You're an honest, trustworthy and ethical person and employee. So wha about that handful of paper clips/push pins/ballpoints that happen to find their way home from the office?
A survey by Spherion Corp., a recruiting and staffing firm, said nearly one in five office workers took office supplies for their personal use and only 21 percent of them felt guilty about it.
The sordid tragedy of Chris Benoit's murder of his wife and young son and subsequent suicidetook another bizarre turn Friday when a poster to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia apologized for posting information that Benoit's wife was dead 14 hours before her body was discovered.
Investigators had not discovered the bodies Monday when someone altered Benoit's Wikipedia entry to mention his wife's death, authorities said.
The failed immigration bill, combined with tough state sanctions against hiring illegal workers, will make it more difficult for Colorado employers to fill jobs in tourism, agriculture and food service, say the businesses.
Joanne Kelley reports local employers say the doomed immigration compromise forces them to keep working within a system badly in need of a major overhaul, which now likely won't happen until after the 2008 presidential election.
"There's already a terrible labor shortage," said Mike Gilsdorf, president of Colorado Employers for Immigration Reform. "We've just got to fight through it." Gilsdorf predicted overtime costs will rise sharply as businesses try to deal with a tight supply of people to fill certain jobs.
If you don't buy an iPhone today - at the very least over the weekend - you are a shameful excuse for an American. If you're not in line right now, drop whatever you're doing and go get in line RIGHT NOW. Otherwise your family, friends and co-workers will shun you as a failure. If your phone rings this weekend and it's not an iPhone you run the risk of being deported.
So maybe we've quaffed just a bit too much of iPhone Kool-Aid, which is at the center of a marketing blitz that's aiming to convince every American that if you don't have an iPhone by the Fourth of July, the terrorists win.
Coloradans, especially teenagers, are queing up to pay $499 plus service contracts of at least $59.99 per month, reports Jeff Smith. More than a dozen were waiting Thursday at the Apple store at Aspen Grove in Littleton.
The proposed compromise on immigration bill was sent packing to political purgatory Thursday when the Senate slammed the door on a key procedural vote.
The bill's supporters fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to limit debate and clear the way for final passage of the legislation, which critics assailed as offering amnesty to illegal immigrants. The vote was 46 to 53 in favor of limiting the debate.
M.E. Sprengelmeyer wonders in his Back Roads to the White House blog what impact the vote will have on the 2008 Presidential contenders.
Feeling a little less elbow room lately? Think your neighbors are too close?
You're probably right - or perhaps moderately paranoid. At any rate, Denver is growing, Aurora busted the 300,000 population mark and the corridor north of Denver is the fastest-growing region in the state.
The Census Bureau showed Denver grew by 8,300 residents, a 1.5 percent bump, to about 567,000 people, reports Burt Hubbard.
"Denver is definitely changing on us," state demographer Elizabeth Garner said. "A lot more people are sticking with the city, instead of leaving."
Perhaps the timing wasn't the best. Nestled amid headlines reporting double-digit tuition increases at the University of Colorado comes word that students paid $160,000 to hear former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.
For that kind of money CU could have paid four years of tuition/fees for a defensive tackle AND a running back.
The amount came as a surprise to several CU regents when it jumped out of a list of speakers and fees from the past school year, reports Berny Morson.
Annan was far ahead of the second-highest-paid speaker, liberal historian and activist Howard Zinn, who received $15,500.
A co-worker said she cried all the way home after dropping off her only child at the University of Colorado for freshman orientation.
And that was the day before the news of the big tuition hike hit. Empy Nest meet Empy Wallet.
Berny Morson reports:
State lawmakers warned Tuesday that middle-class Coloradans will continue to pay higher tuition in coming years as the state searches for ways to fund colleges and universities.The legislature's lean support has left CU and other colleges little options but to raise tuition and fees to cover their rising costs.
Michael Bethel is flanked by his attorney, Michael Lowe, and his wife, Tammy.
Michael and Tammy Bethel have been married for about 20 years which would seem to make them pretty good role models for committment. He's committed to having sex only with her. She's committed to having sex with anybody as long as she tells him about it.
OK, so much for global warming and carbon emissions. I rode my bike to work so that pretty much takes care of the environment. Tell Al Gore he can dial it back a little.
Great day to ride: cool and overcast at 6 a.m. with only the hint of a breeze. Bicycling is the best way to see and appreciate the city and the South Platte Greenway is a treasure. You can ride all the way from C-470 to downtown and only cross one street - except for the next few months when the Greenway is under construction between Oxford and Hampden.
