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The Deference Weapon: Ring Around the Rosie and the Second Mile
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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...
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What our fathers taught us
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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...
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Before you return your ballot: What you get to decide, and what’s already decided.
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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, ...
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Beverly Aikins on faith, recovery and the next right thing
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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...
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Lara Logan: Why ordinary people still give her hope
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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...
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Temper, temper
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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...
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ICE detention cases are surging in Colorado. The DOJ keeps losing the legal fight.
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ICE detention cases are surging in Colorado. The DOJ keeps losing the legal fight.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Five people filed habeas corpus petitions challenging their Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention in all of Colorado federal court in 2024. One hundred five filed in 2025. Through June 15th of this year, 722 have filed, and the pace has held at more than 150 a month since March. Every one of those cases carries attorney fee exposure when the government loses. Of the cases resolved on the core detention question so far — spanning late 2025 and 2026 — Colorado judges granted the petition 248 times. Only one judge, Chief Judge Daniel Domenico, has ruled for the government on the merits — and he has done so repeatedly. And the same Justice Department that keeps losing keeps defending the legal theory behind the cases....
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Colorado rebuilt how it votes twice. Its federal plan never caught up.
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Colorado rebuilt how it votes twice. Its federal plan never caught up.

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold has called the state's switch to mail-in voting a transformation of democracy. The federal election plan Colorado keeps on file describes an election system mostly built around precinct polling places. Both come from the state. One appeared in a 2023 news release celebrating the 10th anniversary of Colorado's vote-by-mail law.  The other appears in Colorado's official Help America Vote Act State Plan, which has not been updated since 2008 despite two major changes to how Coloradans vote and register. The issue surfaced through a HAVA complaint filed in February by Highlands Ranch resident Michael Cahoon and Wisconsin election researcher Peter Bernegger. At the May 11 hearing, they we...
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Colorado is cutting funding for its poorest students. The tool meant to replace it was suspended.
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Colorado is cutting funding for its poorest students. The tool meant to replace it was suspended.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice In Colorado's smallest school districts, the ones tucked into rural towns, two state programs direct extra money each year to districts based on how many students live in poverty. They are not a lot, but they are specific. They are meant for those kids. And they are going away. The state is winding down two programs that have directed about $12 million a year to schools serving Colorado's highest concentrations of low-income students. One program was already repealed when the new fiscal year started. The other drops to half its current level July 1 and is eliminated in FY 2027-28.  The tool the state built to replace how it counts and funds at-risk students was suspended five weeks ago, after two years of data col...
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Name-calling inside the GOP is helping Democrats win
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Name-calling inside the GOP is helping Democrats win

By Shirley Bauer | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice For Review: What Is a “Shirley’s Swirly”?  “Shirley’s Swirly” (noun): An action using water to symbolically swirl bad thinking down a drain. It applies to a person, ideology, or organization that needs their “stinkin’ thinkin’” adjusted. No physical harm to any human or animal is ever involved.  Why This Swirly Exists  I started “Shirley’s Swirly” because of the growing attacks on Republicans in office. Those attacks haven’t slowed — they’ve intensified. Groups like RINO Watch, along with people calling themselves “Republicans” seem to enjoy smearing fellow Republicans more than focusing on winning against the Democrats. So today’s “...
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