2015

Lessons to be learned from the Gold King spill There’s nothing like a mountain stream of yellow to draw one’s attention. The Gold King mine disaster certainly did that. As the…

Co-op could make health care affordable The debate over health care comes down to an essential premise: Is it a right or a privilege? Then the practical: How should it be…

Public finally changing its views on testing It has been a long road but a common-sense view on testing and teacher evaluation has evolved across the nation. With one exception, the…

School board should reassess its value In last week’s column, I noted Mark Twain’s dismissive attitude toward school boards. Needless to say, Twain was eviscerating. Unlike my literary hero, I have…

Education: We had it right, then… Mark Twain didn’t like school boards. Their banning “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” which, according to Ernest Hemingway and countless others, is the quintessential and…

Lessons learned from GOP debate I was one of the 24 million that tuned into the Fox News Republican presidential candidates’ debate. As I predicted, the debate descended into a circus,…

2016 GOP ‘Dream Team’ It is tempting to write about the nut-case rhetoric spewing forth from Republican presidential candidates. For a writer, it is low-hanging fruit. I tried resisting, however… Like…

Privacy in a more perfect union In his guest column last week, District Attorney Bruce Brown describes a hypothetical, but plausible, scenario in which a woman calls 911 for help. It…

21st century populism: history repeating itself “There is looming up a dark new power. . . . The enterprises of the country are aggregating vast corporate combinations of unexampled capital, boldly…

Clear Creek County can be the ‘American Dream’ The Denver Post headline read “American Dream in crisis.” That was the decided take by big thinkers at the recent Aspen Institute confab.…

Ongoing efforts to create ‘a more perfect union’ As James Brown yelps in his classic hit, “I feel good!”  The reason?  I and my gay and lesbian siblings finally can experience…

Time to expose hate and deal with it There’s something particularly heinous about violating places of sanctity that ought to be sanctuaries from violence: e.g., churches, schools, shelters. Over the years…

County needs a Henderson-closure czarina Besides specific actions we need to take to move forward given the closing of the Henderson Mine, there are at least two broader lessons we can…

Balancing county’s needs with less money During my conversation with Clear Creek Economic Corporation Executive Director Peggy Stokstad and Commissioner Tim Mauck on KYGT about post-Henderson Clear Creek, I quipped that…

Breaking from conservative orthodoxy I have to admit to being stunned, albeit pleasantly so.  Catholic Ireland gave a big kiss to marriage equality with 62 percent voting in favor and conservative…