Last week, I talked to one of my daughters in Oregon, and she asked me about “the Romanoff scandal,” adding that it was much in the news out there and so it must be a really big deal in Colorado. It hasn’t been getting that much play in Colorado — I don’t recall anyone bringing […]
Ed Quillen
Posted inGoat
Regional variations in the GOP
Just as Coastal Democrats differ from Interior Democrats, Republicans come in regional varieties. Or so argues Jacob Weisberg in Slate, an online magazine owned by the Washington Post. He sees three GOP regions: Northeastern, Southern and Western. The Northeastern — the moderate variety — is nearly extinct, though showed signs of life with Scott Brown’s […]
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Names in high places
An old college friend lives near Seattle. He’s about as chauvinistic about his Cascades as I am about our Rocky Mountains. I used to annoy him by pointing out that his majestic Mt. Rainier was only 14,410 feet high, while our rather nondescript Mt. Harvard was a towering 14,420. And Harvard is only the third-tallest […]
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Wildfire costs rising
There’s an old saying that “Floods are acts of God. Flood damage is an act of man.” That is, we mortals don’t control rainfall, but we can decide not to build in flood plains. A similar argument might apply to wildfires, according to a recent report from Headwaters Economics, which describes itself as an “independent, […]
Posted inWotr
The Arizona solution
Having lived in Colorado for all of my 59 years, I’ve certainly suffered from immigration. It’s cost me a job or two because immigrants from the East Coast went to better schools and boasted more impressive résumés. I’ve had to compete against well-heeled California immigrants for housing. After these immigrants settle in, they assault our […]
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An Arizona Solution
Having lived in Colorado for all of my 59 years, I’ve certainly suffered from immigration. It’s cost me a job or two because immigrants from New York or Pennsylvania went to better schools and boasted more impressive resumés. I’ve had to compete against well-heeled California immigrants for housing. After these immigrants settle in, they assault […]
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Utah Republicans dump incumbent senator
It’s almost certain that Utah will have a new U.S. Senator next year. Three-term incumbent Robert Bennett sought a fourth term, but despite his generally conservative voting record and endorsementa from Mitt Romney and the National Rifle Association, he didn’t get enough votes at the state Republican convention to get on the primary […]
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That old-time separation
Today is the first Thursday in May, which makes it the National Day of Prayer, established by the U.S. Congress in 1952. A federal judge in Wisconsin has found it an unconstitutional establishment of religion by the federal government, but the decision is under appeal and so the events will go forward. It […]
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Myths about myths
You’ll probably soon hear about the “five myths about green energy,” if you haven’t already. They’re the talking points of a book to be published this week, Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future by Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He wrote […]
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More than a starter castle
Tom Chapman, the land developer whom just about everybody loves to hate, is at it again. Chapman’s specialty is buying inholdings — private land surrounded by public land — and then either developing them, or threatening to develop them until he gets a good deal. He’s been the subject of many articles in […]
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Oh, deer
Living where “the deer and the antelope roam” may be fine in theory, but I’d prefer that the roaming happen somewhere besides my small back yard. Alas, this winter and spring, muley doe and two fawns appear back there with some regularity — two or three times a week. It’s not as though […]
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Grasshopper plague expected this summer
Fires, floods, drought, blizzards, avalanches — life in the West can be rather challenging. And now a plague of locusts. Well, not exactly. Just plain old grasshoppers, whose population has been growing in parts of the West, and might peak this year, causing hundreds millions of dollars in crop and other damage. The population boom […]
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Taking back the country
Colorado’s political season got off to its official start on March 16 with precinct caucuses, but even before those gatherings, some candidates had ads on TV. Among them was Jane Norton, former lieutenant governor and one of several candidates for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. The seat was won by Democrat […]
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The accidental highway
Glenwood Canyon on the Western Slope of Colorado has been in the news lately, thanks to a big rockslide that happened just after midnight on March 9. The tumbling boulders blocked and damaged a stretch of Interstate 70. It took four days to get the highway open again, just on a limited basis. During the […]
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Politics and currency
H.L. Mencken once observed that it would have been worth losing the Civil War in order not to have Ulysses S. Grant as president. The reputation of Grant’s presidency, 1869-77, has improved since Mencken’s day, but apparently not enough. Now there’s a bill introduced in Congress to replace his picture on the $50 bill, a […]
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The Illusory Cowboy Way
It stands to reason that a state that features a cowboy riding a bronco on its license plate would be partial to “the cowboy way.” And the Wyoming legislature is trying to make it official with a code derived from the 2004 book Cowboy Ethics, by James P. Owen. The proposed code […]
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Mules making a comeback
The mule, a sterile cross between a jackass and a mare, is a creature “without pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity.” And it’s also the subject of an article in the current edition (Feb. 15-22) of The New Yorker. The full text is available only to subscribers, although an abstract is available […]
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When Colorado just said No
The eyes of the world — or at least the NBC prime-time audience — are on Vancouver as that Canadian city hosts the Winter Olympics. For Coloradans, it’s a reminder of our state’s peculiar status as the only world’s only place that was awarded the Winter Olympics, but turned them down . […]
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Green energy isn’t always popular
My part of the world gets way too much wind along with plenty of sunshine. It also has some unusual geology which allows the earth’s inner heat to come closer to the surface. Our wind, despite the window-rattling power of its gusts, is too sporadic to attract much commercial interest in developing this […]