•The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel takes a look at some inconsistencies and “flip-flops” by several candidates in Colorado, from both sides of the aisle.

•The Mountain West region could be tough for President Barack Obama and Democrats, given their opposition to the health care bill and support for the Tea Party movement.

U.S. Senate

•Bennet, Buck debate over Bennet/Buck debates:

Buck and Bennet have debated twice and have five more scheduled. Buck says he wanted 10 to 15, but Bennet’s camp declined.
“Sen. Bennet’s staff has been unwilling to schedule many of the traditional debates,” Buck said. “He is the first senator in 20 to 30 years to refuse these traditional debates that we were hoping to do.”
“Unfortunately, I think we’ve had like 70 invitations to debate. We’d love to accept them all, but Michael has a job in (Washington, D.C.) that keeps him away five days a week, and we’re accepting as many as we can,” Bennet spokesman Trevor Kincaid said.

•Bennet on fiscal issues “like nailing Jello to a wall.”

House

•NBC’s First Read has issued a House “Field of 64″ most likely to change seats, and has listed Rep. Betsy Markey (CO-4) at #10, a “lean R,” and Rep. John Salazar (CO-3) at #50, a “toss up.”

•The second round of Salazar vs. Scott Tipton (the first round went to Salazar in 2006 by a hefty margin) could have a very different result in 2010. A National Republican Congressional Committee internal poll puts the race at 45-all headed into the final weeks of the campaign.

CO-7

•Rep. Ed Perlmutter’s new TV targets his Republican opponent, Ryan Frazier, on “Outsourcing”:

•Frazier joins 14 other black Republican House hopefuls.

•My NRO colleague Robert Costa caught up with Frazier in Washington DC:

Governor

•Governor Tom Tancredo? Colorado Springs Gazette says “it could happen.”

•Erick Erickson: “It is time for Dan Maes to go.”

•Dan Maes has released documents from his Liberal, Kansas personnel file and they do not appear to help his case:

​Dan Maes’s explanations for why he was fired from the Liberal, Kansas, police department in 1985 have prompted plenty of ribbing and incredulity. So today, his campaign has released six documents intended to prove that he wasn’t making up the stories. Trouble is, the items are arguably as embarrassing as if he had been.
The barrage begins with a July 10, 1985, letter from Chief of Police Richard Kistner, who wrote that over the course of the previous year or so, Maes became aware of an illegal bookmaking operation involving the family of fiancee Dee Andrade, who would become his first wife. However, Kistner continued, Maes didn’t bring this information to the attention of his fellow cops. Then, after the department found out about it anyhow “through independent sources,” Maes was interviewed by his superiors and agents of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Kistner claimed he was “specifically cautioned” not to reveal the contents of these conversations to either his fiancee or her relatives.
Cut to July 8, two days before the date on the letter, when Kistner said Maes told a KBI agent that he had “advised the persons involved in the gambling operation of the existence and nature of their investigation, thus ruining any chance for the investigation to bear fruit” and placing “your loyalties to friends and associates involved in criminal activities ahead of your loyalty to your profession.”

There’s more, and it’s not good.

Photo from Maes’ personnel file.