In response to this, a fair-minded journalist – even a commentator – shouldn’t set up a false dichotomy between Buck’s “personal” political views and all the rest of his policy positions.

That’s what Denver Post opinion writer Chuck Plunkett did in a Spot blog post Aug. 13. He wrote:

“Some of Buck’s personal beliefs will hurt him. If he doesn’t get out in front of the labeling game, they could hurt him a lot. [Plunkett linked to a story about Buck’s abortion stance.] But his central interest – what truly animates him – isn’t the social-issue stuff that drove old-school conservatives in Colorado like Marilyn Musgrave.”

I asked Plunkett via email if he thought it was factually accurate to separate Buck’s position on abortion from his other policy positions, by describing it as “personal.”

I mean, any political belief can be defined as personal, as guided by ethics or religious morals, or at least a politician can claim that it is–just like a candidate’s belief about abortion.

The “personal” label unfairly implies that the issue should be taken off the table, or at least partially ignored.

Plunkett responded quickly, saying he’d amplify later but the short answer is that Buck’s abortion positions “stem from religious beliefs — so, beyond just ‘personal.’”

This gave me the opportunity to point out to Plunkett that Buck told KHOW’s Craig Silverman that his position on abortion wasn’t derived just religion anyway but from a combination of his “upbringing,” “faith,” and “life experiences.”

I wrote Plunkett that this looks like the same process I use as the basis for some of my own political views, and I’m an atheist. (So I’d re-define “faith” to mean “faith in fellow homo sapiens.”)

Ethics or religious morals can be tied up with almost any legislative decision, like, for example, whether everyone has a right to health care or how much money to spend on education or whether we should house the homeless. As Jim Wallis likes to say, the federal budget is a moral document.

Plunkett responded:

“I don’t think the way a person’s religious beliefs affect his views on abortion is the same — at all — as how that faith shapes his approach to policy issues involving the homeless, or educating children or ensuring that everyone has access to quality health care. There are many ways to approach those issues, but if you believe that life begins at conception and that it would be murder to end that life, what are you supposed to do? You don’t have a choice but to advocate for that fertilized egg to follow its natural course. If that means a baby is born, that means a baby is born — even if that child is the result of an unholy union brought on by a rape or incest.”

Trouble is, any ideology can control a person, whether it’s religious or, as I pointed out to Plunkett later, antinuclear.

I’ve seen this conviction in non-religious activists on the left, who come out, for example, against the entire nuclear fuel cycle from mining and uranium processing to nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and x-rays.

I mean, think of a political issue, from homelessness to education, and you can find an ideological advocate, often principled ones.

How about the hunger activists who says America’s wealth is unconscionable and we have no choice but to spend a tiny fraction of our federal taxes to feed the millions of children who die annually from Hunger? A personal view? Ideological? Whacko?

So Buck’s ideological religious faith shouldn’t give journalists the right to put his abortion views in a separate “personal” category, just like you wouldn’t expect journalists to label the marginalized views of ideological hunger or antinuclear activists as “personal.”

Plunkett, who’s pro-choice and finds Buck’s view “too extreme” yet “understandable,” didn’t accept my argument, but I think he hit the nail on the head when he wrote back:

“I could argue to you that anyone who lets their no-nukes belief get in the way of beneficial uses — like green (minus the radiation) energy — is a whacko. But in our society, if you want to be taken seriously, it’s difficult to say that about people with religious faith.”

He’s right, unfortunately, even if religious people make marginalized, whacko arguments like abortion should be banned if a father rapes his daughter.

But journalists shouldn’t implicitly excuse them by calling these beliefs “personal.”

It seems to me that it’s the kind of political tidbit that’s understandable to a wide audience, and so it might make good TV, especially because there’s a video of Buck saying it.

Former Rocky media critic Greg Dobbs first doubted that I could assert that there was no coverage of Buck’s stance. He emailed me:

“First, if you’re certain that local TV news hasn’t reported Buck’s statement on abortion, so bet it. But I’m not. Unless every local newscast is monitored for every single story, whether a video package or a simple “tell” by the anchors— and unless every bullet point in every story is catalogued— I can’t automatically accept your premise. Again, you might know for a fact that no one has told this story about Buck, let alone shown the video, but I don’t.”

Dobbs is smart to be skeptical.

