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April 04, 2007 06:47 PM UTC

Sloppy, Sloppy, Sloppy

  • 55 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: The Colorado Senate News registration information has been changed.


The website Face The State made news last week for exposing an e-mail sent by Rep. Mike Merrifield that was critical of charter schools and ultimately led to Merrifield’s resignation as chairman of the House Education committee.

While the open records request on Merrifield was a clever and effective political maneuver, they got sloppy with the details. As Colorado Confidential explains:

The open records request that revealed Merrifield’s e-mail was made by attorney Richard W. Daily on behalf of his client, Face the State, which Daily describes as a “brand new news organization.” Face the State is owned by Brad Jones, a consultant with long ties to the state Republican Party…

…But here’s where things get sticky: Jones is also the owner of the Web site ColoradoSenateNews.com, which is the communications hub of the Colorado Senate Minority Office. The same person behind the filing of an open records request against Democratic legislators owns the Web site that the Senate Minority Caucus uses for its press operation.

This was really a dumb mistake by all involved. It wouldn’t have taken much time to move the ColoradoSenateNews.com registration information into someone else’s name.

Comments

55 thoughts on “Sloppy, Sloppy, Sloppy

  1. What are the consequences? It seems fishy to me, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why this is a problem. Is it just that the facethestate site will be shown to be biased? I thought that was clear from the start. Heck, even CMM got the Rocky to change its tune and call it a conservative website.

    I’m not trying to dis the story. I just am missing the point. This isn’t illegal or anything, is it?

        1. Are there some general assembly rules that are at play here? I’m not saying (like the last poster) that there is no point. I am legitimately wondering what is going on here. Why is the Senate Minority Office in trouble? And with who?

          1. I don’t want to ruin the surprise. As the Senate Minority offices panics and tries to cover up all ties http://www.coloradoc… they are further indicting their guilt of breaking the law.

            It will all come out in due time. The Minority Leader and his staff will have a lot to answer for.

            1. If there is law breaking going on, then this is clearly an important story. That is what I was trying to figure out. I’ll wait to see what happens.

    1. I don’t see how any laws or rules are being broken, but I can see how people would wonder how Senate Republicans got involved with this guy.

      He’s not making the kind of splash I’d want to be associated with.

    2. From what I gather on Colorado Confidential, the issue is whether state employees are being used in partisan activities.  I guess there is a state version of the Hatch Act?

      1. The law state does bar discrimination in hiring based on sexual orientation, religion, etc. but elected officals can discriminate based upon political affliation.  Since that is the case, isn’t anything that a caucus staffer does constitute as partisan?  Everything they do is partisan!  It’s not like Dems and Reps trade staffers because “Judy is one committed public servant”. 

        I don’t see how staff being used in partisan activities makes a difference.  If they were forced to do something, then that would be an issue, but if they weren’t forced then who cares?

      1. Hehehehehe.

        I have no sympathy for these teachers-union shills who are so busy protecting their own power that they can’t see that our kids are suffering greatly.  There’s a special place in he….

        Oops – my bad!

        1. They’re not my tracks.  At least I’ll tell you where I’m coming from.  Mr. Chaffee, you are a paid union representative masquerading as a journalist, are you not?

          If I’m wrong, my apologies.

          1. 1. Wasn’t responding to your comment, otherwise my comment would have been indented under yours. So relax there tough guy.
            2. Not a journalist.  Never cliamed to be.
            3. Not a paid union representative (at least not anymore).
            4. Wouldn’t mind being either a journalist or a paid union representative 😉

            I would accept your apology, if I knew who the heck you were!

            Oh, and it’s spelled C-H-A-F-E-E.  I mean, it’s spelled for you right there in my signature.  Didja just wake up from a nap or something?

                1. Your always “right”….but in the inverse world of you kinky thinkers…that equates to wrong. State your principles. What do you stand for? Gecko was man enough. Are you?

                    1. the fact that you called me a “dingleberry” just confirmed my suspicions that you are, in fact, a twenty-something living in the basement of your parents house drinking the Kool-Aid that percolates down from thefreakishly right-wing nutjobs that live above you.

                    2. I own a small business and also work full time at a non-profit that helps inner city kids. 

                      Dingleberry.

                    3. I too volunteer at a non-profit to help inner city kids. Which one do you help out? I’ll understand if you don’t want to answer.

                      Good to see americans lending a helping hand when they can.

                    4. Which one to you work at?  I help with kids through the YMCA, but it’s hardly inner-city.  Northern Colorado Springs is far from….

  2. There might be something here is he operates both sites and controls the content of both.  But, if he is just owns the server space that they reside on and does not control content, this is hardly shocking or scandalous.

      1. Brad Jones is a professional who has multiple clients — typical of a web-company business plan.  The only coordination here is the fact that his clients are all republicans.  But that’s no conspiracy. 

