After a steady drumbeat of stories about the unbearable and undeniable liberal bias of Denver Post reporter Allison Sherry, we decided to take it easy on the political scribe. Maybe she would sense how much conservative readers despised the Democrat talking points she regurgitated as news and try to develop a more balanced perspective. Unfortunately, her last two articles have been so atrocious that we felt the need to pipe up again.

The first, a full print edition article about GOP Congressman Scott Tipton's staff announcing a town hall in part of the new 3rd district, hammers Tipton for the exact same thing as Democrat Congressman Ed Perlmutter has done, except Tipton's staff announced the event on a website and Perlmutter had Congressman Polis use taxpayer dollars to send thousands of dollars worth of mail to announce his. 

Yet that goes completely unmentioned in Sherry's telling. It instead reads more like a DCCC press release, not a balanced news story. 

We're not going to sit here and defend Tipton's mistake. It was dumb and he should take the hit for it. 

What annoys us to no end is Sherry is allowed to publish her piece that contains no journalistic integrity. 

She spends her entire print edition article going on and on about an event on a website and only includes this little blurb about the Perlmutter/Polis event:

Rep. Jared Polis of Boulder invited fellow Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Jefferson County to a town-hall event in what will be part of Perlmutter's new district.

Ummm…Allison, are you forgetting something?  Polis used franked mail, at taxpayer expense, to invite all of Perlmutter's new constituents to an event with Perlmutter. That is abusing taxpayer dollars for a political campaign. No expense was incurred in relation to Tipton's staff mistake — your article even says so.

But what readers of The Denver Post take away from the article is Tipton broke a House ethics rule.   Sherry also "forgets" to mention that Joe Miklosi used an official public office website to make mention of his own Congressional campaign this week, a violation of State House rules. We guess there was no interest in "dirtying" up the clean hit on Tipton with that useful and relevant information.  

The second iteration of Sherry outright shilling for Democrats comes in a "Beltway Blog" today, a series we like to refer to as the DNC press release publishing service.

The title of the post? [Obama's]"Interior Department: Reps. Cory Gardner and Doug Lamborn are wrong." In the piece she literally just repeats what the Obama administration says, and doesn't even bother getting responses from Lamborn or Gardner.

The article is ostensibly about whether oil and gas production has fallen on federal lands or not. Considering that, it might be worth looking at the issue from a Colorado or Western perspective. Well, there just so happens to be a formal study done on that exact topic! So of course Sherry mentioned the results from that study, right?

Nope.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) recently published a study showing oil and gas leases, wells and permits on federal lands in the West are down by 40% comparing 2007-8 to 2009-10. 

A recent National Journal look at this issue pointed out Obama can’t take credit for the increase nationally because it wasn’t his policies that caused it. In fact, leases are how you look at analyzing Presidents’ impact on oil and gas production on federal lands. From the National Journal:

He doesn’t want to admit it, but President Obama is taking credit for something George W. Bush did.

The White House is touting federal data that shows domestic oil production is at its highest level since 2003. In a blog post last week, Obama’s top climate and energy aide, Heather Zichal, points to Energy Information Administration data that shows oil production from the Outer Continental Shelf (which basically means the Gulf of Mexico) has increased by more than a third between 2008 and 2010.

EIA Administrator Richard Newell says it takes several years for any major federal policy action — such as issuing leases — to affect domestic oil production.

Allison: It's fine to report the Obama administration said Lamborn and Gardner are wrong. But you might want to get their responses before you serve as a conduit for the Obama campaign's message. Reporters also like to spruce up he said, she said pieces with outside studies and information. You know, like reports on the exact topic the political spat is about.

We're getting mighty tired of seeing the state's flagship newspaper used as an extension of the Democrats' political machine. 

With the sad passing of conservative giant Andrew Breitbart yesterday, we felt the urge to live up to his example and call the media out for blinding bias and unacceptable journalism. 

If Breitbart taught us anything, it's that sitting around and hoping bad reporters will change does no good. You have to speak up. Loudly.