From the moment he flew into town early last year, Dennis Britton noticed something strange about Denver’s daily newspapers. A former editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, soon to become the Denver Post’s editor-in-chief, Britton knew all about the inexorable dynamics of newspaper wars; in the white-heat of competition, dailies often…
Paul Orosz was willing to pay for his crime. Like thousands of others who commute through Commerce City, the 33-year-old software engineer had been caught speeding by the city’s photo-radar system. “I saw a flash,” says Orosz, “and thought to myself, ‘What the hell?’ Then two weeks later I got…
Less than a year after losing the battle over Amendment 2 in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Colorado Attorney General’s office is on the cutting edge of another 1990s-style controversy, although this one has nothing to do with lawsuits. Not yet, anyway. A male lawyer with more than a decade’s…
Three years ago, while attempting to climb Mt. Everest’s treacherous north face, Mark Udall started to think about getting into the family business–politics. And after just ninety days of working at the Colorado House of Representatives, the Boulder Democrat has found his new career a bit treacherous, too. Making the…
Spanish speakers in Denver may be shocked by the impending invasion of Luscious Lulo ice cream, considering that “lulo” is slang in some Latin quarters for the female nether regions. But the dessert, made from the Latin American lulo fruit, has already made a hit on Capitol Hill and is…
A recent attempt by Denver sheriff’s deputies to remove politics from their wage negotiations resulted instead in fisticuffs between two key players, an act that has serious political repercussions all its own: City officials may now have to discipline–perhaps even fire–two deputies who are arguably among the most influential officers…
The unbearable lightness of being from Colorado: David Letterman plans to fill his studio audience with 135 Colorado residents for a special May 16 taping of his Late Show. The lucky guests will be picked at random from postcard entries, but one Coloradan need not apply: Margaret Ray, the Crawford…
On the bulletin board outside the Rockies’ clubhouse, some wit had posted a newspaper photo of Marshall Herff Applewhite, the late, lamented guru of the Heaven’s Gate cult–he of the astonished eyes. It’s astonishing, all right. As of Wednesday morning, seven games into the season, the Rox had won five…
In U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch’s courtroom, the Oklahoma City bombing trial moves as slowly as a kept secret. Lawyers from both sides ask potential jurors their views on religion, their feelings about the death penalty, their recent reading habits. So far, the runaway favorite is John Grisham’s The Runaway…
Whose Sarin Now? Regarding Patricia Calhoun’s “And Not a Drop to Drink,” her April 3 column on the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, I do not believe the government is capable of cleaning it up in a timely and cost-effective manner. I believe the effort should be aimed at protecting the groundwater…
It was muggy and gray and the skies threatened rain the afternoon Dana Garner was murdered. Her eight-year-old son, Ben, was home from school ill, and she’d hurried to see him. Peering through the windshield, the wipers going just fast enough to remove the drizzle that had been hanging in…
Everyone knows lending money to a friend can be a dicey proposition. Dicier still is extending a loan to your boss. Today Emerson Holliday lives in a motel on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Until last year, though, he was a high-level government administrator, answering only to Colorado’s secretary of…
The verdict’s in: Judging by the pace of its first day, during which only six prospective jurors were called, the Oklahoma City bombing trial has about 2,057 days to go (which also happens to be the number of credentialed journalists in town). But no matter how long the trial continues,…
Grant Ranch, a new subdivision sprouting up on the far edge of southwest Denver, has a very specific group of people in mind as potential homebuyers. “If you work for the City and County of Denver, this will hit you right where you live,” begin advertisements the developer published in…
If matters go according to Governor Roy Romer’s plan, the state Senate this week will confirm the appointments of four new representatives to Colorado’s State Board of Parole. But if two local prisoners’-advocacy groups have their way, the reshuffling of the board will be neither quick nor quiet. Concerned by…
Anti-abortion protester Ken Scott has until April 29 to convince a U.S. District Court judge why his lawsuit against Boulder abortion doctor Warren Hern shouldn’t be dismissed. And even if Scott manages to do that, he’ll find himself battling the American Civil Liberties Union, which has taken Hern’s side in…
John Yelenick was raising his family on a farm in Henderson when he had his water tested in 1985. He wasn’t looking for nerve gas. But a few years later, after the nearby Rocky Mountain Arsenal made the Environmental Protection Agency’s first Superfund list, Yelenick and the rest of the…
Nobody’s Purrfect Regarding the March 27 Off Limits: C’mon–leave Natalie alone. Pujo explained the red dress by saying she had just come from an affair (the Denver Film Society’s Academy Awards party) where that dress was appropriate. Meow! Dorsey Hudson Denver Rail Storm In Alan Prendergast’s “It’s the Rail Thing,”…
Sydney Stone, her broken right arm in a sling, pushes away her salmon salad, leans out of her chair on the patio of an upscale restaurant in Cherry Creek, and reaches for the chunk of Spicer Breeden’s skull that she has just dropped on the floor. It’s obvious that the…
Duty is skin deep: Members of grand jury panel No. 97-1 were warned to show up Tuesday at the federal courthouse at 18th and Stout streets in “casual business attire,” according to an information sheet sent out earlier this month. “Denim jeans, shorts, tee-shirts or tank tops are not appropriate,”…
The three unmarked cars eased to a stop in front of the Frasiers’ Littleton residence around dinnertime on February 27, and five men in plainclothes got out. “They said they were here for my brother, Jamie,” recalls Robert Frasier, who answered the door. “They said they were going to arrest…
Last week Richard Sharkey and Maurice Dominguez got a heater going outdoors and hoped the weather would hold, because there’s no point in working with adobe in the snow or rain: The mud never stops being mud. The elements cause enough damage after an adobe structure is complete, as is…
