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…
Almost two months ago, Michael Roberts offered an all-star list of five Rocky Mountain News staffers that he suggested the Denver Post hire should the News shut down.Now, with the News’s last day tomorrow, the Post has announced that it’s adding a handful of News employees, and three of them…
Yesterday, with the news that the San Francisco Chronicle may go down, leaving the free Examiner the only real daily in SF, Phil Anschutz once again looked like the smartest guy in the room.Today, he’s also looking like the luckiest. Because before Anschutz bought the dying Examiner label and turned…
Dear Mexican: I believe that the words people use to describe other people, intentionally or unintentionally, reflect their political values. But I want to give you the benefit of the doubt. You described César Chávez as hating “illegals” in a previous column, and as being ethnocentric early in his career…
Michael Paglia posted the news first: Adam Lerner, head of the Laboratory of Art and Ideas in Lakewood, will take over as director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, replacing Cydney Payton, who exited last fall. And that’s not all: In revealing the hire yesterday, the MCA board also…
Denver is in a tizzy over coyotes. Greenwood Village wants to shoot them. Denver wants to talk them to death, and will host a meeting Thursday to do just that. And not a moment too soon, apparently, because on Saturday evening, a 51-year-old woman walking a 75-pound lab near her…
