Radio, April 29: Victory or death

Join us on radio every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, DenverTo listen online from anywhere, click 710knus.com --------------------------------------------- Excuse the melodrama; I am just recalling history old and new. "Victory or death" was the password for Washington's army on their daring night crossing of the Delaware to surprise the redcoats and save the revolution, Christmas 1776.

Newt Gingrich stirred 500 leading conservatives with that story at a Philadelphia conference this week. If a conservative complains he's discouraged, the former Speaker and would-be presidential candidate suggested we cite that history and say: "George Washington would be ashamed of you."

Backbone Radio rides again this Sunday in the spirit of Newt's eloquence -- after a week that has also included, for me, a shot of Alan Keyes's passion at the Colorado pro-life rally and a mission to the Pennsylvania Senate on behalf of tax limitation. I hope you will listen and participate.

** Presidential candidate-for-real Duncan Hunter, the California congressman who is arguably furthest right of anyone in the race, will be my guest. Later I'll talk about Obama and the Democratic candidates with columnist Jay Ambrose.

** Our month-long Call to Action on hot issues in the legislature will continue as I welcome state Rep. Kent Lambert (R-Colorado Springs) for a GOP minority report and petition activist Dennis Polhill for an update on the constitutional lockdown plan, HCR-1001, now before the Senate.

** Plus my TV debate partner Susan Barnes-Gelt with a preview of the sleepwalking Denver election that concludes May 1, and author Myrna Blyth with a look at her peppery new book on how to raise patriotic kids.

Gingrich got under my skin, I have to tell you. To break faith with George Washington and the other founders, after all they did to keep faith with us, would be a dishonor indeed worse than death. In my book anyway - and I suspect in yours. For us at Backbone Radio, it's simply not an option. Come on along if you agree.

Yours for self-government, JOHN ANDREWS

Radio, April 22: Face of evil

Join us on radio every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, DenverTo listen online from anywhere, click 710knus.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's been a week of sadness. The slaughter at Virginia Tech on Monday, the Columbine anniversary today, and in between, the irresponsibility of mainstream media in giving the evil Cho a national audience. The leader of the US Senate deems our war lost for no greater reason than his own lack of spine, and criticizes the Supreme Court for upholding an abortion law he voted for. Revolting, all of it.

Sadness too at services on Thursday for our family's matriarch, Donna's mother Patricia Gordon, who passed away at 90 on 3/31. But gratitude as well for her exemplary life of faith and patriotism... gratitude for a huge step back toward the rule of law and the protection of life by that Supreme Court ruling... gratitude for the resiliency of America as a free and decent society unyielding to evildoers at home or abroad.

** On the radio this Sunday I'll talk about how to resist evil and surmount tragedy with seminary professor Dr. Paul Zahl, author of the new book "2000 years of Amazing Grace." And I'll discuss the long fight to protect unborn children with Ambassador Alan Keyes, in advance of his 4/25 address at the State Capitol.

** Plus plenty of conservative politics, as usual on our show, with Colorado gadfly blogger Brad Jones of FacetheState.com and Dave Nabity of Omaha, former candidate for Nebraska governor and a TABOR leader in his state.

** And we continue warning of legislative mischief with two weeks to go. Colorado Call to Action will air again during this week's program, with straight talk from conservatives at the Capitol about potential tax hikes, regulatory overreach, and assaults on your values. Another raid on petition rights, HCR 1001, is now also on the move.

Spin the dial, surf the net, troll through the weekdays -- you just won't find anything else like Backbone Radio. Please be part of our show this weekend by tuning in at 5pm Sunday.

Yours for self-government, JOHN ANDREWS

Radio, April 15: Shock jox R not us

Join us on radio every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, DenverTo listen online from anywhere, click 710knus.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------Here it comes; you knew it would. The left is piling on the Don Imus affair to discredit talk radio in general, with the mainstream media as their obliging platform. Doubt me? Colorado Media Matters, a branch of the Soros-funded progressive thought police, has a hit piece in both Denver papers today (both!), charging several local conservative hosts with "lies, smears, and vitriol" not so different from what got Imus fired.

Imus is a lowlife, and as he once rose by the market for coarseness, he has now fallen by the market for decency and fair play. It's good to know there is still such a market segment in this country - an underserved segment, apparently. The moppy-headed ho(st) will soon fade from the headlines, but the tougher issues of free speech, community standards, and double standards will remain.

We at Backbone Radio try to focus on such core issues along with the principles and truths underlying them. We're not firebrands. That hasn't spared us from repeated scoldings by Colorado Media Matters, whose real aim is obviously to muzzle the right. CMM is welcome to attempt that - it's a free country - but their lofty profession of some other goal is disingenuous. Nor is their Friday indictment against other, more edgy, radio voices really credible. But the print media, steadily losing audience, have a self-interest in publicizing it.

