Denver News Blog

​The 2010 election is less than a year away, and judging from this past Tuesday's vote, things are going to get plenty messy. But here in Colorado, we're still cleaning up after the dirty dealings of 2006.

The gubernatorial race was particularly bad, with 527s and party operatives pushing the candidacy of Republican Bob Beauprez and going hard against Democrat Bill Ritter. The use of a drunken-driving death against the former Denver District Attorney was a particularly egregious twisting of the facts, although that controversy disappeared when the ad was pulled. But the questions about another ad, this one involving info on an illegal alien that came from a restricted federal database, go on and on.

Now, those questions go all the way to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

​What's happened to the liberal mecca of Boulder? First, cops put a lid -- and some pants -- on plans to resurrect the Halloween Mall Crawl, as well as the Naked Pumpkin Run. And now the city's looking at strictly regulating medical marijuana dispensaries -- if it doesn't ban them altogether.

At 6 p.m. today, the Boulder Planning Board will draft a proposal to send on to Boulder City Council. Among the possible moves: setting a limit on the number of dispensaries allowed in the city (there are now about twenty), limiting where and when dispensaries can operate, adopting a moratorium on any new dispensaries -- or requiring a sales-tax license that would be impossible for dispensaries to get.

This is Boulder?

​There's nothing mellow about medical marijuana in Colorado.

In a wacky emergency session yesterday, the Colorado Board of Health tossed out its definition of "caregiver" to comply with a recent Court of Appeals decision, postponing the adoption of any new herbiage verbiage until December 16. In the meantime, Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown will unveil proposed regulations for medical marijuana dispensaries in this city on November 18.

But while politicians and bureaucrats blow smoke over the legal definition of Amendment 20, the medical-marijuana business in this state continues to boom, with new dispensaries coming in every day.

​The state isn't letting any grass grow under its feet -- and may be looking at prohibiting grass growing in your basement.

The Colorado Board of Health has scheduled an Emergency Rulemaking Hearing for 10:30 a.m. today, to discuss -- and possibly eliminate -- its definition of "significant responsibility for managing the well-being of a patient." The state of emergency was created by last week's Court of Appeals interpretation of "primary caregiver," a definition left purposely vague in Amendment 20, which was passed by voters back in 2000. But according to the Court of Appeals, a caregiver must do more than simply provide medical marijuana to a patient -- marijuana that may have been grown in a sympathetic person's basement, as in the People v. Clendenin case that led to the ruling.

For more info on the emergency hearing, click here.

​Marilyn Musgrave's political career rose from the dead last week, as the former Colorado congresswoman and current director of the Susan B. Anthony List's Votes Have Consequences project campaigned for the election of Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate running for the 23rd Congressional seat left vacant when Republican John McHugh became Secretary of the Army.

Pushing for a third-party candidate rather than the woman nominated by the Republican Party might seem an odd choice for Musgrave (not to mention an organization named after a pioneering feminist). But as Musgrave points out in this column, the goal is to elect the right women.

And Republican state Assemblywoman Dierdre Scozzafava was not the right woman, she insists. Too liberal, says Musgrave, who's joined with Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson and other Republican stars who are backing Hoffman in tomorrow's special election.

​Pam and Ricardo Martinez met on a United Farm Workers picket line in California. Now, almost forty years later, they share a life, a family, a passion for social justice and Padres y Jovenes Unidos, the Denver nonprofit they co-founded in 1991 -- as well as another big national honor.

The Advancement Project, a Washington, D.C.-based civil-rights think tank, honored the organization yesterday for its work rewriting the Denver Public Schools discipline code, a six-year project designed to end the schoolhouse-to-jailhouse track that was sending a disproportionate number of minority kids out of the school system and into the juvenile justice system.

​Sheriff's deputies have run into a roadblock in their push to get an initiative on the Denver ballot: the Denver Elections Division has determined that more than half of the almost 60,000 signatures on initiative petitions were invalid.

The deputies need 41,666 valid signatures to put the measure, which would amend the city charter to give them more power to arrest (and collect bigger paychecks), on a special February ballot; the deputies have until November 12 to fix the problem.

In the meantime, though, the obstacle in the deputies' patch could detour Jeff Peckman, who was hoping to piggyback his own ballot measure, intended to establish an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission, onto the deputies's special election. But right now, it looks like ET could have to go home...at least for another nine months.

