Free Republic

10th Circuit Court lifts an injunction barring the filling of the expensive, controversial dam expansion in western Boulder County ... Denver Water can finish its Gross Dam expansion and fill the controversial reservoir in western Boulder County, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday, lifting an injunction by a lower court judge and confirming the dam’s permits as sound. The appeals court said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had acted responsibly in issuing construction permits for the $600 million expansion, which is largely complete and will be filled using water rights Denver holds in the Colorado River...

OXFORD, Miss. (NewsNation) — The University of Mississippi on Thursday identified the two students who died Monday as freshman Aidan Hamilton and junior Robert Strang. The university said the families gave permission to release the names and asked for privacy as they grieve. Hamilton is from Englewood, Colo., while Strang is from Atlanta, according to the records. “We have been in touch with the families to offer our deepest sympathies and share university support and resources,” Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Shawnboda Mead said in a message to the campus community. The causes of both deaths remain under investigation. One...

The unrelenting rise in healthcare costs has left state lawmakers facing a $1.6 billion deficit in the 2027-28 budget year ... The best-case scenario forecast that Colorado budget writers received in June turned out to be too good to be true. Three months later, the budget picture has crumbled again, economists told the Joint Budget Committee at the state’s quarterly revenue forecasts Friday. Analysts now expect the state to face a $1.6 billion deficit next fiscal year, setting the stage for another round of grueling spending cuts for the state legislature and Colorado’s next governor. The driving force behind the...

State officials said the incidents caused no harm to water quality or public safety.. Foreign actors gained access to computer systems at two small private water utilities in Colorado in late August, changing equipment controls before operators restored normal operations, according to the governor’s office. Ally Sullivan, a spokeswoman for Gov. Jared Polis, said the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment followed up with the providers to confirm the issues had been resolved. The governor’s office said it was unable to confirm which foreign actors and did not identify the utilities. “The two water utilities impacted are small, private...

Denver socialist and city councilwoman Shontel Lewis said she's qualified to serve as the city's mayor because she was convicted of stealing food stamps, a crime she said made her familiar with "navigating all the ills of poverty." Lewis, the Denver Democratic Socialists of America's pick for mayor, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor theft in 2008 after stealing thousands of dollars in public benefits by using her position with the Colorado Department of Human Services East Food Stamp Office to reissue Electronic Benefit Transfer cards intended for others to her roommate and herself. She was sentenced to 18 months of probation...

Rep. Lauren Boebert gave a simple response to a viral claim that she had affairs with three staff members — including two women: she’s straight. Boebert (R-Col.), who famously pondered in April, “why is everybody so horny” in Congress after a slew of sex scandals, faces a sworn ethics complaint from a political action committee that has targeted her for years and is led by a political activist who has peddled dubious claims about her in the past.

A Denver Public Schools board facing criticism over infighting is dealing with new allegations against one of its members, and raising concerns among some parents about whether the board is focused on the district's students and schools. There are seven members on the board who are elected for 4-year terms. Two are at-large and the rest represent their specific districts. The latest controversy involves allegations that Denver Board of Education Vice President Monica Hunter made offensive comments about fellow board member Amy Klein Molk, including an alleged reference to her as a "racist Zionist b----." Hunter denies making the comments....

Can't believe this is not on FR after 30 mins....man seen running away from car filled with propane tanks. He had a backpack in his hands as he ran away. Parked in front of City Hall in Arvada,Colorado..aka Littleton.

In a shocking case out of Colorado, a crime lab analyst has been sentenced to 10 years behind bars for tampering with DNA evidence. Imagine your loved one’s rapist or murderer being acquitted because the forensic analyst on the case decided to destroy the DNA proof linking them to the crime. That’s exactly what 66-year-old Yvonne “Missy” Woods did. Over her decades-long career at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, this deranged woman altered DNA data in over one-thousand cases, allowing countless criminals to walk free. For some bizarre reason, this woman threw out DNA from rape kits and even homicide...

Former NBA point guard Ty Lawson put himself in an uncomfortable spotlight this past July with his latest run-in with the law. The 38-year-old was arrested on July 16 in Castle Rock, Colorado, after a liquor store employee accused him of stealing a $34 bottle of vodka. According to police documents, Lawson allegedly carried the bottle to a nearby restaurant where officers later confronted him. Authorities also noted they believed the retired NBA player was intoxicated, documenting the smell of alcohol during their interaction. Things reportedly escalated after Lawson was taken into custody. Police alleged he repeatedly called an officer...

ASPEN, Colo. — Mountain Rescue Aspen responded to two climbing fatalities in less than a week. On Sunday, a climber died after falling on Castle Peak, south of Aspen. On Sept. 2, another climber was killed after falling off Maroon Peak. The Elk Mountains are very rocky, loose shale that’s crumbly and moves a lot,” said Jeff Edelson with Rocky Mountain Rescue. “It’s unfortunate to see two climber deaths in one week in one range. If we look back at our historical data, unfortunately, we do have a couple of deaths a year on average in our range. Sometimes they’re...