There’s a huge amount of local TV news pulsating across Colorado at almost any given moment in three TV markets: Denver, Colorado Springs/Pueblo, and Grand Junction/Montrose. As you may know if you’ve ever looked at the number of shows aired each day, the number of hours is staggering. The total varies by station but, for stations like CBS4, 9News, and 7News, the news programming starts at about 5 a.m. for a couple hours, picks up again around noon for a half hour or hour, pops up again in the late afternoon for an hour or two, and then concludes with the 10 p.m. broadcast. Plus weekends. In case you’re ever star-struck by a TV journalist, just remember how much work it takes to fill those broadcasts, even if much, but certainly not all, of the content is simplistic.

I told Dobbs that I engaged a service, NewsPowerOnline (and there are others), that monitors all of it, from the 5 a.m. newscast to the late-night broadcasts. It does this by searching for key words in the closed captioning. The technique had been used in the media-monitoring world for years. It’s not 100 percent accurate, because the computer-generated transcriptions sometimes garble words, but it’s pretty amazing.

My comprehensive search covered all local TV news programs and found no mention of Buck’s abortion stance in the past year. (For my initial blog post on this topic Wednesday, pointing out that major media had essentially ignored Buck’s abortion stance, I did a simple web search of Denver TV stations’ websites. The Newspoweronline search was much better.)

Dobbs wrote that he is “put off by the general emphasis in TV news on the candidates’ horserace rather than the issues with which the winning candidate will struggle.” And this “might help explain why Buck’s views on abortion haven’t gotten the attention you think they should.”

He continued:

“A key issue for you (or anyone else) isn’t necessarily a key issue for the electorate. If the shoe were on the other foot and newscasts focused ceaselessly on abortion at the expense of the economy, it would raise even bigger questions.

I’m not saying that any candidate’s position on abortion should be covered at the expense of the economy. I want both covered, and I agree that given the wide public concern, the economy should get more coverage than abortion.

After all, a recent Rasmussen poll shows that while abortion isn’t a top-tier interest of voters, they consider the issue of abortion in voting decisions:

Sixty-one percent (61%) of voters say abortion is at least somewhat important as an issue in terms of how they will vote in November, with 33% who say it is Very Important. Thirty-seven percent (37%) say it’s not very or not at all important to them as a voting issue.

Dobbs continued:

“Anyway, if mainstream Republicans have said anything this year about what matters, it is that they want to focus on the economy and jobs; they themselves are trying to put ’social’ issues on the back burner.”

Dobbs is right that GOP candidates have said this, but if you’re a reporter, you have to look at what Buck, specifically, has said about how seriously he’d take social issues, if he’s elected to office. He says he thinks Senate Republicans have shown weakness in not dealing with them.

I posted this radio transcript previously, but it proves my point so well here that I must copy it again. This is an exchange May 21 between Buck and Jim Pfaff on KLZ radio AM560.

Pfaff: “These social issues, like marriage, these are critical issues. It has been one of the great weaknesses of the Republican Party not to deal with these critical issues.”

Buck: “I agree with you that I think it has been a weakness of the Republican Party in the United States Senate, and I think it’s time that we look at the people we are sending back to Washington DC and making sure those people are sticking by the values they espouse on the campaign trail,” Buck responded.

Addressing another point, Dobbs wrote, “Third, it’s my guess that to date, TV news hasn’t told much or anything at all about Bennet’s positions on abortion. If my guess is right, should it be skewered for that?”

No, I would not skewer TV for not covering Bennet’s views, which are not as far out of the norm as Buck’s. But Bennet’s views should also be covered, to allow voters to contrast the two candidates.

Dobbs concluded his email to me with something I agree with. “Finally,” he wrote, “as a lifelong TV news journalist, I think it’s fair to say that newscasts are limited by a number of things: the restrictive length of stories, the fact that things must stay simple because people can’t go back and reread what they’ve heard, and the number of topics they must cover in a single political race.

In a subsequent telephone call, Dobbs added:

“Buck’s stand is clearly outrageous to people on the pro-choice side of the abortion issue. But to people on the pro-life side, the most outrageous position is one that supports virtually any kind of abortion at all, because they consider that murder. Unless we’re talking about something universally outrageous, like suggesting the execution of everyone who’s gay, although in some parts of the world even that is not considered outrageous, I don’t want my news providers to make news decisions based on what they think is politically outrageous or not.”