​"Rocky Mountain High" is getting quite a work-out as national media outlets run stories on the booming medical marijuana business in Colorado. With both city and state officials talking about reining in the industry with new regulations, I put calls into both Governor Bill Ritter and Mayor John Hickenlooper on Monday, asking for their thoughts on this new, really green, really growing field.

I'm still waiting to hear back from the governor's office. But Hickenlooper, who first came to the public's attention as the ebullient owner of the Wynkoop Brewing Co., which specializes in pouring out legal substances, called back quickly with this:

"The voters in Denver overwhelmingly don't want to see marijuana be illegal," he said, referring both to the original 2000 vote that legalized medical marijuana in the state, and the 2005 and 2007 Denver ballot measures legalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana and setting up the Denver Marijuana Policy Review Panel. "A lot of the smartest people we know have great concerns about suddenly removing all limits. That's what the issue is going to distill down to. What are the appropriate limits?"

Especially when you're living in a town that's already labeled the Mile High City? Expect this topic to remain the toke of the town over the next few weeks.

​Colorado's parks, recreational areas and open space are subsidized by the Colorado Lottery, which over the past fifteen years has sent millions of dollars to Great Outdoors Colorado. Community colleges are slated to be supported by another form of gambling: Last November, Coloradans voted to expand gaming at casinos in three mountain towns to 24/7 schedules, adding games and upping the maximum bet to $100 -- all because they were sold on the proceeds going to community colleges.

Now, as city and state politicians debate regulations that could rein in the medical marijuana industry, another strain of the argument is pushing for legalizing marijuana altogether. But don't stop there: Legalize it, tax it -- and then earmark the proceeds for our financially strapped higher education system.

Put the higher back in higher education.

​The news is full of real stories about real people in need. People who can't find jobs, people who can't pay their mortgages, people who can't feed their families. Not high on the list of the truly needy: People who want to feed their hunger for fame.

But still, Cheri Foster and her daughter, Tamara Failla, have established what they call the "first-ever" Fort Collins Care Movement, according to the Fort Collins Coloradoan. And who have they chosen to as the initial recipient of their caring? Richard and Mayumi Heene and their children.

​Colorado is not all about balloon boys and terrorists -- unless you count fat babies and health insurance companies.

Senator Michael Bennet has been getting a lot of face time lately, speechifying about our broken healthcare system. And in his most recent speech, he may have finally given the debate its public face. Actually, two faces: those of Alex Lange and Aislin Bates

The 'Goldilocks Rule' should not apply when it comes to giving Coloradans the health care they need," he pronounced in a Senate speech Wednesday, citing the two Colorado children who'd been denied coverage because of their weight. Alex, a breast-fed baby in Grand Junction, was denied because he was too chubby; Aislin, a two-year-old in Erie, was too skinny. Two kids, two companies, the same decision: No.

​It's been three weeks since we first posted news of our search for a medical-marijuana reviewer. Within five minutes of that posting, we had our first application for this extremely part-time job. Within ten minutes, our first media inquiry. And the applications and media calls keep coming.

This morning -- while on hold with CBS, which called me just after 4 a.m., then postponed the interview because another segment ran long (breaking news? A Balloon Boy update?) -- I fished another fifty applications out of our spam filter. This latest wave was apparently inspired by an AP story sent out this week; the responses are coming in from around the globe -- from applicants and media outlets alike. The BBC. And Irish talk show. Unfortunately, we closed off applications last week, after we'd collected more than 200 of them. (Channel 9 neglected to note that when it ran a piece Tuesday night; my apologies to the extremely erudite poster who lamented missing the deadline at the end of the comments section.)

But the story just keeps growing.

​Before the Balloon Boy story blew up around the globe, Colorado's Najibullah Zazi was reportedly getting ready to blow up New York City. Our hometown terrorist is now being held without bail in New York on charges of conspiring to detonate explosives in the United States; his father has a December 7 trial date in U.S. District Court in Denver on charges of lying to federal investigators.

