You might think that the departure of a rising star among state Democrats would be a bigger deal than this Post story suggests, but state representative Kathleen Curry and party leaders seem eager to downplay Curry’s decision to change her voter registration from Dem to unaffiliated. The move will strip…
Last time I checked, Aspen was still nominally associated with the rest of Colorado. But its legal system sometimes has about as much to do with what happens elsewhere in the state as, well, the microstate of Liechtenstein has to do with Madagascar–not much. And that’s plenty of reason for…
It wouldn’t be the holiday season without the annual appeal from John Ramsey for help solving the 1996 murder of his six-year-old daughter, JonBenét. Check out the latest announcement on his Fair Justice Foundation website and this video. Ramsey is asking “everyone to examine their consciences” and to “share any…
Most people just go along to get along. But every once in a while a hellacious disagreement — about principle, turf, money, or who cut the cheese — makes for an old-fashioned Western display of rootin’-tootin’ feudin’ and cussedness. The most memorable Colorado showdowns of the past ten years involved…
Meet Guido. He is quite possibly the luckiest dog in all of Adams County — because of all the costly and peculiar gifts people lavish on their pets this time of year, Guido got the best one of all. A pacemaker…
Corrections officers aren’t supposed to brutalize the inmates in their custody, but they’re not encouraged to be too fond of them, either. The system frowns on “inappropriate relationships” between staff and prisoners — and such dangerous sexual liaisons tend to lead to explosive scandals, like this one and this one…
The campaign to construct a wildlife bridge over I-70 near West Vail Pass got a major boost this week when the site was selected as the focus for a new, international design competition of wildlife crossing structures. Long identified as a problem area for wildlife migration, the traffic-heavy pass was…
Victor Arnold Gabler talks fast. Faster than a play-by-play announcer or a cattle auctioneer. Faster than John “Mighty Mouth” Moschitta, the rapid-fire executive talker in the old Federal Express ads. Gabler talks the way Moschitta might after a thermos of espresso and a snootful of crystal meth. There’s a frantic…
Weeks before a scheduled government roundup of 2,500 wild mustangs in Nevada, horse advocates are bringing out the big guns in an effort to stop or delay the operation. They’re filing lawsuits and staging protests, bringing in scientists and animal welfare experts to decry this assault on one of the…
In the battle over resentencing Edward Montour Jr., an inmate who faces possible execution for the 2002 murder of a corrections officer at the Limon prison, defense attorney David Lane has accused the death-penalty team of prosecutors in the office of Eighteenth Judicial District Attorney Carol Chambers of wanting to…
Sean Harrington, the do-it-yourself litigator behind the contentious website KnowYourCourts, has been a relentless scourge of judicial excess and abusive attorneys in Colorado, whether battling his own custody issues in family court, commenting on the exploits of former judge Edward “Naughty” Nottingham or following Mark Brennan’s battle with the Office…
How odd, yet oddly fitting, that this week two of the state’s most dogged and outspoken government critics won key victories in separate courtrooms within hours of each other. Call it a blow for… outspokenness. Down in Colorado Springs, the perpetually cranky Douglas Bruce has prevailed in his quest to…
Finding the right map for the trip at hand has always posed certain hard choices. Do you go for one heavy on the topography contours, or one with legible road numbers? Hydrographic features or better trail markings? In one of the more practical developments to emerge from Washington, the U.S…
Last week, we reported on the bludgeoning death of inmate Ronald Ferguson, a convicted child molester, at the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility outside of Canon City. A fifty-year-old habitual offender serving time for kidnapping and sexual assault on a child, Ferguson was struck repeatedly in the head with a metal…
When a state disciplinary judge suspended Mark Brennan’s license to practice law for a year, finding that he intentionally engaged in “obstreperous behavior” in winning a $1.2 million federal verdict against the City of Denver, one requirement for reinstatement was that Brennan submit to an independent medical evaluation. The combative…
To call David Quammen a nature writer seems somehow inadequate. Yes, he’s a whiz at crafting crisp, clear prose about the secret world of spoonworms and busting popular myths about dinosaurs and all that, but his essays go well beyond the usual Discovery Channel enthusiasms. His inquiries into man’s relationship…
The guy was in front of my house for maybe thirty seconds. He rooted around in the blue cart, emerged with a couple of metal cans — not even high-grade aluminum — and tossed them in the back of his battered hatchback. Then he was on to the next cart,…
We’ll leave it to the shrinks and pundits to try to figure out which Broncos team is going to show up in Kansas City next week. Will it be the upstarts who shocked just about everybody for six games? The head cases who fell flat against the Redskins and were…
You just can’t please some people, especially if you happen to be the Secretary of the Interior. Sure, the job has some neat perks–all those trips to national parks and press conferences at glaciers and other cool stuff. But there’s no way to manage what amounts to one-fifth of the…
Lockup, MSNBC’s voyeuristic peek at life inside America’s nastiest prisons, launched its new season Saturday (*corrected) night with some cell floodings and tough talk by thick-necked inmates at Colorado’s own Limon Correctional Facility. This season (titled “Extended Stay: Colorado”) will focus on Limon, a simmering high-security hoosegow that houses close…
To the uninitiated, managing a feral colony may sound like something that slightly demented cat fanciers do in the privacy of their own homes — until animal-control officers show up to haul away scores of starving and diseased critters. But there’s a world of difference between the two. A managed…
Kristin Des Marais crouches in the damp and shines a flashlight into the vast crawl space beneath the apartment building. The light sweeps across rocks and mounds of dirt, the glint of an empty tin can, a flash of tail. Eyes glare back, glittering and metallic, then disappear. A light,…
