When Ken Gorman heard the intruders burst through the front door, he sprang from his room and ran through the hallway toward the sounds of shuffling feet. He’d been robbed dozens of times before, always around the harvest, but that night he was equipped to fight back. Just a few…
Ken Gorman, the emphatic pot crusader featured in this week’s cover story, “High Times,” had a talent for attracting trouble. In fact, those who knew him said it was among his favorite things — behind pot, of course. Trouble can be lethal: Gorman was murdered in February 2007, and three…
A Denver law firm is suing the U.S. Securities and Exchange commission for its refusal to release the names of top officials who were caught regularly using government computers to access pornography. Calling the senior officials “voracious voyeurs of pornographic and sexually explicit websites,” law firm Steese, Evans and Frankel…
Metal heads and dark rock connoisseurs everywhere are today without one of the most feared vocalists of the genre. Ronnie James Dio — the prolific artist who fronted Black Sabbath (post-Ozzy), Rainbow, Heaven and Hell and, of course, Dio — died Sunday from stomach cancer. He was 67. Born Ronald…
A Brighton industrial cleaning company is suing the City and County of Denver and its Department of Aviation, which oversees operations at Denver International Airport, citing racial discrimination and soliciting of bribes for preferential treatments in contracted work by officials. Allstate Sweeping, which filed the federal civil suit earlier this…
On the final day of the Colorado legislative session, the teacher’s union behind much of the uproar about a controversial bill to expand regulation of the state’s K-12 teachers is praying the Senate okays a package of House amendments aimed at lessening the blow to poorly rated teachers. Deborah Fallin,…
It’s been five years since an investigative report that I wrote for my high school newspaper sent shock waves all the way to the Pentagon. For me, the bomb rush of media and interviews feels like a lifetime ago — and generally, that’s where I like to keep it. But…
Is the door-to-door sale of milk a right protected under the First Amendment? It might sound utterly preposterous, but that’s the argument a longtime Colorado milk delivery company is making in a federal lawsuit against the City of Fort Collins…
Colorado State University System officials voted unanimously Wednesday to rescind the school’s hotly contested campus gun ban in response to a court ruling last month that wiped out a similar prohibition at CU-Boulder. The CSU ban, which was passed earlier this year, came under fire from pro-gun groups including the…
The Rocky Mountain chapter of the Community Associations Institute, a trade organization devoted to homeowner’s associations, is hosting a conference tomorrow to help homeowner’s with the nitty-gritty of managing HOAs — which a March Westword feature about the Cherry Creek Farm HOA showed can be a hellish affair. Rita Guthrie,…
Mike Davis, co-owner of Breckenridge’s new Club 420, believes it’s unfair to discriminate against the non-afflicted. Marijuana is for everyone, he says. “That’s the whole point,” Davis says of the mountain town’s exclusive new pot lounge. “It’s not just medical marijuana patients that cannabis is necessary for. In our opinion,…
Auraria campus police are looking for a woman whose 9mm pistol accidentally fired in a woman’s bathroom stall in classroom building this morning. No one was hurt, police say, and crews have already patched up where the bullet penetrated the drywall…
Due to an overwhelming number of comments from readers who say their homeowner’s associations do more harm than good, prompted by our feature “Bad Fences Make Bad Neighbors for the Cherry Creek Farm HOA and Its Residents,” Westword is periodically publishing readers’ HOA horror stories. This week’s HOA tale comes…
The infamous clan of gay-hating, anti-Semitic demonstrators of the Westboro Baptist Church kept its promise to harass schools in Boulder Thursday — an almost rare follow through for the group that appears to have found their obnoxious presence garners about as much attention as not showing up at all. But…
A prominent wildlife conservation group is suing Secretary of the Interior (and former Colorado Senator) Ken Salazar for reportedly failing to protect a prairie song bird that many say is nearing extinction. In the recently filed federal lawsuit (click here to read it), WildEarth Guardians says Salazar has not fulfilled…
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit against the Jefferson County Sheriff, accusing him of illegally detaining a man for 47 days for the suspicion that he was an illegal immigrant. Sheriff Ted Mink, the group says, kept Luis Quezada in Jefferson County jail in the summer…
If there’s one thing Denver’s marijuana movement has embraced, it’s a wanton disregard for federal laws. And no day illustrates this sentiment more than 4/20, when marijuana patients and exuberant scofflaws alike ascend on the Capitol to protest pot prohibition — and to offer reefer-eshing variations on commercial branding. Page…
As promised, the Rocky Mountain Gun Owner’s Club has filed suit against Colorado State University for its board’s recent ban of concealed weapons on campus. With the suit filed on the same day as a Colorado Court of Appeals decision to throw out CU-Boulder’s similar ban, it might have more…
Westword wants to hear your crazy HOA stories. Did you get a letter telling you to paint your house, even though you recently painted it? Do you have an exuberant board member spying on you (this actually happened)? Or maybe you just think your dues are too high. Whatever it…
Update, 1:30 p.m., April 15: This blog, originally published yesterday afternoon, has been updated to reflect the comments of Education Commissioner Dwight Jones. A union that represents 40,000 teachers in Colorado is abandoning efforts to compete for millions of federal dollars available through the Race to the Top program in…
The parent company of Denver-based Frontier Airlines announced today it is abandoning the Milwaukee-based Midwest Airlines brand to unify the two carriers under the Frontier name, ending months of speculation and angst among Coloradans who hoped the moniker would survive. Before hundreds of Frontier employees gathered in Coors Field party…
Last week, we broke the news that the infamously hateful Westboro Baptist Church has announced a three-day-long protest at fifteen Denver metro locations, including events at area high schools during school hours. And students and parents are furious that the homophobes plan to disrupt school activity, prompting a large-scale counter-protest…