Yesterday, President Barack Obama visited the Manhattan FBI office that led the investigation, and praised the agents for their work. But the job's not done yet: New York Senator Chuck Schumer is calling for a nationwide "awareness" program on sales of peroxide, which Zazi picked up in bulk at an Aurora beauty-supply company. He told the clerk that he had a lot of girlfriends in need of hair care -- but concentrated peroxide can also be used to make a liquid bomb known as TATP, and plans for the device were allegedly found on Zazi's computer.

It could have been the ultimate blonde bombshell...

​Ryan Frazier made a smart move, even though his announcement last Thursday that he was switching from a run for the U.S. Senate to go for the 7th Congressional District seat currently occupied by Ed Perlmutter was completely overshadowed by a certain silver balloon.

But someone took notice: The Colorado Democratic Party, which quickly sent out a release headlined "Democratic Party States Ryan Frazier Stoops To Blatant Political Opportunism:"

​Even Balloon Boy couldn't knock our hunt for a medical-marijuana reviewer out of the national news. Yesterday, NPR's Sunday show ran a piece about our quest, resulting in still more applications coming in from across the country. But sorry, folks: We're looking for a Colorado resident, someone who can identify not just particular strains, but deal with the state-specific peculiarities of what's rapidly becoming Colorado's s greenest business.

The medical marijuana industry is already booming here -- and after today, it could explode. That's because the White House is finally releasing new federal guidelines that solidify what Barack Obama promised as a candidate: a reversal of the Bush administration's tough stance against users and suppliers in the states that have legalized medical marijuana.

​Okay, so Falcon Heene was never in the balloon. But why wasn't he in school yesterday?

That's a question for Rico Munn, who's done good work during his two years as executive director of the Department of Regulatory Affairs, and yesterday was appointed by Governor Bill Ritter to head the Colorado Department of Higher Education. The education slot, vacated in August by former Congressman David Skaggs, is a good fit for Munn, a lawyer who served on the state Board of Education for five years, representing the 1st Congressional District. (I once moderated an education panel that included Munn, and he was definitely the best part of the program.)

​Ryan Frazier is trading in a clunker in favor of a much sleeker vehicle. Six months after the two-term Aurora City Councilman announced that he was running for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, he's pulling out of that race and making a fast course correction for the 7th Congressional District instead.

The charismatic Frazier will make that announcement this morning at Brighton Ford, the only family-owned auto dealership in Colorado that refused to participate in the federal government's "cash for clunkers" program.

​ When we learned that Joe Rogan, former host of Fear Factor, had moved to metro Denver, we offered up our top ten list of very scary things for newcomers to Colorado. Number 4? Animal Encounters:

"As houses sprawl across formerly uninhabited areas, the animals that used to live where your patio is now are fighting back. Keep your eyes open and your pepper spray at hand to fend off everything from bear attacks and elk migrations across the freeway to coyotes in your doggie dish."

The day that list (repeated below) appeared, an elk attacked a woman in her Evergreen driveway. On Monday, a mule deer gored a 63-year-old woman in Florissant. And even Rogan's home outside of Boulder has come under attack: Something -- likely a mountain lion -- made off with one of the family's dogs, the comedian tells us.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

​Jeff Peckman has had a tough month: First, David Letterman's all-too-earthly horn-dog behavior made big news -- and bit into the value of a clip from Letterman's June 10, 2008 UFO interview with Peckman that's prominently featured on the campaign web page for the Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission.

That's the concept Peckman's pushing with a Denver ballot measure that would create a commission to teach Denverites how to welcome aliens -- not illegals from south of the border, but those coming from much, much further away. And Peckman, who turned in his petitions to the Denver Election Commission on September 4, recently discovered that he's 1,000 signatures short of the almost 4,000 legit names needed to make the next ballot.

So now he's devoting himself full-time to collecting the remainder. He'd thought about touting the cause at a post-show panel following Curious Theatre's Yankee Tavern, which features a conspiracy theorist, but the theater's non-profit status wouldn't allow petitioning. But Peckman, who also pushed the "Safety Through Peace" proposal, pushes on. "We have to do it," he says. "The future of the galaxy really depends on it."

And what are you doing today?

​
This past weekend the largest gay-rights demonstration in close to a decade descended on Washington, D.C., where lawmakers may finally approve the Matthew Shepard & James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a measure that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the categories covered by federal hate crime legislation. (Rather than the stand-alone measure approved by the House, though, the Senate opted for making it an amendment to the defense appropriations bill -- a maneuver that concernsColorado Representative Jared Polis, the first openly gay candidate elected to Congress.)

