Today's DenverRockyMountainPost has yet another editorial from the likes of John Andrews about how us dirty no good progressives are taking back Colorado from him, Jon Caldara, Bob Schaffer, and Dick Wadhams. It's a rehash of Fred Barnes article about us, the vast left wing conspiracy, now rehashed multiple times. That's quite a bit of hash they've been slinging around.
If you look closely enough the right wing plan is right before our eyes. Barnes traveled to Colorado and met with Andrews, Caldara, and likely several other local conservatives, allowing him to pen his original bit of whining. It was rehashed just a few days ago in the Gazette, and now by Andrews in the DPost. If you want a look at the right wing in Colorado it's all wrapped up in a nice photo here.
Guys, do you want some cheese to go with than whine? Andrews and Caldara have gigs on the radio, in the dead tree media, and in some cases on TV, the traditional top down mediums they're been using for years.
Now we're doing it from the bottom up, instead of their top down methodology, and in the marketplace of ideas, it seems our ideas are winning. Andrews even laments at one point, "how can you be sure what's true?" Unlike Andrews obvious attempt to project the left as a bunch of liars and propagandists, (two words the right continues to try to paint us with) we're ultimately seeing that the people of Colorado are smart enough to read and decide for themselves. And they're deciding the right's model, of division, hate, and fear that Andrews used to be a key architect of as a former president of the state senate, is a joke.
Maybe he's just trying to be fair and, um, balanced. Or maybe he knows they need three people to make the same silly points over and over and over as Sirota smacks them away.
Either way I'd like to hear the justification for this decidedly unbalanced lineup.....from the source.
Have you read John Andrew's article in today's Denver Post? He really shows that his allegiance is to the Republican party over our country. He talks about the candidates in Centennial and the Cherry Creek School Board election. If you look at his Post column and his Backbone column, it shows he doesn't care about what the candidates can do, only what party they are in. For example, he only complains that George Shen is "not ready for prime time." What he fails to mention is that Shen is a convicted criminal (http://www.rockymoun...).
It also irks me that he makes the school board race so partisan. Our kid's education is not a Republican or Democratic issue. I would expect that someone like John Andrews could take the time to research each candidate. Instead, he would rather it just come down to party affiliation. As a member of my kid's PTCO, I was notified of about a dozen candidate forums. In addition, I know each of the candidates has a website. Is that too much work for Andrews? Is he that lazy that he wants to make his decision based on an R or D by someone's name?
Crossposted at ColoradoPols, and I have also emailed a letter to the editor to the Post.
Every so often a guy (metaphorically) walks up to you with a (metaphorical) little silk pouch and (metaphorically) says, "Here are my testicles. If it's not too much trouble please play ping pong with them." This is one of those moments. In his 8/19 column (http://www.denverpos...) John Andrews complains that, once again, even Republicans on the CU Board of Regents have declined to establish a Department of Western Civilization on the flagship Boulder campus. The scheme was to expand the Boulder Center for Western Civilization into a full-fledged academic department to offset the perceived threats to right-thinking emanating from the Women's' Studies and Ethnic Studies Departments. In other words, white boys need affirmative action too. Let's set aside the question of redundancy, e.g., whether establishing a Western Civ department at a major state university is like creating an "Engineering Studies" department at MIT. I still have to ask, does Andrews have any idea what he means by "Western Civilization?" There's this old story about this chick called Pandora. She had this box that she wasn't supposed to look into but did anyway and saw stuff she didn't want to see. I wonder if Andrews isn't like said excellent babe. More below the fold.
John Andrews is worried about "abuse of the professor's podium to undermine the ideal of higher education" and the "wider intellectual rot you can sense on campus." According to Andrews's August 5th oped (http://www.denverpos...) the problem is especially acute at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Sacking "corrupt and treacherous employee" Ward Churchill was not good enough. Boulder's humanities faculty is still riddled with postmodernists, multiculturalists, and relativists. Even the Board of Regents is suspect because it voted 5-4 not to establish a special Department of Western Civilization. Without such a department devoted to "advancing the ideals of freedom [with] loyalty to the past [and] responsibility to the future" things will go the wrong way in Boulder, and young minds will be impressed not by "the permanent things" but poisoned with "critical class theory."
