Five minutes before the polls opened this morning, signs pushing Bill Ritter sprouted every few feet along Speer Boulevard. His name was everywhere — so omnipresent, in fact, that it was hard to remember that at this time last year, the Colorado Democratic Party was still on the Anyone But…
Denver will host the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Not because the Democratic Party will win big in this state on Tuesday — although it will. And not because Denver went through such contortions to guarantee a union hotel — although it did, with the Hyatt Regency recognizing UNITE-HERE in September…
You know your candidacy is in trouble when you hope that Dick Cheney, that man of the people, might be able to bring some votes your way. Still, the veep will be in Colorado Springs tomorrow to help push Republican Doug Lamborn’s chances in the fifth congressional district. There’s only…
It felt traitorous to vote early. I’d never done so before, partly because it always seemed rather undignified to fill out a ballot at the same place I’d buy broccoli, but also because I was loyal to my old polling place, located in a rehab center where the residents considered…
As a kid growing up in Colorado, Andrew Lee loved the Denver Broncos. He discovered his love of politics a little later — when his mother, an immigrant from southern China, decided that her son, the only Chinese kid in his middle school, should learn more about their culture…and rented…
She fought the urge. She really did. But finally, she surrendered. “Someone’s gotta do it,” Lisa Jones says, and sighs. Or, as her new website, VoterJones: The Fix Is In (www.voterjones.com), puts it: “Many voters suspect that the Denver Election Commission is messed up somehow. The purpose of this is…
At 11:15 this morning, Bob Beauprez will hold a press conference to discuss “the source of information regarding Bill Ritter’s plea bargains for criminal aliens.” That someone leaked info isn’t really the story, though — or it shouldn’t be. Journalists depend on leaks, and someone clearly leaked much of the…
It’s tough to end an interview with this question: “Oh, by the way, were you ever a neo-Nazi?” It’s tough, but it’s tougher to suffer through what can happen if you don’t ask that question. We learned that the hard way a few months ago, when we ran a light-hearted…
On Monday night, John Mark Karr faced the camera, wearing only slightly less eye makeup than JonBenét in full pageant regalia, and told Larry King that he was a “very private person.” What a difference a decade makes. Back in early January 1997, a week after the lifeless body of…
It was an ugly Sunday morning at the Las Vegas airport, with lines stretching for hours and a flood of overbookings after Saturday’s torrential downpour had washed away flights. The fellow at the far bar on the D concourse was holding his head and his wallet, having just shelled out…
Up in Arvada, there’s an intense interest in who will win the Nobel Peace Prize each year. That’s because PeaceJam, the international organization dedicated to linking Nobel Peace Prize winners with kids to teach them how to improve their communities, their countries, the world, is based in that ‘burb. In…
Two weeks later than originally promised, Beauprez for Governor finally unsealed its Cold Case files critical of Bill Ritter’s performance as Denver District Attorney. But in the days between the initial announcement and the actual delivery of those files, their contents took a hard turn to the right. At first,…
The electronic signs placed along Highway 285 outside of Platte Canyon High School flash the warning “No Stopping.” But even as your car keeps moving past the place where Emily Keyes was shot last Wednesday, your mind stops, fixated on the horrors of that day. Last Friday, Ellen Keyes, Emily’s…
Her name was Sonja DeVries. She was the only child of Carolyn and Van DeVries, the light of their lives. And on July 18, 2004, that light was extinguished by a drunk driver, sentencing her parents to a life of almost unbearable darkness. The driver, Ramon Romero, is serving the…
Love and marriage, love and marriage, do they really go together like a horse and carriage? Colorado congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave was a featured attraction at this past weekend’s Values Voter summit in Washington, D.C., part of a panel discussing “The Preservation of Traditional Marriage.” And when the sponsor of the…
Did he or didn’t he? When U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo stopped by the South Carolina State Museum on a swing through that state earlier this month, he delivered his standard immigration speech from a podium draped with the Confederate flag. And then, as he exited the room, some members of…
Archbishop Desmond Tutu rocked the house when he came out on stage Sunday morning. The thousands of kids gathered in Magness Arena cheered as he danced, waved the scarf that the Dalai Lama had presented him with the afternoon before, talked about how the story of Jackie Robinson inspired him…
The 1900 block of Market Street has been quiet this summer. Not quiet, in the sense that business has been bad — in fact, business along this stretch of LoDo is better than it’s been in years, with people packing the bars and restaurants and rooftop patios. No, quiet in…
On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, the founders of PeaceJam met with the Secret Service and finalized arrangements for the ten Nobel Peace Prize winners coming to town this week to announce their global Call to Action and, in rare spare moments, wondered what they’d have to do to become…
Tom Tancredo makes news wherever he goes — particularly when he’s not precisely sure where he’s going to wind up. On his swing through South Carolina this past weekend, Colorado’s controversial congressman found himself standing behind a podium draped with the Confederate battle flag, addressing the League of the South…
“This PeaceJam is amazing,” my friend said. “I was just hearing about them on Colorado Public Radio.” She’d been hearing about them from me for months — since last November, when I interviewed founders Dawn Engle and Ivan Suvanjieff, and wrote about how PeaceJam would mark its tenth anniversary by…
“I’m a conservative Republican,” Michael Brown says. “What am I doing here?” Still, on the list of tight spots where Brown, former head of FEMA, has found himself in the last year, the Westword office should rank low. For starters, there was that emergency-response photo op on September 2, 2005,…
