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part 2 of 2 As much as their cases have become a rallying cry for women seeking payment for the controversial bone marrow transplant treatment, Barbara Tepe and Cynthia Snow could just as easily be held up as examples of why insurance companies ought not to pay. After all, both…

part 1 of 2 Last spring, when Barbara Tepe walked out of her California home, slipped into the car next to her husband and began driving to Colorado, it was not the beginning of a pleasure outing. It was a journey to stay alive. Six months earlier Tepe had been…

Strike while the irony is hot: Timing is everything–particularly when you’re Ken Hamblin, Denver’s mouth that roared, then bored. “Hamblin ramblin’ to be `black Rush,'” read a headline in the Washington Times last week. “Mile-high talk host climbing fast.” Anyone who read last January’s New York Times profile of Hamblin…

Denver Post columnist Ken Hamblin was suspended last week after it was discovered that his October 18 column contained several paragraphs that had been plagiarized from an October 16 Rocky Mountain News story. He told his editors it was “a stupid mistake,” and he was quoted in the Post as…

It started out as a way to save the Boulder Theater. But ballot initiative 2C, to be decided by Boulder voters on November 8, has become more than that–a lot more. Even Kent Zimmerman, the executive director of the Boulder Bureau of Conference Services and Cultural Affairs, as well as…

Neder Say Die I would like to thank Westword for printing the article on David Shortridge, candidate for the RTD board and a member of the Nederland Board of Trustees (“Sick Transit,” October 26). Reporter Arthur Hodges painted a grim picture of Shortridge, focusing on his history of filing allegedly…

John and Jim Cipriani hope to accomplish in federal civil court what police and prosecutors have been unable to do for the past four years–prove that Colorado State Patrol trooper Bob Benefiel murdered their sister, former El Paso County sheriff’s deputy Cecilia Cipriani Benefiel. Benefiel has denied killing her (“A…

A real estate deal touted by Denver city officials as key to the redevelopment of Stapleton International Airport suffered another blow last week when the King Soopers grocery chain missed a second closing deadline. King Soopers officials have told the Denver City Council that the company needs more time to…

It was twilight when Jack Ducey’s family arrived at his dark hulk of a house in north Denver. They’d come when their phone calls went unanswered and they spotted the newspapers collecting on his stoop. There was no sign of life. To the contrary, one of Jack’s dogs was lying…

On paper–certain pieces of it, anyway–David Shortridge looks like a clear favorite to win a seat on the board of the Regional Transportation District in November’s election. Shortridge, a member of the town council in Nederland, has experience as an elected official, while his opponent, thirty-year-old businessman Jon Caldara, is…

DIA’s tape delay: The controversy over Denver International Airport has tempers soaring even 2,000 miles away. After learning that someone on Senator Hank Brown’s staff had tape-recorded the GAO’s off-the-record, DIA background briefing for Colorado’s congressional delegation, Representative Pat Schroeder wrote Brown on October 14, complaining of the secret taping…

The Colorado Supreme Court told him to get with the program. The publicity of a family sex scandal put his potential for personal bias in the spotlight. But one year later, critics say Denver Juvenile Court Presiding Judge Dana Wakefield has found another way to stonewall the state law that…

Vance in His Pants Bravo, Calhoun! Your October 19 column about Vance Johnson, “Who’s Sorry Now?,” was right on target. Funny, too. Adios, amigo. Joe Harris Denver I was appalled by Patricia Calhoun’s attack on Vance Johnson. Here is a man who admitted his mistakes and is trying to make…

Given their shoestring campaigns and the perception by the press and both major political parties that they’re kooks, the invisible candidates of fringe parties need to be either very smart or very loud to get noticed. Two weeks ago, Green Party candidate Philip Hufford showed he was both. The 46-year-old…

Subby the Submarine is an awfully nice vehicle, and environmentally friendly, too–he’s solar-powered. He and his best friend, an Arctic tern named Terrence, are enjoying a lovely day when they hear a strangled voice calling, “Help! Help! Help!” The calls are coming from a dolphin trapped in a drift net,…

Get past the unending stream of annoying television ads and Amendment 11, the “Workers’ Choice of Care” initiative, is essentially a labor-management dispute in which voters are being asked to act as arbitrators. Unfortunately, they’ll have to make up their minds based largely on high-priced media campaigns rife with exaggeration,…

part 2 of 2 In 1973 Congress passed the Archaeological Resource Protection Act, which prohibits disturbing sites of human habitation over fifty years old. Seventeen years later the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act was made law, requiring that human remains be returned to Native Americans for reburial. Still,…

part 1 of 2 After a steep ascent, the trail plunged down a rocky slope toward a wall of sheer cliffs. Kenny Frost pulled up short. U.S. Forest Service archaeologist Bill Kight stopped and looked at his friend, the Ute tribe’s liaison with the Forest Service and the Bureau of…

Walk softly and carry a big schtick: Say! Wasn’t that renowned waffler Bill Clinton plunging head-first into the fray outside Denver’s Planned Parenthood clinic? Not quite. It was actually presidential look-alike Michael Newell, a Littleton security consultant who’s poofed up his hair to play Clinton at venues ranging from a…