Media indifferent to illegal alien crimes

(John Andrews in Rocky Mountain News, Nov. 11) What ever happened to investigative journalism? As a young White House staffer in 1974, I saw it bring down a president. In the past month, our lazy journalistic watchdogs couldn’t even sniff out the main story between two would-be governors. Granted, Bill Ritter’s victory over Bob Beauprez was so broad and deep that no great difference ultimately resulted from the October storm over plea bargains and leaks. Still that episode is worth reviewing, not as a rehash of the campaign, but as a case study in media attitudes.

You remember the endless stories about a federal agent with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) who allegedly gave Beauprez information on a criminal alien who had benefited from a plea bargain allowed by Ritter when he was district attorney. The media compliantly played up the Democrat’s attack on his Republican opponent for using the information in an ad. And they had a field day with the FBI leak investigation.

This was grossly hypocritical, because if the leak had come to them, they would have both used it and protected their source. It also revealed an odd disinterest in the information itself and its relevance to the former DA’s qualifications for higher office. Why weren’t the media energetically digging up this seamy stuff on their own?

Instead of joining one side’s “shoot the messenger” ploy against the other, a truly vigilant press would have been (and still should be) probing into what other skeletons are buried in the data on illegal alien crime. Try these questions for starters:

**What percentage of arrests for DUI offenses in 2005 were illegal aliens? Recall that Justin Goodman of Thornton was killed in 2004 on his motorcycle by an illegal alien driver who had six prior DUI and driving violations in Boulder and Adams counties. The man had never been referred to ICE for deportation.

** Does the Denver City Attorney’s standing policy of not asking questions in court about the legitimacy of Mexican driver's licenses presented by defendants have any consequences for the law-abiding citizens of Denver? Recall that the man who killed police officer Donnie Young had used an invalid Mexican driver's license to avoid jail in Denver municipal court only three weeks before.

** Why is it that a full year after the Colorado Attorney General stated that one-quarter of Colorado's outstanding fugitive homicide warrants are for people who have fled to Mexico, no newspaper has asked how many of the individuals named in the warrants were illegal aliens with prior arrests? (In Los Angeles County, there are over 400 such fugitive warrants.)

** How are sanctuary cities like Durango, Boulder and Denver responding to SB 90, the new state law passed in 2006 to outlaw sanctuary cities? What is ICE doing to respond to SB 90?

** If Denver received federal reimbursement for the incarceration of over 1100 illegal aliens in 2004, why were only 175 deported when they finished their terms? What subsequent crimes did the other 925 criminal aliens commit?

**After the murder of Officer Donnie Young in May 2005, the Denver ICE office renewed its routine surveys of the Denver jail population to identify illegal aliens subject to deportation. How many criminal aliens have actually been deported out of the Denver jail since then, compared to prior years when such checks were not being made?

** Nationally there are over 100,000 criminal aliens being sought by ICE "fugitive teams." How many of these criminals are believed to be in Colorado, and how many full-time ICE agents are looking for them?

Investigative journalism on these questions would require the cooperation of law enforcement, it’s true. But reporters routinely tap those sources (and protect their identities) when pursuing a story. After all, "the public has a right to know."

Then don’t we also have a right to know the criminal histories of illegal aliens, the consequences of plea bargaining, and the social cost of the special status afforded illegals by the sanctuary policies in Denver and other cities?

Colorado 2006 and Pike 1806

(John Andrews in the Denver Post, Nov. 5) “Make your election sure.” So urged a mass letter I saw recently. It was not a voter turnout pitch for this campaign. It was the Apostle Peter writing to believers about heaven. The ancients put our instant-gratification culture to shame when it came to foresight. But for a middle view between biblical eternity and the political present, consider the sweep of two centuries. That’s how long it has been since the Zebulon Pike expedition, America’s first look at the mountains and plains we now call Colorado. And as we conservatives brace for unheavenly results on Tuesday, I believe the longer perspective can offer us encouragement.

Autumn 1806 in these parts was not kind to Pike and his men. Weather kept them from the summit of the peak that would later bear his name. Their exploration up the Arkansas River and then briefly down the Rio Grande (where Spanish authorities arrested them) never gained the same glory as Lewis and Clark’s voyage up the Missouri. Zebulon Pike died a hero in the War of 1812. A descendant and namesake, age 84, still lives in Salida.

