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Late in March, the honorable Sir Michael of Bennet, Superintendent of Denver Public Schools, met with a ragtag group of young civic boosters known as Leadership Denver’s Class of 2006, with one goal in mind: winning the state leadership softball classic. Every year at about this time, all the bizarre…

No one but Dr. Phillip Mallory himself will ever know why he wanted to buy a Bushmaster AR-15 so bad that he lied about a felony when he filled out the required purchase forms a year ago. But his guilty plea to that federal charge will spare him a potentially…

The University of Colorado wants you to know that it “remains committed to promoting and maintaining an environment free from sexual harassment.” CU is so committed, in fact, that in 2004 it fired Igor Gamow, a controversial professor and inventor who’d been a fixture on the Boulder campus for nearly…

There was no reason to delay Timothy Kemp’s sentencing after he was convicted of first-degree murder on May 1. On that point, both the prosecution and defense agreed, since judges in Colorado have no discretion when sentencing first-degree-murder cases. Life without parole is the only option. Kemp was eighteen when…

Vail Unveiled It’s all downhill from here: Regarding Jared Jacang Maher’s “Vail at the Crossroads,” in the May 4 issue: I am a 35-year resident of Colorado and was at one time a frequent Vail visitor. However, I stopped skiing and visiting there years ago after tiring of the inflated,…

Ask most folks to name Colorado’s next celebrity resident and they’ll likely namecheck terroristic wannabe Zacarias Moussaoui, who’s expected to take up residence at Supermax, the Florence lockup that’s the current home of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and plenty of other well-known psychopaths. (Here’s the Los Angeles Times’ piece about what…

In most legal disputes between big business and the general public, business has a huge advantage when it comes to resources and the ability to sustain court challenges over the long term. But that’s not the case in the ongoing quarrel between local TV and radio stations and folks who…

On Thursday, the Arapahoe County District Attorney announced that she was sending the case of Aarone Thompson to a grand jury. The girl was first reported missing last November, but may have been killed up to eighteen months earlier, and her body hidden. Aarone was just a year old when…

The University of Colorado wants you to know that it “remains committed to promoting and maintaining an environment free from sexual harassment.” CU is so committed, in fact, that in 2004 it fired Igor Gamow, a controversial professor and inventor who’d been a fixture on the Boulder campus for nearly…

The three tourists stare at the sculpture in front of a fur boutique advertising Black Diamond female mink for “only $3,488.” A life-sized bronze of a young woman holding a sun hat and flowers, the piece has a classical vibe — but the woman’s metal dress is dyed a bright,…

When he was ten years old and clowning around, Shea Sweeney did something incredibly stupid with a cardboard box and a pack of matches. It left his neighbors feeling burned, and little Shea saddled with a debt his allowance couldn’t begin to cover, even if he lived to be as…

Off Limits knows the identity of #127 on the University of Colorado Police Department’s hit parade of people caught smoking dope at Farrand Field on April 20, and we’re not about to narc. The proud mother of #127, a former Westworder, learned of her son’s extracurricular activities when someone at…

To the lone, white-faced Polack proudly waving a red-and-white Polish flag at Monday’s immigration rally at the Capitol: You were noticed. In fact, it was hard not to notice your creepily intense expression as you swayed to a tune only you could hear, back and forth, back and forth, sticking…

In much of our society, the young and vital get preferential treatment over the graying and saggy. But cheer up, wrinkled ones: These days, radio types here and elsewhere care much more about you than they do about those damn whippersnappers. As evidence, consider the music-oriented stations or formats that…

In 1997, Internet surfers looking for a good time on sites like www.sexygirls.com, www.erotic2000.com and www.1adult.com learned that they could access “MORE SEX for FREE” and “ALL NUDE ALL FREE PICTURES” simply by downloading special image-viewer software identified as “david.exe.” But while the porn seekers were getting “FREE XXX IMAGES,”…

Hot Debate Over Hot Dogs Fighting like cats and dogs: I have been an avid, if not unreasonably loyal, fan of Westword for years, but Jason Sheehan’s April 20 Bite Me column has gotten me angrier than a long-tailed cat in a rocking-chair factory. Shortly after you hired Jason, you…

Most reporters and editors don’t really care for corrections, and for good reason: Who likes to have their screw-ups paraded in front of the public? But they’re an absolute necessity if publications are to maintain credibility, which helps explain why there’s so much debate within the journalistic community about the…

Mainstream Denver media operations generally gave appropriate play to the May 1 “A Day Without Immigrants” rally — but several of them had difficulty putting protests of the protesters into context. A Westword reporter who attended the rally estimated that by mid-afternoon, an assemblage of perhaps a hundred folks in…

People who remained on the job but wanted to check on the progress of “A Day Without Immigrants,” the May 1 march and rally at the State Capitol, had what appeared to be an excellent way to do so. Channels 4, 7 and 9 each offered live streaming coverage of…

The price of a particular, peculiar piece of Colorado real estate is dropping through the floor. Back on September 23, 2004, in Home Security, we told you of an unusual home-ownership opportunity: a circa 1960, 50,000 square-foot missile-silo complex out on the former Lowry Bombing Range, as well as the…

A day without legislators: Every window of the State Capitol, where thousands upon thousands of marchers congregated, was occupied by representatives, aides or other government employees taking pictures of the huddled masses with cheap-looking digital cameras or cell phones. Besuited politicians also lined the balcony directly over the Capitol’s main…