This fall, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia was just breaking free from fallout of a vast abuse scandal when the high-profile abuse scandal broke at Penn State University, adding new urgency to lawmaker efforts to reform state statutes of limitations in order to give victims more time to file civil claims against abusers. Those efforts will undoubtedly garner great support among citizens but they will also surely meet savvy well-managed resistance from the Church under new Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, who orchestrated successful opposition to similar efforts in Colorado as Archbishop of Denver over the past half decade.

In the mid-2000s, when shamed archdioceses around the country had come to accept so-called window legislation and paid out tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements to adults who with the new laws were able to pursue justice for crimes visited upon them as children, Chaput almost single-handedly changed the course of the Church in America. He went all out to defeat similar bills in 2006 and 2008 in Colorado, setting the bar in 2006 when he directly appealed to the public and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on PR and political lobbying professionals.

People in pin-striped suits hired by the Colorado Catholic Conference leaked stories to sympathetic reporters and pressed hard on Catholic lawmakers to make the case for Chaput at the capitol. The archbishop gave interviews and wrote op-eds. He sent a formal letter opposing the legislation to be read by pastors during services throughout the archdiocese, a rare act, and had 25,000 postcards printed up for parishioners to fill out at mass and mail to lawmakers.

Chaput also launched a campaign targeting the state’s public schools, producing a list of public school teachers who had been charged with sex abuse and arguing that public schools not Catholic schools were the real site of criminal danger.

Chaput proved a master at hardball politics. His campaign was full of stretched facts and false equivalencies. Opponents outraged at his McCarthy style list of public school abusers, for example, pointed out that the public school criminals had been charged and tried but that their Catholic counterparts faced no such accountability. On the contrary, in parishes around the world, they had been shuttled away, accusations and evidence of crimes buried by Church authorities, which was the main reason advocates for victims were making the case for extending statutes of limitations. They also pointed out that public institutions were subject to open records laws that would prevent the kind of transparency dodging Church officials had engaged in for decades.

As Jeremy Roebuck reported this past August for the Pueblo Chieftan in a piece comprehensively revisiting the battle, Church lobbyists eventually “persuaded Colorado lawmakers to alter the bill to subject government groups to the same $700,000 damages limit that private institutions would now face. In so doing, the bill’s backers unwittingly opened the door to its demise…

“Teachers’ unions, lobbyists for local governments, and insurance companies soon joined the fight. And with mounting opposition from the capital’s most powerful interest groups, the bill that had sailed through committee months earlier suddenly was resoundingly voted down.”

The new sex-abuse legislation in Philadelphia is being proposed by Republican Rep Dennis O’Brien and Democratic Rep Louise Bishop, both members of the House Children and Youth Committee. The legislation will extend statutes of limitations and make it illegal for witnesses of abuse not to report what they have seen directly to law enforcement authorities.

In interviews since his transfer this summer, Chaput has said he doesn’t know why the Pope chose him to lead the flock in Philadelphia. Lawmakers there may soon come to think they know the answer based on practical experience.

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Suncor's Commerce City refinery.

WRA officials are concerned that the Suncor spill into Sand Creek north of Denver has already made it into the South Platte, which is a major water source for Colorado’s Front Range. Stepped up drilling by Anadarko and other companies in the state’s most populous areas could have similar consequences, the group argues.

“Municipal water systems are designed to treat bacteria and pathogens, but not hydrocarbons like those that might come from an oil refinery,” said Drew Beckwith, WRA’s water policy manager. “That’s not to say that the water can’t be kept safe, but we need to consider the potential consequences before something like this happens on a larger scale. The potential for problems becomes exponentially greater as drilling moves closer to population centers.”

The Denver Post reports state health officials have known about the problem in Commerce City for at least a month and that workers at a nearby wastewater treatment facility have been wearing respirators for a week because of toxic vapors. A fisherman noticed the spill on Sunday, blogged about it, which led to a reader in Idaho calling the Denver Post.

That prompted an EPA investigation Monday and finally a report of the incident by Suncor itself. The source of the spill is still being investigated, but Suncor officials admit the material is coming out of the ground around its facility.

Suncor’s refinery, which it acquired from Conoco, handles some of the tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, that was the subject of so much controversy this summer during the Keystone XL pipeline expansion battle. The tar sands oil comes to Commerce City via an existing pipeline and is then refined by Suncor and sold as gasoline at nearly 270 Shell and Phillips 66 stations around Colorado.

According to WRA, the Suncor refinery has been repeatedly cited by both the state and the feds for polluting Sand Creek. EPA and Suncor officials met at the site Tuesday night and decided to dig a trench to keep the oily goo from flowing into the Platte, the Post reported today, but state health officials were not on scene because they were handling media calls.

