The board of the 501(c)3 American Independent News Network on Wednesday announced it will shut down several of its websites on Friday, deciding “to shift publication of its news into a single site, the American Independent at Americanindependent.com.”

On Thursday, however, AINN officials announced the organization will continue to operate as an independent online news organization, maintaining sites in Colorado, Florida and Texas, as well as the American Independent site.

For funding reasons, AINN is shutting down websites in New Mexico, Minnesota and Michigan.

“There’s very good reason to believe the moves being made now by our parent organization, some of them certainly painful, will better fuel the mission of the Colorado Independent, allowing it to deliver even more of the robust brand of new-media journalism the site pioneered in the state and that it has continued to develop and deliver for years,” editor Scot Kersgaard said.

“We look forward to saying more about the organization’s plans in the near future. The main thing is that the independent, insightful and credible brand of journalism offered at TCI will continue into a very critical election year.”

The Colorado Independent was the first site to open among the organization’s network sites and has enjoyed consistent readership and fundraising support over the years.

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“If the mayor of our country’s largest city thinks protecting the press means silencing them, we’re in big trouble,” wrote Free Press Program Director Josh Stearns at the organization’s website. Stearns has been tracking harassment and arrests of journalists covering the Occupy movement for the last two months.

From the Free Press campaign web page:

In what appears to have been a coordinated effort to block coverage of the raid, many journalists said they were barred from reporting the police action. Ten reporters were also arrested, another was put in a choke hold and others described extensive police harassment.

This kind of police response is happening all over the country. Police harassment of the press has been reported during “Occupy” protests in Chicago, Denver, Oakland, Portland and beyond.

We need to send the message loud and clear to mayors across the country: They must drop all charges and publicly commit to protecting press freedoms in their cities. This is especially true for Mayor Bloomberg, who took full responsibility for the NYPD’s actions.

Speak out now: Tell Mayor Bloomberg and the U.S. Conference of Mayors to publicly commit to protecting journalists covering all protests and police actions. You can also call Mayor Bloomberg at 212-639-9675 to speak out against the most recent arrests of journalists.

Free Press launched a similar campaign after police attacks on members of the press during the Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities in 2008. The Free Press petition then garnered tens of thousands of signatures within days. Journalists were released from custody and some of them eventually received settlements.

More than twenty journalists covering the Occupy protests have been arrested in the last two months and many more have been harassed. Police have reportedly pepper sprayed and gassed journalists and employed strobe lights when confronting protesters in order to mess with media efforts to video tape the action.

Police shunted reporters away from Zuccotti Park Tuesday in the small hours of the morning before they moved in to oust the protesters, including a reporter for the New York Times. “When it comes to the taking down of Occupy Wall Street, at least in New York, the whole world is not watching,” Times media writer David Carr said, citing the famous mass-media era protest mantra.

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Ryan interviewed Colorado Independent reporter Troy Hooper for her report, which she broke into two segments, which ran Monday and Tuesday of this week.

Locally, the story was aired on KBCO, KHOW and KBPI among many other stations. Most of the radio stations airing the story do not publicly report their audience numbers, but just counting the ones who shared that information, the story was heard by well over two million people.

PRICE: We don’t see eye to eye on everything about public broadcasting, but I know you and your family have supported Rocky Mountain PBS with an individual gift.

LAMBORN: Yes, that may surprise some people because as you know I don’t support federal funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But I do know that Rocky Mountain PBS has a vital role in the marketplace of Colorado media. So I urge your viewers to remember their own role. If you watch and enjoy what you see here, your membership dollars are vital to keep it on the air.

Lamborn introduced two bills to zero out funds for public TV and radio this year. His HR 68 would amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit federal funding for public broadcasting after fiscal year 2013. His H.R. 69 separately targets National Public Radio funding.

He also introduced a bill to cut NPR funding last year but it was shot down by the Democratic-controlled House.

Lamborn has characterized his efforts as cost-cutting measures during a time of historic budget deficits.

“I have been seeking to push Big Bird out of the nest for over a year, based on the simple fact that we can no longer afford to spend taxpayer dollars on non-essential government programs,” he has said.

Of course, when it comes to cutting “nonessential programs,” members of Congress come up with different wish lists. Lamborn, whose Fifth District hosts a wide range of military academies, training installations and defense contractor businesses, has championed all variety of defense spending during his years on Capitol Hill.

After Fox News launched its own campaign to “defund” NPR in the fall, Lamborn appeared on the network several times and ratcheted up his rhetoric around the legislation.

“You may have heard about the recent firing of NPR News Analyst Juan Williams and the $1.8 million donation by liberal activist George Soros to hire 100 NPR reporters,” Lamborn wrote to supporters. “These two actions make it clear that public broadcasting is a friend and protector of liberal issues and political correctness, at the expense of free speech and balanced news reporting.”