As Sarah Palin might say, this sounds all objectivey, but tell me, how is a journalists supposed to decide what’s news without at least considering the “outrageous” factor? It’s part of what makes news.

And in this case, polls show between 70 and 80 percent of adults think abortion should be legal in the case of rape and incest. A journalist has to try to connect to the mainstream sensibility and respond to it. Sometimes this means giving voice to marginalized views, like’s Buck’s on abortion, that later become mainstream, precisely because the media has spotlighted them.

For another view on this issue, I emailed another former Rocky media critic, Dave Kopel.

Asked if he thought local TV news should cover the issue, Kopel wrote, “Well, I almost never watch local TV news, so it’s hard for me to have an opinion on whether they’re covering that issue sufficiently compared to other issues.”

I asked Kopel if he thought the existence of video of Buck articulating his position on the issue should have made it easier for local outlets to cover it. Kopel responded, “I don’t think that the video makes any difference. It’s not a position he has been hiding or changing his mind on. According to his website: ‘opposed to abortion except to protect the life of the mother. ‘”

I agree. The video of Buck stating his position is irrelevant. Reporters should just talk to him about it.

At issue were Bachmann’s claims that prior to 2008, “100 percent of the private economy was private” and that “30 percent of American physicians would leave the profession if the government took over health care.” CBS News said evidence directly contradicts Bachmann’s statements.

“[N]ow we have the federal government taking over ownership or control of 51 percent of the American economy. This is stunning. Prior to September of 2008, 100 percent of the private economy was private,” Bachmann said on the long-running national news show.

CBS News:

Ms. Bachmann offered no facts to back up her assertion that the government owns or controls 51 percent of the U.S. economy.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis data since 1929, the highest percentage of government spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product was during World War II when government spending was 47.9 percent (in 1944). The lowest level of government spending as a percent of GDP was 9 percent in 1929 at the outset of the Great Depression.

At no time during this period was the United States’ GDP 100 percent private.

The 2009 level of federal government spending was 20.6 percent.

In October, Bachmann put the figure at 30 percent, although her apparent source for the figure said it was an estimate.

Bachmann also cited a phony New England Journal of Medicine report pushed by a doctor-placement agency earlier this month.

“The New England Journal of Medicine released a survey the week that President Obama signed Obamacare stating that over 30 percent of American physicians would leave the profession if the government took over health care. That’s very serious going forward.”

CBS News: “The New England Journal of Medicine has denied it conducted or published the survey cited by Ms. Bachmann.”

Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio, who is running to represent Florida in the U.S. Senate tweeted the phony New England Journal of Medicine report last week.

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) and Tea Party demonstrators (EPA/ZUMApress.com, David Weigel)

“Ninety-nine percent of the people out there were good, patriotic Americans,” Steinhauser said. “Those are our people. But what we heard about were these very few incidents of alleged racial slurs which I haven’t seen evidence of. I’d like to see the video if it’s out there.”

Steinhauser was not alone. On March 21, Missouri-based blogger Jim Hoft posted “video proof that these horrible leftists are liars” in the form of a noisy, 48-second clip of several black members of Congress being heckled, with no racial slurs audible amid the din. “These radical liars with stop at nothing to ram their socialist agenda down America’s throat,” wrote Hoft. And across Washington, many conservatives shared doubts about a story that had damaged and embarrassed Republicans, prompting catch-all apologies from Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.). One hot rumor was that Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) had excitedly hyped and sold the “slurs” story to reporters; another was that police wanted to debunk the story, but had to stay off the record. (Reports on the event were based on the personal accounts of the congressmen and of a criminal complaint filed by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D- Mo., that Cleaver then dropped, without explanation.)

Over the long, angry week since the health care care vote, as more than a dozen members of Congress reported threats or attacks to their homes and offices, Tea Party leaders and Republicans have put out condemnations and apologies. That doesn’t quite reflect the sentiment inside the movement — a belief that the media and the Democratic Party are hyping, and possibly fabricating, racist or violent attacks to tar their opposition.

“The American people,” said Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) in a Thursday floor speech, “have every right to oppose this government takeover of health care without being lumped in with bigots and vandals by liberals in Congress and in the mainstream press.”