Stripping away Andrews's emotive rhetoric, the nub of the column appears to be: (a) that UCB liberal arts professors are left-wing postmodernists who deserve the same treatment as Ward Churchill and (b) their bias needs to be offset by means of an affirmative action program for the writings of dead white males. Predictably, Andrews's logic is flawed and he appears not to understand the intellectual movement he criticizes. After all, Neoconservativism is a postmodernist position.
(Rubbing in the shortcomings of Republicans - promoted by Luis)
If the GOP keeps this up, soon no one is going to be a Republican:
After an on-air discussion and argument with Denver Post columnist and Republican former Colorado Senate president John Andrews about issues surrounding the shooting at the state Capitol, Newsradio 850 KOA's "Gunny" Bob Newman stated on his July 16 broadcast that it was "troubling" that Andrews "claims he's a Republican" and declared on his July 17 broadcast that it was "remarkable" that Andrews is "supposedly a conservative."
And in return...
Andrews told Newman that he "sound[ed] like a bleeding-heart liberal."
Andrews and Newman illustrate one reason the GOP is such a mess these days. Half of them are authoritarians, who want to give the President and military absolute power over private citizens. The other half are libertarians, who want the government to stay out of all private decisions - except those made in the bedroom, of course.
(The usual suspects keep this group afloat. SourceWatch with a CEI "show me the money." - promoted by Stygius)
For sheer fluff, no one - not even DriveCongress - can touch the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The anti-planet propaganda machine once ran an ad claiming that carbon dioxide is not pollution, but "life." Another ad quoted a scientist who swiftly accused the CEI of misrepresenting his research and said the ads were "a deliberate effort to confuse and mislead the public about the global warming debate."
It's an open question why the CEI would want to mislead anyone about global warming. According to its founder, a climate crisis would be a good thing:
Most of the indications right now are it looks pretty good. Warmer winters, warmer nights, no effects during the day because of clouding, sounds to me like we're moving to a more benign planet, more rain, richer, easier productivity to agriculture.
To be fair, the CEI doesn't even claim to be objective. Its website states:
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government. We believe that individuals are best helped not by government intervention, but by making their own choices in a free marketplace.
Unfortunately, Colorado's conservative talking heads continue to misrepresent the CEI as an objective scientific source. According to Colorado Media Matters, KNUS 710 AM host John Andrews told his listeners on July 15 that the CEI is one of his "favorite sources of non-junk science -- sound scientific and public policy research..."
What?
Andrews should apologize to his listeners for misleading them. And then he should spend some time learning the facts about global warming.
Readers of my Andrewswatch diaries know that they revolve around two related themes: (a) astonishment that a major metropolitan daily like the Denver Post would publish material of such inferior quality and (b) that the correct peer group to judge John Andrews' work against is high school students.
Sitting down to read an Andrews Special I expect to have to root around for his point. Today (7/15/07) was no exception. Read it here: http://www.denverpos... The Pavarotti of Purple Prose begins with the usual recitation of grievances. Today it's dissatisfaction with the announced Democratic and GOP presidential candidates. Then by about paragraph 3 he's meandered around to what's missing: "Element R." "R" stands for "responsibility."
By paragraph 5 Andrews tells us that the Republicans stand for "freedom and the individual viewpoint." One assumes he thinks this is a good thing, but he doesn't elaborate or define his terms. Next he tells his readers that the "party of the left" is for "equality and the communal viewpoint." Again, he doesn't elaborate, but by paragraph 6 it's clear that the GOP is at odds with the Democrats' equality and fraternity American democratic conversationwise.
