On Denver’s yawner of a mail-in ballot is one interesting question: Measure 1A, which would extend the term limit for a Denver district attorney to three consecutive terms. Back in 1994, Colorado voters approved a constitutional amendment that imposed a two-term limit on all non-judicial elected officials but permitted voters…
With Sam Waterston (Executive Assistant DA Jack McCoy) and Fred Thompson (DA Arthur Branch), the political realm has already snagged two of Law & Order’s biggest names. But that leaves plenty of other characters in the L&O franchise who might jump into the fray. Here’s how they’d run, from no…
Here in Denver, plans are well under way for next year’s big, big, big political convention. No, not the Democratic National Convention, which will bring 5,000 delegates, 10,000 of their closest friends and family members, and 20,000 pesky journalists to town in August 2008 (exactly one century after the Democrats…
Pondcrete. The word echoed off the marble walls of the U.S. Supreme Court, the bedrock of a legal system that’s lasted well over two centuries, with the eight judges considering the case of Rockwell International Corp. et al. v. United States et al. (Justice Stephen Breyer had recused himself) possessing…
“A quarter of a century later, John Elway sells food; Stapleton is a neighborhood, not an airport; the 16th Street Mall is going strong — and so is CRL!” That’s how Maria Garcia Berry (pictured) begins the announcement that her political/lobbying firm is marking its 25th birthday. The announcment goes…
“If you have an ugly girlfriend and she changes her name, she is still ugly.” Yes, Sean Ford, mayor of Commerce City, said that while arguing against a proposed name change for his town — and he stands by the comment. “Changing the name doesn’t change anything,” he says. Not…
Marva Livingston Hammons Marva Livingston Hammons, head of the Colorado Department of Human Services under former Governor Bill Owens and one of the primary culprits behind this state’s benefits mess, collected quite a goodbye gift on her way out: Eight hundred twenty-three hours of unused vacation time, which netted her…
The Colorado Legislature may not have known that “Rocky Mountain High” references drug use (ha!), but John Denver sure did. Because here are his lyrics for another song, “Poems, and Prayers, and Promises”: And I have to say it now It’s been a good life all in all It’s really…
In today’s New York Times piece on the Colorado Legislature adopting “Rocky Mountain High” as a second official state song — “Colorado Has Song in Its Heart, and Not Drugs on Its Mind” — reporter Kirk Johnson offers this gem: “A lot of people probably think it’s already the state…
Wow — dope really does affect your memory. Because in all the yapping over making “Rocky Mountain High” a second official state song, no one at the Colorado Legislature mentioned a potential snag. Back in 2005, Coors Brewing Co. bought the rights to the song — the lyrics and music,…
Rounding the corner at DIA Monday morning, I ran smack into artist Gary Sweeney, who moved from Denver more than a decade ago, but left plenty for this city to remember him by. “America…Why I Love Her,” for example, the airport’s most beloved public-art piece, complete with a map of…
Give PeaceJam a chance. On March 8, a handful of celebs — including Nate Corddly and Martin Sheen — will launch Refunds for Good, which aims to take $20 billion collected over the past 108 years through a federal telephone tax — the “War Tax” — and redirect it to…
Denver Restaurant Week, Day 1 (an eyewitness report from Patricia Calhoun) Saturday, February 24: The numbers are staggering. Restaurants participating in the third annual Denver Restaurant Week, which starts tonight, are booked solid. At Prime 121, a Cherry Creek steakhouse that hasn’t exactly been packing them in, they have reservations…
The controversy came out of almost-thin air. After Barack Obama announced that he would give up smoking, The Hill asked other presidential contenders about their vices. “I smoke the occasional cigar,” said Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo. And then, in passing, he told the reporter a funny story — about how…
Steve Horner leans in for a hug. But I do not hug on a first interview. Not even if the subject of the interview has already left me a lengthy voice-mail warning that I, and this newspaper, “have been totally insensitive to the needs of this egalitarian society” — not…
Mike Jones is having a bad week. The Capitol Hill apartment building where he lives suffered a fire, and he’s out of his place and in a hotel — with just one week to go until he has to turn in his book on his three-year “relationship” with Pastor Ted…
After a few weeks of counseling, Ted Haggard — who just reached a settlement with the New Life Church that dictates he never talk about the Mike Jones scandal that led to his resignation from the church he founded — insists he’s “completely heterosexual.” Never mind the gay porn, the…
“I can no longer, with good conscience, tell my neighbors and consituents that ‘the city is on its way,'” Denver City Council President Michael Hancock said in an e-mail to the Hickenlooper administration. Almost six weeks after the first flakes fell, the natives are getting restless. But just imagine if…
As of nine this morning, the Denver Election Commission had received 40,039 ballots — and those are ballots filled out by voters, not returned by the U.S. Postal Service as undeliverable (another 30,000 or so), after the DEC had already given itself an A+ on its performance with this single-ballot…
In this Miami Herald column, Dave Barry takes off after Colorado representative and perhaps presidential candidate Tom Tancredo. Among other things, Barry calls Tancredo (the subject of a recent blog) an “ignorant yokel blowhard” and a “xenophobic dimwit.” And I am not making this up! “Back in November,” Barry writes,…
These 50-degree days aren’t just melting snowbanks. They’re going to make a new traffic jam disappear, too. The city has yet to decide on the final design of the new Justice Center, but work has already begun on that project, necessitating the closure of 14th Avenue east of Speer so…
Within hours of the death of Darrent Williams, an imprompu shrine sprang up where the Denver Bronco had been shot, with fans leaving candles, notes, flowers, teddy bears, an empty can of Bud Light and jerseys — including one tattered orange Bronco shirt accompanied by this note: “This is my…