This isn’t the first time Tea Party activists have been accused by Democrats of slurs, violence, and anti-democratic threats — or the first time Republicans have been accused of indulging them. In August 2009, stories and video of angry activists at congressional town hall meetings polarized Washington. Democrats accused Tea Partiers of organizing “un-American” mob scenes. Republicans embraced the activists, and credited their rowdiness with keeping the health care bill on ice.

“Since last July,” said Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) at Saturday’s rally, before the reported slur incidents, “you have put the brakes on this health care bill! The other day, the president, who was planning a trip to Southeast Asia, canceled his trip! You have grounded Air Force One!”

But it took several days for Tea Partiers and Republicans to start fighting back against was they saw as a concerted effort to disqualify their arguments about the health care bill. By Thursday, all leading Tea Party groups and Republicans had issued condemnations of the reported attacks. (”ResistNet Does NOT ADVOCATE Violence!” read one banner on the website of a leading grassroots group.) Those condemnations gave conservatives the space to blame Democrats for pushing so many stories of threats to members of Congress.

“I have deep concerns,” said Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) in a Thursday press conference on a mysterious bullet hole fired at an office he sometimes uses, “that some – DCCC Chairman Chris Van Hollen and DNC Chairman Tim Kaine in particular – are dangerously fanning the flames by suggesting that these incidents be used as a political weapon. Security threats against members of Congress is not a partisan issue and they should never be treated that way.”

Cantor, like Pence, spoke to conservative irritation at an aggressive campaign by official Democratic committees and by organizations like Media Matters Action to publicize — and get Republicans on the record about — reports of violence. That subject occupied Rush Limbaugh for more than half of his Thursday broadcast, during which the conservative host told listeners that they “need to stop being defensive about this and turn it right back” onto Democrats.

“When we have a terrorist attack,” said Limbaugh, “the Democrats always ask: What did we do to deserve this? Have you heard any of the Democrats ask this about something they imposed on us?” At multiple points, he called the health care bill “the real death threat” and intimated that Democrats had faked both the Saturday slurs and the week of attacks on Democrats. “They have to invent this narrative of violence against them for their own well-being.”

Limbaugh echoed some of the “give me a break” criticism of other conservatives, who had refused to accept the framing of the event provided by the mainstream media. Cantor’s press conference provided an opening for some to go after the tactics of Democrats, blaming them for hype.

“‘I’m getting death threats’ has become a tired meme in the American media,” wrote blogger Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com, “and a handy way for politicians to avoid the responsible accountability that mainstream Americans demand. And it’s not just Democrats who have indulged in that avoidance strategy in the past, although they’re certainly the culprits of the moment.”

“When,” joked blogger Jim Treacher at the Daily Caller website, “will the Democrats stand up and condemn this act of violence they caused?”

But other conservatives went beyond the Republican line, arguing that the Democrats got what was coming to them. In an e-mail to his America’s Values supporters, Gary Bauer soft-peddled the Saturday slur story by noting that “these liberals chose to walk through the upset protestors in the hopes, I suspect, of provoking an incident.”

“After years of falsely characterizing former President Bush as a tyrant,” wrote blogger Dan Riehl, “they’ve let slip the mask and America can see with their own eyes who the real tyrants are… [D]on’t expect us to feel sorry for you, or respect you for the wrath you’re now faced with confronting. That may be the only thing you actually deserve for the unjust and un-democratic way in which you’ve comported yourselves throughout this entire charade.”

Conservative anger at the coverage extended to the perceived double standard. Once again, they argued, attacks on Democrats were taken as gospel before rigorous fact-checking; once again, alleged attacks by conservatives were taken more seriously than attacks by the left.

“I wonder,” asked Limbaugh, “if all of those AIG executives whose mansions were surrounded by ACORN and SEIU activists — bussed in activists — got any death threats?”

Steinhauser, who appeared on Fox News Thursday to discuss the double standard, said that it was fair to question why the media didn’t flood the zone on coverage of a September 11, 2009 bomb threat received by FreedomWorks, or by attacks from unions.

“There wasn’t this sort of outcry about what the SEIU was doing at town halls,” said Steinhauser. “If you want to take it back to the 20th century, the left has more to condemn than the right does. My goodness, look at what happened with the 1968 Democratic National Convention! Look at the radical elements of the environmental movement. Look at Bill Ayers — this guy was a member of radical group who said and did awful things. He helped launch Barack Obama’s political career, he’s part of the mainstream Left again, and there’s barely a word about it.”