“We can’t speculate on the overall contamination levels that might reach water and food supplies, but there is no ‘acceptable’ amount,” said WRA’s Beckwith. “Put it this way: There is a reason you’ve never heard someone say, ‘I’d like some more oil in my water, please.’”

WRA created a map showing how oil contamination can reach food and water supplies.

Former Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput took the reins in sex-scandal-plagued Philadelphia last week. A sampling of YouTubes posted last week offers a snapshot of his trying first days there, a new Church leader in a place grown deeply distrustful of Church leaders.

A video posted Thursday captured angry Catholics protesting outside the mass held to install Chaput in his new position.

“We’re here to welcome Archbishop Chaput with an appropriate welcome, I think,” said one protester, “and that’s to ask him, Number One, to tell the truth; Number Two, to make survivors and their healing a priority; and, Number Three, to not to take any of the arrogance of the hierarchy and bring it to Philadelphia. ”

“I think [Chaput] should support the kind of legislation that protects children,” said another protester. “That would be a good start. Pennsylvania needs a law. There should be window legislation allowing these people to have a day in court.”

Chaput is not likely to support any kind of “window legislation”– laws that would extend statutes of limitations in civil cases brought against clergy accused of sexual abuse– which is surely partly why Pope Benedict appointed Chaput to the position.

Chaput has established a strong record over the last decade of successfully guarding the Church against the fallout of sexual-abuse charges. He has shown personal compassion for victims and has moved swiftly to remove accused priests from public ministry. But he has also pushed back hard against legal efforts to hold the Church responsible for abuse, mainly by battling to prevent the kind of high-dollar payouts to victims made by the Church in recent years and that culminated, perhaps, in the hundreds-of-million-dollar payouts that came in the late-2000s in California.

Indeed, Chaput’s scrappy efforts in opposing window legislation have become a model to Church leaders in the U.S. He is a modern prelate who gets dirty playing hardcore politics.

In opposing a Colorado same-sex civil unions bill last year, Chaput pressed his case against the bill from the pulpit and in essays that fudged the facts, a tactic Joelle Casteix, Western Regional Director for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said he also used in opposing window law bills here.

In a blog post on the news of his appointment to Philadelphia, she sounded an alarm:

In 2006, when Colorado legislators tried to expand archaic statutes of limitations for victims of child sexual abuse, including a civil window for older victims, Chaput spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and used the pulpit to kill the legislation… While fighting a [2008 version of the legislation], Chaput played a game well known in politics: “I’m bad, but so are they.” To do this, his lawyers did a simple search of Colorado public school teachers who had been arrested for sexual abuse. Then they put the names in a list, publicized it, and claimed that Chaput had unearthed a scandal of molestation in the public education system.  The PR stunt was a slap in the face of clergy sex abuse survivors.  Why? Because the teachers on Chaput’s list were already exposed and  arrested, unlike the vast majority of the predator clerics in the Catholic Church.  The teachers on Chaput’s list were not carefully hidden by their superiors, shuttled from parish to parish, covered-up by Church officials, and allowed to molest more kids.

In fact, according to Bishop-Accountability.org, the leading database of documents chronicling the sex abuse crisis in the U.S. Catholic Church, Chaput has been less than forthcoming in naming accused clergy.  In 2004, when the first national John Jay study on abusive priests was released, Chaput fudged the math. He only reported diocesan priests and didn’t submit any information on religious order priests who – like himself – make up more than half of the priests in the diocese. (Chaput is a religious order priest, a Capuchin OFM).  Then, he only submitted the names of priests that the diocese had “confirmed” had abused kids, not the number of total accusations.

Chaput’s installment is the latest chapter in one of the most high-profile contemporary Church upheavals in the country. The Philadelphia archdiocese has been doing major damage control since February, when a grand jury skewered Cardinal Justin Rigali, his bishops and staff for retaining dozens of problem priests. It charged three priests and a Catholic school teacher with rape and a priest-administrator or monsignor with endangering children by only shuffling accused priests to different posts. The panel said the Church allowed nearly 40 suspected abusers to continue working.

The strain on internal relations at the archdiocese is a matter of public record. The head of the archdiocese panel on priest sex abuse last month responded angrily to criticism heaped on the panel by the grand jury. Ana Maria Catanzaro wrote at the Catholic magazine Commonweal that Rigali and his bishops “failed miserably at being open and transparent” with the panel and so panel members couldn’t perform genuine oversight and shouldn’t be made to carry blame.

