NOT EXACTLY OXFORD STYLE: CU student Zach Lahn continues to follow up on his contentious questioning of President Barack Obama in Grand Junction last weekend with a tour of cable news shows. Yesterday, the conservative Lahn had a few minutes to explain to MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer why Fed Ex doesn’t have to deliver a postcard to Alaska, or something like that. Westword says MSNBC “shut down” the “Obama basher,” though it looks more like the breathless 23-year-old ran up against a commercial break. Best Lahn line? Explaining why it’s inaccurate to call him a McCain volunteer because he didn’t start volunteering until Sarah Palin was on the ticket.

MEDIA WATCHDOG TURNS TECH FLAK: Roughly six months after Media Matters shuttered its branch in Colorado, former chief watchdog Bill Menezes has landed a permanent gig as a bigwig account director at VisiTech Public Relations, a Denver-based “boutique agency specializing in the tech field,” reports Westword’s Michael Roberts. “I’ve always had a personal passion for tech,” the former Denver Post and Wireless Week journo told Roberts.

DEMS TAR GARDNER WITH ‘BIRTHER’ HEDGE: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee didn’t wait long before jumping on news Republican Cory Gardner, the front-runner to take on first-term U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey, wasn’t willing to say for sure whether President Barack Obama was “born in this country” at a town hall Wednesday night. “With his comments last night, it’s clear that Cory Gardner has latched onto a fringe movement whose central belief has been debunked and proven false time and again,” said DCCC flak Andy Stone in a release posted soon after Coloradoan editor Bob Moore posted the story on his blog. “Gardner had an opportunity to put the issue to rest, but now joins an illustrious group of Birther supporters, including Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the notorious ‘Birther Queen’ Orly Taitz.” That last one’s gotta hurt — for a full run-down on the “Birther Queen,” see Dave Weigel’s dogged reporting at our sister site, The Washington Independent.

YOU MEAN THE O.J. TRIAL WASN’T GONZO ENOUGH?: Yes, the 1994 trial that brought us Kato Kailen, Johnny Cochran and Judge Ito could have been even more of a circus. Dethroned San Francisco Examiner boss Phil Bronstein — whose former newspaper is now the heart of Denver-based billionaire Phil Anschutz’ free-tabloid empire — wanted Aspen-based gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson to cover the proceedings. “The best idea I ever had, that never got acted on, was to have Hunter Thompson cover the O.J. Simpson trial,” Bronstein told Market Watch’s Jon Friedman. “We had an eight-hour negotiating session. Hunter wanted satellite dishes, an unlimited expense account and a suite or two at the Chateau Marmont. We were a dying afternoon paper with no budget.”

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“I feel like I’m losing a stalker girlfriend,” said frequent Colorado Media Matters target Jon Caldera, who heads the libertarian Independence Institute and hosts a radio show on 850 KOA, in an interview with the Post.

“Colorado was kind of the pilot project for how do we export the Media Matters model to focus on a single state,” Menezes said. Last fall, Media Matters also tried doing “more centralized monitoring” of the news in several cities across the country from its national offices in Washington, D.C., “with pretty good results,” he added.

Ultimately, Menezes said, the organization decided to close down the state office and create a “hybrid model” to expand into other media markets without duplicating Colorado’s extensive operation. “Given the amount of work that went into launching Colorado and the amount of work staffing it the way they have — it’s a huge undertaking,” he said, adding that Media Matters concluded that it “can find a more efficient way of doing this.”

Media Matters launched a Colorado Web site in June 2006, roughly two years after the national site went live, and regularly hammers the local news for the way events are portrayed. Some recent headlines still up on the Colorado site:

Click the image to go to read the Colorado Media Matters' critiques.

The Colorado office employed five staffers who pored over newspapers, television and radio broadcasts and posted detailed critiques. Menezes will continue with Media Matters as a consultant, he said, helping the national organization figure out how to expand into other states.

The Colorado site will likely be redirected to the national site, and subscribers to the local e-mail newsletters will have the option of receiving national updates, Menezes said. The Colorado site’s archives are expected to remain online, he said.

And as for Caldera, who likely won’t merit the same level of scrutiny from critics based in Washington: “To tell you the truth, I hardly ever heard his radio show,” Menezes said. “It was on too late at night.”

There following are just a few Colorado-specific guilt-by-association efforts that the media watchdog group has documented, listening to such radio luminaries as the Independence Institute’s Jon Caldara and Amy Oliver, Mike Rosen and “Gunny” Bob Newman since the scandal involving the Illinois governor broke.

• On his December 10 Newsradio 850 KOA broadcast, “Gunny” Bob Newman dubbed the Blagojevich scandal “BlagoRezkObama,” in reference to purported unsavory connections among the three and Rezko’s campaign fundraising for both politicians.