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“Doron Ofir Casting, in association with a major cable network, is looking for young hot politicos who care about America, follow the heated debates, rallies, protests, and scandals!” a release sent to press today reports. “We are looking for people of all party affliliations [sic] or those who are unaffliated [sic] as long as you’re outspoken, fearless, free thinking, unbound, unleashed, unrestrained, appear to be between 21-35 and are politically active and telegenic. WE WANT YOU!”

The translation that no one needs made: “We’re looking for sexy narcissists who aren’t afraid to drink too much and act horribly on television. Think Snooki and Anthony Weiner.”

Seriously, maybe staring into the horrific funhouse mirror that is reality TV will turn our politics around. Why not?

The release:

DORON OFIR CASTING LAUNCHES THE CASTING CALL FOR THE HOTTEST POLITICOS IN THE USA!

LOS ANGELES, CA (October 24, 2011) – Doron Ofir Casting, the epic star making company behind Jersey Shore, Nashville Star, Millionaire Matchmaker and The A-List officially confirms and announces the nationwide search for political activists with personalities that rally behind a cause and influence others to do the same.

“It’s about time we give a mainstream media opportunity to the generation that has the fortitude to proudly live as a representative of their individual politial beliefs. What could be more American than that?” Doron Ofir – Executive Casting Director.

Doron Ofir Casting, in association with a major cable network, is looking for young hot politicos who care about America, follow the heated debates, rallies, protests, and scandals! We are looking for people of all party affliliations or those who are unaffliated as long as you’re outspoken, fearless, free thinking, unbound, unleashed, unrestrained, appear to be between 21-35 and are politically active and telegenic. WE WANT YOU!

You’ve volunteered for a local political campaign, stood in protest, logged over a thousand comments on blogs, tweeted Fox News or CNN on a daily basis, you run your own blog, vlog, stream, podcast, and are still looking for the right forum to express yourself. Whatever the case, we want to hear from you!

With personalities such as Ann Coulter, Bill Maher, Meghan McCain, Rachael Maddow, Keith Olberman, Glenn Beck, Jon Stewart, Arianna Huffington, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore and Bill O’Reilly influencing the world of politics and dictating our national conversation, shouldn’t it be your turn?

Register online on the digital application: www.partypoliticscasting.com

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CitizenLink leans on high-profile religious-right attorney James Bopp to make the case against disclosure.

“We are certainly going to pursue the case vigorously, because the result of the judge’s decision is going to literally be a free-fire zone when we talk about the court sanctioning harassment of people who participate in our democratic process,” Bopp is quoted to say. “Absent the prospect of protection in future cases, I think the whole idea here by the homosexual lobby is they now have a threat. They [will seek the names of donors] and put them on the Internet. So they already know they’ve got a weapon of intimidation, and without the courts’ protection, they’ll continue to use it.”

The ruling upholding California’s campaign finance disclosure laws was handed down by U.S. District Judge Morrison England Jr on Thursday. California requires political campaigns to disclose the identity of anyone who donates more than $100.

During the 2008 heated Prop 8 campaign, gay-rights websites like Californians Against Hate that opposed the ballot initiative posted information such as the names, addresses and employers of donors to the campaign. In Washington state a similar proposal saw the same kind of websites appear. There, the sites included Whosigned.org and Knowthyneighbor.org.

CitizenLink refers readers to the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation report on harassment against Prop 8 supporters. The Heritage authors placed the harassment into three categories: vandalism, hostility and slurs, and violence and threats of violence.

Vandals also hit houses of worship. Perpetrators used orange paint to vandalize a statue of the Virgin Mary outside one church. Offices at the Cornerstone Church in Fresno were egged. Swastikas and other graffiti were scrawled on the walls of the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in San Francisco, a parish known widely as being “gay-friendly.” In San Luis Obispo, the Assembly of God Church was egged and toilet-papered, and a Mormon church had an adhesive poured onto a doormat and keypad. Signs supporting Prop 8 were twisted into a swastika at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in Riverside. Someone used a heavy object wrapped with a Yes on 8 sign to smash the window of a pastor’s office at Messiah Lutheran Church in Downey.

Fear of harassment on the part of Christian groups has been a marked and ironic aspect of the Prop 8 campaign and its aftermath. At the trial that followed passage of the initiative and that considered whether the new law was constitutional, the team defending the law fought hard to keep the proceedings from being broadcast, fearing that witnesses for the defense would be harassed. Yet LGBT people have been one of the most harassed and discriminated against classes of American citizens in the post-slavery era.

In a previous ruling on the matter, Judge England pointed out that, if there were crimes committed by supporters of either side of the debate, those crimes could and should be prosecuted. As for the rest, he said, heated exchanges are part of the political process and aren’t reason to limit the ability of Californians to fully inform themselves on questions they’re asked to answer at the ballot box.

Bopp plans to appeal England’s decision once the written version is made available for review.

Bopp recently filed a brief with the US Supreme Court on behalf of Catholic Answers, a nonprofit group that has been penalized by the IRS for performing express advocacy against 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry.

