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Mike Davis changed the Supreme Court. Now he has Colorado officials in his sights.
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Mike Davis changed the Supreme Court. Now he has Colorado officials in his sights.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice On the morning Tina Peters walked out of a Colorado prison, Mike Davis was already filing paperwork. The referral went to the Department of Justice before the cameras left.  It named four Colorado officials — Mesa County District Judge Matthew Barrett, Attorney General Phil Weiser, Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein, and Secretary of State Jena Griswold — and called on Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon to open a federal criminal investigation into the prosecution that put Peters away. Davis didn't wait for a press cycle. He didn't wait for the right moment. "The message had to land while the cameras were still on, while the story was still live," he told RMV. That's how he...
She circled his photo in seventh grade. For America’s 250th, she’s taking his name to Washington
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

She circled his photo in seventh grade. For America’s 250th, she’s taking his name to Washington

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Days before leaving on a trip she has waited 50 years to take, Rahna Autrey walked into her garage and found a face she had promised never to forget. The tub of childhood keepsakes sat on a shelf in her garage. Inside was her seventh-grade scrapbook, Partridge Family magazines and all. Inside was the brochure that came with her bracelet. One photograph had a blue circle drawn around it. "I couldn't believe it," she said. "What a God thing, huh?" The soldier was Staff Sgt. William "Sandy" Sanderlin, lost over South Vietnam on Dec. 2, 1969. She never met him. But she wore a bracelet with his name for five years, until it broke when she was a senior in high school. Across the country in those years, Americans wore POW/MIA bracelets, each ...
Colorado’s main suer runs on Trump
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Colorado’s main suer runs on Trump

By Tom Anthony | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice According to Tucker Carlson interviewee Joe Kent, erstwhile Director of Counterterrorism, it was Netanyahu that induced the US to attack Iran. Of course Trump is taking the blame and that goes with being President, as executive decisions have their consequences. High gas prices aren't popular with too many people (we're excepting the ones who own oil wells) and so being anti-Trump has gotten somewhat easier on both sides of the aisle. My dad was a doctor and started out a Republican (although, as a Catholic, he did support Kennedy and, we'll have to include, partnered with Roy Romer in a ski resort venture). After me hearing years of ranting about "socialized medicine" he capitulated to the Democrats later in life to the poi...
From peer-review scandal to cultural warning: Dr. James Lindsay comes to Freedom Fest
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

From peer-review scandal to cultural warning: Dr. James Lindsay comes to Freedom Fest

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice James Lindsay voted for Democrats into his thirties. He will tell you that himself, and he'll tell you exactly why. He knew he disliked George W. Bush. He knew Bush was a Republican. The other side, he figured, must be better. "That was the depth of my political analysis right there," Lindsay said. He means it as a confession, not a punchline. He was, at the time, a mathematician with a PhD from the University of Tennessee, living in Maryville in the foothills of the Smokies, running a business that fused martial arts and massage therapy. Not exactly the profile of someone who would end up warning the European Parliament about the collapse of Western civilization. But that was before a peer reviewer's note about a s...
The Deference Weapon: Ring Around the Rosie and the Second Mile
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Devotional, Top Stories

The Deference Weapon: Ring Around the Rosie and the Second Mile

By Drake Hunter | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down. Most of us learned Ring Around the Rosie before we learned how to tie our shoes. We held hands, spun in circles, laughed, and then intentionally fell to the ground together. Nobody was trying to win. Nobody was competing for attention. Nobody was demanding their rights. For a few brief moments, everyone moved together…Then we grew up! Today, it seems we've forgotten how. Everywhere we look, people are fighting for position. We fight for attention, recognition, influence, and control. We fight to be heard, to be right, and to make sure no one gets ahead of us. The cultural message is clear: stand your ground, protect your rights, and never let a...
What our fathers taught us
Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

What our fathers taught us

Compiled by Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice We put a single question to some of the writers you read here: what's the best thing your father taught you, or the thing you didn't understand until much later?  Nobody sent us a speech. They sent us a memory. Some are about work. Some are about faith, or grit, or a sentence a man said once and never repeated. Much of what these dads handed down came through more than instruction. Your father taught you most in ways he probably didn't plan. Most of us figure that out later. Here are their words, on Father's Day. My father was part of "the greatest generation," a WWII veteran. After the war he was a traveling salesman for the Quaker Oats company for 30 years or so. He taught me the importance of being there. Whenever my d...
Before you return your ballot: What you get to decide, and what’s already decided.
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Before you return your ballot: What you get to decide, and what’s already decided.

By RMV Staff Ballots are already coming back across Colorado, but many voters are still making up their minds. Since January, RMV has followed candidates from campaign launches and candidate forums to assemblies, debates and ballot qualification fights. Before you return your ballot, here's what stood out. The race that could end a 24-year streak For Republicans, the governor's race is the biggest decision on the ballot. It has also been a losing one for a long time. No Republican has won the governor's office since Bill Owens in 2002. Democrats have held it ever since, through Ritter, Hickenlooper and two terms of Polis. Barb Kirkmeyer, Scott Bottoms and Victor Marx are asking Republican voters for the chance to end it. RMV asked all three candidates the same questions, ...
Beverly Aikins on faith, recovery and the next right thing
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Beverly Aikins on faith, recovery and the next right thing

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Hillbilly Elegy made her a character in her son's book. Ten years into recovery, the nurse and grandmother is telling it herself—and bringing it to the RMV Freedom Fest on June 26. Last Christmas, everyone in Beverly Aikins' family opened a gift she had made by hand. She had not sewn in years. The machine had been quiet a long time. Somewhere in a decade of getting well, it started running again. She counts that as recovery. Not the headlines. The sewing. Most people who know Aikins know her secondhand. Her son wrote about her addiction in his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. He talked about it again at the 2024 Republican convention, where the cameras found her in the crowd. This time the questions are hers to answer. Aikins...
Lara Logan: Why ordinary people still give her hope
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Lara Logan: Why ordinary people still give her hope

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice A few weeks after walking out of a Colorado prison, Tina Peters will take the stage at RMV Freedom Fest. Lara Logan will follow her to the microphone. After decades covering wars, terrorism, government corruption and some of the biggest stories in the world, Logan still talks most about people like Peters. A county clerk. A whistleblower. A parent standing before a school board. An ordinary person who decides staying quiet is no longer an option. "People like Tina Peters ... she was just a mom," Logan said. Logan is no stranger to the state. Over the past several years, Colorado has kept showing up in her reporting through Tina Peters' case and the election-integrity disputes that followed. For Logan, Peters' story fit a patte...
Temper, temper
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, National, Top Stories

Temper, temper

By Mark Salley | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice The Left is having a temper tantrum over America250. The babysitters spent the last 10 to 20 years…letting the children do exactly what they wanted. The children didn’t like mommy’s and daddy’s rules. So the babysitters, rather than enforcing the time-tested rules, let the children break them. And, break the rules they did. They left behind civility, honesty and responsibility. The leftist babysitters chose not to reign-in or teach the children. They decided, not merely, to let the children break all the rules…but not to punish the rulebreakers! No more “time outs” in the corner. No more going to bed without dinner. No more having to apologize and accept responsibility for wrongdoing. The children learned…”just do what yo...