• KOA’s Mike Rosen, on his December 10 program, admitted, “Now, I haven’t seen anything that directly connects Barack Obama to anything that would be illegal, dishonest, fraudulent, or felonious” in the scandal. He then added, “But nonetheless, he just doesn’t want to be tied too closely to Blagojevich. It seems, however, that he and his people are tied more closely to Blagojevich than he would have you believe.”

• Another KOA host, Independence Institute President Jon Caldara, during his December 9 broadcast interviewed Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Tillman of the “free market” Illinois Policy Institute, asking him: “Is it possible for a man to become a state senator and then a United States senator from Illinois without somehow playing ball, being complicit, understanding, knowing the rules and playing by those rules of such a corrupt system?” Tillman responded by repeating the false claim that Obama “paid under market value” for his Chicago home. As Colorado Media Matters has noted, Bloomberg News reported, “The couple who sold Barack Obama his Chicago home said the Illinois senator’s $1.65 million bid ‘was the best offer’ and they didn’t cut their asking price because a campaign donor bought their adjacent land, according to e-mails between Obama’s presidential campaign and the seller.”

• Another Independence Institute senior staff member, 1310 KFKA’s Amy Oliver, stated on her December 10 program: “But I gotta tell you, you know what? There are so many relationships around Barack Obama that are questionable. Tony — what is it? — Rezko, [former Weather Underground member] William Ayers, Reverend [Jeremiah] Wright [Jr.], Blagojevich. These are guys that are all around him.” Oliver continued: “And, by the way, Barack Obama worked closely to get, or worked very hard and was one of Blagojevich’s, I guess was part of his inner circle when he was in the governor’s, when he tried, or, his first run for governor, and Barack Obama’s in the statehouse, and he was an adviser to the governor. Am I saying he’s involved? No.”

Apparently, the right-wing radio heads just can’t help it. Read more of Colorado Media Matters’ findings.

As Colorado Media Matters has deliciously memorialized, Gessler, the Denver attorney who seems to be at the heart of all things Republican in Colorado — and who is among 20 applicants for the open secretary of state position — spent a good chunk of airtime yammering on Sunday with former state treasurer Mark Hillman on Backbone Radio at KNUS 710 AM.

Hillman, a current Republican National Committee member, was serving as guest host, and as Media Matters reports, laughed when Gessler said he liked calling several prominent progressive benefactors “the ‘Gang of Four’ because of its Maoist connotations.” The four, of course, include Tim Gill, Pat Stryker, Rep.-elect Jared Polis, and Rutt Bridges, though Gessler didn’t say exactly how they were Maoist.

Courtesy of Media Matters, here is the pertinent exchange:

GESSLER: Well, I think what the — when you look at the Colorado Democracy Alliance, what it basically is is an alliance of about four or five Democratic interest groups that have gotten together to coordinate their funding and coordinate their political activities. And the groups that you have, they fall into a couple of categories, but they are really sort of the ones with a lot of money that are controlling this. So that initially starts off with a “Gang of Four”, as I call them. That was Tim Gill, Pat Stryker, Jared Polis, and Rutt Bridges, sort of four multimillionaires; I think that a couple are billionaires, actually. That has sort of dropped off to the “Gang of Two” lately. I usually like the “Gang of Four” because of its Maoist connotations.

HILLMAN: [laughter]

GESSLER: So you sort of have the “Gang of Four,” now the “Gang of Two,” which are extremely wealthy folks, and then connected with that, you have a couple of other groups — the teachers unions, sort of collectively the Colorado Education Association. They have — they bring to the table several million dollars. You’ve got sort of the trade unions, or the AFL-CIO grouping, as well as that SEIU, that’s sort of the public workers union. So those three unions are all at the table. And then, really, between the activists, sort of hyper-wealthy Democratic activists and the unions, that’s most of the money at the table. Now, you also have some of the foot troops, that will sort of be the environmental groups — there’s a whole variety that sort of pitch in. And now and then you sort of get the abortion folks on the Democratic side as well that are interested in this. So —

HILLMAN: Wait a second. Democrats actually talk about social issues? Am I understanding this correctly?

GESSLER: Well, you know, they try not to call it social issues. They try to call it just sort of reasonable people thinking this way, and everyone else is unreasonable.

Looks like Gessler got in just about everyone, save those evildoers the “Castro Brothers” — as Sarah Palin famously referred to them (and we’re not talking about the 60s-style Judy Garland variety show crooners).

Jon Caldara, president of the conservative Independence Institute think tank, has made controversial remarks before, and when it came to the subject of unions he didn’t disappoint this week. According to an article in The Washington Times, he likened union supporters to terrorists.