Our long national nightmare is over. Paris Hilton walked out of a Los Angeles jail this morning, a free woman.
The liberation of Paris ended a shocking miscarriage of justice that reverberated among so many of America's oppressed thin blondes, who feared they too could be persecuted if their publicists forgot to to tell them their licenses had been suspended.
The family of a woman who died in Denver's jail after being injured in a car crash she allegedly caused while driving drunk has sued the city and jail and hospital personnel, reports Julie Poppen.
Hours before 24-year-old Emily Rae Rice died at the Denver jail, she called her mother and complained that she was freezing and couldn't feel her feet.The family claims that on the afternoon of Feb. 18, 2006, a jail nurse told Rice, whom he suspected of being drunk, to "sleep it off." That nurse told Rice to "stop being dramatic" when she collapsed during a prolonged check-in, the suit says. Later that night, Rice's pleas became so urgent that other inmates began screaming and banging on the glass to get guards' attention, but Rice was never evaluated, according to the suit.
By the next morning, Rice was dead.
Jim Sheeler writes obituaries so riveting and poignant it's almost worth dying to be a subject.
The Pulitzer Prize winner for the Rocky's "Final Salute" story is out with his first book, Obit: Inspiring Stories of Ordinary People who led Extraordinary Lives.
Jim will read from Obit, answer questions and sign copies during a public event Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the Rocky Mountain News auditorium, 101 W. Colfax.
In a Linn County (Iowa) straw poll where the favorites were way down and other guys way up, Tom Tancredo was a top tier candidate. He placed third and not to place too much context into the mix, but John McCain finished last, reports M.E. Sprengelmeyer in his Back Roads to the White House blog.
The big winner: Former Gov. Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin (33.1 percent)
Followed by :Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas (30.4 percent)
And: Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado (15.5 percent)
Denver Public Schools' pension plan is faced with such serious debt that it could scuttle savings realized by the expected closure of several schools report Nancy Mitchell and David Milstead.
A Rocky analysis of Denver Public Schools' retirees fund found a tangled tale that includes an $80 million accounting error anddecisions to put short-term gains ahead of long-term financialstability.Today, though, the bill has come due.That means the ongoing and painful process of deciding which city schools should be shuttered could, ultimately, do little to resolve DPS' precarious financial state.
A citizens' group studying the district budget repeats this warning four times in a little-seen 10-page report: "Failure to address the . . . pension plan presents significant risks to the budget; further substantial losses could eliminate all savings created through school closures."
Former Denver City Attorney Larry Manzanares was found dead Friday and the media and prosecutors are being criticized for the way Manzanares' case was presented to the public, report John C. Ensslin and Julie Poppen.
Several friends and colleagues of Manzanares blamed the media in general, and the Rocky Mountain News in particular, for what they felt was sensational treatment of the fact that pornography was discovered on a stolen state court laptop computer found in his possession.Others were critical of Jefferson County District Attorney Scott Storey, special prosecutor in the case, for including the pornography allegations in an affidavit filed to support charges of theft, embezzlement, evidence tampering, computer crime and official misconduct against Manzanares.
Rocky dining critic John Lehndorff puts on his music-guy hat and reports from the 34th annual Rocky Mountain Bluegrass Festival.
Singer and fiddler Alison Krauss performs Saturday at the 34th Annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival. She and her band, Union Station, joined by guitarist Tony Rice, covered songs from Rice's musical career.
TELLURIDE June 24, 2:45 p.m.:
After attending at least 25 – and probably 27, of the 34 annual Telluride Bluegrass Festivals, the event still has the power to stop me in my tracks, make my jaw drop and send a chill rippling up my backbone.
Here are a few of my favorite moments from this year’s hoedown/gathering/earfest deluxe:
Young mandolin savant Chris Thile opening the festival June 21 with a spot-on performance of a Bach partita. Bach would also guest star when Thile and Edgar Meyer did a duo set and when Mike Marshall delivered a gorgeous solo rendition of Bach’s notoriously difficult Chaconne, an adaptation for the mandolin he’s worked on for almost three decades.
Bill Richardson says he's moving up. Well, what else would you expect him to say? Maybe, "I'm hopelessly mired in the middle of the pack and couldn't get much attention if I set myself on fire."
At any rate, he's gaining ground, the New Mexico Governor told a gathering sponsored by IowaPolitics.com, Drake University and the Rocky Mountain News, reports M.E. Sprengelmeyer on his Back Roads to the White House blog.
