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Some people just can’t face the prospect of former senator Bill Armstrong getting an honorary degree from the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs on May 19. So they plan to turn their backs on him. While Armstrong receives his doctorate in “humane letters” at the urging of CU president…

Clara Munoz has finally gone home. Last week she boarded an Immigration and Naturalization Service bus bound for El Paso, Texas. Once there, INS agents watched as she and other passengers walked across the bridge into Mexico. At that point, Munoz and her compatriots became the responsibility–and headache–of the Mexican…

“This is my home bar,” Joe Canavan says as he looks down into his bourbon and water. “I’ve been bitching about how uncomfortable these stools are since 1946. That’s when I heard about this place. I was working across the street from here, and we heard they’d opened a bar,…

Cherchez la femme: Nope, Denver’s never had a mayor named Mary–as was readily apparent reading between the lines of the two dailies last week. For example, although the city has seen plenty of mayoral candidates in heavy pancake makeup, Mary DeGroot’s lipstick is a first–as was Denver Post reporter Tracy…

Representative Pat Schroeder, who’s still irked by Newt Gingrich’s recent remarks that women are unfit for combat, just may get the chance to prove him wrong. But it’s coming at a price. The Army is currently paying forty civilian women $500 each to subject themselves to a six-month regimen of…

The Ball’s in Your Court Regarding Patricia Calhoun’s column “Court Time,” in the May 3 issue: I have a suggestion for all those rich folks who have nothing better to do with their time (and money) than sue each other: Get a five-dollar annual pass to the City of Denver’s…

Anyone contemplating renting out a room in a residence that’s not up to code might want to consider this: Apart from gang members and assorted dime-store hoods, the fastest-growing segment of Denver’s heat-packing population is the city’s Department of Zoning Administration. In fact, every single one of the concealed-gun permits…

Westword staffers took home seven first-place newspaper writing awards at the Society of Professional Journalists’ annual state awards banquet last Friday–more than any of the state’s three major dailies. Sports and film columnist Bill Gallo led the way with first-place finishes in sports commentary and arts and entertainment criticism. Staff…

At first, Tony Behrendt’s room in the lower level of his parents’ posh Boulder home seems like a typical college-student hovel–it’s dominated by an unkempt bed, stacks of CDs, and posters and photos plastered on virtually every flat surface. Take a closer look at those pictures, however, and you’ll realize…

Two faux-tiger-skin coats, one beehive hairdo and ten pairs of uncomfortable pumps have already passed beneath the giant cat-face sign and tiki torches of the Kit Kat Club. “We told them to please look nice,” says Darryl Stubbs. “Well, and they do look nice. But I’m all nerves. There should…

Is that a gun in Dr. Norm Resnick’s pocket? Yes, and he’s not glad to see you. The beleaguered radio talk-show host on the USA Patriot Network can’t really say who would shoot him, but he has been packing double heat since the April 19 bombing of the federal building…

Imagine that you have a good idea, perhaps even a great idea, for a product that might help humanity–and, of course, make some money along the way. So you start your company and a few years later raise hundreds of millions of dollars by selling stock to the public. Years…

History in the taking: Remember when the Denver Urban Renewal Authority declared much of lower downtown “blighted” just two short years ago? For that matter, remember when “historic” LoDo actually looked historic, rather than like a brick version of Glendale circa 1977, with a big mess of bars and, well,…

Harry MacLean’s vindication arrived on April 4 from San Francisco–a federal district judge overturned the 1990 conviction of George Franklin, who’d been found guilty of a twenty-year-old murder based solely on his daughter’s recovered memory. The judge ruled that Franklin had not received a fair trial. That’s something MacLean, a…

It’s been more than two years since little Alexis Storkson witnessed the murders of her half-sister, her mother and the man she knew as her father. Now seven, she’s been at the center of a cross-country custody battle for almost as long (“Little Girl Lost,” October 12, 1994). Thanks to…

Mayor Wellington Webb’s administration is poised to give the Winter Park Recreational Association unprecedented control over development at the city-owned mountain resort–including handing over clear title to ninety acres of land that now belong to Denver taxpayers. But top administration officials admit they know almost nothing about the one development…

Sludge Match Regarding Richard Fleming’s April 19 article, “Don’t Spread on Me,” on the dispute between the City of Boulder and the Somerset housing development over the spreading of sludge bio-waste on rural land: I hope that the residents of Somerset each have their own septic systems and drainage fields…

Just nine months ago, it seemed, King Harris could do no wrong. After the politically connected businessman had already won almost $20 million worth of work at Denver International Airport, the City of Denver went ahead and awarded him almost $2 million more in additional airport contracts last summer. But…

Mary P.’s kids think it’s a pager. And at the community newspaper in metro Denver where she works as an assistant to the publisher, they kid her about how it complements her clothes. At this point, she thinks of it as her “buddy” and says, “It’s with me night and…

With the city’s attention riveted on this year’s high-profile race for mayor, few are paying any heed to the five candidates vying for the auditor’s job. The campaign, however, isn’t the dull-as-dishwater affair it may appear to be on the surface. In fact, while nobody was looking, it got downright…