The Boulder County courtroom was standing room only last Wednesday, as Professor Alex Hunter presented his Civics 101 lecture on the origins of modern jurisprudence. While reporters from around the world yawned, Boulder’s district attorney took the grand jury concept slowly–very slowly–from the Magna Carta through the American Revolution to…

“Today, there is a secret plan to deprive the American people of the man they want for their president. It consists of mass-media manipulation, lies, distortions, half-truths, cheap tricks and Soviet-style news blackouts and censorships. The media have insulted the American people’s intelligence by thinking they can decide the presidential…

Attorney Hal Haddon is no fan of grand juries; the courts are full of filings that attest to his irritation at their general nosiness. On Monday, though, Haddon and the other lawyers representing John and Patsy Ramsey, “innocent parents of a murdered child,” sent a joint letter to Boulder County…

“Get the facts about anyone–your ex-spouse’s hidden assets, a new client’s credit history, your lover’s secret past or information about any business–quickly and legally.” Hurry! This sounds like a job for one of the Clinton operatives investigating Kenneth Starr–and recently subpoenaed by the independent counsel as thanks for their efforts–or…

While the Broncos prepare for the second half of their big playoff game in the Colorado Legislature, why don’t we just sit back and enjoy the halftime show? The high-priced entertainment, of course, is reserved for the VIPs–the Very Important Politicians who will be voting on SB 171 (read: the…

“Bill becomes law if governor sins.” –typo in the 1998 Colorado Legislature’s pamphlet How a Bill Becomes a Law Does abstinence make the heart grow fonder? If so, then the folks calling for Roy Romer’s head should be anointing it instead. The alleged personalities at KNUS radio, chief among them…

Governor Roy Romer lied. You can read his lips in a six-minute smooch that catches Romer in the middle of a close, personal consultation with B.J. Thornberry, his former deputy chief of staff, in the front seat of a car parked outside Dulles Airport. The kiss was captured in 1995,…

From wowtown to cowtown. Just a week ago, Denver was recovering from the largest collective hangover on record. On Super Bowl Sunday, in a wannabe major-league “riot,” crazed Broncos fans fueled by Jell-O shots looted an athletic-goods store. (This is Denver, after all.) On Monday, thousands of slightly more sober…

Depending on how you measure these things, Westword was born late one night in a college newspaper office, when starting a weekly seemed like a much better idea than typing a resume and finding a real job, or at a rugby game in Washington Park, where the vigor of the…

Clarissa Pinkola Estes is thinking about what story she would tell to residents of Denver in 1998. She settles on “Stone Soup,” an ancient tale–but not an ancient idea. The people are starving–for soulfulness, for spirit–and they shut their doors and live behind them, and what little they have they…

Friday night, and the Wazee Supper Club is packed–as it has been for Friday night after Friday night since long before LoDo was the center of Denver’s universe, since before LoDo was even called LoDo. But although the Wazee is packed, as always, the space seems oddly empty. Something is…

Was it good for you? A year ago, Colorado was barely a blip on the political map, a handy way station where national candidates could drop in to stuff their pockets on cross-country junkets, a state more notable for Monkey Business than real money business. But that was before Colorado…

One day in mid-November, a San Francisco radio station called my office. “We hear Denver’s overrun by skinheads,” a reporter said. “Can we get a quote?” How about: “Baloney.” On the last day of November, a cabbie heading downtown from DIA reported that the skinhead violence had spread to a…

That airplane banner flying overhead Monday, proclaiming the unfairness of Denver Post management to all of downtown Denver, wasn’t the only sign that Denver Newspaper Guild negotiations are under way. The stickiness of those negotiations, which affect up to half the employees of Denver’s two daily newspapers, also explains the…

Let us now give thanks. It was one big, dysfunctional family reunited in U.S. District Judge John Kane’s courtroom last week, picking at the carcass of this year’s biggest turkey: Guide the Ride. The $3.5 billion, or $8 billion, or $16 billion, or $20 billion (depending on who’s counting) mass-transit…

The best argument against the death penalty may be a death-penalty trial. Four weeks after opening arguments in the People v. Jon Morris, the prosecution is still trying to put out all its evidence against Morris, who is on trial for the brutal rape and murder of five-year-old Ashley Gray…

I was holding my sister’s one-month-old son in Framingham, Massachusetts, a mile away from the women’s prison, when a jury found its most famous resident, Louise Woodward, guilty of killing eight-month-old Matthew Eappen. Around Framingham–if not in England, the nanny’s native country–people were cheering. I could only hope that somewhere,…

Johnnie’s Market is closed. Cerrado. For the first time in over sixty years, Johnnie’s is not open for business. “Closed because of illness,” the sign on the door reads, although people walk right in anyway. They cannot imagine Larimer Street without Johnnie’s. Ed Maestas, who’s owned Johnnie’s for over two…

He could never forget his daughter, but six years after her death, Frank Baley was getting on with his life. Then a Boulder police officer called, and the pain cut deep once again. Detective Thomas Wickman wanted to reopen the file on Susan Baley, who’d died in Boulder in 1982…

Gary Davis was ready to die in 1990. Mark Thomas had just come to town as the director of the Colorado Press Association when he got a call from the Colorado Department of Corrections. Davis, convicted in 1987 of the brutal rape and murder of Virginia May, was suspending any…

The war between the sexes takes no prisoners–except children, who often earn their purple hearts during custody battles. Even after Anthony Roszel won the court fight to be named custodial parent of his daughter (won it twice, in fact), the war with his ex-wife, Keleigh Kasteile, wasn’t over. Not by…

Princess Diana’s body was barely back on British soil when the most unlikely people began acting like royal pains, comparing their own plights to that of the deceased princess. On September 2, Larry King’s live show got a surprise call from none other than Patsy Ramsey, who wanted to pop…