On average, American men have sex with seven women in their lifetime, American women have sex with four men. That's what a new survey finds although the numbers could be affected because Paris Hilton has been in jail for a couple of weeks.
Men are far more apt to play the field when it comes to sex, the survey found - 29 percent of them reported having 15 or more female sexual partners in a lifetime, while only 9 percent of women reported having sex with 15 or more men.The survey, released Friday, was based on data collected from 1999 to 2002 for the National Center for Health Statistics, a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The EPA is considering cutting the amount of ozone allowed in Denver air - and neither environmentalists nor industry is pleased, reports Todd Hartman.
The proposal is based on new scientific findings that show current limits aren't protective enough, both for people with existing respiratory ills and for healthy adults exercising outdoors on high pollution days.The EPA's proposal recommends ratcheting down the current limit of 80 parts per billion over an eight-hour period to 70 to 75 parts per billion, which - if in effect today - would put the metro area in violation of the health standard.
The Bush administration is close to closing the Guantanamo Bay detainee facility and transferring the suspects to other prisons, the Associated Press reports.
Senior administration officials said Thursday a consensus is building for a proposal to shut the center and transfer detainees to one or more Defense Department facilities, including the maximum-security military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where they could face trial.President Bush's national security and legal advisers had been scheduled to discuss the move at a meeting Friday, the officials said, but after news of it broke, the White House said the meeting would not take place that day and no decision on Guantanamo Bay's status is imminent.
Rep. Ron Paul may be a blip in the polls (more about them later) but his hardcore supporters are pitching a fit about the grave injustice being done to their man, reports M.E. Sprengelmeyer on his Back Roads to the White House blog.
Blogroots darling, Republican Rep. Ron Paul, has been excluded from a candidate forum on June 30 and his fans are burning up "the Internets" pledging to make a show of force."Let's make all the news be about Ron Paul so that (the) event is a side note," someone posted at the digg.com entry on the growing brouhaha.
Mike Littwin has a poll-ish joke about polls on his Fair and Unbalanced blog. Namely, they don't mean much. He cites a Daily Kos blog that compares early polling in 2003 to how things actually turned out.
The American Film Institute isn't budging: Citizen Kane is still its choice for the best American film of all time.
In the CBS special "AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies - 10th Anniversary Edition," "Citizen Kane" held the same No. 1 billing it earned in the institute's first top-100 ranking in 1998. There were notable changes elsewhere, though, with Martin Scorsese's 1980 masterpiece "Raging Bull" bounding upward from No. 24 in 1998 to No. 4 on the new list and Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 thriller "Vertigo" hurtling from No. 61 to No. 9 this time.
My top 10:
Midnight Cowboy.
The rest inside ...
The Yankees and Rockies wind up their three-game series at 1:05 p.m. at Coors Field with the Yankees pinning their sweep-avoidance hopes on the ageless arm of Roger Clemens.
So far the most storied franchise in sports history have been victimized by Josh Fogg and Jeff Francis as the Rockies are starting to make believers of the skeptics.
Summer kicks in at 12:06 p.m. and the temperature got a head start on the calendar, reports Kari Craig.
Denver's hot weather isn't going away. Potentially record highs in the 90s are expected to continue for at least another week.CBS 4's Ed Greene's looks for a high of 96 today. The record high for June 21 in Denver is 98 degrees.
Old hippies and aging boomers remember it's the 40-year anniversary of the Summer of Love.
Today's long lines at the Department of Motor Vehicles could one day have a nickname: the good old days.
The federal Real ID Act, scheduled to take effect next May, the DMV could see a six-fold increase in folks lining up at the door, reports Ann Imse.
That's because all 3.8 million residents with Colorado identification will be required to show up in person to have their photo and documentation checked, instead of renewing by mail, said Debora Jerome, project coordinator for the state driver's license administration.
President Bush wielded his veto pen for the third time - and the second time against federal funding for stem cell research.
Despite public opinion polls showing support for the research, the White House said the veto was a matter of conscience:
This is, certainly not an attempt to muzzle science," White House press secretary Tony Snow said. "It is an attempt, I think, to respect people's conscience on such an issue."
So we've all known New York's billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg was a Republican in name only. He was a Democrat until switching to run for mayor. Now he's claimed the political trifecta by declaring himself an independent.
After some six years as a Republican, the 65-year-old former CEO announced Tuesday that he has left the Republican Party and become unaffiliated in what many believe could be a step toward entering the 2008 race for president.