Here in Denver -- just a few hours south of Laramie, Wyoming, where Matthew Shepard was murdered and tied to a fence eleven years ago -- Newman Center Presents is joining with organizations around the world to present tonight's The Larimer Project: 10 Years Later, an epilogue to the original Laramie Project, in which playwrights documented Shepard's murder. Although no tickets are left for the Univeristy of Denver event, which will feature dozens of readers from across Colorado, you can follow the global project at www.laramieproject.org.

​Yesterday was a long day in Idledale, the tiny town in the foothills where Dawn Engle and Ivan Suvanjieff put up their feet when they're not pounding the pavement on behalf of PeaceJam, the non-profit they founded over a dozen years ago that links up youth from around the world with Nobel Peace Prize winners to push for peace.

Once again, word had leaked that PeaceJam might be up for the Nobel Peace Prize, a rumor reinforced by a Reuters piece headlined "Prize Going Back to Activist Roots." PeaceJam is as activist as it gets; Engle and Suvanjieff are on the ground from urban Denver to Costa Rica to Tibet. And they have some powerful supporters, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of a dozen Nobel prize-winners who PeaceJam brought to Denver three years ago for its tenth anniversary event. Tutu wrote a letter to the Nobel committee endorsing PeaceJam for the prize. Engle and Suvanjieff have been honored before, but a Nobel wouldn't hurt, especially in these cash-strapped times for non-profits.

But then, early this morning, the word finally came down: the Nobel went to Barack Obama.

Read Tutu's lpro-PeaceJam letter after the jump.

​In the 21 months since John Parr, Sandy Widener and their daughter, Chase Parr, were killed in a horrific car accident, I've trained myself not to grab the phone to call Sandy, a wonderful writer and college pal who was one of the founders of Westword, to hoot over some journalistic dust-up. And I've finally removed the Rolodex card devoted to Parr, the political strategist who was working for then-Governor Dick Lamm when Sandy met him on an interview, and who remained a go-to guy whenever you wanted a smart take on the local scene -- or just a great conversation.

But still, I found my fingers itching to dial John Parr last Friday, when the location of the 2016 Olympic Games was being decided. He was a key strategist in the quest to stop the 1976 Winter Olympics from coming to Colorado, a move that propelled Lamm to the governor's office and changed the face of this state. For the better.

His good works didn't stop there, of course, and tonight, the Denver Foundation's annual Tribute to Philanthropy will include the presentation of the second annual John Parr and Sandy Widener Civic Leadership Award to Brian Barhaugh, founder of YouthBiz and Project Voyce.

I don't need to call Sandy and John to know they'd be pleased.

​Twenty-five years ago, the Department of Defense took over 235,000 acres of ranchland in southeastern Colorado -- the largest condemnation of private property in the country. And the Army's not done yet. Six years ago, word surfaced that the feds would try to add another 400,000 acres to the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site, and for the past three years, Congress has approved a prohibition on the Army's use of any appropriated funds to expand PCMS.

Last session, the Colorado Legislature also passed a measure prohibiting the State Land Board from selling or leasing any land to the federal government for the purpose of expanding Pinon Canyon.

But the local ranchers behind the group "Not 1 More Acre!" recently learned that the Army may be planning an end run around Congress, planning for Fort Carson to annex PCMS, which would remove the pesky necessity of having Congress sign off on any additional land grabs from families that have worked this land for generations.

​Yesterday, Westword's quest for a medical-marijuana critic made the New York Times, after already being featured in the Wall Street Journal, MSN and CNBC. My e-mail box overflowed and my phone rang off the hook.

It's funny how the national media has jumped all over this. "Is this the most attention you've ever gotten?," asked one reporter -- words that warm the heart of any editor who's hoping for attention for a big investigative scoop, but instead gets the call for what a national outfit considers a light, fun story. But there's one aspect of our search for a reviewer that's not funny: How very, very important easy access to quality medical marijuana is for so many people.

