Westminster mom Wendy McKendrick left the hospital after giving birth to her first daughter feeling disempowered and unnecessarily medicated. “I felt like I was just a spectator to my own birth,” she says. So when she found out she was pregnant with a second daughter, McKendrick decided she’d like to…
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a Colorado case that asked the question, Should abortion protesters be allowed to wave signs featuring “gruesome images” in places where children might see? The case started in 2005, when abortion protesters did just that outside St. John’s Cathedral in Denver on…
Look out, lady elephants of North America! A new hunk is headed your way. Billy the elephant is scheduled to arrive at the Denver Zoo later this summer. The five-year-old will come from the Antwerpen Zoo in Belgium, where he was called Budi. But Denver already has an elephant named…
Bringing It Home, a new documentary about industrial hemp inspired by North Carolina eco-conscious home builder Anthony Brenner’s first hemp house, will be screening in Boulder tomorrow night as part of the fourth annual nationwide Hemp History Week. The film “explores the question of why a crop with so many…
James Holmes, accused of killing twelve people and wounding seventy at a July 2012 screening of The Dark Knight Rises at an Aurora theater, has been allowed to plead not guilty by reason of insanity. Judge William Sylvester had previously entered a plea of not guilty on Holmes’s behalf. At…
Tomorrow’s scheduled hearing in the case of accused Aurora theater shooter James Holmes has been postponed until Tuesday, June 4. The purpose of the hearing is so the judge can advise Holmes about “the effect and consequences” of entering an insanity plea. Once the judge has done so, he’ll decide…
The judge in the case of accused Aurora theater shooter James Holmes has ruled that Colorado’s insanity plea laws are constitutional. In doing so, Judge Carlos Samour rejected arguments by Holmes’s attorneys that the laws are unconstitutional partly because they bar a defendant from calling his own experts to testify…
A hearing today in the case of accused Aurora theater shooter James Holmes dealt with one question: If Holmes, who has indicated that he’d like to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, does not cooperate with a court-ordered mental examination, should he be allowed to call his own expert…
When Governor John Hickenlooper announced yesterday that he’s offering a reprieve to Nathan Dunlap, who was convicted in 1996 of killing four people at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant, he never uttered Dunlap’s name. Instead, he chose to call him “offender number 89148,” reasoning that he’d already gotten enough notoriety…
In order to make a movie, you need a crew. To that end, the Colorado Office of Film, Television & Media has launched an online tool called Colorado Reel-Crew, which will “enable the state’s film industry workforce and support service companies to showcase their skills and services to producers considering…
Is it legal to grow hemp in Colorado? Like, right now? That’s a complicated question — and one that the Colorado Department of Agriculture is trying to clear up in a statement issued this week: “Amendment 64 did not authorize the immediate cultivation of hemp. It instead directed the General…
This week’s cover story, “Paging Doctor Bang Bang,” recounts the medical adventures of Denver Roller Dolls skater Kimmy Kimmy Bang Bang, a foot-and-ankle surgeon known professionally as Dr. Kim Wilms. The 32-year-old is the league’s unofficial in-house doctor, assisting skaters with the sprains and bruises that come with playing the…
This week’s feature, “Paging Doctor Bang Bang,” tells the story of Kimmy Kimmy Bang Bang, a.k.a. Kim Wilms, a foot-and-ankle surgeon by profession and a badass blocker and jammer on the track with the Denver Roller Dolls. Wilms doubles as the roller derby league’s unofficial in-house doctor, assisting skaters with…
It’s nearly 10 p.m. on a Wednesday night, and the Denver Roller Dolls have just finished a punishing scrimmage. The warehouse where they practice smells like a damp locker room as the skaters peel off their knee and elbow pads, wrist guards, bandages and braces. While a few discuss a…
Late last month, a court document suggested that the attorneys representing accused Aurora theater shooter James Holmes wished to enter a not-guity-by-reason-of-insanity plea on his behalf. At a hearing today, the defense team formally did so in the case, which involves the murder of twelve people and the wounding of…
Last year, the Colorado Office of Film, Television and Media got a big boost when lawmakers passed a bill to increase cash rebates to moviemakers who choose to film here — an incentives package that came with $3 million in funding. And new film commissioner Donald Zuckerman made good use…
A bill to register hemp farmers with the state has been approved by lawmakers. Now all it needs is the governor’s signature before a nine-member committee can begin assisting the Department of Agriculture in developing a process that will allow the good people of Colorado to engage in widespread planting…
A new developer will take over the stalled Gaylord hotel project in Aurora, which won an estimated $81.4 million tax rebate from the state last year before hospitality giant Gaylord Entertainment announced it was restructuring — and that building the 1,500-room hotel and conference center here wasn’t in its plans…
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a promise to the hundred eighth-, ninth- and tenth-graders to whom she spoke this morning. “If anybody watching this today in this room ever becomes a justice,” she told the teenagers at the new Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center, which is being dedicated…
Parents of children with disabilities and their advocates are frustrated by a new questionnaire being used by the state to determine a child’s home-health-care needs. The survey has resulted in hundreds of families being paid less to care for their children, many of whom need constant supervision. Wendy Rutter’s fourteen-year-old…
Bill Sullivan, the subject of our bad-boyfriend story “Operation Cock Block,” is now claiming he’s innocent of participating in a $15.7 million Ponzi scheme. “The preponderance of facts support a dismissal of the case against Defendant Sullivan and all monies in his accounts unfrozen and returned to Defendant Sullivan in…
A bill that would bar Colorado private probation companies from also providing chemical dependency treatment to an individual client has failed for the second year in a row. The question at the center of our cover story, “Blow Back,” was whether providing both services was a conflict of interest. Lawmakers…
