As reported in this space on Friday, a new study from Common Cause tracks how oil and gas interests spent $747 million on lobbying and campaign donations since 2001 to win congressional support for “fracking,” hydraulic fracturing drilling methods that involve using toxic chemicals. Which may be why the House…
As the oil and gas industry has turned increasingly to hydraulic fracturing to extract reserves, fears about groundwater contamination from the toxic chemicals used in “fracking” have intensified. And that’s prompted a $747 million spending spree by major industry players in an effort to allay those fears and influence key…
The Bureau of Land Management’s efforts to remove thousands of wild horses from public lands — supposedly for their own good — has generated outrage among mustang advocates across the country, as well as numerous YouTube glimpses of the brutality of the roundups. Now a documentary having its Denver premiere…
It’s distressing to learn that the good folks of Bent County are shelling out thousands of dollars a month to lobbyists in an effort to “repurpose” the decrepit, soon-to-be-shuttered state prison at Fort Lyon. After all, we suggested five amazingly practical new uses for the old place months ago, and…
A federal judge has ruled that Darrell Havens can proceed with his lawsuit against the Arvada police officer who shot him during a car-theft sting operation in 2007, leaving him a quadriplegic. The decision has Havens’ attorneys poised to conduct a fresh investigation of the controversial case, in which they…
Former Adams County Coroner James Hibbard was term-limited out of a job last year, but folks in that county are still paying for the strange way he ran his office. County officials have agreed to shell out $650,000 to settle claims by a forensic pathologist who claimed Hibbard retaliated against…
In the long struggle by southern Colorado residents opposing expansion of the Army’s Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site, one of the most striking aspects of the story has been the broad range of support for that effort, which has united local ranchers, environmentalists, preservationists, business interests, lawmakers and others. That’s one…
What is it about Paonia? That scenic, green-leaning Western Slope haven of old hippies, envirojournalists and organic gardeners has produced yet another grim work of post-apocalyptic, steampunk sci-fi, set in a near-future devastated by climate change, genetically engineered plagues and humanity’s boundless capacity for betrayal and debasement. The book is…
Yesterday, after three years, more than 80,000 public comments, and countless hours reviewing ponderous economic and environmental issues — in other words, pretty speedy for government work — Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar unveiled the Obama administration’s slimmed-down plan touting “solar energy zones” spanning seventeen sites in six western…
In the classic 1967 drama The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s character is offered one word, just one word of advice from an avuncular businessman: plastics. “There’s a great future in plastics,” the man whispers. But that future is pretty much past in the Roaring Fork Valley — which, town by town,…
One of the most basic principles of the American legal system is the guarantee that what you tell the attorney representing you is confidential and can’t be disclosed without your permission. That’s an absolute. Unless, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled this week, you happen to be a vulnerable child in…
Criminals aren’t terribly skilled at performing a cost-benefit analysis before embarking on their disastrous ventures, which they usually end up describing as “bad choices, Your Honor.” That’s all the more reason judges, lawmakers, prison officials and others in the justice system ought to think more like economists, according to a…
This week’s cover story, “The Victim Lobby,” delves into the growing power of the victim rights movement and the sometimes clashing agendas of groups within that movement. But there’s one issue crime victim advocates strongly agree about: The pile-up of unsolved homicides over the past few decades is alarming –…
This week’s cover story, “The Victim Lobby,” examines the victim rights movement in Colorado — its remarkable growth and accomplishments, as well as the controversy over who truly “speaks” for victims in court or in the legislature. But few in high places speak as powerfully, or as knowledgeably, about the…
A few years back, reporting on a convention of prison officials and vendors who supplied them with everything from stab-proof vests to suicide-proof toilets, I noted that America’s spending on the corrections industry had reached $40 billion a year. According to two new documentaries worth checking out, that figure has…
The long-awaited, much-debated Bureau of Land Management plan for oil-and-gas drilling on public lands in northwest Colorado has something in it to annoy everybody. In other words, it’s the kind of classic, middle-of-the-road, concessions-to-all-sides-and-favoritism-toward-none compromise we’ve come to expect from the Department of the Interior under Secretary Ken Salazar –…
Newly elected as a state representative, Pete Lee hit the Capitol last January fired up with big ideas. The biggest of them all was the restorative-justice bill he introduced shortly after the session began. A concept borrowed from Native American traditions and other cultures, restorative justice offers an alternative to…
So one day you’re just a typical aircraft mechanic and engineering student who loves young women in tank tops and being outdoors — flying, hiking, camping, mountain biking — and the next you’re officially Colorado’s most eligible bachelor, according to the boy-crazy editors of Cosmopolitan, and in a race against…
One of the guilty pleasures here at the Crime & Punishment Desk is occasionally visiting the madness on display at The Real Colorado Department of Corrections, an anonymous blog by someone calling himself Thomas Paine. Mr. Paine apparently worked for DOC long enough to acquire a vast trove of unintentionally…
In an affidavit filed in federal court, a veteran cop turned high-profile private investigator claims that an Arvada police officer who fired on an unarmed suspect during a car-theft sting operation in 2007, leaving the man a quadriplegic, was not justified in the use of deadly force — and that…
John Williams would have relished the irony. The University of Denver professor’s astonishing novel Stoner landed with a thud when it was first published in 1965. Forty-six years later, and seventeen years after Williams himself died at the age of 71, the book is being hailed as a masterpiece –…
Any way you slice it, the very, very, very strained relationship between Douglas County Coroner Lora Thomas and Sheriff Dave Weaver can’t be good for homicide investigations in the county. Both sides have accused the other of interfering with and jeopardizing their work, and now a backer of the sheriff…
