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…
By June of 1998, sixteen-year-old Nathan Ybanez couldn’t take it any more. So he called his friend, seventeen-year-old Eric Jensen, to get him out of the house. And he got out, all right: In separate trials, both boys were convicted of the murder of Julie Ybanez, as detailed in Luke…
You would have thought that getting voters to approve a bond measure to build a new jail — smack in the heart of the artsy Golden Triangle, at the edge of the revived Civic Center — would have been the challenging task. But that was a breeze compared to coming…
The Colorado chapter of the Public Relations Society of America held a meet-the-press style session yesterday, as PRSA members and students played a game of musical chairs, sitting down at literal round tables for fast, fifteen-minute sessions with actual representatives of the media. Or what passes for the media these…
Dear Mexican: What is the deal with Mexican denial when it comes to dealing with child sexual abuse? I know counselors who tell me that it’s a big problem trying to get Mexican families to admit and confront this. In my own experience, I have seen my Mexican relatives be…
