Free Republic

Three teenagers were charged with murder after allegedly tossing landscaping rocks at several Colorado drivers in a disturbing spree that left one motorist dead, according to authorities. Victim Alexa Bartell, 20, was behind the wheel last Wednesday night while talking to a friend on the phone when she was fatally struck by a heavy rock that smashed through her windshield, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said. ..... The trio, identified as Joseph Koenig, Nicholas “Mitch” Karol-Chik and Zachary Kwak, are also suspected of carrying out several other similar rock attacks on drivers the same night that Bartell was killed, according...

Nine former employees of Newmont CC&V Mining Corp. filed a lawsuit against the company April 11 in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. The suit alleges religious discrimination and retaliation by unlawful termination after the company denied their request to be exempt from taking the COVID-19 vaccine. The nine refused the company mandate to be vaccinated and were terminated. The lawsuit alleges Newmont forced every employee to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs or face termination of employment. “CC&V is aware of a lawsuit filed in federal court by former CC&V employees,” said Katie Blake, sustainability & external...

Nothing lasts forever. Just ask Ozymandias, or Nate Fisher. Only the wind inhabits the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde in Colorado, birds and vines the pyramids of the Maya. Sand and silence have swallowed the clamors of frankincense traders and camels in the old desert center of Ubar. Troy was buried for centuries before it was uncovered. Parts of the Great Library of Alexandria, center of learning in the ancient world, might be sleeping with the fishes, off Egypt's coast in the Mediterranean. "Cities rise and fall depending on what made them go in the first place," said Peirce Lewis,...

Colorado lawmakers narrowly voted down a state House bill calling for the ban of so-called ”assault weapons” on Wednesday, in a vote that included three Democrats joining with the Republicans to defeat the measure. The Colorado bill, HB23-1230, would have made it illegal to manufacture, import, purchase, sell, or transfer an “assault weapon” and prohibit a person from possessing a rapid-fire trigger activator. After hours of debate, the lawmakers voted down the bill in a 7-6 vote. A local gun rights organization, the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, organized hundreds of witnesses to testify against passing the proposed “assault weapons” ban....

Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling that he violated anti-discrimination laws by refusing to create a cake celebrating a gender transition. Phillips and his attorneys from the Alliance Defending Freedom filed a petition on Thursday with the state’s highest court. In January, the state Court of Appeals ruled in favor of attorney Autumn Scardina, who requested from Phillips a blue and pink birthday cake to celebrate transitioning from male to female. Scardina’s request was made in 2018 on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear...

Rep. Gabe Evans isn’t a career politician. Before being elected to his first term as a Colorado State representative on Nov. 8, 2022, Evans served 12 years in the U.S. Army and Colorado Army National Guard, and 10 years as an Arvada, Colorado, police officer, sergeant, and lieutenant.As such, Evans has extensive experience in law enforcement and combating crime. When he was asked about a March report from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that found that among the 22 most populous states, Colorado was number one for violent crime and what’s led to the increase, Evans was quick to...

Senators introduce bill to create digital identity for all Americans.. U.S. Senators Kyrsten Sinema, an independent of Arizona, and Cynthia Lummis, Republican of Wyoming, have introduced Senate Bill 884, also known as “the Improving Digital Identity Act of 2023.” The bill was introduced March 21 and ordered to proceed out of committee on March 29 without amendments and with a favorable recommendation. ... The bill’s text states: “The lack of an easy, affordable, reliable, and secure way for organizations, businesses, and government agencies to identify whether an individual is who they claim to be online creates an attack vector that...

A 20-year-old Colorado woman was killed after a large rock was thrown at her vehicle. The victim was one of at least five victims of rock attacks on cars in the Denver area. Around 10:45 p.m. on Wednesday, a large rock was launched at a yellow Chevy Spark. At the time of the attack, Alexa Bartell was on the phone with her friend. The phone call went silent. Bartell's friend used an app to locate Alexa’s phone. The friend found Alexa's Spark in a field off the road. The 20-year-old woman was dead inside her car near Denver, Colorado. Police...

DENVER (AP) — Colorado Democratic lawmakers killed an ambitious bill Thursday that would have banned the sale and transfer of semiautomatic firearms, citing promises made to their constituents and concerns over the sweep of the ban even in a state still reeling from a mass shooting in Colorado Springs months earlier. Washington state's Democratic-controlled Statehouse cleared a ban on semiautomatic rifles Wednesday, joining the blue bastions of California and New York. But Colorado's Democratic-controlled Legislature was split on the issue, underscoring the state's purple roots, tensions between urban and rural constituents, and an ongoing push-and-pull between progressive and moderate Democrats...

