Radio, Jan. 21: The future is now

Join us on radio every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, Denverand now also on 1460 KZNT, Colorado Springs To listen online from anywhere, click 710knus.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Remember all the talk we heard last year on the campaign trail and in the new media, warning of the consequences if voters were to gamble on giving Democrats power? All the talk of "Wouldn't it be awful if...."

Well, hang on for the ride, because last year's unpleasant forecast has become this year's harsh reality. The left is in the driver's seat, and the future is now.

How bad will it get, here in Colorado where the other side holds all three branches, and back in Washington where Bush seems off balance against an opposition Congress? What should Republicans be doing better, now that the game is on? Who will rally our GOP troops?

We'll dig into those questions this Sunday on "Backbone Radio with John Andrews." Guests include:

** Conservative political warrior Dick Wadhams, coming off the Allen loss in VA to become Republican Party chairman here in CO...

** John Suthers, who won his race for Attorney General, and Mark Hillman, who narrowly lost for State Treasurer...

** State Sen. Josh Penry of Grand Junction, reporting on some legislative judo the minority is planning for campaign finance and the state budget...

** Plus our man in Hollywood, black conservative actor and commentator Joseph C. Phillips, looking back at Dr. King and ahead at Sen. Obama.

Backbone Radio is a lively finish for your weekend -- and a head start on next week's news. We are your window on the future for America after liberalism. Matt Dunn and Krista Kafer are my mike partners this Sunday. Here's my personal invitation for you to be part of the broadcast as well.

Yours for self-government, JOHN ANDREWS

Radio, Jan. 14: Talk of victory isn't PC

Update after the show: Hilmar von Campe, tonight's leadoff guest, will sign his book "How Was It Possible?: Story of a Hitler Youth," Thursday at 730pm at the Tattered Cover, 2526 E. Colfax. Click here for bio & book details. Join us on radio every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, Denver and now also on 1460 KZNT, Colorado Springs To listen online from anywhere, click 710knus.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------The President rightly insists failure in Iraq is not an option. Yet "we're losing and can't win" has become a mantra on the left, voiced with smug satisfaction. Former Sen. Gary Hart lectured Dan Caplis on the air the other day to stop talking about victory, stop it! Sorry to violate your PC speech code, Senator. Guess we didn't get the memo.

** I'll probe the issue on Sunday evening with Colorado's two new congressmen, Republican Doug Lamborn of Colorado Springs and Democrat Ed Perlmutter of Lakewood. Killing embryos for research, socializing medicine even more, and tracking Pelosi's power trip will be other topics for that segment.

** "Why not victory?" will be my question as well to Richard Allen, national security adviser to President Reagan, and to Diane Carman, liberal columnist of the Denver Post. We'll also get Carman's view on new governor Bill Ritter, Colorado's own "man from hope," and on the Dems' convention coming here next year.

** Our wise elder for the Jan. 14 show is Hilmar von Campe, a onetime Hitler Youth and Panzer crewman who fled to freedom and made a new life here in Colorado. His new book "How Was It Possible?" draws a connection from Nazism and Communism to the Islamofascism of today, showing how a potentially fatal apathy has infected our response to all three. Don't miss my interview with this truth-teller.

"Backbone Radio with John Andrews" is a lively finish for your weekend -- and a head start on next week's news. We are your window on the future for America after liberalism, your voice for America without apologies. Matt Dunn and Joshua Sharf are my mike partners this Sunday. Here's my personal invitation for you to be part of the broadcast as well.

Yours for self-government, JOHN ANDREWS

Radio, Jan. 7: Time to grow a spine

Join us on radio every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, Denverand now also on 1460 KZNT, Colorado Springs To listen online from anywhere, click 710knus.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Out with the old, in with the new. Enough of 2006, "the year of retreat" as Ben Shapiro aptly called it. America slumped as a world leader, and conservatives got shellacked at the polls. Let's say goodbye to all that and roar into 2007. True principles and iron will to enact them, the spirit I call backbone, should be our resolve for this new year.

"Backbone Radio with John Andrews" on Sunday, January 7, will shrug off the snowstorms and sound the call that it's time to grow a spine. We're back to live shows after two holiday weekends. We invite you to listen and call in.

** What's next on the left-liberal battle plan to transform our country? I'll ask David Horowitz, author of "The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party."

** How will Gov. Bill Owens stand in history? Sean Duffy, formerly his deputy chief of staff, weighs in.

** Can the Reagan coalition be revived? Kevin Miller of Vanguard Forum will bring his insights.

** Plus my conversations with French political scientist Jerome Noirot about anti-Americanism and with columnist Mike Littwin about the Darrent Williams murder.

