Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Tuesday, January 16, 2007 11:56:43 PM
This weekend, Dave Kopel wrote a
catchall column in the Rocky Mountain News. Catchall columns wander from subject to subject., and Dave eventually wandered into the subject of Colorado Political Blogs. He made the following claim:
Colorado has dozens of political weblogs, but most merely comment on well-known stories. Here are some that go further:
Kopel then proceeded to identify three local blogs, two of which were left leaning. One, Coloradopols, he complemented for a speculative December post claiming that Allard's staffers were looking for new jobs, indicating that Allard would be quitting. Huh? No staffers were named and the speculation didn't make sense, given that Allard and his staff will keep their jobs until 2009, if they like. Actually, back in July, 2005, Kopel himself
noted that his father had served in the legislature with Allard and was speculating that he would be leaving on the Senate in 2008. That, was a lot more solid than the Coloradopol speculation.
I thought I might take the opportunity to list some of the "original reporting" that this blog has done in the five months of its existence, and not in any order:
1. Observed that the Colorado Republican Website had stopped being updated in August.
2. Observed that Republicans are not googleing themselves.
3. Observed that the Democrats were using Wikipedia to demonize Republicans and puff themselves.
4. Reported on dirty Democratic google bombs.
5. Speculated how Republicans could use google bombs legitimately.
6. Suggested a blog strategy for Republicans.
7. Reported on Media Matter's efforts to push Colorado media outlets leftward.
8. Reported on the strange construction of CRS 13-5-136 and suggested a fix
9. Observed that the townhall main bloggers, MKH, HH, MM, etc., did not appear to have blogrolled a single townhall blog.
10. Reported that the Supreme Court had made it impossible for citizens to make some ethics complaints.
11. Reported that Cornell U had observed that the Supreme Court had never needed to define dilatory practices.
12. Reported that the CBA had spent $500,000 to defeat Amendment 40, four times what the Supreme Court spends in a year to reimburse citizens for attorney misconduct.
13. Reported that the Supreme Court has no interest in having citizen members appointed to its rules making bodies, and couldn't be bothered to respond when I applied.
14. Reported that the Supreme Court seemed to believe its primary constituency was the Bar Association and was making its reports easily available to Colorado Lawyer, but not to the public.
15. Identified six reasons that the DA Carol Chambers trial was a show trial timed and intended to impact the election. No one has ever challenged my logic.
16. Noted that the Chambers decision was released on December 26th in an apparent attempt to avoid news coverage.
17. Reported that the Judicial Retention Commission system doesn't always report derogatory information to the public.
18. Reported that several Colorado District Court Judges have broken CRS 13-5-135 and the Commission on Judicial Discipline does not appear to have taken any action.
19. Deconstructed and demonstrated the intentional deception of a Rocky Mountain News guest article opposing Amendment 38.
20. Pointed out the awful logic of the first Rocky Mountain News editorial supporting Bill Ritter.
The fact is that almost anyone could do what I am doing. The News, the Post, and the Gazette all practice agenda journalism. They either flat out refuse to cover important stories (like legal ethics), or they cover them in such a slanted fashion that they leave wide holes for bloggers like me to walk into and explore (Carol Chambers).
Except to go back and look up the exact number of CRS 13-5-136, I wrote this essay from memory. I am quite sure that if I had looked back, I could list at least ten and perhaps twenty more issues, big and small, that I am writing about that no one else is writing about, or, quite frankly, has even thought much about.
When you next promote blogs that are doing original research and making original observations, please include mine.