“I know how Jesus felt,” said David VanderMolen. “This was a witch hunt.” But no witch ever cast a spell as successfully as VanderMolen, the longtime Longmont High School wrestling coach and physical education teacher as well as Amway salesman and PromiseKeeper. Early last month, while VanderMolen compared himself to…
Beneath his judicial robes Andrew Armatas has been stripped bare, right down to the 35 shirts (dress and casual), 8 pairs of slacks, “misc. socks, undergarments, etc.” and single tuxedo he lists among his worldly possessions. Augmenting these is $50 in cash, nothing in the bank and an inventory of…
There. That wasn’t so bad, was it? Denver International Airport actually opened Tuesday, on its fifth debut date, after such a drawn-out, stop-and-start ordeal that everyone had almost forgotten that’s what DIA was supposed to do: open. A city does not build a $5 billion airport merely to create jobs,…
At the moment, Westword may be responsible for the only positive revenue stream at Denver’s $5 billion new airport. That’s because we pay the city’s Airport Revenue Fund $1.25 for each piece of paper we are allowed to see regarding the fees paid to private legal firms retained by the…
Ironically, it took a legal threat to convince Denver city attorney Dan Muse to release the legal bills of Debevoise & Plimpton, the high-priced spread that’s rung up a $1 million tab representing Denver’s interests against the Securities and Exchange Commission’s “informal inquiry” into DIA bond sales. If an “informal”…
This won’t hurt a bit. You’ve already suffered the injury, although you may not know that yet. Because by the end of January, the City of Denver had racked up $15 million in bills from all the outside attorneys it had hired over the past three and a half years…
Douglas Bruce, victim. Let it roll over the tongue a few times. Let it vibrate in the most sensitive part of the brain, the one usually reserved for trampled flowers and kicked puppies. Hold that thought. Douglas Bruce says he’s a victim. He claims that he’s the focus of a…
Since Bill McCartney announced on November 19 that he was resigning as coach of the University of Colorado football team, we’ve been subjected to an endless stream of the gospel according to Coach Mac, recounted by a number of media disciples. We’ve heard that he didn’t intend to steal Rashaan…
There Newt Gingrich sat, innocent as a choirboy who’s just ditched a cancer-ridden first wife, meeting the press. If truth is stranger than fiction, it doesn’t get much stranger than this. The Washington pundits were asking Gingrich, the next Speaker of the House, about Hillary Clinton’s derisive denunciation of his…
At five o’clock last Tuesday morning, Michael Reagan’s voice came in loud and clear–even if his message was a mess. Reagan has parlayed his position as son–albeit estranged, adopted son–of the former president into a slot as a conservative talk-radio host; his show airs twice daily in Denver on KTLK-AM…
The press won’t have Bruce Benson to kick around anymore. But he sure gave journalists something to remember him by. The Republican gubernatorial candidate waited until almost ten o’clock last Tuesday night to concede that he’d lost the election. Lost despite the fact that as late as September, polls actually…
Has a Colorado campaign season ever been less inspired? Less inspirational? After being fed a daily diet of Benson divorce drivel and troopersuperduper details, it’s hard not to have fantasies of being chased out of state by a mysterious red Chevy until sometime after November 8. That failing, however, here’s…
Bruce Benson turned his back on the governor’s race last week. In one of the most stunning about-faces in Colorado campaign history, the Republican gubernatorial candidate turned the other cheek–literally–for a television ad that shows him strolling away from the camera through the scenic shrubbery while he confesses, again, to…
Vance Johnson says he’s sorry. Sorry for the tantrums, the violence, the abusive behavior. So sorry, in fact, that the back cover of his recent vanity–and I do mean vanity–book, The Vance: The Beginning & The End, includes a large, generic “I’m Sorry!” And you will be, too, if you…
The Denver City Attorney’s Office handles many legal matters. None of them are divorces. But judging from the city’s slam-bam response to recent open-records requests, you’d think reporters had been asking City Attorney Dan Muse to spill the beans not just about Bruce Benson, the gubernatorial candidate whose divorce had…
Let’s keep this confidential, shall we? In the first week of May, as 9News viewers got an unappetizing eyeful of Denver employees stuffing their faces with donuts when they should have been on the job, at least someone in the city was working. In fact, that someone at the City…
Denver has become the Sally Field of cities. They like us, they really like us, we exclaim whenever the country shows the slightest inclination to forgive us our trespasses. It was just four months ago that Denver International Airport was scheduled to open–for the fourth time. Instead, Mayor Wellington Webb…
It was eighteen years ago this week that Westword, which would be printing Volume 1, Number 1, in a matter of hours, moved out of a bungalow basement and into its first office in LoDo. Not, of course, that this part of town was then known by that hip, nod-to-New-York…
It would have been such a pretty sight: Paula Woodward, star TV reporter, hauled off in chains, Sky9 following as the sheriff’s car stops first at 7-Eleven for coffee, then at Burger King for fries as it slowly wends its way to Denver County Jail. Live remotes from the gymnasium-cum-dormitory,…
Denver International Airport is deserted at twilight. It looks like the last relic of some tent-worshiping civilization after the bomb is dropped. Which, of course, is precisely what had occurred earlier this day, 25 daunting miles away, when members of the Denver City Council learned that the proposed “back-up” baggage…
The debut episode of Rocky Flats Close-Up, a half-hour Department of Energy infomercial tucked into the wee-hour time slots usually reserved for miracle car washes and thigh trimmers, is about as exciting as watching Chernobyl cool down. Anchor Mike Nolan–the former Channel 9 sportscaster who peddles RVs when he’s not…
At eight in the morning, Governor Roy Romer already looked tired. After a month of putting out fires–both literally and metaphorically–he was now glad-handing his way through the train heading from Denver to Cheyenne. And by car twelve, the campaigning was beginning to wear thin. It’s a tough year, the…
