Returning from Seoul, South Korea, recently I had an email from Jason Salzman, a name that was vaguely familiar to me, but one that I couldn't quite put my finger on in my mental Rolodex. He wrote:

Message: Hi Michael --

I\'m a blogger in Denver and former media critic...

The State of the Union Speech (SOTU) has become a carnival of politics, theatrics and rudeness, much like cable television. The United States Constitution requires the President to "give to the Congress Information on the State of the Union" (Article II, Section3). You don't have to be a...

For those of you not familiar with a recent art controversy in Colorado, a museum in Loveland exhibited a lithograph containing a picture of Jesus imposed on a female body with a man performing oral sex on the same figure. People were outraged claiming a double standard. Many were arguing...

Let's tone down the hyperbole on Senate Bill 1070, the Arizona immigration legislation. Those on the right claim this statute is now the panacea for illegal immigration and those on the left claim it is, well, the end of American civilization as we know it. Neither side is correct. On...

Flying under the statewide news radar over the past several months (unless you live in Colorado Springs and regularly read the Colorado Springs Gazette) has been the surprising story of the United States Olympic Committee and the City of Colorado Springs arguing about money, facilities and threats to leave the...

Last Thursday while we were still engulfed in the attack at Fort Hood, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved legislation removing the Federal Emergency Management Agency from the Department of Homeland Security, returning it to independent, Cabinet-level status if approved. See H.R.1174. Ironic that a few days after...

I love the Colorado Rockies.

When I moved temporarily from Boulder to Washington, DC to work in the Bush Administration, the hardest part was giving up my season tickets at Coors Field. My radio show on 850KOA is often preempted for Rockies' games, which is certainly understandable. After...

I don't recall when I joined Facebook and Twitter.

The reasons for joining were the obvious: the ability to reconnect with old friends and make new ones, the chance to explore a new social media that was being talked about everywhere, and the opportunity to peer into...

The most innocuous and unobjectionable language can obfuscate the obvious:

The people of the city of Longmont find and declare that large campaign contributions to political candidates allow wealthy contributors and special interest groups to exercise a disproportionate level of influence over the political process; that large campaign contributions create...

All-American faces, the plumber, schoolteacher, mechanic, accountant, they are all there. Small talk, the smells of barbeque for dinner, an occasional laugh all fill the basketball court/dining room. Some sit in chairs in neatly aligned rows for a ceremony. Others sit in the partially deployed bleachers, head in hands, or...

I want my conservative and libertarian friends to put aside their dislike (and hatred) of President Obama for at least a minute or two. Forget momentarily the monumental waste of fuel, manpower and dollars sending First Lady Michelle Obama on a State Department 757 airplane only to have the President...

Imagine being tried and convicted in 1999 for a murder you did not commit. Now imagine those nine years, five months and twelve days you spend in a Colorado state penitentiary for that murder. It happened in Colorado and while the subject of this post is not about the murders,...

In George Bernard Shaw's Back to Methusela, the Serpent says "I hear you say 'why?' Always "Why?' You see things; and you say 'Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?'" While Shaw may have thought the answer to the world's problems is to live...

Today's email digest of talk radio news has an article saying talkers may be inciting listeners to violence. According to the article, right-wing talkers are said to send subliminal messages. The author, talk-radio consultant Holland Cooke, invokes Chris Matthews' reference to the "dog whistle" and claims that "fringe...