Perspectives
Winds of change in the Middle East
On Feb. 11, 1979, Islamic revolutionaries took power in Tehran. On Sept. 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden and his al- Qaida terrorists launched their attacks on New York and Washington, killing nearly 3,000 Americans. On Feb. 11, 2011, Hosni Mubarak resigned as president of...
Bowl a strike for reproductive freedom
Everybody knows abortion became legal for all women with the ‘Roe v. Wade’ Supreme Court decision in 1973. Fewer people know that in 1976, poor women lost that fundamental right to determine whether or when to have children. That is the year that the Hyde Amendment (...
Sometimes, the government comes in handy
Americans have a love/hate relationship with government, condemning those wasteful and corrupt government bureaucrats in the abstract while praising many public services in the concrete like the fire department, schools or parks...
Paying to pump
Denver was number three in a survey of the top 10 oil-and gas-cities in the world done by Rigzone, an industry employment and data clearinghouse...
It’s time to open the vault on Kennedy
President John Kennedy was killed 50 years ago. There is still considerable controversy about who did it. The release of 4 million pages of long-secret documents since Oliver Stone’s movie JFK clarified some disputes but raised new questions. Many thousands of pages ...
The racial wounds of 9/11
On Sept. 11, I was a 28-year-old attorney working for the Department of Justice. I remember being evacuated from my federal office building that morning, and later heading across the 14th Street Bridge to my home in Arlington, Va. I could hardly believe the sight ...
Journalistic stings go mainstream
Here’s a problem of professional ethics right out of today’s headlines: If a news organization prohibits its own staff from using certain reporting techniques — say, deception — should it publish information that somebody else gathered using those forbidden ...
After the deluge: What I told city council
On Sept. 17 I ended up the first to address the Boulder City Council during citizen participation. Several council members were nodding their heads by the end of the first sentence ... but soon they stopped. Here’s what I said, prettied up for print...
Fix our bridges already
The four-lane Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River near Seattle seemed to be in good shape for a 58-year-old structure. Inspected as recently as last November, it wasn’t even on the list of bridges judged “structurally deficient.” Yet in May, it suddenly ...
Walmart is still bad for the planet
In May, Walmart was hit with $110 million in environmental fines after pleading guilty to improperly dumping pesticides, fertilizer and other hazardous materials into public sewers and landfills. The Justice Department’s Environmental Crimes Section said that it was ...
Facing a crossroads
Woody Allen once said that “more than any time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.” Our reliance upon fossil fuels has ...
