Opinion & Commentary

Don’t forget: Today, Ted Haggard and his wife, Gayle, appear on Divorce Court, to discuss how revelations of Haggard’s extra-curricular (and intra-sex) activities affected the marriage. On the show, the disgraced former New Life pastor says he wanted his wife to divorce him, but she refused, even though he said…

It’s official: Hillary Clinton yesterday confirmed that the Obama administration is no longer fighting a “War on Terror” in its battle against al-Qaeda and militant Islam. So are those prisoners still incarcerated in Gitmo considered “terrorists”? Some of those prisoners could soon be living at Supermax, the federal prison at…

You auto know better: In advance of the Denver Auto Show, which revs up in the Colorado Convention Center April 1 through April 5, the Metro Denver Automobile Dealers Association is hosting the second annual Rocky Mountain Auto Summit today, covering everything from technology to financing to green developments. The…

Danger! Danger! No one has driven down my street since I arrived home late last night (after carousing through a close-to-empty downtown last night). There’s no telling when, if ever, the newspaper will arrive. Maybe tomorrow, when the temperature returns to fifty degrees. I am looking at the foot of…

David Lane presented his last witness in Denver District Court yesterday — Ward Churchill’s wife, Natsu Taylor Saito — and the University of Colorado lawyers started delivering their defense. But if you happened to tune into The O’Reilly Factor on Tuesday, the day Churchill finished his testimony, it’s all over…

Yesterday morning, before heading to the office to finish up the Best of Denver 2009, our 25th anniversary celebration of this city, our annual orgy of niceness, I stopped for a moment at my favorite spot in Denver. Denver got its start at the confluence of the South Platte River…

There have been other school shootings in the ten years since Columbine, horror scenes with even bigger body counts. But for some reason, Columbine is the crime that resonates; “Columbine” is the word that keeps getting repeated in the tales of similar plots — some carried out, some foiled. It…

Barack Obama spilled way past 60 Minutes talking about the economy last night, and there’s still plenty of talk to come. Trump University is in session, offering four days of classes on how you can “make a fortune” in real estate; today’s are at 1 and 6 p.m. at the…

You don’t need a calendar to know that it’s just one month until the tenth anniversary of the shootings at Columbine. You can tell by the flood of programs, movies and books pouring out. The day-long “Colorado Rising: A Columbine Update,” sponsored by School Safety Partners, kicks off at 9…

“This is part of Ted’s journey,” Gayle Haggard told a reporter. “It’s made him a better man. I see what has happened as a divine rescue.” Of the Haggards’ bank account, if nothing else. Three years ago Ted Haggard, then pastor of the New Life Church and head of the…

Even as Jason Wren’s family was mourning the Littleton freshman’s tragic death at a Kansas frat house, Leslie Lanahan, the mother of Lynn “Gordie” Bailey, a pledge who was found literally dead-drunk in the the Chi Psi fraternity house in Boulder in 2004, agreed to settle her lawsuit against the…

Even in a state full of stunning scenery, many of Colorado’s most remarkable sights are man-made. A castle made out of stuff in southern Colorado. A tower filled with stuff out on the plains in Genoa. And north in Tinmath, just off I-25 by Fort Collins, the Swetsville Zoo, a…

News is busting out all over today — and not just in Denver District Judge Larry Naves’s courtroom, where Ward Churchill may take the stand in his case against the University of Colorado, now starting week two. Or on the Auraria campus, where veteran newshounds of the Rocky Mountain News…

Joe Nacchio isn’t the only one going to jail. Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Marcia Krieger denied Nacchio’s request to remain out on bail pending a petition of his conviction to the Supreme Court. The former Qwest CEO, who ran a Denver-based company but kept his home in New Jersey, has…

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…

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…