There have been other school shootings in the ten years since Columbine, horror scenes with even bigger body counts. But for some reason, Columbine is the crime that resonates; “Columbine” is the word that keeps getting repeated in the tales of similar plots — some carried out, some foiled. It…
Barack Obama spilled way past 60 Minutes talking about the economy last night, and there’s still plenty of talk to come. Trump University is in session, offering four days of classes on how you can “make a fortune” in real estate; today’s are at 1 and 6 p.m. at the…
You don’t need a calendar to know that it’s just one month until the tenth anniversary of the shootings at Columbine. You can tell by the flood of programs, movies and books pouring out. The day-long “Colorado Rising: A Columbine Update,” sponsored by School Safety Partners, kicks off at 9…
“This is part of Ted’s journey,” Gayle Haggard told a reporter. “It’s made him a better man. I see what has happened as a divine rescue.” Of the Haggards’ bank account, if nothing else. Three years ago Ted Haggard, then pastor of the New Life Church and head of the…
Dear Mexican: Why is it that when I go to the Mexican supermarkets to buy productos femeninas, fully 98 percent of the aisle provided for such things is composed of maxipads, and the limited selection of tampons are in dusty boxes with a sell-by date of 1986? I assume it…
Even as Jason Wren’s family was mourning the Littleton freshman’s tragic death at a Kansas frat house, Leslie Lanahan, the mother of Lynn “Gordie” Bailey, a pledge who was found literally dead-drunk in the the Chi Psi fraternity house in Boulder in 2004, agreed to settle her lawsuit against the…
Even in a state full of stunning scenery, many of Colorado’s most remarkable sights are man-made. A castle made out of stuff in southern Colorado. A tower filled with stuff out on the plains in Genoa. And north in Tinmath, just off I-25 by Fort Collins, the Swetsville Zoo, a…
News is busting out all over today — and not just in Denver District Judge Larry Naves’s courtroom, where Ward Churchill may take the stand in his case against the University of Colorado, now starting week two. Or on the Auraria campus, where veteran newshounds of the Rocky Mountain News…
Joe Nacchio isn’t the only one going to jail. Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Marcia Krieger denied Nacchio’s request to remain out on bail pending a petition of his conviction to the Supreme Court. The former Qwest CEO, who ran a Denver-based company but kept his home in New Jersey, has…
Dorothy Stang died many thousands of miles from Denver, murdered in the Amazon rain forest, but her story resonates here in Colorado. Her brother, David, lives in Palmer Lake, and has spent years trying to find justice for his sister, a 73-year-old nun who had spent decades working with the…
Dear Mexican: Not sure if this has been asked before, but how do you feel about Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio? I think the guy’s a fucking racist who’s just out to get Mexicans to fulfill his racist agenda. He’s been relevant lately due to the protests in Arizona against Section…
It is a shame that Steve Horner no longer lives in this state, because the anti-ladies’-night crusader would have found a warm welcome — a very warm welcome — had he shown up for last night’s “ladies-only” wine-tasting at Venue. The event was designed to aid the free flow of…
Steve Horner has left Colorado — for now. My first clue was the sudden silence: no voice-mail messages left for Westword writers, linking their stories on the plight of the homeless or the educationally challenged to the very existence of ladies’ nights. My second clue: a sudden influx of messages…
When Ward Churchill faces off against the University of Colorado in Denver Chief District Judge Larry Naves’s courtroom today, it will be the culimination of a controversy that dates back not just years, but decades. It wasn’t until January 2005, when a student publication complained about the then-CU professor’s post-9/11…
A billion here, a billion there — pretty soon we’re talking real money. To be somewhat precise, $13.5 billion, which is what the federal government has spent in the more than two decades that it’s proposed storing nuclear waste in an area known as Yucca Mountain, a volcanic ridge fewer…
I am listening to Peter Boyles talk about state Senator Chris Romer’s bill, which will go before a legislative committee today. The measure would allow illegal immigrants to get in-state tuition at state schools (if they have attended a Colorado high school for at least three years, and have graduated…
Dear Readers: Many of ustedes offered alternate meanings to the Mexican Spanish vulgarity pinche, beyond “cooking assistant” and “fucking in the adverbial sense.” From our Puerto Rican brothers: In Puerto Rico, pinche is simply the term used for a wooden clothespin. There is no negative connotation of the word on…
I am being held hostage by Steve Horner. And the state helped write the ransom note. I first met Horner two years ago, when he was sending haranguing notes and leaving endless voice-mail messages about how I, and this newspaper, “have been totally insensitive to the needs of this egalitarian…
There has been plenty written about Jared Polis’s inane, inaccurate, insensitive slam at the Rocky Mountain News– “killed,” he said this weekend, by the new media. And there will be plenty more. Polis apologized yesterday. “I did not mean to offend nor to show anything less than a strong sense…
Pablo would be a senior in college now. A senior in a private college, rather than a public university. Because while Pablo was a star student at West High School, he was also an illegal immigrant. His parents had come to the United States when he was just a boy,…
The Rocky Mountain News sign came off the Denver Newspaper Agency building (and how long will it have that name?) on Sunday. But this speedy erasing of the past didn’t extend to the Sunday Denver Post, which included numerous reminders of the two papers pairing to promote a charitable endeavors,…
When the official news came down at noon yesterday that today would be the last day for the Rocky Mountain News, I was at a Colorado Press Association luncheon — in a painful bit of timing, the state’s newspapers are holding their annual convention in Denver this week — at…