“What will it take for bishops to accept that their attitude of superiority and privilege only harms their image and the Church’s image?” she wrote.

In a video that introduces Chaput to Pennsylvanians, the archbishop sought to make the focus of the story of his installation wider than merely the sex-abuse controversy.

“Everybody’s talking about the problems Philadelphia has,” he said, “but that’s not who Philadelphia is… It’s very important for us to see [ourselves] as more than the problems we have.”

Another video, also posted last week, asks Chaput whether he believes “priests should be held to a higher standard.”

It’s an intimate piece, in which Chaput looks weary, his quiet and measured response conjuring the weight of the long slog ahead of him.

“Priests are human and they will sin,” he said. “But we also know god desires to use them as symbols of his presence among the church. So priests, when they accept the sacrament of ordination, they’re accepting responsibility to try very hard to be faithful to every teaching in the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Reverend James Conley, auxiliary archbishop of Denver, was appointed apostolic administrator of the Denver archdiocese by Pope Benedict until he appoints a new archbishop. A spokesperson for the diocese told the Colorado Independent that that process could take roughly six months to a year to complete.

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Supporters of diverse local media and champions of competition among news outlets are celebrating the recent U.S. Court of Appeals verdict in Prometheus Radio Project v. the FCC. The court rejected Federal Communications Commission rules that would have opened up ownership to further corporate consolidation. In the wake of the egregious overstepping by media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s uber British tabloid News of the World, the ruling has taken on an heroic cast. The court said that in making its rules the FCC had ignored the input of millions of American citizens.

“This is a major victory not just for our media but for our democracy,” Prometheus Policy Director Brandy Doyle told Democracy Now. “The court blocked the FCC’s attempt to end a 35 year old ban on newspaper and broadcast cross-ownership, when one company owns both in the same market… thousands of people spoke out at hearings held by the FCC and millions of people filed comments and raised their voice against this. The Third Circuit Court in Philadelphia agreed that what the FCC did was undemocratic and the process through which they did it was undemocratic.”

Prometheus Radio project is a non-profit group that builds community radio stations and advocates for media news and information that more directly reflects the concerns of local populations.

The Bush-era FCC twice tried to pass deregulating rules, in 2003 and 2007, and both times was blocked by the courts.

The recent court ruling came as the Obama-era FCC gears up to consider media ownership rules. Media watchdogs are pushing for the rules to be strengthened given that corporations have found ways to effectively chip away at them or skirt them altogether.

In Denver, for example, local TV news stations KDVR and KWGN work under a “shared services agreement” where essentially the same staff produces news programs at both stations. Watchdogs have flagged that kind of agreement as a violation of the spirit of the law if not the letter of the law and argue that the station owners are squatting on public air wave space through mutual agreement.

The argument for relaxing ownership laws made by corporate lawyers and rejected by the court was in part that cable television and the internet now ensure that a diversity of voices are heard on issues of public concern. Free network news, however, is still the main channel through which the public receives local news by a long shot and the FCC presented no evidence to counter the data in support of that fact. The court added that many local news websites are also owned by television stations and newspapers, which unsurprisingly use them to promote the work of their own staff.

Doyle said that 99 percent of the millions of Americans who officially commented on the FCC rules were against consolidation. The fact that the FCC moved ahead with deregulation anyway, she said, is another demonstration of the sway communications corporations have in the nation’s capital.

She added that Murdoch, for example, enjoys a permanent waiver of the rules banning cross ownership in New York. His News Corps owns the New York Post and TV station WNYW.

“The court not only ruled we have the right to media diversity,” Doyle said, “the court also ruled that we also have a right to impact the rules that shape our media system.”

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This past Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of Marvin Booker’s death at the Denver jail after a tragic confrontation with Sheriff Department deputies. Booker’s parents commemorated the dark day by joining members of a rights coalition and police brutality awareness activists for a rally in front of the jailhouse. Booker’s death was one of several high-profile episodes over the last few years that have sparked widespread concerns over law enforcement practices in the Denver metro area. At the event Saturday, the ACLU’s Rosemary Harris Lytle said the group asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate police practices in the city.

“We must change the culture of policing in this city and county,” she said. “We’ve called on the Department of Justice to launch an independent investigation of law enforcement practices in this city so that those of us who live and work here can do so without having to fear the police. We say that police brutality is killing us and that enough is enough.”

Harris Lytle called on the administration of Denver Mayor-elect Michael Hancock to make addressing police brutality a top priority.

“Not one more citizen, not one more family should have to endure what the Booker family endured,” she said.

A pastor at the event on the video below said the point of honoring Booker’s death was to do something vital for the living.