John Edwards says it's all about electability.
M.E. Sprengelmeyer reports from Iowa:
The way Edwards sees it, if the Democratic Party's 2008 presidential nominee can't help like-minded candidates win in closely contested congressional districts and states where Senate seats are up for grabs, then the progressive agenda will be lost. It's all about coattails.
So let's say God gave you a chance to ask Him/Her one question, What would it be?
The question drew hundreds of responses at St. James Presbyterian Church in Littleton. The 10 most-asked questions will be sermon grist for the next 10 Sundays, Jean Torkelson reports.
10 What's my life all about?
9 Why are some people healed and others not?
8 Will you really forgive me?
The rest inside.
What's the use of living in Boulder and having a lot of money if you can't show it off? And the best way to show it off? Build a bigger house.
Alas some Boulderites are miffed at the cavernous cribs being constructed and new rules are being proposed to scale back their neighbors' house, reports John Rebchook.
At the very least, the rules would make it more difficult - and more expensive - to build homes bigger than a certain size, initially over 2,600 square feet in the mountains and 4,000 square feet on the plains.
He's not in the race yet but Fred Thompson has vaulted to the top of the GOP Presidential pack according to the latest Rasmussen Reports poll.
This is all silly money until Thompson actually joins the fray and starts going head-to-head with Rudy Giuliani, whom he supplanted at the top, Mitt Romney, John McCain and the rest. Thompson's lead is within the margin of error but it is the first time this year that anyone but Giuliani has led the pack.
Vacation - All I ever wanted Vacation - Had to get away.
So sang the Go-Gos in their 1982 pop hit. We all deserve an occasional trouble-free escape from life's stressful routines. Trouble is, our best-laid vacation plans often go disastrously astray:
Hotel rooms that looked good on the Web site but turned out to resemble the hovel occupied by Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy.
Mike Jones says he was used to his clients not being who they said they were.
But when "Art from Kansas City" turned out to be national evangelical leader Ted Haggard, the repurcussions struck deep into the conservative Christian community. After Jones revealed their sexual relationship, Haggard resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and from his mega-church in Colorado Springs.
Jones' book, I Had to Say Something: The Art of Ted Haggard's Fall, details his life as an escort and bodybuilder and explicitly details his meetings with Haggard.
(Photo from allposters.com)
Just thought you'd like a little reminder to slather on the deodorant with temperatures headed into the 90s today:
Denver is 69th in a list of the 100 sweatiest cities in the U.S., according to a study released Monday by Old Spice deodorant maker Procter & Gamble, basing its results on average high summer temperatures.
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I'm glad my driver's license doesn't expire for four years. But maybe I should get in line now.
The state's revenue director says four in 10 people are turned away on their first attempt to get their driver's license, reports Ann Imse. And that's after standing in line for hours.
Rocky columnist Mike Littwin spent time in New Hampshire looking for the 'there' in GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney:
Romney is suddenly very hot. John McCain looks like he's fading, at least for now, under the weight of Iraq and immigration. Rudy Giuliani looks like he's worried about playing in the early primary states. Fred Thompson, the new Republican flavor, has been labeled by candidate Mike Huckabee as the Mighty Mouse candidate. "You know," he says, "here I come to save the day." But Thompson remains unbloodied.
Romney, meanwhile, is running as the successful CEO Republican; in other words, the one who's not George Bush. The one who likes to talk more about trade with China than death in Iraq. But if he's hot, he's no hotter than the attention he's getting, most of which follows a familiar story line - similar to the one that closely followed another recent Massachusetts presidential candidate.
And so, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen writes that Romney is so "counterfeit" that if "he were a coin, a vending machine would spit him out," and Time columnist Joe Klein writes "there isn't the slightest hint of courage or conviction in his stump act." You get the center-left conventional wisdom on Romney as the plastic candidate.
And John McCain's campaign reportedly owns a mittvsfacts.com Web site. McCain says now he won't use the Web site, but he'll still point to Romney's, uh, inconsistencies.
Does this rock look like Elvis Presley?
It does to Lynn and LaDell Alexander, who discovered the image as they were rinsing off some river rocks gathered near their vacation home in Estes Park, reports Justin Coons.
The names of at least 15,000 suspected illegal immigrants were turned over to federal authorities under terms of a new state law during the last six months of 2006, reports Burt Hubbard.
And then ...
Law enforcement officials debate whether the new law is having its intended effect. hey said they doubt the enhanced reporting has led to any more deportations of criminal illegal immigrants..