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The discussion touches on stories reported by the Michigan Messenger on a new Brennan Center for Justice report on the new rash of voter laws and on the fact that Michigan appears to be violating federal laws that seek to expand voter registration there.

Note: At the end of the discussion, Tomasic refers to the Denver District judge who ruled against Gessler on the matter of inactive voter ballots as “she.” He meant “he,” as in Judge Brian Whitney.

“Apologies, Judge Whitney! I had Denver County Clerk Debra Johnson’s face playing across my mind,” says Tomasic.

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“A friend of mine chastised me the other day. He said I was being too hostile toward the occupiers on Wall Street and elsewhere,” wrote Erickson in the Friday blog. “[A]round the country there are… a lot of angry, unemployed people who just think the deck is stacked against them… These people are open to listen to anyone who is willing to take on Wall Street…. We shouldn’t let unwashed hippies be the only people they hear speaking to their concerns.

“[T]he time is right for a Republican candidate to take up the cause of populism against Wall Street.”

Erickson has mocked the Occupy Wall Street movement as anti-American, communist and vague and its supporters as generally filthy and unlikeable. That line got a lot of traction on the political right for weeks. Erickson even took the lead in formulating the right’s online response to the movement.

“We Are the 53 Percent” is the tea partyish answer to “We Are the 99 Percent,” an Occupy Wall Street blog that posts stories of the overwhelmingly unemployed, underemployed, semi-employed, overworked, debt-ridden and uninsured population of the United States. That’s the 99 percent. The 53 percent referred to in the anti-Occupy blog refers to the specious GOP talking point that only 53 percent of households pay federal income taxes.

The stories posted at “We Are the 53 Percent” aim to provide a peek into the lives and mindset of hardworking conservative contributors to American society, a supposed contrast with the kind of people who want a free-ride, which is how Erickson had been describing the Occupy supporters.

Just looking at the substance of the posts at the two sites, however, the lines get blurred. The stories of the 53 percent, including Erickson’s, are also about hardship, about being taken for granted or taken advantage of and of being ignored by lawmakers. Gawker described the site as heartbreaking.

What makes “We Are the 53%” so heartbreaking isn’t that its contributors are enormous jerks-— it’s that so many of them could just as easily be writing in to “We Are the 99 Percent.” Like the guy… who can “barely afford” his rent. Or the “former marine” … who hasn’t had “4 consecutive days off in 4 years.” The phrase “I don’t have health insurance” pops up frequently on “We Are the 53%,” but not as a cry for help or an indictment of a broken system. Here, it’s a badge of pride.

Fox News is conducting an online poll that asks its readers if they support the Occupy Wall Street movement. Seventy percent of the first 190,000 respondents supported the movement.

Exaggerated bafflement about what the Occupy Wall Street supporters hope to achieve, an early line of dismissal, is now falling away, thanks in part to patient explainers like Alan Grayson.

The revolution that toppled the anachronistic and unresponsive French government in 1968 began with a protest in Nanterre, where students demanded the government serve more than just the country’s middle-aged wealthy elite. They wanted opportunity. The Nanterre sit-in started at the end of March. In May, students at the Sorbonne in Paris joined the protest. Then came more students at more schools, then came the labor unions and factory workers, then came celebrities and moms and dads. Last came the politicians. President DeGaulle on May 29 abandoned the capital and his wife gave her jewels to relatives for safekeeping. From a French military base in Germany, the World War II icon, an avatar for a certain kind of France as well as its president, decided to dissolve the government, which he did the next day.

Hat tip on the Fox poll to the Brad Blog.

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Translated to English, the ad says:

President Obama’s plan puts Colorado to work…

Teachers in classrooms.

Jobs in construction.

And money in the pockets of working families.

But Republicans say NO, they would rather politically hurt President Obama than fight for Colorado jobs.

Congress, no more delays. Pass the plan.

The ads will air on KDEN, KCEC and KETD.

“We are happy to see the DNC continue to focus on this key Colorado demographic,” said Matt Inzeo, spokesperson for the Colorado Democratic Party.

“Latinos came out big for Obama in Colorado in 2008. They were the difference for Senator Bennet in 2010. That the DNC is already focusing on this group is huge. The DNC is reaching out on an issue that is huge for Colorado. Everyone is concerned about jobs. Jobs and the economy are front of mind. The jobs bill contains ideas that Republicans have supported in the past. President Obama is engaged in trying to create jobs but we just see the same old games from Washington Republicans,” Inzeo said.

Republicans were less kind.

“President Obama’s so-called jobs bill is nothing more than a rehash of the same failed economic policies that have left Hispanics suffering from disproportionately high unemployment and 70,000 more Coloradans out of work since he took office. President Obama couldn’t even muster up enough support in the Democrat controlled Senate to pass his bill, so this latest DNC attack ad seems to be nothing more than a pathetic attempt to distract from his failure to put Coloradans back to work,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Ryan Mahoney by email.