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Seven years before he died, George Murray inscribed his Last Will and Testament by hand. “And it better be legal, as it comes from my heart,” he wrote, with his usual intensity. “Anyone who doubts this, I will come back after my death and haunt THEM.” The time is right…

Clearing the air is what it does best, boasts Envirotest Systems, the embattled operator of Colorado’s new auto-emissions testing program. But the Arizona-based company under fire from residents faced with long lines and higher test fees does some of its best work in smoke-filled rooms. Two years ago, before Colorado…

Snow-lo contendere: The Moffat Tunnel Commission is plenty steamed over the Winter Park Recreational Association’s efforts to put it on ice. So after the city-owned ski resort hired big-time lobbyist Pancho Hays to snow the legislature, the chairmen of the bore tapped the powerhouse legal firm of Brownstein Hyatt Farber…

The prospect that Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich will make good on threats to reduce or eliminate federal funding to the Public Broadcasting System has most PBS representatives already talking about cuts in budgets and airtime. So why has Denver’s KBDI-TV Channel 12 chosen this moment to expand its…

Supersalesman Joe Vaughn arrived on Springfield’s main street late last year determined to sell the plains town on the economic benefits of building a privately financed prison west of the Baca County fairgrounds. It was a familiar sales pitch for Vaughn, an Indiana-based promoter who has cut deals for rent-a-prisons…

Over the years, Haagen-Dazs, the luxury ice-cream maker, has earned a reputation for trying to put the chill on its competitors. In 1980 the company sued the owners of Frusen Gladje for allegedly using a copy-cat umlaut (and lost). Four years later Haagen-Dazs tried to freeze out an upstart Vermont…

Big Mac Attack I agree wholeheartedly with Patricia Calhoun’s excellent editorial on Coach Mac (“Is Nothing Sacred?,” January 18). I swear she read my mind! “The Preacher” truly is a hypocrite in every sense of the word. His criticism of people’s lifestyles needs to begin at home. Rosemary McManis Denver…

Reverend Dan “Point Me in the Direction of Albuquerque” Partridge, co-founder of the Partridge Family Temple, is seated on a platform overlooking an indoor waterfall at Casa Bonita, the Mexican restaurant/theme park that’s been Lakewood’s proudest claim to fame since 1973. Before him, enchiladas share a tabletop with several vintage…

John Frew has never held public office. But he knows how to give a politician a bloody nose–and he’s gotten a few in return. When the 38-year-old Park Hill attorney, lobbyist and political consultant was still in his twenties, he was enough of a campaign veteran to conduct a workshop…

It’s a date! “In February we will open Denver International Airport,” said Mayor Wellington Webb in a fundraising letter mailed earlier this month. That assertion, tucked into the usual campaign laundry list of good deeds, started tongues wagging that the mayor had, at long last, unofficially announced an official date…

After clashing with the Moffat Tunnel Commission over lease payments for state-owned land at the Winter Park ski resort, the Winter Park Recreational Association is backing an effort to abolish the agency. If successful, the controversial city-owned ski area could save millions of dollars in rent payments–and get its hands…

Five weeks ago, Mitchell and Candice Aronson of Evergreen filed a civil lawsuit against their neighbors, William and Dorothy “Dee” Quigley, alleging a campaign of intimidation and harassment driven by anti-Semitism. The time immediately following the legal filing was hectic. On December 7, one day after they filed their lawsuit,…

Food for Thought I agree completely with Kyle Wagner’s December 21 and January 4 Mouthing Off columns on the restaurant critics in Denver, particularly Pat Miller. Paging through Miller’s 1995 restaurant guide, I felt as if I were reading one of those cheesy hotel “Things to Do” guides, which list/promote…

Like most other serious boxers, Joe Silva has discovered that his time isn’t his own. Five evenings a week he meets his coaches at a gym in a Thornton strip mall. He stalks and feints his way through shadow boxing, first righty, then southpaw. Later, he stages furious rounds against…

The morning chill was still in the air December 14 when the news flew up and down Colfax Avenue: “Shorty’s dead. Murdered. The midget hooker is dead.” The street people knew before the media, before the coroner, before many of the cops on the beat. Another dead prostitute. But Belinda…

Is there a script doctor in the House? Credit Glenn Jones, the man behind Englewood-based Jones Intercable, with fast work in getting Newt Gingrich’s lecture series, “Renewing American Civilization,” on his Mind Extension University. Last Thursday, the same day the Speaker’s mom was whispering sour somethings to Connie Chung, Jones…

Hitting Home In response to Karen Bowers’s story on the Wahrle family situation (“A House Divided,” December 21), I would like to educate the writer on human decency. It was obvious, in my opinion, that Ms. Bowers acted as judge, jury, then God in her description of this horrible life…

Colorado’s fringe political parties have been griping for years that the state makes it unfairly difficult for them to get their candidates on the ballot. Now, many of them fear, it’s about to get even tougher. A nascent electoral-reform proposal backed by former secretary of state Natalie Meyer could drastically…

A homebuilder under grand jury investigation in Florida for leaving dozens of buyers without promised houses is now building luxury homes near the Front Range town of Evergreen, where he moved in 1993. Clyde Hoeldtke, 58, once one of the largest residential builders on the Gulf Coast of Florida, claims…