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

National Tea Party Convention organizer Judson Phillips (David Weigel)

But on the floor of his convention, the paranoid, mysterious Judson Phillips was nowhere to be seen. The real Phillips, a jovial defense attorney, bounded in and out of sessions, across the stage of the Gaylord Opryland Hotel’s Tennessee Ballroom, and from interview to interview. Hardly 15 minutes could go by without Phillips, sporting a rumpled tan suit and day-old shave, shaking the hand of a grateful attendee or being miked for a new interview.

“I’m talking to them,” he said, pointing at a video crew from Time magazine, and asking if he could wait a few minutes to answer questions. “Then I’m talking to them.” He pointed to CNN’s set-up box in the corner of the small convention hall. “Then I have another interview in a half hour. But I will talk to you!”

As this three-day event wrapped up with an hourlong address by and Q&A with Sarah Palin — broadcast live on CNN, Fox, MSNBC and C-Span — it was clear that Phillips’s massive and controversial gamble had mostly paid off. More than 200 members of the media had descended on Nashville to write probing stories on the Tea Party Movement. In the end, said Phillips, the convention would turn a small profit — a step down from his initial hopes to make enough of a profit to launch a 527 that would back conservative candidates, but when compared to the rumors that led up to the convention, a smashing success.

“We’re going to break even, maybe a little bit into the black,” Phillips said. And just as he did from the main stage, Phillips went a little further and ribbed his critics with a joke. “I’m not planning to declare bankruptcy. I had to do that one time–it really sucks when you have to do that.”

To the delight of attendees, the National Tea Party Convention became a coming-out party for a movement that’s always had an oppositional relationship to the press. It was a small event — around half the size of the inaugural YearlyKos convention of liberal bloggers in 2006 — and The Gaylord Opryland location served to make it look even smaller. The entire weekend was contained in a ballroom and three breakout rooms adjacent to a short lobby with media check-in on one end and a raft of cameras on the other, with pundits like The Daily Beast’s John Avlon and RedState’s Erick Erickson doing quick live bits. Getting to the convention floor meant walking through one of two indoor shopping malls, one of them inside a massive dome decked out with greenery and artificial lakes. “I imagined one day I’d meet [Palin],” said conservative media pioneer Andrew Breitbart in his introduction of the former governor. “I just never knew that it would be in the middle of Tennessee, in a biosphere. Or is it an international space station? Or is it the set of Avatar?”

Inside the main hall, and inside the breakout sessions, there was one member of the media for every three Tea Partiers. During the troubled run-up to the convention, those sessions (and Palin’s speech) were scheduled to be closed to the media, and only a few cloaked-in-mystery “availabilities” would be opened up.

“I think they were the dog that caught the car,” said Erickson, who had been an early critic of the convention. “They got Palin. Who thought they were going to get Palin? They didn’t know what to do next.”

In the final stretch, as coverage of the “intra-Tea Party infighting” reached fever pitch, Phillips put Memphis TEA Party founder Mark Skoda in charge of media outreach. (”I just didn’t want to deal with it,” Phillips told TWI.) It was Skoda, a bombastic radio host and consultant, who started keeping in touch and on top of media requests and letting the world in.

“I jumped in when all the negative press was coming,” Skoda said, “because I don’t have a lot of tolerance for people who want to be bullies. My focus was getting as much video press in here as possible, that show that we’re not a bunch of crazies, OK? So there was a necessity to look at international press. We wanted to give them access because this is truly American. Our president may not believe in American exceptionalism, but I do. And if you look at most of the U.S. press, there’s a national audience — there’s a lot of videography going on. My sense was: Nobody here is wearing crazy outfits, there’s no little pointy hats, no screaming mimis, no signs.”

Skoda’s calculation paid off. The few people in “crazy outfits” did draw cameras toward them as if they were magnetized. One was William Temple, a pastor who donned the revolutionary war garb and British accent he’d broken out at every Tea Party. During speeches, Temple would wave his hat and lead cheers of “Hip, hip, huzzah!” Outside of the main room, he was interviewed with every step he took. But Tea Partiers hardly had anything to fear from the quotable and polite man who co-starred in “Tea Party: The Documentary Film” and led the 9/12 march on Washington.