​I've always had good luck at the Division of Motor Vehicles office at 2736 Welton Street. Sure, the tiny parking lot is a nightmare, but the DMV employees are friendly, if not always fast -- and you can always take a quick stroll around Five Points if there's a wait. Which I did on Friday afternoon, when the place was standing-room-only and the crowd overflowed into that nightmare parking lot and ran down to the Wells Fargo ATM -- who knew that if your dealer takes two months to send you registration forms, you're still the one who has to pay the $25-a-month late fee? But that's a story for another day.,

Because while I was away from the DMV office, another story -- or something -- had unfolded. "Yes, people, there's a very bad smell in here, and I think anyone who smells it knows what it is. Somebody did something somewhere," apologized the security guard, who'd been tracking the source of the stink and was now rushing to open windows and doors. "I apologize if any of you get cold, but it's better than sitting in this."

And because late on a Friday afternoon, after already investing an hour (or more) in a DMV wait, no one was about to surrender his seat -- even on this wild, shit-smell ride.

​President Barack Obama just signed an executive order banning federal workers from text-messaging when they are driving government cars, or driving their own cars on government business, or using their on government phones while driving their own cars on personal business. The ban was announced at a transportation department meeting called to discuss "distracted driving."

And it's a smart move. Now, can Obama just extend this crackdown to anyone texting while driving? That's the kind of martial law just about everyone could support.

Particularly the RTD driver whose bus was almost smashed by a driver (who shall go nameless) texting while trying to find a parking place for yesterday's Rockies game. Our careening course through LoDo had a lot more drama than the game that clinched the Rockies' place in the playoffs.

​For years, I fought the urge to buy a pair of Crocs, that homegrown phenomenon that has millions of people shuffling around the planet in what look like wading pools. It wasn't the shoes' appearance that bothered me, or the stories of people getting their Crocs stuck in escalators, or even the fact that by jumping in a pair, I'd be jumping on a bandwagon. No, they just weren't comfortable.

All that changed when a friend passed along a pair of the Crocs Havana model that didn't fit her. I wore these black, wedgie-style shoes all summer, despite the mockery of more fashion-forward friends, and even found myself looking longingly at the different-colored Havanas displayed at the Crocs cart at Denver International Airport.

Then, disaster: A dog ate my Crocs while I was looking the other way at a Mad Man-watching party.

Now I must decide: Do I actually go out and buy a pair? The beleaguered Niwot-based company can certainly use the money, although Crocs just renegotiated a $30 million revolving loan deal with PNC Financial Services Group.

Are Crocs just a crock? Or are people still wearing these shoes?

​Pat Schroeder was always quick with a quip when she represented Denver in Congress for 24 years, from 1972-1996, whether she was talking one-on-one with a reporter or treating the masses to her opinion of the "Teflon presidency" of Ronald Reagan.

In China with members of the House Armed Services Committee in the spring of 1979, Schroeder donned an Easter Bunny outfit and handed out candy to kids at the U.S. Embassy. And then she donned the costume again on a trip to the Great Wall.

Or did she? Maybe there is no Easter Bunny!

​Ameristar is betting on Black Hawk. Today, the company will cut the ribbon on its 33-story, 500-plus room hotel that towers over the old mining/new gaming town -- a hotel that boasts not just a renovated casino, but luxury suites, a spa and the "only rooftop pool" in Black Hawk. (I'd wager it's also the only pool in Black Hawk -- unless one of those residents who's been collecting checks since gaming began back in 1992 somehow stashed a pool in an old mining shaft.)

This comes the day after Ron Kammerzell, director of the Colorado Division of Gaming, told the Legislative Audit Committee that while the state had anticipated that the higher limits and 24/7 hours introduced on July 1 would result in a 25 percent increase in casino-tax revenue this year, 10 percent is looking optimistic.

Will Ameristar's bold gamble pay off? Everyone in the pool!

​When asked about the catfight over his run for the U.S. Senate nomination, Andrew Romanoff usually repeats some variation on this line, first offered up at his Pueblo campaign announcement two weeks ago: "Democrats are a lot like cats. When you hear them making a lot of noise, it sounds like they're fighting. But really, they're just making more cats."

And how are Republicans like cats? When the noise is over and they've settled on a candidate, they generally lick themselves -- without much help from the Democrats. Think Pete Coors; think Bob Beauprez.

But 2010 could be another animal entirely.