Colorado redistricting campaign changes course on appointing power and gains...
A group seeking to change the way Colorado draws its political boundaries has made major changes to its plan while gaining an influential backer with a recent record of passing big ballot measures. The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Analysis: What a new report on climate science portends for the West
The complexity of climate change means it’s hard to trace simple lines from cause to effect in daily life, much less plan for the future. That’s one reason the federal government updates its National...
View ArticleThe gay wedding cake, the baker who wouldn’t make it, and the legal crusade...
Jack Phillips wants to talk. “But I can’t, not without my lawyers here,” laments the Masterpiece Cakeshop owner whose refusal to make a cake for a gay couple’s wedding has led to this year’s most...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Colorado Independent is fighting to unseal secret records in a death...
Update: George Brauchler’s office has asked for another two-week extension to submit its legal objections to The Independent’s motion to unseal documents about prosecutorial misconduct. We’ll keep...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Colorado Legislature 2018: Shortfalls in a time of plenty
When lawmakers drive to Denver next week to convene the 2018 legislative session, they will see about a dozen cranes across the city’s skyline, a sign of a growing economy. And if they walk through...
View ArticleColorado governor’s race: Battle to the ballot begins
Colorado voters are primed for the governor’s race of a generation. With more than a dozen Democratic and Republican hopefuls crisscrossing the state and jockeying for position in the first wide-open...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What the battle over the Dream Act means for the West
For a short time, soccer seemed like it might be Daniela Benitez’s ticket to attending college. She didn’t begin playing soccer until the eighth grade, but by her junior year of high school, she had...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Greene: Beth McCann, Colorado’s newest innocence denier
Beth McCann won her seat as Denver District Attorney on a promise to restore public confidence in an office notorious for defending law enforcement at all costs. A year later, she’s poised to break...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Greene: Copout
Friday’s deadline came and went for Beth McCann to make things right in one of Colorado’s longest and most twisted injustices. In choosing to perpetuate the 30-year railroading of Clarence Moses-EL,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Indy takes fight over Brauchler’s office misconduct files to Supreme Court
The Colorado Independent has turned to the state Supreme Court for help in our fight to unseal records about prosecutorial misconduct in a death penalty case. Earlier this week, we filed an emergency...
View ArticleIn La Plata County, a heated effort to oust environmentalist commissioner
To hear La Plata County Commissioner Gwen Lachelt tell it, the breaking point was a chance meeting with Sen. John McCain. Last May, Lachelt traveled from her home in Durango to Washington, D.C. to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Colorado’s oil and gas regulatory agency is running out of money – fast
As the state grapples with the aftermath of last April’s fatal pipeline explosion in Firestone and a fervent demand by residents to better regulate the oil and gas industry, the agency in charge of...
View ArticleGREENE: Mennonite criminal investigator will take the stand in capital case....
(This story has been updated.) The investigator who has spent nearly two weeks in jail for refusing to testify for prosecutors in a death penalty case has changed her mind and was released late Monday....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Undocumented: A life, a home and a family in the rural West
This story is the first in a series that examines a community grappling with uncertainties around immigration in one of Colorado’s poorest rural counties. Before the sun rises over the Sangre de Cristo...
View ArticleGreene: Despite promises of reform, Hancock and team failed to seek answers,...
A disturbing report outlines Mayor Michael Hancock’s administration’s inaction in response to sheriff’s deputies’ killing of a mentally ill homeless man in Denver’s jail. The 47-page review by Denver’s...
View ArticleSame-sex marriage cake case renews effort to legalize discrimination on...
Anyone who thought the 1990s culture wars in Colorado were over hasn’t been following efforts by Republicans in the state House of Representatives. A GOP lawmaker in the lower chamber again tried to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What the battle over the Dream Act means for the West
For a short time, soccer seemed like it might be Daniela Benitez’s ticket to attending college. She didn’t begin playing soccer until the eighth grade, but by her junior year of high school, she had...
View ArticleColorado’s grand bargain to create a national model for redistricting
Two groups that were readying for a major battle on your ballot in November over how Colorado draws its political lines have laid down their swords and joined forces in a grand bargain they say will...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dryland: Farmers in tough places to do agriculture are innovating for climate...
“Dryland” farmers on the high plains of Colorado grow their crops with whatever falls from the sky—no irrigation, no pumped groundwater—just what Mother Nature delivers. In recent years some have been...
View ArticleGreene: Former jury foreman in capital case made to reckon with his ‘racial...
Carl Dubler would prefer that I not write this. The software marketer from Centennial served as foreman of the 2009 jury that convicted and handed a death sentence to Robert Ray, one of the three men...
View Article