Al Gore says the agreement by world leaders to limit greenhouse gases was a "disgrace disguised as an achievement."
The dedicated climate crusader, whose 2006 global warming documentary won an Oscar, said leaders at last week's G8 summit in Germany had not risen to the challenge to respond to what he calls a "planetary emergency."
Gore also said he hoped to push climate change to the front of the 2008 Presidential campaign, but likely not as a candidate.
The aftermath of Hamas' armed takeover of Gaza was marked by looting crowds but only sporadic violence.
Violence, which came despite a Hamas offer of amnesty for Fatah, was sporadic. Gaza's streets, deserted in the past week of fighting, were crowded with cars, pedestrians and triumphant fighters with the Islamic militant group.
Those of us of a certain age - and some of our kids - got our first science fix from Mr. Wizard, who died this week of cancer at age 89.
Don Herbert taught a generation of youngsters staring at black-and-white TVs that science was fun and brought real kids into the studio to help with experiments we could do at home.
The sultry young lady coos into the phone: "Hey B, it's me. If you're there pick up, I was just watching you on C-SPan (sigh) anyway, call me back."
So goes the opening of I Got a Crush ... on Obama, a new video spoofing Barack Obama's rock-star appeal that's drawn tens of thousands of viewers since it debuted earlier this week on its home site barelypoltical.com, You Tube and other viral video sites.
Father's Day is Sunday and all of us dads deserve to be pampered and shown due deference ("Hey dad tell us again how tought it was for you when you were a kid").
Share a story about your dad: Why he's worth honoring, what he taught you, how he shaped your life and what you're planning for Father's Day.
My dad is 83 and in fading health the last year. I was able to get back last fall and take him to his last Purdue football game, a Saturday ritual for us from the time I was in sixth grade through high school. It's funny how you remember the little things: the day he bought me my first good baseball glove, our long-standing (to this day) joke from a Ma & Pa Kettle movie about plunking the bottom of the collection plate to make it sound like you'd dropped some money, the funny asides he still occasionally makes, buying a red Mustang convertible when he was 72 - then buying another one when he was 78.
Marshalltown, Iowa, the small city that hosted visits by four presidential candidates in a span of 10 days, is changing. A rapidly-growing Hispanic population has exacerbated tensions in a city that now mirrors the ethnic face of America.
M.E. Sprengelmeyer reports:
During the 1990s, there was a more than ten-fold increase in Marshalltown's Hispanic population. Folks mostly from the states of Michoachán and Guanajuato, Mexico, were drawn by higher-paying jobs at the meat packing plant and the promise of a safe, small-town environment where they could raise their families.Over the decade, the city's Hispanic population went from 248 to 3,265, helping to make up for a slow, generation-long decline in the city's white population. By the year 2000, Marshalltown had 26,009 residents and almost exactly the same proportion of Hispanic residents as the rest of the United States, 12.6 percent.
President Bush's approval rating has dipped to near-record lows, a Rasmumssen Reports poll finds.
Just 34% of Americans approve of the way that George W. Bush is performing his role as President. That’s just a point above the lowest level ever recorded by Rasmussen Reports. In fact, prior to the past few weeks, the President’s Job Approval had never slipped below the 35% level. But, since then, he has had a hard time getting above the 35% level. He’s achieved that just once in the past seven days.
Was an unborn child spared from severe birth defects because of the miraculous intervention of prayers to an 18th century priest?
The Vatican will decide whether Father Junipero Serra intervened to save Kayla Rebecca Kellog from severe birth defects before she was born, reports Jean Torkelson..
A team from the Denver Archdiocese spent seven months collecting documents, including independent medical data, which is now at the Holy See for further evaluation. It’s all part of an investigation into whether the California priest is worthy of sainthood.
Rep. Ron Paul, who had a news-making dust-up with Rudy Giuliani during the first GOP Presidential debate will match wits with Stephen Colbert tonight, reports M.E. Sprengelmeyer on his Back Roads to the White House blog.
According to his web site, he'll make a triumphant return to that all-news cable television network, Comedy Central, with an appearance on The Colbert Report. (He was on the sister program The Daily Show earlier this month, but now he's back by popular demand.)Lots of folks first heard of Paul when he took a tough stand against U.S. military involvement overseas and had a run-in with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani during one of the televised Republican debates. But Paul has been an enigmatic figure on Capitol Hill since his first stint in Congress in the late 1970s.