“Gone were the placards that protesters carried [at Tea Parties] last year with Mr. Obama’s face wearing a Hitler mustache or superimposed on the Joker,” wrote Kate Zernike in a New York Times piece representative of the convention coverage. Many questions to organizers were about the firey speech by former congressman Tom Tancredo that opened the convention; many questions to attendees were about Palin, and whether they’d back her if she ran for president. The controversy surrounding the convention and its speakers led to media coverage of the convention as a mainstream political event, a stop along the road to the rebuilding of the GOP. One sign of how happy Tea Partiers were to see the media there came after Anthony Reese, who’d left the organizing committee of the convention in a huff, staged a press conference with three other angry activists critical of what happened–and then asked Fox’s Carl Cameron for a photo together. Cameron obliged.

“I think the media convinced the media to cover this by playing up the early stories,” said Glenn Reynolds, the libertarian Instapundit blogger who drove to the convention from his home in Knoxville. He was conducting interviews for PajamasTV, the conservative web network that ran some of the earliest coverage of the Tea Party movement, and was allowed to livestream most of this convention. “If I wanted to give Judson Phillips more credit than he deserves, I’d claim he was actually a genius who manipulated the media into giving this more coverage. I mean, this was the front-page, headline story in the Knoxville paper yesterday!”

Continue reading at the Washington Independent, the Colorado Independent’s sister site in D.C.

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

In an affidavit detailing the bungled sting operation, FBI Agent Steven Rayes argued that “there is probable cause to believe that Flanagan and Basel by false and fraudulent pretense attempted to enter, and did in fact enter, real property belonging to the United States” in order to bug phones, and that they were “aided and abetted” by O’Keefe and a 24-year-old activist named Stan Dai. One day later, the botched operation has become national news, an embarrassment that could tarnish the conservative media that turned O’Keefe’s ACORN stings into a national sensation. While O’Keefe, Basel, Flanagan, and Dai were released on $10,000 bonds, they face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty of “entering federal property under false pretenses for the purpose of committing a felony.” The scandal marks a swift and staggering downfall for an activist who had been praised for months for doing the work the “mainstream media” wouldn’t do in exposing sloppy and illegal work by ACORN.

“If he’s done what it’s said he’s done,” said Seton Motley, director of communications at the conservative Media Research Center, “the left-wing media is going to be all over him in a way they weren’t when he did the ACORN investigation. They’re going to love pounding him on this.”

Motley didn’t excuse the charges against O’Keefe. “People can do good things and bad things,” said Motley. “James O’Keefe did a very good thing with the ACORN videos. If this is true, he did a very bad thing. I don’t think one cancels out the other.”

According to Robert Bluey, who investigated the “Rathergate” scandal for CNSNews in 2004 and who is now director of online strategy at the Heritage Foundation, with this stunt O’Keefe may have put himself in the company of fact-manufacturing journalists such as Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass.

“If you’re a journalist, you have to follow certain laws of ethics,” Bluey said. “If this is true, it clearly falls outside the bounds of journalistic ethics.”

Bluey was hopeful that O’Keefe’s scandal wouldn’t reflect poorly on other conservative journalists. “He made clear that he was not doing this from any ideological perspective.”

O’Keefe, a self-described “progressive radical” who studied the tactics of Saul Alinsky, made a name for himself at Rutgers University as the founder of a conservative newspaper and a producer of hidden camera stings of politically correct administrators. From 2006 through 2007 he worked for the Leadership Institute, training conservative students on how to start campus publications. In July and August 2009 he and 20-year-old activist Hannah Giles posed, respectively, as a pimp and prostitute seeking advice for cheating on their taxes from various ACORN employees across the country. Their investigation badly damaged ACORN and fueled a successful congressional effort to temporarily prevent the group from receiving any federal funds. O’Keefe and Giles quickly became conservative icons, sought-after speakers at Tea Party protests and events like The American Spectator’s annual dinner.

“Now James is a national conservative hero,” wrote Leadership Institute president Morton Blackwell in a October 15, 2009, blog post for CampusReform.org, “and I believe he will write his own ticket to a future career doing just what he loves to do.”