“We must stand by Marvin and realize that if we don’t stand by him and fight for him, it will be someone else tomorrow.”

Booker, who was 56 when he was killed, was a homeless pastor with a string of run-ins with the law. He was arrested on the night of his death for possession of drug paraphernalia. He was reportedly winking in and out of sleep before being called to the processing desk at the Van Cise Detention Center. Standing in his socks, he left the desk to retrieve his shoes. He ignored orders to leave the shoes and sit. A scuffle ensued, a cluster of deputies subdued him and tased him and dumped him in a holding cell, where he stopped breathing. The city coroner pronounced his death a homicide.

After the investigation into his death, which cleared the five deputies involved, video tape of the scuffle was released to the public.

The remembrance gathering included representatives of the ACLU, NAACP, the Shorter AME church, Servicios de La Raza, One Colorado, the National Lawyers Guild and CopWatch.

Police brutality was a major issue in the heated recent Denver mayoral race. Hancock spoke about it regularly on the stump, as did the other mayoral candidates. Hancock said that if he were elected he would work to change the city’s police culture “from top to bottom to ensure that excessive force is never tolerated.”

Hancock is reportedly conducting a national search for a new police chief.

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Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput has weighed in on the recent Supreme Court decision (pdf) that struck down a law banning the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. His arguments in favor of restricting the availability of video games echo his views on gay marriage and civil unions. Government should step in, he says, and bar gay marriage and restrict violent video game availability based on the “common sense” threats they pose. In opening an essay on the topic, Chaput references the 1999 Columbine school shootings.

“I spent the day after the massacre… trying to make sense of the violence to the wider community…. Common sense tells us that the violence of our music, our video games, our films, and our television has to go somewhere, and it goes straight into the hearts of our children to bear fruit in ways we can’t imagine— until something like [Columbine] happens.”

Chaput, who often raises alarm bells about the negative influence of the media, advances concerns that video games don’t just “simulate” violence but “stimulate” violence as well.

Scientific research is far from clear on that point, however, with the strongest studies suggesting that depression, alienation and the influence of friends are much stronger predictors of violent behavior.

That debate will go on as more research results come in but until then, as most constitutional attorneys might add, “common sense” is no sufficient support for a court ruling limiting speech.

Chaput surely knows that but he likes the “common sense” argument. It’s the same rough argument he advanced against a Colorado same-sex civil unions bill last spring.

“The nature of marriage is a matter of common sense and long tradition… it is not simply a ‘religious’ issue.  Marriage has long been recognized as a lifelong relationship between one man and one woman that exists for the benefit of children and the protection of women.”

At the time, supporters of the civil union bill argued that Chaput’s common sense was not everyone’s common sense and was no valid legal justification, in any case, for the state to deny equal individual rights.

Church-state watchers will note that, in his discussion of the video game ruling and the civil unions bill, Chaput, who is often talked about as a candidate for higher church office and who has long encouraged Catholics to involve themselves in civic life as an obligation of the faith, has highlighted his basic position on the role of government.

When it comes to gay marriage, he wants the state to act to guard his version of Christian traditional marriage. In considering the video game violence, Chaput wishes the government would act to help parents guard their children against video game violence he considers dangerous.

It is perhaps unsurprising that a Catholic Archbishop would view government and invest in it as a hierarchical source of authority from which protection and morality might flow.

“All law serves—or should serve—the dual purpose of protecting the dignity of the human person and advancing the common good. A law which respects mothers and fathers trying to make good choices for their family does just that,” he writes.

Americans, however, disagree almost as much on what constitutes the common good as they do on what role government should play in the lives of the people.

Legal writer Emily Bazelon posted a constitutional view of the video game case as it approached the court last year. Bazelon is no “First Amendment absolutist,” as she put it, but she’s not sure the government would be properly fulfilling its role in U.S. life by helping parents choose what games are appropriate for their children to play.

To justify a limit on speech…. courts have to find that the state has a compelling interest and has used the least restrictive means to achieve it. Let’s stipulate for a second that the research on the link between playing games and acting more aggressive is good enough, despite the reasons for skepticism. What about the least restrictive means part? Does it really make sense to bar older teenagers from buying violent games? By 15 or 16, do they really need the state acting as their protector?

