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10 Straight Wins – Go Rox!

Colorado baseball fans have stood up and taken notice at the amazing, unexpected run made by our Rockies down the regular season homestretch. Ten straight wins in September? Coming back from the brink to the thick of playoff contention? One game back in the wildcard with a chance to win the NL West Division? It's a feel-good story for a young ball club that is gelling a season sooner than this amateur pundit expected. Clutch hitting, quality starts and fine work from the bullpen have anchored this underdog team. Michael, a fan with a longer history of Rockies loyalty than myself (Colorado is my favorite National League squad, but all bets are off when they face my Detroit Tigers), has blogged his enthusiasm. Now I'm just waiting for … [Read more...]

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Lt. Col (Rep.) Rice off to Iraq

Godspeed to Lt. Col. (and state representative) Joe Rice, who will be deployed to Baghdad for a three-month stint starting in October, as reported today in the Denver Post's Politics West: Rice, who has three young children, said he looks forward to getting the “feel of the street” in Baghdad. “Unless you are out there on the street, you just don’t get it,” he said. As an operations analyst, Rice will look for the best practices among reconstruction teams. He plans to spend a lot of time with the Iraqi police force. Rice, who has been in the Army for 23 years, said he didn’t think about asking for a special deployment exemption because he is a state lawmaker. I am honored to have met Rep. Rice in May 2006, before he … [Read more...]

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Lesson in Journalistic Ethics for CSU Student Paper

The story of the juvenile, obscene editorial in the Colorado State University newspaper has prompted the Independence Institute's Jessica Corry and Ryan Olivett (a current CSU student) to fire back with a sharp reminder in journalistic ethics: Like a child howling in a candy store to get what he wants, the Collegian substituted a four letter word for genuine political discourse. All for attention. If only McSwane had stepped back for a moment to acknowledge not just his freedoms as an American—but also his ethical obligations as a newspaper editor. According to the code of ethics espoused by the Society of Professional Journalists, "gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort," but this doesn't mean the "pursuit … [Read more...]

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Labor Leader Twists Facts in Anti-Initiative Campaign

In today's Face the State report, at least one Colorado labor union leader is twisting numbers to recruit allies in their attack on a proposal that would "protect a worker’s right to choose whether or not to join or pay fees to a union as a condition of employment." This kind of statistical manipulation would make Media Matters proud. The rightness of Aurora city councilperson Ryan Frazier's cause is one thing, but the realities of deep union coffers suggest that passing a statewide Right-to-Work ballot initiative in 2008 figures to be an uphill battle. The question is whether defenders of freedom will let the truth become victimized in the political arena. I hope not. … [Read more...]

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Devoid of Argument: Campos Attacks with Bizarre Analogy

Update: I'm clearly not the only one with this take on the Campos column. Check out Drunkablog's snide comments, as well. I've been mulling over what phraseology to use to describe this morning's Paul Campos column in the Rocky Mountain News - screed, armchair psychological fantasy, scurrilous personal attack. (My sympathy for my unnamed friend, who is a law student in Prof. Campos' class, only grows and grows.) Please note the absence of any shred of evidence or cogent argument: But how respectable is [Bill] Kristol, really? Anyone who pays the least attention to him soon discovers that the ruling passion of Kristol's life is to involve the United States in as many wars as possible, with as many enemies as he can find or create. In … [Read more...]

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“Allow” vs. “Require”

Facile, inaccurate comparisons are common fare among the Left in Colorado these days. Case in point: Diarist GoBlue on the Dead Governors site, convinced by the fact he has the ultimate "gotcha," publishes a post that compares a Republican proposal that would allow small businesses to pool together to negotiate health insurance policies with a Democrat proposal that would require state and local governments to accept binding negotiated agreements. Memo to GoBlue: There is a vast difference between allow and require. There is no Colorado law, nor should there be, preventing voluntary associations of public employees to meet, express their interests, and air their grievances. Such arrangements already exist. Besides, if Governor Bill … [Read more...]

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Harsanyi to Hawk Book at Tattered Cover Tomorrow

Everybody's favorite libertarian columnist at the Denver Post, David Harsanyi, is unveiling his long-awaited book Nanny State at an event tomorrow (Tuesday) evening at the Denver LoDo Tattered Cover store. The 300-page skewering of "food fascists, teetotaling do-gooders, priggish moralists, and other boneheaded bureaucrats" should be a provocative, page-turning read - sure to tick off people from across the political spectrum (for me, it would be any pro-Yankee stories). If you're in the Denver area and looking for something to do tomorrow evening, why not stop in the Tattered Cover, say hey to David, and maybe pick up a copy or two of Nanny State? … [Read more...]