Missing Sopranos and The Shield? Still in the mood for edgy TV in the midst of all the summer reruns and reality shows?
Lisa Bornstein offers seven reasons you should catch Rescue Me, back for its fourth season tonight on FX:
Back for its fourth season, the FX comic drama about New York City firefighters picks up with, as usual, lives in disarray. Tommy Gavin (Denis Leary) was last seen in the house that his lover, Sheila (Callie Thorne), set afire. Now he's trying to prove he didn't set the fire himself, but because she drugged him, he doesn't really know what happened. Chief (Jack McGee) is coming to terms with his gay son and the heart attack that could keep him off a truck. And Tommy's baby? Well, they're not sure whether it's his or his brother's. Sounds like a soap opera, but The Rocky's Lisa Bornstein says there are at least seven reasons you should tune in:
Architect Daniel Libeskind, who designed the addition to the Denver Art Museum, has proposed a modern, urban-style condo tower in the mountain community of Edwards. Not everyone is pleased, reports John Rebchook.
The $125 million project, developed by Remonov & Co., has drawn criticism from residents who say it doesn't blend in with the environment, or it is simply another tribute to Libeskind's ego.Libeskind designed the $90.5 million addition to the Denver Art Musuem. He also created the master plan for the World Trade Center site in New York and designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
The Boulder school board got an earful of sex, drugs and Boulder High, reports Kevin Vaughan.
Fueled by talk radio and cable TV, the controversy over a sex-and-drugs talk at Boulder High last month spilled over into Tuesday's school board meeting as parents and students defended and derided the presentation.
For 47 minutes they took turns at the microphone, alternately praising and punching the April 10 discussion at Boulder High, during which members of the panel talked graphically about sex and drugs. During that talk, members of the panel made statements that, among other things, masturbation is "appropriate" behavior for 12-year-olds and that students should enjoy themselves as they experimented with sex and drugs.
Workers who assembled the atomic bombs that armed America during the Cold War saw their health claims denied Tuesday by a government panel, report Ann Imse and Laura Frank.
Former atomic bomb makers with cancer were crushed and tearful when the board denied the majority of them immediate medical care and compensation. They say they are dying because they put their lives on the line for America at the now-demolished nuclear weapons plant outside Denver."How many more workers have to die?" asked Terry Bonds, district director for the United Steelworkers Union, which filed the petition.
Dick Notebaert, who took over from recently convicted Joe Nacchio as CEO of Qwest, is hanging it up, reports Jeff Smith.
Notebaert, 59, announced plans to retire Monday, after helping lift the company from bankruptcy's edge to profitability.He and his hand-picked team did the cost-cutting, asset sales and other things necessary to regain firm financial footing. Notebaert also restored credibility with Wall Street, analysts said.
Predicting a lively and peaceful street scene populated by anarchists and old hippies, organizers of Recreate '68 vowed to "party in the streets" during next summer's Democratic National Convention.
Denver City Councilman Charlie Ward played party pooper, saying the Denver police "would not roll over for any radical group," reports Stuart Steers.
At issue was a proclamation proposed by Councilwoman Kathleen MacKenzie that would have called on police to respect demonstrators' rights at the convention. The Recreate 68 Alliance, which is organizing the protests, met recently with police officials to discuss how Denver would deal with demonstrations.MacKenzie said she is withdrawing the proclamation, pending further discussion among council members at a public safety committee meeting July 11. She said she wanted to be sure that the council did everything it could to ensure that the encounters between police and protesters at the convention were peaceful.
Sopranos creator David Chase says the inconclusive ending to the show isn't a setup for a movie.
And, says Chase in his only post-finale interview, what you saw is what you get:
"I have no interest in explaining, defending, reinterpreting, or adding to what is there," said Chase, 61, who grew up in North Caldwell, N.J. "People get the impression that you're trying to (mess) with them, and it's not true. You're trying to entertain them," he said. "Anybody who wants to watch it, it's all there."
Once a Rocky story on Denver's Climate Action Plan was bannered on Drudgereport.com, the city - and reporter Stuart Steers who wrote today's followup - were barraged with responses calling it "crackpot" and accusing the city of embracing a radical environment agenda.
The plan includes several controversial ideas, including making residents who use large amounts of electricity and natural gas pay higher utility fees, boosting insurance rates for people who drive long distances and mandating that homes be energy efficient before they can be sold."We've gotten a bunch of phone calls, but nothing like a good snowstorm," said Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.
Rocky music critic Mark Brown, who listens to a lot of radio, says the talk on talk radio just keeps getting cheaper.