On Tuesday, conservatives scrambled to contain the damage from O’Keefe’s Louisiana debacle. Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website hosted the ACORN tapes and pioneered a new breed of aggressive conservative investigative journalism. Mike Flynn, the editor-in-chief of Big Goverment, told TWI that the site was not working with O’Keefe; Flynn told libertarian Reason magazine that “unlike the left, I don’t believe the ends justify the means.”

In a statement to TWI and other media outlets, Breitbart said much the same thing.

“We have no knowledge about or connection to any alleged acts and events involving James O’Keefe at Senator Mary Landrieu’s office,” Breitbart said. “We only just learned about the alleged incident this afternoon. We have no information other than what has been reported publicly by the press.”

The potential blowback from the Landrieu sting extended to some Republican members of Congress. In October, Rep. Pete Olson (R-Tex.) introduced a resolution honoring “the fact-finding reporting done by Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe III.” The resolution credited the two activists with “exemplary actions as government watchdogs and young journalists uncovering wasteful government spending” and asked for the House to officially honor them and “transmit an enrolled copy” of the resolution to them. Thirty-one other Republicans co-sponsored the resolution. On Tuesday night, Olson gave TWI a statement criticizing O’Keefe’s actions while maintaining that the ACORN sting had performed a valuable service.

“Individuals who lawfully expose wrongful activities by an entity like ACORN receiving federal tax dollars should be praised,” said Olson. However, if recent events conclude that any laws were broken in the incident in Senator Landrieu’s office – that is not something I condone. Citizens have an important role in helping to expose waste and/or fraud when their tax dollars are being spent, but it must be done in a lawful manner.”

ACORN deputy director Kevin Whelan pounced on the story as “further evidence of [O'Keefe's] disregard for the law in pursuit of his extremist agenda.” According to Whelan, it was more evidence that O’Keefe’s original videos “had been shot illegally and edited deceptively in order to undermine the work of an organization that has empowered working families for four decades.”

While attention is beginning to spread to O’Keefe’s lesser-known accomplices, it’s the apparent downfall of a conservative journalistic star that is leading TV and newspaper reports on the botched sting. On the way out of a Louisiana courthouse, O’Keefe’s first statement to the media was “veritas”–Latin for “truth,” and half of the name of his video company, Veritas Visuals.

“The truth,” said O’Keefe, “shall set me free.”

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

Diaz:

Organizers say that journalists without passes will not be allowed into the convention at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. (A Star Tribune request for a pass was denied, the paper’s interest in covering its home-state congresswoman notwithstanding).

Convention spokesman Judson Phillips informs us that most of the sessions are closed “at the request” of the presenters. “Given the media interest, I don’t want the sessions disrupted and overrun with the media,” he said.

As a journalist, I’ve been allowed into sessions, dinners, everything at conferences hosted by the Eagle Forum and by Focus on the Family. Extra credit to Eagle Forum: when I was covering the How to Take Back America Conference in St. Louis, Phyllis Schlafly’s son Andy, an organizer, invited me away from my media seat and into a seat at his dinner table to chat with more activists. And some of the most controversial speakers at the National Tea Party Convention, like Rick Scarborough, happily chatted with me inside and outside of their sessions at previous events.

One major implication of this, of course, is that for the third time since the presidential election — the first at a speech in China, the second at a speech for a pro-life group in Indiana — Sarah Palin will give a political speech that members of the media are not allowed to attend. According to co-sponsors I’ve spoken with, they, not journalists, will get to spend time with Palin before and after the speech.

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

Tucker Carlson (ZUMA Press)

“I just thought it was funny,” said Carlson, chewing on a piece of Nicorette. (He quit smoking last year, on his 40th birthday.) “We dispatched some intern to go and get those signs made. Actually, it was $150–I never would have done it if I’d thought it would be so expensive. But something about it amused me. They’re on velcro. We swap ‘em out–we’ve got a whole drawer full of ‘em.”

Last February, Carlson–the conservative former host or co-host of shows on CNN and MSNBC, and still a Fox News contributor–gave a speech to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in which he urged activists on the right to “copy” the journalistic model of the New York Times. “They need to get out, find out what’s going on, and not just analyze things based on what the mainstream media has reported,” Carlson said. He was roundly booed. Four months later he officially announced plans to launch a news site “along the lines of the Huffington Post” with an ideology “not in sync with the current program.” When he talked with TWI on Wednesday, Carlson suggested that the desire for news like that, and the potential to break big stories, was greater than ever.