It’s worth asking what President Thomas Jefferson, who bought this vast territory from France, would make of the civilization that has arisen here 200 years later. “We are acting for all mankind,” Jefferson wrote. Upon Washington, Adams, Madison, himself and the other founders rested “the duty of proving what is the degree of freedom and self-government in which a society may venture to leave its individual members.” Has their proving stood the test? How does Colorado measure up?

The debate over such questions as Ritter for Governor, Matt Dunn for State House, the defeat of Judge Marquez, immigration penalties under Referendum H or a cannibis carnival under Amendment 44, will be settled soon. The transcendent question of whether our state still honors America’s founding principles should concern us long after the election suspense is over.

All of us created equal, our rights to life and liberty endowed by God not Caesar, the securing of those rights by limited government, its derivation of just powers from the consent of the governed – these timeless truths as voiced by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence are the yardstick to measure by. While sidebar issues such as his agrarian dream versus Hamilton’s commercial vision are fun for parlor discussion, what really matters is “the degree of self-government.”

I’ll argue that no matter whether Democrats or Republicans win this election (his likely preference between them being another tempting digression for another day), Mr. Jefferson would be generally approving of our 21st-century Colorado republic. We respect individual rights better than in earlier eras or in other countries. We enforce limits upon government better than most other states. He would applaud our commitment to universal education and to religious liberty.

Yet there are things he’d see here that would trouble the Sage of Monticello. Our notions of group rights and multiculturalism would alarm him, as would the cradle-to-grave welfare state. Our schools, so gratifying to Jefferson in concept, would sadden him with the civic illiteracy of their graduates and the union mentality of their teachers.

He and all the founders would be shocked at our militant secularism, unmooring politics from “the laws of nature and nature’s God” so that marriage is mocked and babies are unsafe in the womb. They would marvel in horror at the indifference of our elites to mass invasion by foreign migrants across open borders. Their legacy to Coloradans, though well-kept overall, is jeopardized by such post-modern trends, I believe.

The hubris of progressivism with its “living” constitution was anathema to the men of 1776. They sought fixed principles for government because they saw human nature as fixed – and they were right. That’s why their appraisal of us in 2006 is important. That’s why we should cherish what Katherine Bates in “America the Beautiful,” penned atop Pike’s Peak, called their “patriot dream that sees beyond the years.”

Remember, Colorado is the state once known as Jefferson Territory. May his principles always be our unmoving political landmark, just as the rugged mountain was for Pike, according to his journal: “Never out of sight in our wanderings.”

Nebraska needs the Colorado cure

(John Andrews in Omaha World-Herald, Oct. 25) As a Colorado leader with many Nebraska friends (we don't discuss football), I'd like to see Nebraska have the kind of thriving economy my state has. That's why I hope Nebraskans in this election will restrain taxes and spending with fiscal guardrails, as Coloradans did years ago. The possibility that Nebraska will pass Initiative 423, the Stop Over Spending amendment, is welcome news to me, unlike the Big 12 Conference football standings. The SOS plan to slow the runaway growth of government can help restore healthy growth to Nebraska's lagging economy. It worked for us in the high country, so why not for Nebraskans on the Plains as well?

This taxpayer advocate objects to the distortion of our Colorado success story that was foisted on World-Herald readers last month by big-government cheerleader Deb Crago ("Critical state services suffered under Colorado state budget lid," Sept. 28 Midlands Voices). Her phony scare propaganda deserves a rebuttal from the perspective of working families.

Ms. Crago and her friends in the spending lobby understandably dislike our state's version of the SOS amendment, a constitutional provision called the Taxpayers Bill of Rights. But my neighbors would tell you they like it fine. The amendment has been great for prosperity and quality of life in Colorado ever since voters passed it in 1992.

Back then, my neighbors were tired of the broken promises of politicians. They were fed up with a bloated budget and a sluggish economy - which may sound familiar in Nebraska today - so they did just what Nebraska is seeking to do. Citizens used the petition process to bypass political insiders and change things for the better.

It was a good decision. Over the years, our amendment has paid dividends in Colorado for job creation, family finances, leaner government and lower taxes. Its fiscal restraint has provided backbone when office-holders felt tempted. Its flexibility has allowed overrides when special needs arose. I can see Nebraska's SOS plan, Initiative 423, delivering all the same benefits.

Similar to Colorado's amendment and actually better drafted, SOS is quite simple. It would limit each year's increase of state spending to the sum of inflation and population growth. Any revenue above the limit goes first into a rainy-day fund and then becomes available for tax rebates unless voters approve spending it. That's common sense all the way, so what can Ms. Crago object to?