Like most Americans, I was blissfully unaware of talk radio for years, finally tuning in a couple of years back. Warning: It'll make your head explode. It's a bizarre parallel universe. It's a medium mostly made up of wealthy, privileged, self-important and powerful white men who have somehow convinced themselves that they're the most aggrieved, repressed and downtrodden people in the nation.
The Police recreated their chemistry during their reunion tour performances at Pepsi Center, writes Mark Brown.
It wasn’t until you saw Sting play these songs with other guys on his solo tours that you truly appreciated the distinctive, irreplaceable sound Summers and Copeland gave to the originals. That fire returned with amazing run-throughs of When the World is Running Down, Walking on the Moon and Can’t Stand Losing You, songs that drove the audience nuts. All three appeared very happy to be there, with Summers and Copeland looking particularly pleased and grateful
Sen. John McCain is on a lonely limb, supporting the war in Iraq as well as the immigration bill that was recently battered in the Senate. And that was before George Stephanopoulosreferred to his campaign as "Dead Man Walking" on ABC's Sunday morning interview show.
M.E. Sprengelmeyer reports:
These days on the campaign trail are testing the mettle of this former prisoner of war.McCain likes to say he wants to be president to do the difficult things, not the easy things. But that means his stump speech is one long prescription for tough medicine, without the sweet, syrupy promises of some other campaigns
She was tired and hungry - and couldn't afford an onion.
Roxanne White, Denver's Manager of Human Services, spent just $3.57 per day last week on food, reports Rosa Ramirez.
White took the 2007 Food Stamp Challenge, in which participants survived for a week on $3.57 a day to spend on food. The intent was to highlight the plight of millions of Americans and about 250,000 Coloradans receiving food stamps who have an average weekly food budget of $25."I was shocked to see how some things became luxury items, like having two bananas a day," she said. "I really wanted an onion and I couldn't afford an onion. I really wanted a green pepper but I couldn't do the green pepper and the bag of potatoes."
Hotel heiress Paris Hilton says she's done acting dumb.
The Army faced an angry, sometimes hostile, gathering of ranchers, farmers and other residents opposed to the expansion of its Piñon Canyon training ground onto about 408,000 acres of private land to the south and west, reports Chris Barge.
It was the first time the Army had pinpointed specific parcels it wants to acquire since announcing in February its plans to expand its 238,000-acre maneuver site between Trinidad and La Junta.The announcement sparked shouts of disgust from several ranchers in attendance, who were finding out for the first time that the government intended to someday own their properties.
A breakthrough in stem cell research could end the ethical debate over a process that could save thousands of lives, reports Bill Scanlon.
The new technique turns mature cells into primitive cells, the type that are able to be coaxed -into any kind of specialized cell to fight maladies such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. And the technique does so without involving the embryo, so it has a better chance of withstanding criticism from groups who equate embryonic stem cell research to abortion.
Meanwhile, the House has passed - and President Bush vowed to veto - a bill championed by Denver Rep. Diana DeGrette easing restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
Housing prices nationally are headed to the basement but an economist says Denver is likely to buck the trend, reports John Rebchook.
"All real estate is local," said Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors. who released a report today saying he expects home sales nationally to drop an average of 4.6 percent this year.The new forecast more than doubles the 2.2 percent decline the association had predicted two months ago. Yun also predicts an overall decline in national housing prices this year of 1.3 percent.
The father of a Columbine victim is at odds with the committee overseeing the construction of a memorial to the victims over who should have final say on the words that memorialize his son, reports Kevin Vaughan.
And that father, Brian Rohrbough, said Wednesday that he is prepared to go to court to fight for the right to choose the words that will mark his memories of his 15- year-old son, Dan.Dan Rohrbough was murdered on a sidewalk outside Columbine High in the April 20, 1999, attack on the school that left a dozen students and a teacher dead and more than 20 others wounded.
Rohrbough would not disclose the contents of his writing. He, like all of the families, agreed that the memories remain confidential until the memorial is dedicated. He has been asked to consider alternatives to the words he wrote, but so far he has not agreed to.
Denver is getting too noisy and motorcyclists are among the first groups to feel - and hear - the heat.
Fernando Quintero reports:
As more people move into downtown Denver's sparkling new high-rise condos and lofts, more complaints about city noise are being logged. Among the chief culprits: loud motorcycles.But it's the increase in complaints - not more loud bikes - that led to Monday night's Denver City Council crackdown on noisy hogs, police say.
