Hurricane season is about to hit, but Washington, D.C., is still flooded with backwash from Hurricane Katrina. Last week, the Center for Public Integrity released 928 pages of e-mail messages to and from former FEMA head (and current Coloradan) Michael Brown. The e-mails, which the center received seven months after…
From zero to hero. Just a couple of weeks ago, Joe Nacchio’s lawyer was in federal court, arguing that his client’s upcoming trial must be moved, because the former Qwest CEO is one of “the most reviled figures in Denver history” and could never get a fair trial here. But…
Sure, this city’s great at handling 75,000 protesters. But toss it a hundred kids on bikes, and things go to hell. Late in the afternoon on the last Friday of every month, bicyclists in 400 cities around the world gather for Critical Mass, a community bike ride that’s taken off…
Tourism boosters kick off the summer season at a rally today at the State Capitol. And what a season it should be: Come July 1, the state’s annual tourism budget will increase from $5 million to $20 million (pending final legislative approval). But at the same time those boosters tout…
You don’t find green chile in Mexico — but here in Denver, it’s the signature dish at most Mexican restaurants, a sauce/soup/stew of green chiles (always) and tomatoes (sometimes) and onions (sometimes) and pork (sometimes). Order green chile in Puerto Vallarta, or Phoenix, or Cheyenne, and you get a side…
Denver’s about to get The Real World, but four years ago we had a shot at getting a much bigger piece of a world that was — and remains — all too painfully real. “In the name of Allah,” began the 29-page, handwritten pleading filed in U.S. District Court for…
Some day in 2008, you’ll be able to stand on top of the 33-story Ameristar Casino in Black Hawk (right by the pool) and have a clear view of the gold fields that gave birth to Colorado’s past. The future looks cloudier. At last Thursday’s ceremony unveiling Ameristar’s big plans,…
Quick! Call a lawyer! Student Jason Sharman is still several years away from achieving that status, but as the president of the University of Colorado at Denver Pre-Law Society, he’s already getting a pretty good education in the Law of Unintended Consequences. Or maybe CU really intended for events like…
After months of testimony and weeks of deliberation, the ten jurors considering the case of Merilyn Cook, et al., vs. Rockwell International Corporation and the Dow Chemical Company had finally reached a verdict. But before it was revealed, U.S. District Judge John Kane had a few words to say. “Through…
If a picture is truly worth a thousand words, I should simply have snapped a photo outside of Zengo on Monday night. Inside, the restaurant was turning a record number of tables — all thanks to Denver Restaurant Week, the promotion that runs through March 3 and is packing the…
At least Home Depot didn’t accuse Bob Dougherty of shoplifting. Michael Panorelli, a carpenter in Massachusetts, was buying lumber at a local Home Depot. His client handed him a pencil to do some calculations, which Panorelli subsequently pocketed. He didn’t realized his mistake until a Home Depot worker caught up…
“Mind if I smoke?” asks Frank Rich, Denver’s drunken ambassador. Who could mind? We’re sitting in Club 404, a 53-year-old bar in the heart of Denver, a town that’s suddenly turned into America’s new-age sin city, a place where vice is very nice — if, in fact, it qualifies as…
Back when Ivan Suvanjieff was a society columnist for exactly 87 days, Cherry Hills matrons “would rub their fake boobs on my arm,” he remembers. Today he’s rubbing shoulders with Nobel Peace Prize winners — “the Nobels,” he and partner Dawn Engle call them. As in, “The Nobels told us…
The lights dimmed, and there on the screen at the front of the room was a sight as obscene as anything that’s ever hit Judge John Kane’s court: the towering incinerator of Building 771 at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant. Glowing. To FBI agent Jon Lipsky, who’d been investigating…
Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years. By that count, the sixteen years these plaintiffs had waited for their day in court was just a drop in the leaky bucket. But by Tuesday morning, when opening arguments finally got under way in the class-action suit of about 12,000 property owners…
Pancho Villa if you don’t like this country You’re gonna stop here We don’t need your beans We don’t need your beer… While three Colorado lawmakers tour the Arizona border with the Minutemen, shooting off their mouths — but not their guns, not yet — about introducing legislation next session…
The savings of the poor are made little by little; they come out of that broken, fragmentary condition of humanity to helpfulness and self-respect. — Reverend Oscar McCullough, 1890 Denver City Council was packed Monday night, overflowing with supporters of the city’s 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness, a proposal that…
Like its commander in chief, the Air Force Academy has weathered some rough times lately. Last Thursday it hosted the world premiere of Jewel of the Rockies: The U.S. Air Force Academy’s First 50 Years, a Rocky Mountain PBS film that airs at 9 p.m. September 19. Producer Trux Simmons,…
No question, Kumbe Ginnane lied. At least twice. He lied when University of Colorado cops, and then the Boulder District Attorney’s Office, asked if he’d had sexual contact with a coed on October 19, 1990. No, he said then, he hadn’t had sex of any kind with her. He told…
I was feeling safer already. The demonstrators who’d gathered on the plaza outside of the Central Library at high noon on Monday were waving the flag and protesting a collection of novellas, not because the comic books were in Spanish — oh, no — but because they were pornographic, depicting…
One day last week, a construction crew building a behemoth in the 400 block of South Franklin Street fired up shortly after 6 a.m. According to city rules, they’re not supposed to start work until 7 a.m. — but when “Housing Goes Frothy to Flat in the Denver Area,” as…
At nineteen, Sonja DeVries had her life mapped out. She was going to go to college, become a psychologist, work with children, have children. The future looked blindingly bright. Last July 18, Sonja enjoyed a belated birthday celebration with co-workers, then put her party hat on the front seat of…
