A former warden at the highest-security prison in the country — the federal supermax prison outside Florence — has some intriguing advice for fixing the nation’s troubled, budget-draining corrections system in the coming year. Intriguing, in part, because some of the changes Robert Hood urges (apparently with a straight face)…
Environmental leaders who ardently supported Barack Obama in 2008 haven’t had much to celebrate in the past three years, as key pieces of legislation dealing with climate change and controls on the energy industry have been scuttled, diluted or delayed — by a bad economy, an increasingly intransigent Congress, and…
The conviction of controversy magnet Douglas Bruce on tax evasion charges has touched off some high-pitched gloating on liberal-leaning political websites, as well as the expected musings on the irony of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights godfather getting busted by the tax man. For those who hate TABOR, it’s apparently…
Seven years ago inmates at a private prison in southeastern Colorado went on an all-night rampage, chasing the shorthanded staff from the premises, attacking suspected snitches, setting fires and causing millions of dollars in damages. Now documents filed in a long-running legal battle confirm what many prisoners have been saying…
In a telephone conference with journalists this morning, officials of the Canadian energy giant Encana sharply disputed an EPA draft report that linked the company’s gas drilling operations in Wyoming to contamination of residents’ drinking water, calling the report badly flawed and demanding an independent review of the study’s findings…
Thanks to the increasing push for more oil and gas drilling, communities once considered out of the fray are being drawn into the controversies over hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” — even folks in the stunning North Fork Valley, an area better known for its organic farms, ranches operated by the…
A New York City undercover investigation of online gun sales in fourteen states has found that a majority of the 125 unlicensed sellers contacted were eager to sell firearms to buyers they knew couldn’t pass a background check, a violation of federal law. Colorado sellers fared somewhat better than those…
This week’s cover story, “The Case of the Kidnapped Coed,” revisits the wild press coverage surrounding the 1948 murder of eighteen-year-old college student Theresa Foster — and explores how the Denver Post’s rabid campaign to catch a killer tainted the subsequent trial. It’s a cautionary tale about how pseudo-experts (in…
Yesterday, amid an unusually genial gathering of environmental and energy leaders, Governor John Hickenlooper unveiled new state rules requiring detailed disclosure of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) methods of drilling for oil and gas — a major step toward transparency in the controversial drilling practice and a…
No question about it, the ascension of Tim Tebow has established a unique style of football in Denver. The Broncos have managed to distill all the heart-pounding excitement and nail-biting competitiveness of NFL action and compress it into the final couple of minutes (and sometimes the final couple of seconds)…
Two rabbit hunters found her. She lay face-down, half-buried in the snow beside a frozen stream twelve miles south of Boulder, legs pulled up as if curled in sleep. She appeared to have been dumped there from a bridge fifteen feet above that carried motorists along state highway 93. She…
You know you’ve moved beyond cult status as an author when national magazines get all itchy over the upcoming publication of your new novel… a good half a year before it’s scheduled to be released. Such is the excitement around The Drowned Cities , Paonia writer Paolo Bacigalupi’s much-anticipated follow-up…
The release of an EPA report detailing suspected groundwater contamination from gas drilling operations in Wyoming comes just as Colorado is weighing tougher restrictions and wider disclosures about the hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” process — and may serve as Exhibit A for environmental groups opposing the practice. All of which…
When you’ve spent close to three decades as one of America’s leading opponents of capital punishment, you develop an understanding of what states truly have the will to execute their condemned. And Sister Helen Prejean, the Dead Man Walking author who’s in Aurora tonight for a public talk on vengeance,…
If you’re not occupying any other public space in central Denver today, it might be time to visit the Colorado Capitol building and climb those 99 steps from the third floor to the dome observation area. Tomorrow will be too late, since the dome is closing for repairs until some…
Although Kristen Parker, the surgical tech who infected dozens of Rose Medical Center patients with the hepatitis C virus in 2008 and 2009, is now serving a thirty-year prison sentence, the fallout from her crimes continues to keep a scrum of attorneys busy. In recent court filings in a patient…
For some of us, the day after Thanksgiving is for quiet family time and home-cooked leftovers. For all too many, though, it’s a grisly rush to the Black Friday sales at the mall and a lot of scarfing of fast food. Which makes this an excellent time to check out…
This week’s cover story, “Welcome to Arapahell,” examines Arapahoe County District Attorney Carol Chambers’s frequent filing of habitual criminal charges against repeat offenders, which can triple or quadruple the length of a prison sentence. While other district attorneys use the habitual criminal charge sparingly, reserving it for their most violent…
On the Saturday before Easter 2010, Dennis Pauls got it into his head to give his ex-wife a plant. It was an Easter lily, a Christian symbol of suffering and renewal; tradition says white lilies bloomed where Christ’s sweat fell to the ground in the garden of Gethsemane, a sign…
There was a time when you could hardly turn on the TV without seeing the footage over and over: terrified teens fleeing the school with hands in the air, running past the bodies of slain classmates; SWAT teams smashing windows; the badly wounded young man who fell out of the…
So many choices for music, dance or art this weekend. But if you’re in the mood for aerial performances, archetypal paintings, ecstatic dancers, light shows, electronica, fire spinning, spoken word, custom wearable art, vibration adjustments and energy activations — all in support of a good cause, mind you — there’s…
A study by researchers at the National Institute of Corrections has found that Colorado’s approach to locking down its most unruly prisoners in 23-hour-a-day isolation is “basically sound” — but could be used a lot less. Instead, even as the state’s prison population is declining slightly, the use of “administrative…