In this context, the answer is probably no. The idea that a 17-year-old can go to an R-rated movie alone and then be turned away at the video store seems kind of silly. Which means California’s ban is broader than it should be. And if the state lowered the age, say to 14, how many kids would it really affect? Isn’t the problem, if there is one, that parents are buying these games for their younger kids, rather than that kids are showing up at the store with $60 and toting the games home themselves? Video games are already labeled to alert parents to the violence inside the box…. some consoles come with controls so parents can block games they don’t want their kids to play. Banning the sale of these games to teenagers is an ineffectual gesture that mostly misses the point. It’s not up to the government to get kids to stop playing these games, whether they’re harmful or immoral or just a waste of time. It’s up to us.

If the readers who chose to comment at First Things, the religious website where Chaput published his essay, are any measure, the Christian flock might be as apt to accept Bazelon’s “common sense” as they are to accept Chaput’s “common sense” on the topic.

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As the Martin Luther King holiday unfolds in Denver, it is important to remember that it is more than a day off, more that an extra ski day.

Today, we bring you first a statement by Colorado Democratic Party Chair Pat Waak. Then, we have video of the entire Martin Luther King “I have a dream” speech, that is followed by a much shorter video of an excerpt from the speech, in case you don’t have time for the whole thing.

Down below, we also have links to the entire text of the speech and to a calendar of Denver events marking the day.

From Pat Waak:

“Tomorrow is a day for both the celebration of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the tireless movement for equality and understanding that he helped foster. Through non-violent action, peaceful assembly and soaring rhetoric, Dr. King helped show all Americans a better way forward and reminded our nation that all are created equal.

“While we remain imperfect, we have come a long way since Dr. King’s speech nearly a half century ago. While on this day we certainly reflect on our progress, we also look forward to bettering ourselves and our nation and to upholding the values Dr. King spoke of when he addressed a nation from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. As Dr. King said that day, ours must be a nation where our children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” And on this day we observe his vision by engaging in service to those in our communities that need assistance. And I believe that in doing so, we honor the life and continue the legacy of Dr. King.”

Click here to see text of the entire speech.

Here, link to The Denver Post’s calendar of Martin Luther King Day events.

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Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper

Director of the Office of Cultural Affairs Erin Trapp explained that there is no basis to make a firm projection because of the newness of the event. “This is a first-time event so you hesitate to make that sort of projection. We are really going to use this year as a benchmark,” she said.

“This Biennial is clearly the most important national event that we have seen here since the Summit of the Eight. It allows us to highlight how important our hemisphere is to us,” Hickenlooper said. “Most people don’t realize that we import more oil from this hemisphere than we do from the Middle East.”

Noting that Denver was already a multicultural city, he said, “We believe [the Biennial of the Americas] will allow us to introduce Colorado to a whole new spectrum of businesses, cultures, ideas and innovations from throughout the Americas.” Thirty-five nations are participating in the Biennial.

Hickenlooper said the cultural exchange will help to show there are more similarities between nations than differences. “We have a chance with this to fight against the prejudices that result from a lack of understanding,” he said.

Many other organizations and venues are centering themselves around this event, said Rich Scharf, President of Visit Denver. He stressed that the event was a tool to brand Denver as an international hub. “Even in the convention business, we find that the growth today is in international attendees. So this is really kind of highlighting our brand. We are innovative, and we are fun. This event is doing the job of promoting Denver to the world.”

Ted White, Boettcher Foundation chair, said that at first the event did not look like a good fit for Foundation funding. He said organizers were asked for a $2 million grant for an event that was not established. “Our average grant size is $50,000,” he said.

He went on to note that the Foundation does not generally sponsor events, and only works with established projects. However, he said the mayor’s vision to make Denver the host of “a world’s fair of ideas” eventually won them over.

Hickenlooper said that the idea and vision were not his, but that of the Department of Cultural Affairs, although he said he would take credit for some of the energy that went into ensuring it happened.

Today’s events include a roundtable on education featuring U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet along with representatives from Chile, Columbia, Guatemala, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago. That is at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House from 9 to 11:30 am.

For the rest of today’s events and a full schedule, see www.biennialoftheamericas.org.

When Markey and Gardner want to raise cash, though, its not their own district that brings in the bucks. Like pretty much every other politician in Colorado, the real dollars come from Denver.

Gardner has brought in $413,443 from Denver, according to OpenSecrets.org. From Fort Collins, Loveland and Greeley combined, he has raised a little more than $90,000.

Markey has brought in $241,334 from Denver. She has raised $114,000 from Fort Collins – Loveland and $122,211 from Boulder-Longmont.

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The crowd gathered at Colfax and Lincoln and then marched to court house across at 19th and Stout amid the high-rise office buildings and hotels. The activists were arrested one at a time while kneeling in a line after Denver police issued three warnings to disperse.

The chants were in Spanish and English and centered around frustrations surrounding the lack of progress on immigration reform in Washington.

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