Rocky Mountain Voice

Commentary

HB26-1276 faces hearing today as Rep. Slaugh warns sanctuary policies could cut federal jail funding
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

HB26-1276 faces hearing today as Rep. Slaugh warns sanctuary policies could cut federal jail funding

By Rep. Scott Slaugh | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Editor’s update: HB26-1276 is scheduled to be heard today at 1:30 p.m. in the House Finance Committee (HCR 0112). Readers can listen to the hearing live here or sign up to testify here. Since the year 2000, by Act of Congress the federal Department of Justice’s has annually reimbursed state prisons and thousands of local county jails across the nation for the documented costs of incarcerating convicted criminal aliens –persons not lawfully present in the United States and convicted of a felony crime or two misdemeanors under a state’s criminal code. That decades-old federal program is called the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, or simply, “SCAAP.”   From its inception the federal SCAAP program ...
Washington Post Frames Constitutional Rulings As Civil Rights Setbacks
The Federalist, Approved, Commentary, National

Washington Post Frames Constitutional Rulings As Civil Rights Setbacks

By Shawn Fleetwood | Commentary, The Federalist In his new article, Washington Post reporter Justin Jouvenal attempts to convince readers that SCOTUS has waged a war on ‘civil rights.’ The unspoken competition among legacy media outlets to see who can produce the most asinine propaganda is pretty fierce this week. On top of a debunked hatchet job involving the Pentagon and Vatican, The Washington Post decided to throw its hat in the ring with a particularly dumb hit piece of its own — this time, against the U.S. Supreme Court. In a Thursday article titled, “Supreme Court remade by Trump ushers in historic defeats for civil rights,” Post reporter Justin Jouvenal attempted to convince readers that the court’s conservative justices have waged an all-...
From imminent threat to no threat: Why the Iran narrative suddenly changed
American Thinker, Approved, Commentary, National

From imminent threat to no threat: Why the Iran narrative suddenly changed

By Brian C. Joondeph | Commentary, American Thinker Not long ago, Iran was described as an imminent threat. Now we are told it wasn’t a threat at all. What changed? Not the facts. The politics. That shift is playing out in real time as the narrative around the Iran war evolves. A recent Rasmussen Reports poll found that a majority of likely U.S. voters believe the conflict has been successful so far. Under normal circumstances, that would invite a sober reassessment. Instead, it has produced something closer to denial. From the beginning, critics warned that confronting Iran would spark chaos across the Middle East, destabilize global markets, and drag the United States into another endless quagmire. Many insisted there was no urgent threat requiring acti...
Colorado Supreme Court sides with transparency in child abuse hotline case
Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado Supreme Court sides with transparency in child abuse hotline case

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project The CFOIC article linked at bottom details a recent ruling by the CO Supreme Court. Five years on from when the suit was first filed, the state’s highest court ruled that the Colorado Sun and 9News have a right to some records from the state’s child abuse hotline pertaining to group homes for children. The State of Colorado, in particular the State Department of Human Services (CDHS) had argued that releasing the statistics would violate state statutes pertaining to confidentiality, mainly due to there only being three group homes from which statistics were sought.** Quoting with links intact: “CDHS contended the information could be used to identify individual informants, children or family members — in ...
Colorado Faces Backlash Over Law Limiting Attorney Cooperation With Federal Authorities
Fox News, Approved, Commentary, National

Colorado Faces Backlash Over Law Limiting Attorney Cooperation With Federal Authorities

By Jonathan Turley | Commentary, Fox News New law forces lawyers to certify they won't share court data with immigration officials. Colorado's tourism slogan, "It's Our Nature," has a menacing meaning for free speech advocates. Colorado is now arguably the most anti-free speech state in the union, pushing an array of measures attacking those with opposing social and political views. The irony is that the state has proved a bonanza for free speech with spectacular legal failures that reaffirmed rather than restricted the First Amendment. Now, the Democratic legislature and governor are back with new unconstitutional measures, including a requirement that lawyers not share information with federal immigration officials as a condition for filing with state courts. ...
Commentary Questions Whether Colorado Leaders Mirror The Power They Protest
Complete Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Commentary Questions Whether Colorado Leaders Mirror The Power They Protest

