didn’t ask Gessler if he was also getting away from people who are unpaid and angry, but maybe a reporter can put that question to our Secretary of State once he returns to Denver.

Trouble is, Gessler probably lumps reporters into the “paid-to-be-angry” category of people, given that he thinks The Denver Post has been on a “jihad” against him, and Gessler is a frequent critic of professional journalists (but talk radio hosts, not so much).

KDNK reporter Erik Skalak reported Gessler’s comments on a 2011 lawsuit Gessler filed against Denver County Clerk and Recorder Debra Johnson. A judge ruled against Gessler, allowing Johnson to send election ballots to voters who had skipped the last general election. KDNK reported:

“I think the judge was just wrong in his analysis,” Gessler told KDNK. “I really do. That said, you know, so the Clerk and Recorder in Denver and I have sort of been the two people opposing one another. And I’ve been in conversations with her for a long time, ever since the lawsuit, even before the lawsuit, on how we can sort of find a way to move forward on that. And I think we’ve hammered out a solution. So even though we’re still at the District Court Trial, if we’re able to get this solution through the State Legislature, the issue will probably ultimately go away.”

KDNK didn’t get a comment from Johnson, and I’m hoping reporters will join me in finding out if this solution is real–or just more Gessler loose mouth.