Colorado Media Matters has now weighed in:

In a September 30 online article, The Washington Times quoted Jon Caldara, president of the “free market” Independence Institute, as saying, “You shouldn’t negotiate with terrorists” in reference to Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter’s efforts to persuade organized labor to remove four initiatives from the state’s November ballot. The article stated that Ritter’s efforts to get backers of the so-called “right to work” measure Amendment 47 to pull their ballot proposal in exchange for removal of the labor-backed ballot issues have “opened up debate over whether Mr. Ritter is doing the right thing by moving to protect the state’s economy — or buying more trouble by giving in to union blackmail.”

Caldara is also supporting Amendments 49 and 54, two ballot measures that would prohibit certain unions from giving to political campaigns and restrict the way organized labor retains dues from state employees.

Then again, maybe Caldara should be concerned. If organized labor really is a haven for terrorists, its statewide base, which included 8.7 percent of the working population in 2007, is growing!

With just six weeks and counting until voters are asked to weigh in on the controversially named Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, the Vote No campaign has dropped its lawsuit against its rivals and opted instead for a concentrated advertising campaign.

Yesterday, Carlos Valverde, co-executive director of the Colorado Progressive Coalition and part of the Vote No team, criticized the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative’s Jessica Peck Corry for her “racist” comments earlier this month.

According to Colorado Media Matters, a progressive media watchdog group, Corry, a policy analyst for the conservative Independence Institute think tank, referred to the Barack Obama and Joe Biden ticket as “Obama bin Biden” on an Independence Institute TV panel. She also accidentally referred to Obama as “Osama”:

“We’ve been attacking the Republicans for not being on message to unaffiliated voters. Obama bin Biden, as they should be called, is also off message to unaffiliated voters. You look at who introduced Obama — I almost said, “Osama,” sorry — you look at who introduced Obama, it was labor members, it was unemployed nurses, it was hardco — hardcore, excuse me, radical, leftist activists,” said Corry, referring to Obama’s INVESCO Field acceptance speech. “I was just in my car today and heard a pro-abortion commercial in favor of Obama. They are not on message, just as Republicans are not on message. They just are far to the left at this point.”

Here’s the video:

Valverde jumped on the opportunity to connect Corry’s comments with her anti-affirmative-action efforts.

“For someone who feels a color blind society is ideal, she is comparing someone whose name sounds close to a terrorist’s to a terrorist. We think it is inappropriate and contradictory,” he said, adding later in an email that her words were “frankly racist.”

When it was reported a little over a week ago that Francis Hernandez, an undocumented immigrant who was arrested 16 times in the state but never deported, was possibly responsible for a killing two adults and a 3-year-old boy after crashing his vehicle into an ice cream shop, the media went into a tizzy spouting facts that weren’t true, according to a report released by local watchdog group Colorado Media Matters last week:

Newsradio 850 KOA’s “Gunny” Bob Newman parroted the unsubstantiated assertion that illegal immigrants kill 12 Americans every day, KDVR Fox 31 aired the baseless claim that “25 to 30 percent of the entire inmate population in most jails are aliens subject to deportation,” and columnist Chuck Green in The Pueblo Chieftain and The Aurora Sentinel repeated the myth that Colorado is a “sanctuary state” and Denver is a “sanctuary city.”

Right-leaning radio programs have traditionally been the worst factual offenders on immigration so far, but the watchdog group’s report reminds readers that when tragedy strikes, print and broadcast news organizations are prone to make fictitious claims as well.

First there was there was an unhinged letter from a federal drug enforcement agent, assailing an opinion columnist for having the gall to write a pro-medical marijuana article for the Denver Post.

And now it looks like Colorado Media Matters, a liberal media watchdog group, has garnered the attention of another fuming public servant.“What a disgrace that high school students were required to hear the outrageous comments of these speakers,” reads a letter appearing to come from a man named Daniel R. Guzzo at a usdoj.gov address.

The e-mail was received by Colorado Media Matters (CMM) in regards to Conference of World Affairs hosted by the University of Colorado in Boulder.

One panel discussion dealing with sex and teenage drug use was held in the adjacent Boulder High School auditorium and attended by the building’s students. Because of the subject matter, conservative personalities were up in arms and, according to CMM, completely distorting panelist comments.

“It is more disgraceful that Media Matters and other liberal media (Rocky Mountain News) condone the behavior,” continues the e-mail. “I symphathize [sic] with the parents whose children attend the high school and the residents of Colorado who are subjected to the secular progressive media there.”

The message shares many similarities with the previously mentioned federal employee penned e-mail, including typos and the use of the word “liberal” as a derogatory term.

But according to one official, Justice Department policy does not prohibit the sending of such e-mails because they can be looked at as being of “negligible time and monetary value.”

Why are federal employees so determined to send their opinions from their government e-mail addresses? And more importantly, why don’t they create a free Yahoo account and vent from there?

If you have any angry e-mails originating from a government address, please reply to erosa@coloradoconfidential.com.