By Jon Caldara | Commentary, Complete Colorado Though most of us celebrate “No Kings Day” on July 4, the Trump-deranged got a head start last weekend with rallies around the state. Attendees bravely fought oppression by blocking traffic for people with jobs. Rally-goers demanded freedom from tyranny, many right after voting to ban all but beige house paint at their HOA meetings. After pausing briefly to DoorDash something gluten-free, they returned to the barricades to secure democracy in Colorado for one more day. They risked everything, except mild discomfort, to call the guy who won both the popular vote and the electoral vote a tyrant. Yes, I’m having fun at their expense. And yes, they have a point. When you build a country on principles instead of a per...
Colorado fought scrutiny—until a lawsuit forced a cleanup
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Colorado fought scrutiny—until a lawsuit forced a cleanup

By RMV Editorial Board | Rocky Mountain Voice Back in 2019, Colorado’s voter rolls were already showing the problem—if anyone in charge had been willing to look at them. Forty counties had more registered voters than eligible citizens. Call it whatever you want—but it’s not normal. That wasn’t a partisan claim. It wasn’t a social media theory. It was data. And for a long time, it just sat there. No press conference. No urgency. No statewide fix. Then something happened. Someone sued. The lawsuit no one was supposed to take seriously Eventually, someone stopped waiting for the state to act. By October 2020, it had crossed a line. Judicial Watch took it to federal court, filing suit against Jena Griswold under the National Voter Registration Act. An...
Should professors persuade or present? Classroom neutrality questioned in Colorado
Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, Local

Should professors persuade or present? Classroom neutrality questioned in Colorado

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project The article at bottom details how an adjunct professor specializing in queer studies at Colorado Mesa University resigned over a dispute involving classroom neutrality. I’ll leave it to you to read up on the dispute and come to your own decisions about the facts in the matter. From my take on the article, it seems that there might be something of a disagreement as to exactly what was said and what happened. I am also open to any civil comment you’d like to add. Please feel free to toss in your two cents on the issue, whether we agree or not. Again, without saying what the professor here did or didn’t do, let’s examine two different versions of how a class discussion could go. Contrast the following: ...
Colorado lawmakers move to sidestep Supreme Court ruling on therapy speech
Sey Anything, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado lawmakers move to sidestep Supreme Court ruling on therapy speech

By Jennifer Sey | Commentary, Sey Everything The Colorado legislature is attempting to sidestep the Supreme Court ruling with a new "conversion therapy" lawsuit bill The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on March 31, 2026, in Chiles v. Salazar (8-1 decision, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting) that Colorado’s 2019 ban on “conversion therapy” for minors violates the First Amendment’s free-speech protections as applied to talk therapy. (I wrote about it here.) The Supreme Court’s ruling said the Colorado law was unconstitutional because it constituted “viewpoint discrimination.” The Supreme Court made it clear that talk therapy is protected speech, not “conduct.” But Colorado refuses to accept the Supreme Court’s ruling. Instead, the insane state that I l...
Follow the money faster: New tool unlocks Colorado spending data in minutes
Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Follow the money faster: New tool unlocks Colorado spending data in minutes

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project I have mentioned (and used) the TOPS system, our state’s online checkbook register, multiple times. It’s a great way to see who our state is paying and for what. I noticed recently (within the last 6 months) that the people who run it made it significantly harder to use: I’m not sure why, but at some point they made it so you can only go month by month.** I had a reader kindly volunteer his time and skill at computer programming to come up with a way to automate TOPS searches so I, and now you since the program is public, don’t have to click and wait month by month to find what we need. The program this person came up with lives online and is linked first below. They titled it a TOPS scraper. It’s pretty i...