Our show is your positive antidote to downer headlines like Pelosi taking over in DC and labor pushing around the Dems in Denver. We're the most principled, most patriotic, most faith-based, most Colorado-proud spot on your weekend radio dial. Please be with us this Sunday at 5pm.

Yours for self-government, JOHN ANDREWS

Radio, Dec. 31: We could have done better

Join us on radio every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, Denverand now also on 1460 KZNT, Colorado Springs To listen online from anywhere, click 710knus.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This Sunday, New Year's Eve, our show takes a look back at big events of the stormy year of 2006 -- and a view of the cloudy crystal ball for 2007.

Columnists Jay Ambrose of the Rocky Mountain News and Susan Barnes-Gelt of the Denver Post (she's also my TV debate partner, the peace symbol gal) bring their right and left perspectives to the discussion. Krista Kafer and Joshua Sharf are there as well. We hope you'll be.

My right perspective is that conservatives and Republicans could have done better, a heck of a lot better, in the old year if we'd had our heads in the game as America is entitled to expect from us. Losing Congress was not necessary. Slumping toward defeatism in Iraq wasn't either.

Here in Colorado, Bill Ritter's cakewalk to the governor's chair needn't have occurred. Ditto with Dem gains in the legislature. Shoot, there was even a way to win judicial term limits if yours truly had quarterbacked the darn thing smarter.

So join us on 710 KNUS, 1460 KZNT, or 710knus.com from 5-8pm on December 31 for a wrapup on the GOP's ugliest twelve months since 1974. "Auld Lang Syne" won't be sung, but we'll dig in the songbook for a battle hymn to help conservatives back toward victory next year. Tune in and put some backbone in your final hours of '06.

Yours for self-government, JOHN ANDREWS -------------------------------------------------------------------- ALSO, LET'S FACE IT... America could have done better with its leaders in the 1970s. President Gerald Ford, rest his soul, was a good and honorable man who rose to the unsought challenge of cleaning up Richard Nixon's presidential mess. Indeed he was in some ways heroic at that hour. But as we eulogize Ford, don't forget the "road not taken" by Republicans who twice missed a chance to nominate Ronald Reagan -- instead of Nixon in 1968, then instead of Ford in 1976.

Could Reagan, if nominated, have won the White House? No one can know. But Nixon, Agnew, Ford, Rockefeller, Dole, Carter, and Mondale were not inevitable. Our country (and the free world) could have done better. That is we can know, because in 1980 we did do better. An honest reading and evaluation of the past, including its "what ifs," is essential to doing better in the future, it seems to me. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FOR A SOBER NEW YEAR'S... Lest the champagne go to our heads, here's part of Ben Shapiro's sobering piece on 2006, the year of retreat: "The enemy presses us from all sides; he weakens us internally. 2006 saw Western civilization doubt the justice of its cause and shy away from the means necessary to preserve its survival. But 2007 can be the turning point, when we recognize the nature of the threat we face and steel our wills to finish the battle our enemies began on September 11, 2001." And here's the clear-eyed Dennis Prager on "The World in 2007." -------------------------------------------------------------------- MY SHOW COULD'VE BEEN BETTER TOO... No doubt about it, Backbone isn't all that radio should be, and JA's not the ultimate talk show host. Far from it. Our resolution for the New Year is to improve every week, Sunday by Sunday -- and on the days between, to live out the reality that people matter most of all. YOU matter a lot to me. Thanks for reading these emails and listening to the show. Let us know how we can do better. We'll respond.

Radio, Dec. 24: What Christmas means

Join us on radio every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, Denverand now also on 1460 KZNT, Colorado Springs To listen online from anywhere, click 710knus.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Why does Christmas still matter, in an America that seems more disspirited each year with secularism, multiculturalism, and political correctness? Why is the Jewish festival of Hanukkah a better fit with our nation's heritage than the holiday claims of most other faiths? How do Judeo-Christian beliefs and values undergird our liberties as Americans?

We'll explore those questions this Sunday in a special Christmas Eve edition of "Backbone Radio with John Andrews." My guests are Jean Torkelson, religion writer of the Rocky Mountain News, and Rabbi Hillel Goldberg, editor of the Intermountain Jewish News. Joshua Sharf and Krista Kafer, my regular microphone partners, will also join the discussion. We invite you to listen.

Backbone Radio's recommended reading for Christmas includes this beloved poem by G. K. Chesterton, this timely warning against false political messiahs by Cal Thomas, and this feast of books for patriots, contributed by my colleagues at the Claremont Institute.