Two days after he was flayed by Democrats running for his job, President Bush was criticized by members of his own party during Tuesday's Republican Presidential debate.
"I would certainly not send him to the United Nations" to represent the United States, said Tommy Thompson, the former Wisconsin governor and one-time member of Bush's Cabinet, midway through a spirited campaign debate.Arizona Sen. John McCain criticized the administration for its handling of the Iraq War, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said, "I think we were underprepared and underplanned for what came after we knocked down Saddam Hussein."
Do discount airlines provide better customer service than their high-cost cariers? That's what a Consumer Reports survey says, reports Aresu Eqbali.
Low-cost carriers such as JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines and Frontier Airlines received high marks from travelers for comfort, on-time performance and overall service in a Consumer Reports survey.The discounters handily beat larger, older airlines such as United Airlines and US Airways, which finished at the bottom of rankings covering 18 carriers.
JetBlue led the results, followed by Midwest Airlines and Southwest Airlines. Denver-based Frontier came in fourth.
When Republican presidential hopefuls gather for tonight's debate (5 p.m., CNN), the biggest - and most divisive - issue will be immigration.
Columnist Mike Littwin writes: There's already a real intraparty, uh, discussion here.
Let's set the terms. George Bush starts if off by saying those opposing the bill "don't want to do what's right for America." That's right. Bush, in a rare show of bipartisanship, has now decided to call members of his own party un-American, too. Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of John McCain's closest allies, has said of immigration reform that "we're going to tell the bigots to shut up, and we're going to get this right."
Some folks just can't stand the thought of living an anonymous life.
They're painting their roofs with personal messages or business ads that can be picked up by satellite mapping Web site. This is the 21st century version of farmers painting advertisements ("Red Man" chewing tobacco was popular) on the side of their barns so they could be seen by passing motorists.
USA TODAY says roofs are the new billboards.
UPDATE:
A third test on Speaker came back negative on Tuesday.
PREVIOUSLY
Tests on tuberculosis patient Andrew Speaker were negative for tuberculosis bacteria say officials at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center.
Bill Scanlon reports:
If the third test is negative doctors will decide whether to let Speaker out of his quarantine room for short periods while wearing a mask, the hospital said.So far, the results mean Speaker seems to be noncontagious. Doctors like to see three consecutive negative test results, one recorded each day, before announcing the patient is a very low risk for infecting others.
White House Press Secretary Tony Snow's visit to the Rocky Mountain News has been cancelled. He has a health issue unrelated to his cancer that prevents him from travelling.
Hillary Clinton went after George Bush. John Edwards went after Clinton and Barack Obama. And Mike Gravel got a big laugh.
The focus was on how forceful Democrats need to be in ending the Iraq war during last night's Democratic presidential contenders debate, reports M.E. Sprengelmeyer.
The White House is fighting to keep administration visitor logs secret, including those of Vice President Dick Cheney.
Over the past year, lawyers for President Bush and Cheney have directed the Secret Service to maintain the confidentiality of visitor entry and exit logs, declaring them to be presidential records, exempt from a law requiring their disclosure to whoever asks to see them.
If you don't believe in Nessie, then you probably don't believe in Keyser Soze either.
Comes now new footage of what might be the creature some call mythical that lives in the depths of the mysterious Loch Ness.
Jack Kevorkian, released from jail Friday after serving eight years for murder, says he won't assist in any more suicides but hasn't changed his mind about people being able to choose to end their own lives and that assisted suicide should be legalized.
Throughout the 1990s, Kevorkian challenged authorities to make his actions legal — or try to stop him. He burned state orders against him and showed up at court in costume."You think I'm going to obey the law? You're crazy," he said in 1998 shortly before he was accused — and then convicted — of murder after injecting lethal drugs into Thomas Youk, 52, an Oakland County man suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease.
You can feel free to take your local lawmaker and his family to a Rockies game this weekend and ply them all with hot dogs and beer.
A Denver District Court judge on Thursday blocked the gift-ban provisions of Amendment 41, the ethics measure Coloradans approved last year, reports Lynn Bartels.
Home prices in the metro area lagged substantially behind the nation in the first quarter of 2007, reports John Rebchook.
Denver-area home prices rose only an average of 1 percent in the first quarter of this year vs. a year ago, lagging an overall 4.3 percent increase for the entire nation.U.S. home prices in the first quarter rose at the slowest pace in a decade, led by declines in Massachusetts and Michigan, as the U.S. housing slump entered its second year, a government report showed.