By paragraph 7 Andrews is back on about responsibility, and this appears to be the nub of the column. It's got to be the nub. It's serious business in any high school paper when The Dictionary gets cited. According to The Dictionary "responsibility" means being "morally accountable for one's actions [and] capable of rational conduct." According to that big ideas man Andrews, "This is heavy stuff in the Age of iPhone." Heavy man, heavy.
Then Andrews tells us that this was what his July 1st column was all about and invites us all to become free by being "responsible." Cue the Champaign Music.
As a high school essay, this is B- material. But for years now Andrews has been going on about the need for values education in the schools. So, surely, our Boy from Backbone wouldn't mind if I assigned a comportment grade as well.
John Andrews' citizenship grade appears below the fold. Also, you'll see why I chose the title for this diary.
Once again, I'm astonished that a major metropolitan daily like the Denver Post would would publish something of such poor quality as John Andrews' July 1st column. Read it at http://www.denverpos... The thing speaks for itself--it sounds like something from a highschool boy who took the Renaissance Faire waaay too seriously.
This time out, John Andrews says he's had a dream. Probably he hasn't but is just saying he did. Like when he claims to have discussed "whether a good Muslim can be a good American" with constitutional scholars outside Congressman Keith Ellison's door. (See comments following my previous diary:http://www.squaresta...) The real point, of course, is to set up as many straw men as possible in order to reinforce the GOP's standing narrative about the left.
The nitpicking starts below the fold, but here are a couple observations for starters. First as a standard logic textbook says:
The Straw Man Fallacy is committed when an arguer distorts an opponent's argument for the purpose of more easily attacking it, demolishes the distorted argument, and then concludes that the opponent's real argument has been demolished (Hurley, A Concise Introduction to Logic 9th ed. (2006), 120-121).
By embedding his distortions in a "dream" Andrews is being even more lazy than the usual flogger of straw men because he doesn't even bother to refute them. He merely vents a little moral indignation:
Then I woke, and the shouting was Colorado kids, not dour defeatists. Our ship of state didn't sink at launching after all. She sails on, proud and strong.
Of course, the real purpose of claiming that he's had a dream is that it let's Andrews avoid taking responsibility for what he's actually said. Press him on it, and he'll put on his Ann Coulter wig and say, "See, you liberals have no sense of humor. Can't you silly people see I was joking?" So, once again, more highschool rhetoric. The mean girl is so cool that you're supposed to laugh along with her as she makes fun of you.
This week financial woes forced the Denver Post to announce plans to cut 37 jobs including those of columnist Jim Spencer and longtime editor and writer Todd Engdahl. Meanwhile, op ed columnist and right-wing think tank fellow John Andrews beavers away apparently unaffected by the financial crisis. The usual argument is that figures like Andrews provide "balance" for an otherwise left-leaning editorial page. The usual response is that the Post's editorial pages are not left leaning and that Andrews's work mainstreams extreme right-wing views and causes the whole enterprise to lurch in an even more conservative direction. What's missing in "marketplace of ideas" discussions like these is any reference to the quality of the product. Viewed purely from the standpoint of competence, a John Andrews column could easily be mistaken for the work of a clever highschool boy. The prose is turgid, the piece as a whole is poorly structured, sources cited are unreliable, the main arguments are undeveloped or fallacious, and the underlying bullying tone warants a referral to the school guidance counselor. Below the fold, I look at this Sunday morning's John Andrews special in a more appropriate context: as a high school English composition.
According to John Andrews, Denver Post columnist, TV and radio pundit, and former President of the Colorado Senate, there is an Islamist paramilitary training camp in Buena Vista, Colorado. Oh my!
I grew up in a Colorado mountain town called Buena Vista. This week there was a national news report alleging that radical Islamists have a paramilitary training camp at Buena Vista. I wonder if some of them are illegal aliens, similar to the Fort Dix cell that as recently broken up. That’s the risk we take with an unsecured border in the middle of a global war.
