By now the nation knows that Linda Tripp was worried about her bangs, that Monica Lewinsky was worried about her lack thereof with the president, and that an unworried Hillary Clinton thought her husband was simply “ministering” to a misguided youth outside the Oval Office. We know this because Congress…

Twenty years ago, Denver led the way in dealing with domestic violence. While other cities were just beginning to recognize the plight of battered women–hell, in some states it was still legal for a husband to rape his wife–Denver was funding safehouses, establishing police protocols and reconfiguring courts to provide…

Listen carefully. In the 21 months since JonBenet Ramsey’s body was discovered in a Boulder basement, Colorado has tried the two men charged with the Oklahoma City bombing, convicting both Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols and sentencing McVeigh to death. We have hosted the Summit of the Eight. We have…

“I’m always on the record,” Governor Roy Romer confessed as he sat down with a Washington Post reporter for a 45-minute heart-to-heart last month. The interview was just one in a possibly never-ending series of sincere chats during which Romer, the three-term Colorado governor who took a second job as…

My grandfather was too old to fight in World War II. He went anyway. (He lied to get into World War I, too–but was booted after recruiters learned he was underage.) In 1943 he was an orthopedic surgeon, his practice finally taking off after the Depression, when patients often couldn’t…

On May 22, 1996, John Sheron put on his softball uniform and told his wife he was going to a game. He played for a while, then drove up to the Wal-Mart in Evergreen, where he bought a shotgun. He took the gun out to his car, got in and…

While real-estate values soar across Denver, one neighborhood–Overland Park–has been left in the dust. A few miles down the river, the Central Platte Valley is finally fulfilling its century-old promise, transforming its gritty past into the city’s future centerpiece: already home to Coors Field, an amusement park and a children’s…

Poor Ken Calhoun. The former Denver Post vice president of marketing, known as “Ken4Boys” in Internet chat rooms, didn’t so much as get his Bermudas unzipped for that “hot oil massage” he’d talked about with a supposed teenage boy he had planned to meet on a Florida vacation. But within…

The bus stops here. During last year’s State of the City address, Wellington Webb urged the Broncos to give up on Stapleton and instead support a new stadium downtown. Even in these heady economic times, Webb warned, a Stapleton site was too darned expensive. “Where is that money coming from?”…

Denver likes to bury its mistakes. And it’s made plenty. Ninety years ago, radium was a miracle cure, the turn-of-the-century equivalent of Viagra–and Colorado was playing doctor to the world. Marie Curie herself came out West, prospecting for uranium; Denver was a major ore-processing center. So major, in fact, that…

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. At Maria’s Bakery, on the corner of 37th Avenue and Shoshone Street, the best seat in the house is actually in the garden out front. From there you can hear the children playing outside the elementary school down the street and watch as…

The Boulder County courtroom was standing room only last Wednesday, as Professor Alex Hunter presented his Civics 101 lecture on the origins of modern jurisprudence. While reporters from around the world yawned, Boulder’s district attorney took the grand jury concept slowly–very slowly–from the Magna Carta through the American Revolution to…

“Today, there is a secret plan to deprive the American people of the man they want for their president. It consists of mass-media manipulation, lies, distortions, half-truths, cheap tricks and Soviet-style news blackouts and censorships. The media have insulted the American people’s intelligence by thinking they can decide the presidential…

Attorney Hal Haddon is no fan of grand juries; the courts are full of filings that attest to his irritation at their general nosiness. On Monday, though, Haddon and the other lawyers representing John and Patsy Ramsey, “innocent parents of a murdered child,” sent a joint letter to Boulder County…

“Get the facts about anyone–your ex-spouse’s hidden assets, a new client’s credit history, your lover’s secret past or information about any business–quickly and legally.” Hurry! This sounds like a job for one of the Clinton operatives investigating Kenneth Starr–and recently subpoenaed by the independent counsel as thanks for their efforts–or…

While the Broncos prepare for the second half of their big playoff game in the Colorado Legislature, why don’t we just sit back and enjoy the halftime show? The high-priced entertainment, of course, is reserved for the VIPs–the Very Important Politicians who will be voting on SB 171 (read: the…

“Bill becomes law if governor sins.” –typo in the 1998 Colorado Legislature’s pamphlet How a Bill Becomes a Law Does abstinence make the heart grow fonder? If so, then the folks calling for Roy Romer’s head should be anointing it instead. The alleged personalities at KNUS radio, chief among them…

Governor Roy Romer lied. You can read his lips in a six-minute smooch that catches Romer in the middle of a close, personal consultation with B.J. Thornberry, his former deputy chief of staff, in the front seat of a car parked outside Dulles Airport. The kiss was captured in 1995,…

From wowtown to cowtown. Just a week ago, Denver was recovering from the largest collective hangover on record. On Super Bowl Sunday, in a wannabe major-league “riot,” crazed Broncos fans fueled by Jell-O shots looted an athletic-goods store. (This is Denver, after all.) On Monday, thousands of slightly more sober…

Depending on how you measure these things, Westword was born late one night in a college newspaper office, when starting a weekly seemed like a much better idea than typing a resume and finding a real job, or at a rugby game in Washington Park, where the vigor of the…

Clarissa Pinkola Estes is thinking about what story she would tell to residents of Denver in 1998. She settles on “Stone Soup,” an ancient tale–but not an ancient idea. The people are starving–for soulfulness, for spirit–and they shut their doors and live behind them, and what little they have they…