When the Colorado Legislature passed laws requiring sex offenders to register with the police and to make that information available to the public, it lifted a veil of secrecy surrounding sexual abuse and sex crimes. But some professionals argue that those laws — which were designed to reduce risk to…
The Glenwood Springs headquarters of the White River National Forest looks like it was furnished during Teddy Roosevelt’s administration. Banged-up wooden doors inside the two-story former post office building creak open to reveal antique desks that could have been used by the former president during one of his swaggering, turn-of-the…
Cliff Fleetwood speaks a lot about “we,” as in, “Getting people to volunteer, getting people to hold office, that’s what we want.” He talks at length about consolidating black voter turnout and moving the black community “to the center of American politics.” And he plans to raise money this summer…
In what may be the largest settlement of its kind, the State of Colorado has agreed to pay $70,000 to a prison inmate who was raped by a former cellmate. And although the state doesn’t have to admit liability in the case, the payment is based on claims by the…
When Roy Romer was hired last week as superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District — or what L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan refers to as “the most dysfunctional bureaucracy in the history of the world” — a few school-board members questioned whether he had enough experience. Romer may have…
It’s hot out, damn hot. The lunch crowd is surly, the mall cops are cruising, and Denver City Council just banned “aggressive” panhandling. But none of that changes the fact that Mike the Hippie Bum needs your money. “Whatever I make today will finance my next adventure,” he says. “I’ll…
You’ve been hearing it for weeks: The joint operating agreement that’s set to link the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post will pour cold water on the competitive fires the papers have stoked for over a century. There’s even fresh evidence to support this theory: On June 11, News…
KKK Investments. Good morning. Can I interest you in fifty shares of Stars and Bars Flag and Pennant? No? Then how about Foreigner Detection Systems? If your mailman has relatives in Peru, or that fat monkey of a woman sitting next to you on the bus is from the former…
Dial Mutt for Murder The paws that refreshes: Patricia Calhoun’s “Barking Up the Wrong Tree,” in the June 8 issue, was absolutely the best damn Ramsey article I have read over the past three and a half years. I am from West Virginia (no joke), and I have followed this…
Looking back, Ernie Ferguson can see the deception. It’s all there in the photographs, as thick and smooth as the makeup on the con man’s face. But when Ferguson met the model now called Storme Shannon Aerison, he wanted to believe. He wanted the blonde in the red dress, black…
Traffic starts stuffing up at the corner of Alameda Avenue and Quebec Street at about 7:30 a.m. The cars leaving the former Lowry Air Force Base stream into a double line of shiny luxury sedans and caravans of SUVs. The cars heading north, onto the base, are driven by construction…
Having a gold mine next door can be a wonderful thing, bringing wealth and jobs to the community. Or it can be an environmental nightmare just waiting to happen, a stockpile of hazardous waste that could poison the water, kill wildlife and blight the landscape for generations to come. It…
Five months after Jay Schlaks was sentenced to prison for conning more than 200 people out of $3.2 million in a land-investment scam, his wife and partner in crime, Rebecca Ann Romero, will also face punishment. Romero returned from a thirteen-year self-imposed exile in New Zealand on May 9 but…
In the weeks following the January 27 decision by the Boulder Valley Board of Education to consolidate five elementary schools, it was hard to find a parent in South Boulder who wasn’t calling for boardmembers’ heads to roll. But as the school year wound down, a petition to recall three…
The radio ad begins innocently enough with the sound of chirping crickets. “You’re listening to the Kleins camping out under the stars,” a happy voice says. “The Klein family are lottery winners. Not because they won the top prize in a scratch game or matched any numbers in a Lotto…
In the month or so since the announcement of a proposed joint operating agreement pairing the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, staffers opposed to the plan have seldom voiced their objections in the press, to absolutely no one’s surprise. Privately, though, many remain plenty pissed off, ranting that…
Size Matters Fashion victims: Thanks for Michael Roberts’s great article on SUVs, “A Sporting Chance,” in the June 1 issue. It should be required reading for all those considering purchasing one of those Stupid Useless Vehicles, as well as for those lemmings who have already followed the latest fashion by…
Since moving to Alma, Colorado, a scenic mountain community not far from Fairplay, Amy Majikas hadn’t gotten to see her mother, Janet, nearly as often as she would have liked. After all, Janet lived on the eastern end of the continent, in Fallsington, Pennsylvania, a lovely historic village near Levittown…
The Colorado Department of Transportation’s repository of accident reports fills an entire room. Row after row of shelving units that reach up to the ceiling support hundreds of folders packed with paperwork submitted by law-enforcement agencies across the state. (No, they’re not computerized; they’re on old-fashioned paper.) The documents are…
Marilyn Forrest managed the Bradley Petroleum filling station at 8875 Washington Street in Thornton for almost three years. She only made $6.50 an hour, but she was a conscientious person who often worked more than sixty hours a week without a day off to cover for employees who missed their…
Denver Bronco wide receiver Rod Smith is asking that a domestic-violence assault charge be dropped because Douglas County prosecutors tried to bribe the victim — his common-law wife, Jami Mourglia — into testifying against him. Smith and Mourglia also claim that the prosecutors and/or the Parker Police Department’s victim’s advocate…
Ron Norris’s family eked out a living as sharecroppers in Scotch Ridge, Iowa. They lived simply, decades behind progress, tilling the fields with draft horses and drawing water with a hand pump. On Saturday evenings they’d sit around the battery-powered radio and listen to the tinny strains of Roy Acuff…