        1. I don’t run a web site so I have little practical knowledge about it. So can anyone tell me a) is it usual for web designers who are not responsible for a site’s content to be the ones who register the domain, and thus appear to be the owner? And if that is normal, then isn’t it still kinda suspicious that they changed the registration now?

          1. that Brad simply got the ball rolling on the State Senate website, then turned it over to current leadership. They just failed to change names on the paperwork. Happens all the time…

            1. This goes deeper than that. You don’t sounds confident in your statements, but rather more like a communications person trying to cover your ass.

              1. I AM QUITE CONFIDENT WITH MY STATEMENT.

                As someone who has hired Brad for his impeccable work, I know absolutely the level of professionalism and perfectionism he lives up to.  No one matches his work. 

                You guys are going after a techie here… not a hack. 

                1. Are you referring to the affirmative action bake sale he held at the University of Colorado where he sold baked goods at differing prices determined by the buyers skin colorado? Or how about the neo-con yout shirts he had made: “Join us, or work for us later.” I believe Jessica Cory, Windels former opponent, had her hand in all of those professional stunts as well. Both are stand up characters.

          2. The company hired to host and design the site usually stays as at least the technical contact. And many times as the billing contact too.

            My guess is they switched it now because of the story. But unless there’s a law broken somewhere I don’t think this is a real story.

            Don’t worry fellow Dems – the Repubs do enough clearly wrong things each day that we can give them a pass when it’s no big deal and still have plenty to rail against every day 🙂

            – dave

            1. to you and “It’s Me” for the clarification.

              It still feels like this was a deliberate attempt by Repubs to gun for Windels by fishing through her emails until they found something, and that this was as close as they could get. (Calling for her resignation doesn’t make much sense unless she was the original target to begin with, unless I’m missing something.) But I agree, this is all small potatoes. Should something come to light about the who and why behind the CORA request, however, what a boomerang effect that will be to see!

  3. I ran a whois on coloradopols.com and here it is. Note that it runs through Network Solutions. I would guess that is a blind address that forwards to whoever at coloradopols but officially the registrant is Network Solutions:

    Registrant: 
      Colorado Pols 
      ATTN: COLORADOPOLS.COM
      c/o Network Solutions
      P.O. Box 447
      Herndon, VA 20172-0447 

      Domain Name: COLORADOPOLS.COM 

      Administrative Contact : 
      Colorado Pols 
      cg5fm3tw5ec@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com 
      ATTN: COLORADOPOLS.COM
      c/o Network Solutions
      P.O. Box 447
      Herndon, VA 20172-0447 
      Phone: 570-708-8780 

      Technical Contact : 
      Colorado Pols 
      cg5fm3tw5ec@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com 
      ATTN: COLORADOPOLS.COM
      c/o Network Solutions
      P.O. Box 447
      Herndon, VA 20172-0447 
      Phone: 570-708-8780 

      Record expires on 23-Dec-2007 
      Record created on 23-Dec-2004 
      Database last updated on 13-Oct-2006 

    1. Network Solutions offers a privacy service so that people don’t have to put their personal contact info into WHOIS when they register a domain.  The email address forwards to the actual registrant, I think.

      Sounds like SOMEONE should have done that with HIS domain…

  4. So, I am trying to put the pieces together here. This information was supposedly obtained by an open records request. Yet the emails listed are a yahoo and com cast address. My questions are these:

    First, are state emails available for open records requests?

    Second, if they are (or if they aren’t) are PRIVATE emails available for open records requests?

    Third, if either of the above two are answered by “yes,” then why haven’t people been digging through these emails for years????

    1. The content of the mail makes it public.  An open records law wouldn’t be very effective if elected officials could just conduct all of their ‘wink, wink’ business using a private mail account and therefor have it be exempt.

      1. I understand the premise behind the “content” being what is public. My question is, who gets to sift through people’s private email to decide what content is public and private??? I, for one, wouldn’t use email as a main communication tool if I thought that anyone but law enforcement could go through it for whatever reason. I’m not a state employee, so I don’t have to worry about (I think), but if I was, I would stop using email except for official communications.

        1. By my read, it is the custodian of the record who decides what is and what is not exempt from a request.  In your example above, I suppose the custodian would be any person who has the password to the private mail account who also gets a CORA request.

  5. I don’t understand why this is a problem.  The Open Records Act permits anyone to request copies of any records that are defined as public under the Act.  OK, I get that the guy who made the CORA requests is a partisan hack, but he’s still entitled to make an Open Records request, so why is this a problem?  I must be missing something.

    1. everyone is bored with speculating on presidential candidates; this legislature is about as colorful as cream of wheat; oh, and it may take years before anyone is in charge in the Ritter admin.

      Next Up:  nslookup and MX records.

      Back to you, David.

      1. Pretty sure Bill Ritter is in charge of the Ritter Administration.

        Why, do the Republicans do that differently where they put a puppet in the executive position while there are bunch of neo-cons pulling the strings from behind the curtain? Oh wait, that is how they run offices.

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