Legislative endgame

Slated on Backbone Radio, April 20 Listen every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, Denver.. 1460 KZNT, Colorado Springs... and streaming live at 710knus.com.

Gut the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights? Check. Make it harder for citizens to limit government by amending our constitution? Check. Hike the cost of health care while enriching the trial lawyers? Check. Distort civil rights laws to favor alternative lifestyles? Check. Insert bureaucrats into the governance of religious colleges and seminaries? Check. They're a busy bunch, that Colorado General Assembly of ours with the Democrats in charge. Rolling toward adjournment on May 7 or sooner, they have all sorts of mischief in store. The terrible ideas I just listed are already moving ahead (except the first one, Speaker Romanoff's brainchild, still being drafted) and known as SCR-3, SB-164, SB-200, and SB-167.

All those happen to have started in the Senate, but House members have their share of horrors as well. We'll run down the worst of the worst for you on this week's edition of Backbone Radio, and we'll talk about how you can make your voice heard to help stop them from passing. To be clear: this bad stuff has not passed yet, and with enough noise from citizens, none of it will. Please listen Sunday and get in the game.

** I'll talk with both Republican caucus chairs, Rep. Amy Stephens and Sen. Mike Kopp, as well as health policy expert Sen. Shawn Mitchell, family values champion Rep. Kevin Lundberg, and Republican Study Committee chairman Rep. Kent Lambert.

** Plus Bishop Philip Porter on how the greenies are driving up energy costs in disregard of minorities and the poor, and Sean Paige with the Limited Government Forum, a new citizens group in Colorado Springs.

** Plus renowned author Os Guinness on where Biblical faith stands as the atheists close from one side and the Islamists from the other.

We are Backbone Radio are so grateful to you, our listeners and email audience, for keeping us encouraged and on the air, 180 shows and counting. Can we send you a Backbone pen and bookmark to say thanks? To get yours, email KLecrone@BackboneAmerica.net and give us a postal address.

Yours for limited government, JOHN ANDREWS

Hear the Show: 04/13/2008

Read John's Show Preview 5PM Show Open: John Andrews, Kathleen LeCrone, Joshua Sharf

5:30PM Guest: Bill Moloney

6PM Guest: John Berry

6:30PM Guests: Jim Jatras

7PM Guest: Ken Hamblin

7:30PM Guest: Ken Hamblin and Ward Connerly

Note: We apologize for brief portions missing in the Berry and Hamblin interviews

Tibet and Kosovo, firsthand

Slated on Backbone Radio, April 13 Listen every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, Denver.. 1460 KZNT, Colorado Springs... and streaming live at 710knus.com.

Should Bush attend the Beijing Olympics? Is China still Maoist red, or merely the color of money; an enemy or merely a rival? What's the big deal about Tibet anyway? Can't we all just get along? Then there's Kosovo, another distant trouble spot. If the sinister Putin doesn't want it breaking away from mean old Serbia, what's not to like? Aren't we Americans all in favor of declarations of independence? Or does the breakaway have echoes of 9/11 and bad karma for Israel? The world gets smaller and more complicated every day. The more it does, the more our backbone as a free people is tested. That's why Backbone Radio covers the globe as well as the neighborhood. They're increasingly inseparable.

** On our show this Sunday, I'll talk with two friends who know these tangled issues firsthand. John Berry of Denver wrote "To Move the Mountain," a political novel about Tibetan protests rocking the Olympics. Now it's happening. Don't miss his eyewitness analysis of the gathering storm.

** Jim Jatras is a Washington lawyer long familiar with the former Yugoslavia and deeply concerned about US support of a new and potentially radical Muslim state inside Europe. His take on Kosovo contradicts the MSM line you've been hearing. Is he right? Listen and judge for yourself.

** Plus the latest from our education correspondent, Bill Moloney... a civil rights update from the fearless Ward Connerly... and straight talk on race in the 2008 campaign from the Black Avenger, Denver's own Ken Hamblin, writer and radio host.

Dude, where do you get these great guests, people constantly ask me. (Okay, they don't ask constantly, just during waking hours, and not all of them say "dude.") The answer is simple. I have an inside connection with Kathleen LeCrone, and she has an inside connection with everyone. Okay, not quite everyone; she's only gotten Newt once, and she has yet to get Ted Nugent at all. Slacker.

Yours for great conversation, JOHN ANDREWS

Hear the Show: 04/06/2008

Read John's Show Preview 5PM Show Open: John Andrews, Matt Dunn, Krista Kafer

5:30PM Guest: Sandy Froman

6PM Guest: Linda Gorman and Paul Archer

7PM Guest: Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

7:30PM Guest: Jane Norton

Re-create 1776

Slated on Backbone Radio, April 6 Listen every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, Denver.. 1460 KZNT, Colorado Springs... and streaming live at 710knus.com.

America's government "needs to be completely eliminated and replaced," according to the leader of a protest group intending to disrupt the Democratic convention in Denver this summer. They call themselves Re-create '68, fondly invoking the Chicago riots of 40 years ago. A recent profile on their chieftain, Glenn Spagnuolo, says he believes that "revolutionary politics are the best way to address" our national problems right now. Fair enough, Glenn. You can talk that way and even up to a point act that way, because it's still a free country, no thanks to you and your radical pals. But we at Backbone Radio intend exercise that same freedom. We'll see your New Left hippie peacenik nostalia, your Castro-inspired bogus revolutionary politics, and raise you the real thing: the authentic American revolution of Washington, Madison, Adams, and Jefferson. We're out to re-create 1776. May the best ideas win.

** Backbone Radio this Sunday features a special one-hour seminar on health care and free markets, where I'll be joined in the studio by policy guru Linda Gorman and business lobbyist Paul Archer. This discussion will crackle. Listen and learn.

** Plus Sandy Froman, past president of the NRA, on the gun rights ruling soon to come from the US Supreme Court... terrorism expert Daveed Gartenstein-Ross with the latest from Baghdad and Gaza... and former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, McCain's campaign chairman for the battleground state of Colorado.

Ever wonder why the Founders took as their emblem the eagle and not the hornet, the rattler and not the scorpion? Since either would have done for warning off enemies, I like to think they chose vertebrates, symbols with spine. Stiffening our own spine is the first step to re-creating 1776. Let's do it.

Yours for self-government, JOHN ANDREWS