Despite the obligatory squawks from lawmakers about the need for transparency in government, few of their actions are quite as transparent as their efforts to shield internal bureaucratic processes from outside scrutiny. For a demonstration of this principle in action, look no further than two bills currently creeping through the…
A running gag in the classic comedy Raising Arizona is that just about everybody in the vicinity of Tempe is packing heat — even the pimple-faced kid at the convenience store, who whips out a Dirty Harry special and starts blasting away at stickup man Nicholas Cage. But it’s no…
I know, I know. There are lots of other folks out there struggling to make ends meet, unsung worker drones subsisting on sweatshop wages. But let’s face it: Doug Lamborn is underpaid. I’m not talking about his base salary of $174,000 as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives…
News that Eighteenth Judicial District Attorney Carol Chambers is seeking the death penalty for Josiah Sher, the alleged trigger man in a double-murder-for-hire case in Castle Rock, doesn’t exactly come as a shocker. The slayings of Amara Wells and Bob Rafferty were about as coldblooded as they come, and Chambers…
Anyone thinking about abandoning the safety and comfort of the big city for a trip to Colorado’s savage backcountry, take heed. Not only might you be braving the caprices of nature and the hardships of an untamed wilderness, but you could also encounter a particularly fierce breed of sheepdog. According…
“My options are narrowing,” says Charles Farrar, phoning from the Sterling Correctional Facility. And so they are. Farrar has just learned that his handwritten appeal of his 145-year sentence for child sexual abuse — a series of crimes that his accuser now insists never happened — has been rejected by…
In the war of words over the plan to round up thousands of wild horses on federal lands, it’s the images that speak loudest. Even as the Bureau of Land Management argues that the thinning of herds is for their own good, critics of the program keep coming up with…
In the next few weeks, federal regulators will decide whether the Upper Colorado River needs additional protections in the face of growing demands from thirsty Front Range towns. Which is why hikers, rafters, anglers, and people interested in the economic future of Grand County will be gathering outside the EPA…
Lately, ranchers and community leaders in southeastern Colorado are feeling a bit like the battle-weary Michael Corleone of The Godfather Part III. Every time you think you’re out, they pull you back in — “they” being the Pentagon planners seeking more intense use of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site, a…
This week’s cover story, “Drilled, Baby, Drilled,” reports on the efforts of a group of federal auditors to hold energy companies accountable for underpaid royalties on oil and gas leases. On the eve of its publication, the U.S. Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR) announced a $25 million settlement with…
The good news about Denver International Airport’s ambitious South Terminal Redevelopment Program (STRP) is that it’s only eight months behind schedule and a projected few million bucks over its half-billion-dollar budget at this point, despite the loss of its “signature” architect, Santiago Calatrava, over artistic (i.e., financial) differences. And the…
Famous for its ski bums, Aspen also has a modest contingent of real bums — although the homeless shelter downtown isn’t exactly as celebrated as the haunts of the 1 percenters. But that may soon change. Fresh on the heels of the uproar over the new sociology study The Slums…
Two weeks ago, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar surfaced in Alamosa, surrounded by state leaders, to present the results of a federal study aimed at promoting tourism and conservation in the San Luis Valley. The National Park Service’s study pushes for conservation easements, recreational trails and landmark designations for…
Few people can endure the scrutiny involved in a lengthy New Yorker profile with their mystique intact. But the magazine hardly makes a dent in the armor encasing Phil Anschutz, despite the wealth of information about the “secretive mogul” amassed in Connie Bruck’s “The Man Who Owns L.A.,” in the…
Three years ago this month, outside some drab federal offices in Lakewood, a bespectacled man sporting a white cowboy hat and a bolo tie stood in a teeth-rattling wind before a clump of reporters and bureaucrats and declared his intention to lay down the law. “We’re no longer doing business…
The use of private prisons by states and the federal government continues to increase, yielding billions in annual revenues for two dominant companies in the industry — despite a lack of solid research that America’s experiment with for-profit incarceration actually saves taxpayers money in the long run…
It took nine years of fighting for money the government insisted it wasn’t owed. It probably cost him his job, too. But last week, former federal auditor Bobby Maxwell and the Justice Department finally reached a $26 million settlement with Anadarko Petroleum over underpaid royalties on oil leases in the…
Last summer’s wild multi-state crime spree by the Dougherty Gang — two scary-looking brothers and their stripper sister — understandably drew some superheated media coverage, what with Lee-Grace Dougherty’s online bikini shots and all. But the story fizzled shortly after the trio’s brief rampage ended in a police chase and…
On October 28, 2010, a 26-year-old inmate named Terrell Griswold was found slumped over and unresponsive in his cell in the Bent County Correctional Facility, a private prison in southeastern Colorado. The official cause of death is listed as cardiac hypertrophy, or an enlarged heart. But Lagalia Afola says the…
Juveniles doing time in adult prisons, surrounded by older and stronger criminals, rarely fare well. But juveniles serving sentences of life without parole in the United States face particularly daunting prospects of sexual assault, neglect and long periods of solitary confinement, according to a grim new report from Human Rights…
On Wednesday, Alamosa-born Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will return to his roots — again — as part of a long-simmering effort to promote tourism and conservation in Colorado’s much-praised, much-neglected San Luis Valley. Accompanied by Governor John Hickenlooper and Senators Michael Bennet and Mark Udall, Salazar will visit…
It’s holiday week in Aspen, and this New Year’s weekend is shaping up as the busiest party binge at the resort in years — a time for Hollywood celebs and other one-percenters to pack the slopes and the clubs, to ogle and to be ogled, and call 911 about Charlie…