Apparently, she and other opponents, believing bigger government means a better life, resent the $3 billion in tax refunds paid out to hard-working Coloradans since the 1990s because of our amendment. They must deplore the additional $500 million in permanent tax cuts, passed by the Legislature to avoid collecting revenues we couldn't constitutionally keep. They miss the good old days of runaway spending. It has grown at only the rate of inflation and population since 1992 after growing at twice that pace in the decade before.

But have opponents no compassion for Nebraska's anemic economy and population outflow, young workers and retirees alike, worsened by bad public policy? My state, having gotten the public policy right, now ranks at or near the top in nearly every index of economic vitality and business climate.

Colorado's gross state product per capita expanded 20 percent faster than the national average in the decade after voters installed our amendment. During the 2001 recession, it was weak revenues - not our constitutional spending limit, as critics falsely imply - that pinched highways and higher education. With revenues strong again, voters in 2005 used the flexibility of our amendment to approve higher spending through 2011 so those areas can catch up.

And if Nebraskans want clinching proof of Colorado's attractiveness with fiscal guardrails in the budget, consider our booming population growth. When the spending lobby in Maine warned of "devastation" in my state, I replied that our more than 1 million new residents since 1992 top Maine's entire population. Some devastation.

Initiative 423, the Stop Over Spending amendment, could start to turn things around in Nebraska. The politicians and lobbyists hope Nebraskans don't pass it. I hope they do.

Ten reasons I'll vote for Beauprez

(John Andrews in the Denver Post, Oct. 15) Political crossovers are in. Rick O’Donnell, Republican for Congress, says his hero is the late Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. His opponent, Ed Perlmutter, boasts the endorsement of our former state Senate colleague, Republican Dottie Wham. Bill Ritter, the Democrat currently leading in the race for Governor, has some Republicans backing him. So I’ll cross over and predict that Bob Beauprez, the GOP nominee for Governor, might become this year’s Harry Truman. Notwithstanding the recent Denver Post poll showing Ritter ahead 50% to 35%, this thing’s not over yet. What Truman, the scrappy underdog, did to his favored challenger in 1948 could be the template for a come-from-behind Beauprez win. Bill Ritter as a latter-day Thomas E. Dewey: imagine that.

Now I’m no odds-maker. This is a guy who thought the Beatles were a flash in the pan. I never play the lottery, and my little boy used to beat me at Go Fish, which his four-year-old may soon do also. Yet I have this hunch about a potential Beauprez upset.

Winner or not, Battlin’ Bob gets my vote for at least ten reasons. Immigration, judges, jobs, taxes, education, health care, highways, water, values, and qualifications – that’s the deciding decalogue in Beauprez’s favor. Here is my case for the Republican nominee:

1. Curbing illegal immigration. Beauprez’s commitment to secure borders was clear from the day Tancredo endorsed him in the GOP primary. Ritter’s embrace of sanctuary and amnesty is evidenced by his outrageous plea bargains to help felons avoid deportation.

2. Appointing good judges. Whether judicial term limits pass or not, the next governor will get to name a lot of new judges. On their backbone will depend both public safety and the rule of law. The conservative Republican is the clear choice here.

3. Creating jobs. Beauprez has done it as a businessman, and he’s equipped to do it as Colorado’s CEO. With attorney Ritter will come overregulation, worker’s comp rollback, favors to labor unions and trial lawyers, minimum wage hikes, the whole job-killing liberal agenda.

4. Restraining taxes and spending. Ritter will fatten the budget with every dollar of revenue that comes in. He’ll probably advocate waiving the TABOR growth limits forever. Beauprez will squeeze the bureaucracy and fight for the taxpayer.

5. Excellence for classrooms and campuses. Ritter’s union friends include the teachers in government-monopoly schools and the professors in Ward’s World, our leftist university system. Figure education reform is DOA with Bill. Score this one for Bob as well.

6. Untangling the health care mess. Beauprez understands that consumer choice and market efficiencies are the only answer to a broken health insurance system and a Medicaid budget that is draining the state treasury. Ritter, as a Hillary-minded liberal, doesn’t.

7. Highways for freedom and mobility. The Sierra Club extremists who want you out of that SUV and into denser housing will present their IOU’s the first day Ritter is governor. Transit will be in and pavement will be out – as will energy development. If you drive, vote GOP.

8. Water for the new century. Density is just phase one for the Democrats’ environmental utopian allies. Ultimately they dream of returning the West to buffalo and beaver. Developing Colorado’s water for PEOPLE is better entrusted to Republicans.

