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When Philip Morris tells a politician it wants to make a contribution, it’s not just blowing smoke. A recent Los Angeles Times report pegs the maker of Marlboro cigarettes as the single largest contributor to politicians. And, according to a pile of internal Philip Morris documents obtained by Westword, Coloradans…

It was a gay activist’s dream come true: Will Perkins, leader of the anti-gay-rights Amendment 2 campaign, being arrested in the middle of a speech, handcuffed and hustled off stage for speaking ill of homosexuals. Well, dream on. Perkins himself staged the “arrest” during an appearance in late August at…

He could never forget his daughter, but six years after her death, Frank Baley was getting on with his life. Then a Boulder police officer called, and the pain cut deep once again. Detective Thomas Wickman wanted to reopen the file on Susan Baley, who’d died in Boulder in 1982…

The Martian Chronicles In response to Steve Jackson’s “Mars or Bust,” in the September 18 issue, without sounding Amish or like a Luddite, I would like to say the following: Has it occurred to anyone that the exploration of our solar system without a code of ethics that respects The…

The last time Denver super-developer-turned-S&L-deadbeat Bill Walters was heard from, he was lying low in his wife’s California condo, ducking calls from the press and hoping not to hear a knock on the door from the G-men assigned to mop up the nation’s thrift crisis. Walters had a lot to…

Prisoner No. 21-052-013 walks stiffly into a small meeting room at the federal prison in Jefferson County. John Gable’s jet-black hair is slicked back and neatly combed, belying his 69 years. He has the solid build and resolute gaze of a Kansas farmer, the life he was born to, but…

After more than a year of living on the streets of Denver, time was running out for Michael Allen Wells. The 29-year-old drifter may have sensed something bad heading his way when he called his mother in a state of near-panic, jabbering about a dead girl and two “bad guys.”…

Keeping a breast of the news: John Elway has a nipple ring! Monday’s revelation was the Denver Post’s biggest scoop in months, uncovered when Elway’s towel slipped and a nosy reporter started asking questions. “That’s not anybody’s business,” replied the quarterback-cum-car-peddler. “But if you have to know, it was a…

When cabbies started complaining at Denver International Airport this summer, it was strictly from hunger. Something was rotten at DIA’s ground-transportation area, they said, and all too often it was the food in the vending machines–not to mention the contract that had awarded the concession. “You have to understand–this is…

The only thing standing between Paul Fox and his seven-year quest to open a topless club is a mobile home parked across the street from his property. Last week the Adams County Board of Adjustments upheld a previous ruling that determined that Fox’s property at 6000 Pecos failed to meet…

Gary Davis was ready to die in 1990. Mark Thomas had just come to town as the director of the Colorado Press Association when he got a call from the Colorado Department of Corrections. Davis, convicted in 1987 of the brutal rape and murder of Virginia May, was suspending any…

I Think I Cayenne Kenny Be’s detailed rendition of the rampaging squirrels (Worst-Case Scenario, September 11) is painfully similar to my backyard. I agree–we should be compensated for the loss of our tomatoes, sunflowers, etc., though there is little enough left after the hailstorm. Kenny, here is a hip tip…

“Yes! Yes!” Robert Zubrin smacks a fist into his open hand as he hunches over a graph showing several spikes. He points to the tallest. “Methane,” he shouts gleefully. Zubrin trots back across the lab to a plumber’s twisted nightmare of convoluted tubes, condensers and gauges wired to a board…

Denver’s first 1,000-room hotel, the expanded Adam’s Mark, is supposed to help revitalize the upper end of downtown and make Denver a major convention destination. But those who are first in line to reap the financial benefits of the publicly subsidized project–the subcontractors who actually did the work–claim they’re being…

The rest is history: Central City residents have been having a good laugh over all the bad press that Black Hawk, their affluent neighbor downstream, has collected with its proposal to move the truly historic Lace House to a fake “historic village” in order to expand casino parking. But the…

A long-running dispute between former Longs Peak ranger Jim Detterline and his bosses at Rocky Mountain National Park has taken another turn into pettiness: Detterline and a party of world-famous climbers, including best-selling author John Krakauer, were denied use of a mountain cabin this summer by park officials. Detterline, known…

Nearly two years after it began, a federal lawsuit filed by a Denver police captain against Mayor Wellington Webb and other city officials has been all but buried in a blizzard of paperwork and legal maneuvering, with no end in sight. The suit, which alleges sexual discrimination and political retaliation…

The Egos Have Landed Until Patricia Calhoun’s “The Princess and the Peons,” in the September 11 issue, it looked like you’d lost interest in the Ramsey case. Too bad. I was hoping you could shed some light on the weird dance being performed by the police and the DA. Is…

The war between the sexes takes no prisoners–except children, who often earn their purple hearts during custody battles. Even after Anthony Roszel won the court fight to be named custodial parent of his daughter (won it twice, in fact), the war with his ex-wife, Keleigh Kasteile, wasn’t over. Not by…

Down the tree-lined streets of the Hill in Boulder, where many of the University of Colorado’s fraternities are located, you can see the signs of an uneasy cease-fire in the booze war between CU frat boys and Boulder police. In the quiet blocks around the Greek houses, people walk their…