Opinion & Commentary

Standing outside the EZE Mop building on an overcast Saturday, watching the cars roll past on 17th Avenue, Stephanie Shearer tries to figure out where her story really begins. Maybe it was ten years ago, when she and her husband, Chris Dacorn, were opening Soul Haus, a men’s clothing shop…

For five decades, the EZE Mop building at the corner of 17th Avenue and Franklin actually sold mops, earning a Best of Denver award back in 2002. But a few years later, David Jurenka closed up shop and put the building on the market.It soon became one of the most…

As protesters rally around the country at Tea Parties protesting Wall Street greed and increasing government incursions into private pocketbooks (Peter Boyles is broadcasting live from the State Capitol right now on KHOW/630 AM, although the Denver protest doesn’t officially start until noon), we get the final chapter in the…

Paula Woodward’s departure from Channel 9 is not good news — except for loafing workers and, probably, Woodward herself. She deserves a break after 32 years at the station, 32 years that have seen some major changes in the television business. Woodward popped up in one of the first issues…

State Senate President Peter Groff will be heading to Washington, D.C. after this legislative session ends to take a job in the Department of Education pushing faith-based programs. But first, he’s keeping the faith that the state’s $17.9 billion budget bill will be approved by the Senate today. The most…

Denver District Court Judge Larry Naves has yet to rule on whether the University of Colorado must give Ward Churchill his job back or pay to make him go away. But CU has already promised that it will “vigorously challenge” any effort by Churchill to rejoin the faculty. “Vigorously challenge”?…

Pinnacol Assurance gets a glowing endorsement in today’s Denver Post from former Governor Bill Owens, who notes that “in 2002, I signed a law requiring Pinnacol Assurance to operate like a business, meaning its liabilities would not be the state’s responsibility, while its assets were specifically protected from seizure by…

An hour after getting all the appropriate permits, the long-awaited Houston’s finally opened this past weekend at 303 Josephine Street. This sibling of the Cherry Creek Grill and other restaurants in the Hillstone chain has an expansive, sleek dining room and an inexplicable eleven seats at the bar. Eleven seats?…

“In this country, we have to let every child — it doesn’t matter if they are documented or undocumented — live the American dream and have a chance to go to college,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said yesterday on a tour of Bruce Randolph School with Michael Bennet, the…

A strong, independent streak runs through Colorado politics, a vein of common sense that cuts across party lines — and leads straight to Ari Armstrong, the creator of FreeColorado.com, and a man always ready to smack down political correctness. When Independence Institute head Jon Caldara was slapped for saying “bitch…

The pert young anchor turned to the avuncular weathercaster. “So,” she said. “What happened to that eight big inches you promised me last night?” The inches have changed over the years — to ten, to twelve — as the story takes on all the trappings of an urban legend, but…

I caught the Ward Churchill verdict from a thousand miles away, on the nightly news shows. And after all the local hand-wringing about how young these jurors were, it sounds like they got some things right. In its response to any complaints about Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado has…

The Lab at Belmar (for now, before the Lab moves to the Museum of Contemporary Art later this month) tonight hosts “Bitch! The History and Politics of a Word,” part of the Feminism & Co. series. You can read about all the theory behind the program in our Night &…

At 6 p.m. tonight, Denver gets to see the first episode in what’s being billed as a “very special two-part Divorce Court.” Through the mysteries of TV programming, I’m watching it right now in Tucson. And Judge Lynn Toler isn’t giving “the former reverend” Ted Haggard and his wife of…

Don’t forget: Today, Ted Haggard and his wife, Gayle, appear on Divorce Court, to discuss how revelations of Haggard’s extra-curricular (and intra-sex) activities affected the marriage. On the show, the disgraced former New Life pastor says he wanted his wife to divorce him, but she refused, even though he said…

It’s official: Hillary Clinton yesterday confirmed that the Obama administration is no longer fighting a “War on Terror” in its battle against al-Qaeda and militant Islam. So are those prisoners still incarcerated in Gitmo considered “terrorists”? Some of those prisoners could soon be living at Supermax, the federal prison at…

You auto know better: In advance of the Denver Auto Show, which revs up in the Colorado Convention Center April 1 through April 5, the Metro Denver Automobile Dealers Association is hosting the second annual Rocky Mountain Auto Summit today, covering everything from technology to financing to green developments. The…

Danger! Danger! No one has driven down my street since I arrived home late last night (after carousing through a close-to-empty downtown last night). There’s no telling when, if ever, the newspaper will arrive. Maybe tomorrow, when the temperature returns to fifty degrees. I am looking at the foot of…

David Lane presented his last witness in Denver District Court yesterday — Ward Churchill’s wife, Natsu Taylor Saito — and the University of Colorado lawyers started delivering their defense. But if you happened to tune into The O’Reilly Factor on Tuesday, the day Churchill finished his testimony, it’s all over…

Yesterday morning, before heading to the office to finish up the Best of Denver 2009, our 25th anniversary celebration of this city, our annual orgy of niceness, I stopped for a moment at my favorite spot in Denver. Denver got its start at the confluence of the South Platte River…