Bottom line, if you want incendiary talk, don't bother with our show. Shock jox R not us. "John Yawn" is one of the nicer epithets I've earned with my soothing rational style. Calm Krista, Jocular Joshua, and Mild Matt share the microphone with me in Mr. Andrews' Neighborhood. Even broadcasting stone drunk, we probably couldn't offend Al Sharpton -- and cocoa with marshies is our preferred studio beverage.

But if you want a thoughtful but tough, factual but friendly approach to the news and the American experiment, we're the place for you on Sunday evenings. This week we'll talk with Joseph C. Phillips, black conservative commentator and TV star, about the Imus affair, the Duke rape frameup (largely ignored this week by MSM), the hypocrisy of Sharpton and Jackson, and the sickness of soul it all represents.

** Our special hour on the 2007 legislative countdown, taped at the State Capitol on 4/11 and first heard that night, will air again as part of this show. Don't miss Sen. Andy McElhany's warning on the Ritter tax hike, and Sen. Ken Gordon's dreamily confused view of the Iraq War.

** We'll also hear from Jake Werther, running for the new office of Denver Clerk against Mayor Webb's daughter, and from Ike Kelley, a onetime Jack Kemp appointee now running for Denver City Council.

** And Evan Maloney, guerrilla film producer who drives the campus left crazy, will be along to tell us about his new movie, "Indoctrinate U."

Spin the dial, surf the net, troll through the weekdays -- you just won't find anything else like Backbone Radio. Please be part of our show this weekend by tuning in at 5pm Sunday.

Yours for self-government, JOHN ANDREWS

Radio, April 8: Despite the headlines

Update after 4/8 show: Doug Groothuis blogs at TheConstructiveCurmudgeon. To order his booklet, "Are All Religions One?", click here. For more on Leon Kelly and Open Door Youth Gang Alternatives, go to TheRev.org.

Join us on radio every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, Denver To listen online from anywhere, click 710knus.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The headlines are not usually the last word, nor is history the news cycle. Mankind's journey is something subtler and grander -- a chain of choices and a mighty drama resulting from those. In the Roman execution of a certain Galilean troublemaker, for example, first impressions were wrong again and again, as my latest commentary points out.

So we at Backbone Radio not only cover the headlines. We look behind them, and we often cut contrary to them. All in the cause of equipping you for better citizenship. This Sunday, for Easter and Passover, part of our conversation will track the news cycle, but much of it will explore deeper trends and timeless truths.

** Matt, Joshua, and I will talk at length with Dr. Douglas Groothuis of Denver Seminary about the role of biblical faith in these militantly secular times.

** And lest the "other half" be forgotten amidst contemporary affluence, we'll have a special hour with Rev. Leon Kelly, famed for his work with Denver's inner-city gangs.

** Meanwhile on the political side, Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colorado) checks in with a report on life under the majority Democrats and Speaker Pelosi -- "Damascus Nancy" as some are now calling her.

** And Tom Schatz of Citizens Against Government Waste unmasks the shameless pork used by Pelosi to jam through the anti-Iraq military spending bill.

Spin the dial, surf the net, troll through the weekdays -- you just won't find anything else like Backbone Radio. Please be part of our show this weekend by tuning in at 5pm Sunday.

Yours for self-government, JOHN ANDREWS

Radio, April 1: A place in hell?

Join us on radio every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, DenverTo listen online from anywhere, click 710knus.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Theocracy alert, take cover! The top Democrats making education policy at the Colorado General Assembly say there is "a special place in hell" for supporters of charter schools and parental choice. That's according to an email from Rep. Mike Merrifield, House Education chairman, to Senate Education chairman Sue Windels, disclosed this week by the new website FacetheState.com. (Oops, late-breaking news and correction: Make that former Chairman Merrifield, since he quit the post in disgrace on Friday.)

Besides the uncaring attitude Merrifield betrays toward ill-served schoolchildren, we should be shocked at the fundamentalist overtones in this exchange between two supposedly respectable liberals. And the diversion of taxpayer resources into a religious expression -- at that fatal moment when Windels began reading the message on her official state email account -- horrors!

The hell talk smacks of jihad. No doubt these powerful committee chairs, pronouncing secret curses on their infidel enemies, also hope for a heaven where 72 educrats await every martyr to the NEA faith. The ACLU with its atheist censors would certainly not approve.

We at Backbone Radio don't approve either, not one bit. State Sen. Nancy Spence, R-Centennial, will be my guest on Sunday for a report on this year's Dem offensive against all the school-reform gains of the past decade. I urge you to listen -- listen or else, as Mike Merrifield might put it.

** Also, David Kopel of the Independence Institute will discuss the huge recent victory for gun rights in the DC Court of Appeals. And I'll talk with John Zakhem, attorney for those Colorado voters who lost a redistricting appeal in the US Supreme Court.

** And there's more. Hilmar von Campe, author and conservative organizer who survived Nazism, returns to the show. So does Mike Littwin of the Rocky Mountain News, back from his travels covering the 2008 presidential race.

So join us from 5-8pm this Sunday, when my own startling conversion to Hillary for President will also be a hot topic. Our special April 1 show (get it?) is one you won't want to miss.

Yours for self-government,

JOHN ANDREWS