John Andrews -- former Colorado Senate President and Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute -- and his fellow 29% Iraq War Cheerleaders announced the winner of their 2007 Statemanship award to be celebrated this November: Donald Rumsfeld.
And they're debasing the name of Winston Churchill in the process. I thought Dubya was the new Churchill?
Now I know without a doubt why Andrews went on his "anti-American" screed the other day against the critics of their failed war in Iraq.
But I didn't see Dan Haley's name on the board, so I still have to wonder why Andrews is given free reign to lie on the pages of the Post....and how big a failure one has to be before they quit honoring you.
Media Matters caught John Andrews' latest fact-free essay in the Post. It was still on their Opinion front page yesterday so I thought I'd take a crack at it. On first read I was able to discern this "shorter" John Andrews:
Americans and Democrats who use the First Amendment to criticize our current leaders are anti-American and anti-democratic.
The apologists of the right always make it sound so simple - "9/11 changed everything", "you're with us or against us" - but things are never so simple as they'd have us believe.
Anti-Americanism denies that the United States is a force for good in the world and a noble chapter in human history. It indicts our nation and its people for a dark litany of crimes, flaws, transgressions and omissions. It ignores America's virtues and magnifies our deficiencies.
I had the pleasure of seeing former Denver Mayor and Clinton Cabinet Secretary Federico Peña speak last night before the Colorado Hispanic Bar Association. Peña gave a great speech, one that made me wish he would consider running for office again. He hit a lot of themes SquareState readers would find familiar, tying the attempt of "a very conservative group of people" to recall Judge José D. L. Márquez with the anti-immigrant furor that swept the state last year as part of a new civil rights struggle for Latinos that found its expression in the marches for immigrant rights last spring. He criticized talk radio hosts who spout factually inaccurate attacks on immigrants, specifically named Dick Lamm and Tom Tancredo as people fueling the anti-immigrant fire, and got a big round of applause for expressing sympathy for the "people of 'third world' south Florida" who will have to put up with Tancredo campaigning for president down there.
(One thing I learned last night was that Judge Márquez was actually the first Latino ever appointed to the Colorado Court of Appeals. He was appointed in 1988 by Roy Romer. That's mind boggling, even allowing for the fact that the Court of Appeals was dissolved in the 1910s and reinstated in the '70s.)
Peña said one thing I hadn't heard before -- that the people who targeted Judge Márquez may now launch a drive against some current Colorado Supreme Court justices.
He didn't call out John Andrews by name, but that is who I have to believe would be in charge of such a drive, and I really have to wonder why he would bother. After all, the anti-Márquez campaign spent a lot of money on robo-calls but were only able to drive Márquez' retention vote down to 65.5%, only three and a half percent lower than that received by the next lowest vote getter among appeals judges up for retention (Judge Loeb). (Results here, scroll down.) Sure, a lot of people opened their pocketbooks to support a campaign to retain Judge Márquez that was organized on the fly, but the prospect of diverting dollars that could have gone to other campaigns doesn't seem to me like a good enough reason to launch a campaign against Supreme Court justices that seems very unlikely to succeed. Not to mention, Andrews launched a frontal attack on the appellate courts through Amendment 40 this past year and was soundly thrashed at the polls.
But it's also true that Andrews was greatly angered by the Colorado Supreme Court's decision that invalidated the Republicans' 2003 midnight re-redistricting plan. So he may well target whichever justices will be up for retention in 2008. This is something to keep in mind over the next year and a half or so.
Republican ex-State Senate President John Andrews had a bad election. His pet initiatives, 38 (easy petitioning onto the ballot) and 40 (judicial term limits) were trounced, and his bullying effort to oust an appellate judge with a 90% plus approval rating from both lawyers and judges also failed miserably. Not to mention, John Andrews supported Bob Beauprez for governor.
You might think Andrews might question whether he is really in touch with what most people in Colorado want for our state. But no, he went running to the media without a hint of irony to complain that the so-called liberal media cost Beauprez the election. The problem, you see, is that the media failed to aggressively investigate and publicize every crime committed by an undocumented immigrant who was caught by Denver police but not deported while Bill Ritter was district attorney.