An unruly mob of 500 teenagers swarmed a Colorado Burger King and supermarket in a chaotic “takeover” on Sunday. Video footage shared on social media shows the out-of-control miscreants shouting in a Burger King, standing on tables, and then breaking into fisticuffs amongst each other. Watch Below: VIDEO AT LINK.................... The uncontrollable mob — many of whom were between 14 and 17 years old — took over the Hoffman Heights Shopping Center in Aurora, Colorado, at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, the Aurora Police Department said. “The gathering appears to have been organized through social media around an unpermitted sporting event,”...

The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office said that confidential voter registration information was inadvertently made public during an update to a tool on the Secretary’s website. More than 130,000 confidential voter registrations became accessible to the public. Secretary of State Jena Griswold said the issue occurred when the office updated its “Find My Voter Registration Tool” link on its website on August 14. That update made confidential voter profiles inadvertently available to the public. The mistake was discovered on Tuesday. In a press release, the Secretary of State’s Office said confidential voter details displayed included full name, birth year, party...

The Democratic nominee for Colorado's Third Congressional District, Dwayne Romero, has made housing affordability a tent-pole issue for his campaign, accusing "Wall Street behemoths" of "buying up homes and driving up rents." Yet, for years, his real estate firm has made big money selling multimillion-dollar luxury homes in Aspen, where residential property is so expensive that even the city's doctors and lawyers can't afford to live. Romero also holds stakes in BlackRock, Blackstone, and Airbnb, his personal financial disclosure shows. Romero told a Grand Junction news outlet that his top priority is "affordability" and that "prices and housing costs" is...

Like the cuckoo bird who lays its eggs in other birds’ nests, Colorado’s leftward lurch began some 20 or so years ago and has accelerated steadily ever since, fueled by disaffected cuckoo birds from California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and other assorted pockets of liberal mania, who laid their eggs liberally across their newly usurped state. To be fair, several formerly conservative states have suffered this fate to varying degrees, but Coloradan transplants have transformed the state with a vengeance. For example, in the 2020 national election, Proposition 115 would have “prohibited abortions in Colorado beyond 22 weeks,...

Venezuela's new petroleum minister sees her South American home not as a dilapidated former oil giant, but as an emerging energy economy ripe for U.S. and foreign investments in new oil and gas exploration, both onshore and offshore. Paula Henao, who took over as the hydrocarbons minister in March after the forced U.S. removal of former leader Nicolás Maduro, told an overflowing Houston energy audience on Wednesday that Venezuela is much more than just its famed heavy-grade crude oil. There are more than 916 exploration opportunities awaiting foreign investment, she said, including natural gas and other untapped oil basins. She...

Victor Marx, the Republican nominee for governor, took the spotlight Wednesday during the opening day of the Colorado Water Congress, laying out how he says the state should approach its water future. Marx told the standing-room-only audience in Steamboat Springs that he holds water rights himself, giving him a personal stake in Colorado’s water challenges. His proposed fix? More storage. “We can’t make it snow, we can’t make it rain, but we can decide whether we’re prepared for when the water comes,” he said. “So, I believe we should store water in good years. Wet years. Lord, please send it.”...

Colorado state officials on Thursday morning released the results of spring 2023 K-12 achievement tests and the results are mixed -- suggesting that where students were developmentally when their learning was disrupted by the COVID pandemic may play a role in how well they're succeeding academically today. In the English Language Arts portion of the Colorado Measures of Academic Success for example, higher percentages of students in grades 5, 6 and 7 met or exceeded expectations than in 2022, but grades 3 and 4 saw drops or nominal gains. The CMAS tests students in grades 3-8, finding that across the...

Restaurants and other businesses have lost their challenge to Denver ordinances that forbid them from using natural-gas appliances, as a judge has found they are not preempted by federal law. The Restaurant Law Center and the National Association of Home Builders were among the trade associations that sued Denver in July 2024, arguing rules passed in Denver this decade were preempted by the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act. Judge Philip Brimmer disagreed in an Aug. 7 ruling granting the city’s motion to dismiss. Preemption only applies to energy use requirements on manufacturers before the appliances reach consumers, Brimmer wrote....

A Denver District Court judge has given Secretary of State Jena Griswold until Thursday to comply with an open records request, or she could be held in contempt. The records involve consulting work, paid for with public funds. Griswold's office says it doesn't have the documents and it refuses to ask the consultant for them, claiming that would impose an undue "burden." Instead, the Secretary of State's office sent four employees and the Attorney General's Office sent three attorneys to court. The consultant was brought in two years after Griswold became Secretary of State. The office had become a revolving...