9. Values for children and families. Beauprez unequivocally supports protection of the unborn child and traditional marriage between one man and one woman. Ritter, in contrast, has done the both-ways thing on these core values. To make sure, choose Bob.

10. Qualifications for leadership. Bob Beauprez (about whom as a friend I’m admittedly not objective) is superbly prepared to lead our state from his record in government, business, and civic life. The Democrat, a good and decent man himself, is simply less ready.

While I’m too young to remember “Dewey Wins,” the headline waved by a beaming President Truman, I’ll never forget how the upset stunned my parents. Will Ritter’s rooters get a similar shock on Nov. 7 as Beauprez wins at the wire? This Republican hopes so.

PeaceJam was a scam

(John Andrews in the Denver Post, Oct. 1) Someone needs to say it: PeaceJam was a scam. The goal, a world less riven by aggression and oppression, is laudable. But that outcome is only set back by such utopian lovefests as last month’s big Denver conference. The 3000 young people who gathered from 31 countries, at a time when Islamofascists seek a new global caliphate enforced with nukes, deserved better than Buddhist platitudes about “inner disarmament” (the Dalai Lama), daydreams about the US answering 9/11 by building schools in Afghanistan (Shirin Ebadi of Iran), and leftist lies about Guantanamo (Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland).

The PeaceJam organization, founded ten years ago by Ivan Suvanjieff of Arvada, has shown imagination in brokering idealistic kids together with self-important Nobel Peace laureates for its annual rallies. And it’s hit promotional paydirt with massive, gooey media coverage.

PeaceJam’s premise is fatally flawed, however. Its hoary ‘60s mantra of (start italic) Think positive, be nice, hug each other (end italic) is powerless against aggressive evil. By seducing impressionable teens away from the tough realism needed to defend humane values in a dangerous world, it actually imperils peace and invites war.

The high-sounding curriculum posted at PeaceJam.org is a cover for educational malpractice being perpetrated on naïve students. Take for example the September 17 conference journal published online at the Denver Post Bloghouse by East High senior Rose Green. This bright, earnest girl seems like someone you’d want for a daughter. But a responsible parent or teacher would warn Rose against uncritically swallowing the PeaceJam message, which she sums up this way:

“We are all brothers and sisters…. We are all interconnected…. We all should give and must have compassion and love…. We should all be happy…. All religions practice tolerance, love, peace, nonviolence, and self-discipline. We must accept all religions and simply try and focus on those elements instead of anger and extremism…. America is incredibly guarded from reality…. Bombs do not secure a country, people do.”

Rose Green probably excels as a varsity debater for East, and there are a lot worse things her classmates could be doing than participate in the PeaceJam club she founded. But club members are ill-prepared as future American citizens and global peacemakers if they agree with Nobelist Mairead Maguire that the corrupt, despot-dominated United Nations is a better model for the future than our own United States.

Or if their standard for truth comes from Nobelist Rigoberta Menchu Tum of Guatemala, whose revolutionary autobiography was found by the New York Times to have been “fabricated or seriously exaggerated (in) many of the main episodes.” Or if their idea of tolerance matches that of Argentine Nobelist Adolfo Esquivel, who told the Denver conference, “God covers up his ears when George Bush prays.” Or if their exemplar for nonviolence is Irish Nobelist Betty Williams, who said in a recent interview, “I would love to kill George Bush.”

In thousands of words about PeaceJam in both Denver papers, there was only one passing mention of freedom, the value prized higher than peace by most Americans – and by most people anywhere who have any backbone. It came from Nobelist Aung San Suu Kyi, speaking by videotape from house arrest in her native Myanmar. The conference seems to have omitted any consideration of liberty and the other precious things that are worth fighting and dying for. Peace at any price was the assumption. What a crime.

Did Maestro Suvanjieff’s peace symphony contain any note of praise for those nations such as the United States, Britain, Australia, Israel, Poland, Taiwan, Japan, and India that are the world’s true force for peace because of their success with democratic capitalism and their courage in defending it? Apparently not.

Was there any tribute to the brave statesmen who promote genuine peace by standing against the barbaric warmongers, political leaders like al-Maliki of Iraq and Karzai of Afghanistan, or spiritual leaders like Pope Benedict XVI? Again, sadly no.

“Second to agriculture, humbug is the biggest industry of our age,” said Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite and founder of the prizes. Though microchips now outsell cow chips, PeaceJam proves that humbug still sells.