Andrews' criticism is in the same vein as the infamous e-mail Dave Schultheis sent to the Greeley Tribune after a Weld County family suffered a tragic auto accident earlier this year. Schultheis wanted to know why the Tribune hadn't highlighted these questions: "Was the driver properly licensed ? Was the vehicle properly registered, and insured? Why aren't these facts part of your published article? Was this person the child of parents in the U.S illegally? Or was she here illegally?" As it turned out, the answers were that the driver was licensed, the car was properly registered and insured, the victims were all native born U.S. citizens, their mother was a U.S. citizen, their father was a legal immigrant, and Schultheis was asking these questions only because of the family's Spanish name. Andrews' column makes it more obvious that Schultheis was "working the refs" by suggesting that the media must demonstrate its lack of liberal bias by hyping crimes or tragedies involving undocumented.
(At this point, I should probably credit Eric Alterman for the phrases "so-called liberal media" and "working the refs" -- if you haven't read What Liberal Media? yet you really should. It has been the most influential to me of all of the lefty political books that have come out in the last few years.)
The idea that the Colorado media demonstrated a liberal bias in reporting on the Beauprez campaign, or on immigration, is laughable, as Colorado Media Matters has pointed out. But beyond being fact challenged, Andrews' complaint is ridiculous. Ask yourself these questions: Why wasn't Dwayne Morrison, the Platte Canyon High School shooter, deported? Or Brian Washington, charged with the murder of Aurora police officer Michael D. Thomas in September? Or even Lawrence Trujillo, charged in the hit and run deaths of three pedestrians in downtown Denver the other day?
The answer is Duh, they're all citizens. Crimes and tragedies occur in all segments of the community, including the segment of the community that is denied the basic rights of citizens. Of course there will be some crimes and tragedies involving undocumented; they constitute a substantial percentage of the population. But to single them out for demonization in the media smacks of demagoguery and racism, especially coming from the guy who targeted Judge José D. L. Márquez as his poster child for judicial term limits.
From Bush to Dobson to Haggard to Lamborn--name one Republican who won't lie lie lie lie lie lie lie.
Did you see the robo-call where John Andrews says 'Vote Yes on Term limits for judges because they're going to ban Sunday!"
What. The. Fuck.
John Andrews better hope me and him don't end up running in to each other. The verbal assault on this weak, pathetic, liar might just make his head explode.
What a scammer. What a loser. What a liar. What a hack. What a coward.
John Andrews should be shipped out of this state.
The Republicans know people would never vote for them unless they LIE LIE LIE LIE LIE.
I sure hope there is a hell, so John Andrews goes there.
I know most people reading this site have already voted. I also know that most people either vote to retain or to not retain all of the judges en masse. But it is a sad fact of our system here in Colorado that all other things being equal, a judge with a Spanish surname will draw fewer votes in favor of retention than other judges. That's why it is distressing that former Senate President John Andrews is leading a partisan campaign to oust Judge José D. L. Márquez from the Colorado Court of Appeals, even making robo-calls from what I've heard. No, it is not a coincidence that Márquez is the only Romer-appointed Latino judge on that court.
Earlier this week I criticized white Colorado Democratic leaders for keeping silent about the noxious comments Dick Lamm made to the effect that Latinos and African-Americans are products of inferior cultures that need to give up those cultures in order to succeed. Fairness dictates that I point out that white Republicans are actually coming out to defend Lamm.
Former Senate President (and Left Behind Series lover) John Andrews might not be an elected official in Colorado anymore, but that hasn't stopped him from proposing more bad ideas for Colorado. His latest foray into destroying effective government is attempting to term limit state-level judges.
Earlier this week, the Post reported the State Supreme court approved the language of 'Initiative 75', a proposed ballot measure (yes, just what we need. Another ballot measure) that would retroactively limit judicial terms on the bench to 12 years. If this measure passed, Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey and six appellate court judges would have to step down.
Ken Gordon speaks for me:
Ken Gordon, a lawyer and majority leader of the Colorado Senate, called the idea of term-limiting judges "crazy" and said judges must be protected from political whims.
"This is anti-judicial sentiment that is stirred up by certain political elements, and I think it is unjustified," Gordon, D-Denver, said. "A judge's job is frequently to protect somebody's rights. And rights are frequently unpopular."
I also agree with Jean Dubofsky, former Colorado Supreme Court Justice:
"Term limits don't do anything (but) end institutional memory and the experience of judges," Dubofsky said. "That institutional memory can be very important. You want people there that understand the development of particular areas of legal theory and know how the law has developed over a long period of time."
And Roger Clark, the President of Colorado's Bar Association:
"[Judicial term limits are] inconsistent with the independence of the judiciary," he said.
Exactly, Roger. If you're only a judge for 12 years, you're going to have to find another job. Meaning, when a judge is making a court rulings, they might be left contemplating how their ruling would affect future job prospects. Is that what we want in our courts?
Also, by supporting this idea, Andrews thinks he knows better than the Founding Fathers of this country. The writers of the Constitution saw the need for an independent judiciary, and created lifelong terms to help foster that independence. Thomas Jefferson or John Andrews: who are you going to trust?
There's two measures Andrews is trying to get on the ballot. He'll have to collect 65,000 signatures for each by Aug. 7th. Let's hope he fails.
Being out of political office gives former Republican Senate President John Andrews a lot of time to think up new misguided ramblings.
His latest foray into flawed reasoning and revisionist history is offered up in the opinion section of the Denver Post, under the title "The Battle for America". I was a bit disappointed when the piece wasn't about immigration, but equally disgusted by Andrews' "take" on the current state of the Iraq War.
Some choice lines:
We are unquestionably winning the Battle of Iraq. The millions of purple fingers and the regional wave of democratization prove it. The Battle of America is another matter, however. The only way we can lose in Iraq (same as Vietnam) is to quit, Vice President Cheney recently noted. But influential voices like Congressman John P. Murtha and Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean are urging we do just that.
This is for all the marbles. As Congress returns, Coloradans should tell Sen. Ken Salazar, Rep. Diana DeGette and their fellow Democrats to wake up, you could get us killed, there's a war on. We should encourage Sen. Wayne Allard, Rep. Tom Tancredo and their fellow Republicans to stay on a war footing and support our commander in chief.
That's when I started uncontrollably laughing at Andrews and his faux-tough guy bravado. Shirking any responsibility for his party's actions, he then tries to pass the buck and blame DeGette (who voted against this debacle) and Salazar (who wasn’t even there at the time) while 40% of the USA (and 80% of the GOP) still claim to stand with Bush. Mr. Andrews: Republicans have just as many kids as Democrats. Why aren't your young elephants standing in line to defend America in Bush's war?
Not to mention using the ideas "Vietnam", "Dick Cheney" and "keep fighting" in the same sentence. As Andrews I'm sure is well aware, when it came to fighting in Vietnam, Dick Cheney had "other priorities".
I keep laughing because people like Andrews said Vietnam was for "all the marbles" back in the day. We pulled out and guess what? Everything was OK, and now the shirt I’m wearing was made in Vietnam. This proved the "domino theory" a sham, just like "trickle down economics" and "WMD".
And if we're going to be making comparisons to Vietnam, the only one that fits is both wars were and are run out of the White House for political expediency, not by military leaders for tactical victory. I mean look at how ridiculous the Iraq war strategy was: Bush & Co. throw out the "Powell Doctrine" while the guy who devised the strategy for successfully fighting modern war was Secretary of State.
Our poor military. It will take a generation to heal.
I ran out of fingers to count the way John Andrews was wrong. I just wish the Denver Post would run out of room for his columns.
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