“When was the last time you saw, on television, a straight explanation of what’s in the competing House and Senate health care bills?” Carlson asked. “What’s in them? People want to know that!”

In the time between that announcement and next week’s debut, Carlson and his partner Neil Patel–a former aide to Dick Cheney–raised money, scouted out staff (”we didn’t ask about ideology,” said Carlson) and held poker games at their original, grimier office in Washington’s Dupont Circle. A June launch date was pushed into autumn, and then pushed back again. The reason, explained Patel, was that “our aspirations kept growing.”

Continue reading at the Washington Independent, the Colorado Independent’s sister site in D.C.

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

No word from Market Watch on a follow-up expos

After getting himself appointed to the legislature late last year, Douglas Bruce’s soon-to-be colleagues and high-profile supporters gushingly predicted he would, among other things, “revive the constitution and save the Republic.”A month into his term, Bruce, the Republican from Colorado Springs, has:
1. Kicked a photographer.
2. Been censured for it.
3. Says he will no longer talk to reporters.
4. Refused to co-sponsor a resolution honoring veterans and men and women in the military – prompting his own party leader, Mike May, R-Parker, to opine to the Rocky Mountain News, “That’s a man with no honor. He has no shame.”
5. Proceeded to shout at his colleagues, “Are you all happy?” after they required him to vote on another resolution to urge health care coverage for children in Colorado by 2018 (Bruce voted no).

Let’s take a look, now, at some of the predictions and promises of what Bruce would bring to the Capitol from three current Colorado lawmakers and the former Colorado Senate President who formally endorsed Bruce when he announced in October his intent to replace Rep. Bill Cadman.

From Rep. Kent Lambert’s letter of praise (Lambert is a Colorado Springs Republican and Air Force veteran who endorsed Bruce on Oct. 19; bold emphasis added):

“(Douglas Bruce’s) willingness to lead on tough issues sometimes invites controversy, but in an environment where the political majority is blatantly violating the constitution, citizens’ rights, and increasing taxes without permission of the voters, his voice needs to be heard in the Colorado House.“

From State Sen. Dave Schultheis, a Colorado Springs Republican who endorsed Bruce in October (bold emphasis added):

“No one can debate the fact that (Douglas Bruce) has stood as a bulwark in upholding the constitution and saying `no’ to the constant intrusion of an ever-growing government into the lives of Colorado’s hard-working citizens. One can only relish the future opportunity to see Douglas Bruce debate Colorado’s radically-left Democrat [sic] legislators. It will truly educate the citizens of Colorado as to the proper function of government.“

From Rep. Stella Garza Hicks, a Colorado Springs Republican who endorsed Bruce on Oct. 20 (bold emphasis added):

“I endorse Douglas Bruce for House District 15 and I see him as our best candidate to represent HD15 in the legislature in Denver.“

From former Senate President John Andrews, who endorsed Bruce on Oct. 23 and later gushed about Bruce’s appointment in his blog on Dec. 6:

“… The times call for the telling of hard truths and the drawing of bright lines — even when some of the resulting discomfort, mainly felt by Democrats, may also spill onto my fellow Republicans. And Mr. Bruce, while he’s no cuddly Sudanese teddy bear, is one of the few who can and will take on that thankless role.

“Douglas Bruce in the Colorado House of Representatives is going to be quite a spectacle, no doubt about it. Stay tuned for the fireworks when he takes his seat and the session opens next month. Barefoot opponents won’t be the half of it.

“You can expect Rep. Bruce to proclaim at every opportunity that the left-liberal emperor has no clothes at all — bare naked yet shameless about it. If we want to revive the constitution and save the Republic, somebody has to say that. I believe Doug is just the man.”

UPDATE: Friday, 11:30 p.m. Rep. Bruce has been booted off the  State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee, effective immediately. From House Minority Leader Mike May:

“I no longer believe it is in the best interest of the House nor for the active-duty or retired military personnel of Colorado to have Representative Bruce continue to serve on the committee of reference for veterans and military affairs.”

Cara DeGette is a senior fellow at Colorado Confidential and a columnist and contributing editor at The Colorado Springs Independent. E-mail her at cdegette@coloradoconfidential.com