---assorted Colorado sources say the "assault weapons" ban failed--

Colorado’s election chief was shot down by her own party leaders after demanding the Democrat-controlled legislature adopt a measure to chill future recount efforts. Adding insult to injury, the Democrats added what we like to call the “shut up and sit down” provision telling Secretary of State Jena Griswold to stop using taxpayer dollars to promote her own vain self for reelection. We’re giving Colorado Senate President Steve Fenberg a rare standing ovation on this one. PeakNation will recall that Griswold blew more than $1 million in taxpayer dollars to fund a blatantly political reelection TV commercial last year featuring...

An “ambitious” climate bill that would speed up Colorado’s decarbonization efforts, incentivize the purchase of electric lawn equipment and streamline the regulation of carbon-sequestration wells passed the state Senate on a Democratic-led party-line vote Friday. Senate Bill 16, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Chris Hansen of Denver, is one of several bills trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that is moving through the Legislature this year, but it stands out for the breadth of sectors and activities that it could affect. An amendment made Thursday to the bill, for example, would fine utilities as much as $20,000 per day for failing...

from Pew Research: You are five times more likely to be murdered with a knife vs. a rifle. More than half of all firearm deaths are due to suicide. In countries where firearms are banned/outlawed, the number of knife deaths skyrockets. (It’s not a firearm problem; it’s a people problem.) The U.S. has the highest rate of firearm ownership, yet ranks 28th in the world for firearm deaths. Cities with the strictest firearm laws also have the highest firearm crime rate. As for the 2nd Amendment: You seem to have ignored the part about “shall not be infringed.” And militia...

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis wants to steamroll local zoning and land-use rules in favor of his own vision for planning and development across the entire state? Not so fast, say Colorado’s cities. Their opposition first popped up when their chief lobbyist at the Capitol, Kevin Bommer of the Colorado Municipal League, labeled Polis’ plan a “breathtaking power grab.” That was upon its unveiling a few weeks ago as Senate Bill 23-213. It was just the start of the push-back. As reported by Colorado Politics, the CEO of Colorado’s No. 2 city, Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers, turned up at the...

The Biden administration has proposed cutting water allotments from the Colorado River to California, Arizona, and Nevada by up to 25%. hoping to conserve the supply. “The Colorado River Basin provides water for more than 40 million Americans. It fuels hydropower resources in eight states, supports agriculture and agricultural communities across the West, and is a crucial resource for 30 Tribal Nations. Failure is not an option,” said Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau in a statement. “Recognizing the severity of the worsening drought, the Biden-Harris administration is bringing every tool and every resource to bear through the President’s Investing in America...

With less than a month left of the legislative session, Gov. Polis has yet to put forth any plan to prevent a looming bloodbath and cap residential property tax increases as he promised when voters repealed the Gallagher amendment. Republicans put forth their own plan to cap expected spikes of 40-50% to just five or ten percent over the next several years. But Democrats were ordered to kill those efforts and await the arrival of their hero governor, who would surely swoop in and save the day just in time for his planned 2024 presidential run. Yet the clock is...

A metro area woman said her car and dog were stolen by individuals experiencing homelessness. “They took off with my car and my dog,” Julie Oliva said. Oliva said in late March, she stopped to help a man experiencing homelessness. She admits to letting him inside her Alfa Romeo to warm up. Soon after that man got out of her car, she said she noticed her cell phone was missing. Oliva said she then made contact with a group of people, also experiencing homelessness, who claimed to know the man in question. What can legally be done with a meth-contaminated...

In 1951, on a cold, snowy, windy April day, my parents and I were driving from Cheyenne to Colorado. Long before I-25 improved that journey, we were on two-lane U.S. 85 through tiny Nunn, whose water tower sign (“Watch Nunn Grow”) always made me laugh. None of us were smiling that day; we were anxious, not just about what we faced in Denver, but also about whether my father could stay on the highway, so limited was the visibility. It was agonizingly slow-going. At last, he saw an oncoming vehicle, pulled to the side of the road, and threw his...

A Colorado teen who was arrested last month for allegedly planning to commit a mass shooting at her former middle school owned a copy of “The Communist Manifesto” — and blasted former President Donald Trump as a “con man” in her own writings, authorities said. Lilly Whitworth, 19, wrote a detailed manifesto and possessed floor plans of her intended target before she was busted on March 31 for making threats to various schools, including Timberview Middle School, which she once attended, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by news station KRDO. She also owned a copy of “The Communist Manifesto”...

A transgender teen is in custody after authorities say they recovered a manifesto detailing her plan to attack three schools and churches in Colorado just four days after Audrey Hale murdered six people at the Covenant School in Nashville. William Whitworth, 19, who goes by the name Lilly and is referred to with female pronouns in arrest documents, was arrested on March 31. She was a student in the school district that she planned to attack between 2014 and 2016, authorities say. In a manifesto that was recovered in her home, Whitworth called Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold...