Rocky Mountain Voice

Menu

Rocky Mountain Voice

A socialist endorsement for mayor: What Denver DSA’s backing of Shontel Lewis means.
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

A socialist endorsement for mayor: What Denver DSA’s backing of Shontel Lewis means.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Denver's Democratic Socialists of America chapter has picked a candidate in the 2027 race for mayor. In an August 25 release, the chapter said it was "proud to announce their endorsement of Councilwoman Shontel M. Lewis for Mayor of Denver in the 2027 election." The endorsement comes from the chapter itself, in its own words. What is worth slowing down on is the word itself. For DSA, an endorsement is not a pat on the back. It is a category with rules attached, and the rules are written down. The candidate Lewis is a first-term councilmember for District 8, a seat that runs through Park Hill and parts of East Colfax.  She filed an affidavit in July to run for mayor in the April 6, 2027, municipal election, a...
Read More
What the Supreme Court did, and did not do, on Trump’s mail-ballot order
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, National, Top Stories

What the Supreme Court did, and did not do, on Trump’s mail-ballot order

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a win Monday on mail-in voting, and the headlines said so. But for a Colorado voter, nothing has changed yet. The state remains set to send November ballots under existing rules, because a second court order the justices did not touch still blocks the part of the president's plan most directly tied to how voters receive their ballots. That gap between the headline and the effect is the story. The Court cleared one obstacle in Trump's path. It did not rule that his election order is legal, and it did not change how Coloradans get their ballots this fall. What it means for Colorado now Colorado is not a bystander in the case. It is one of the plaintiffs that brought th...
Read More
Three federal cases test whether Colorado treats gun rights as policy or as a limit on government
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Three federal cases test whether Colorado treats gun rights as policy or as a limit on government

By C. J. Garbo | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado has spent more than a generation treating the Second Amendment as a public-policy question. That is the first mistake. The Bill of Rights does not identify subjects upon which government may act whenever legislators believe their intentions are sufficiently benevolent. It identifies areas in which governmental power is constrained. The distinction is fundamental. A constitutional right does not exist at the pleasure of a legislative majority, nor does its force rise and fall with polling, tragedy, political fashion, or the confidence of public officials in their own judgment. This is particularly important when discussing firearms because the Second Amendment was never merely an eighteenth-century hunting prov...
Read More
DougCo’s charter proposal protects schools from competition, not choice
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Local, Top Stories

DougCo’s charter proposal protects schools from competition, not choice

By Kim Gilmartin | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Douglas County has long been known as a community that values school choice, which is one reason a resolution recently advanced by the Douglas County School District (DCSD) Board of Education deserves much more attention than it has received. The resolution, submitted to the Colorado Association of School Boards (CASB), asks for changes to Colorado’s Charter Schools Act that would give local boards more authority to consider how a new charter school might affect schools that already exist. CASB has now published the proposal as Resolution #3, submitted by the DCSD Board of Education, for consideration at its September Delegate Assembly. The language matters. The resolution would allow local boards to consider the “educa...
Read More
A fire chief lost his free speech case. The day after, he published a book.
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

A fire chief lost his free speech case. The day after, he published a book.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Erik Holt read the opinion the morning it came down on July 7 at 9 a.m. Three federal judges had decided that when the former Florissant fire chief handed election surveillance footage to a criminal investigator examining alleged misconduct in the board's election, he was doing his job, not speaking as a citizen.  That single finding ended his case. It meant the federal courts would never reach whether the board fired him in retaliation. He wrote the last chapter of his book that day. He submitted it for publishing the next. "I used the very First Amendment that the court said I didn't have to publish a book and tell my story," Holt said. RMV has followed Holt's case since November 2025, in reports on the su...
Read More
Davidson: Capitalism trusts you to choose. Socialism does not.
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, National, Top Stories

Davidson: Capitalism trusts you to choose. Socialism does not.

By Jay Davidson | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Only one economic system accounts for human nature. Economics is the study of human nature. It seeks to explain how individuals interact in the exchange of a medium of value: money, barter, services, etc. Psychology, social science, even philosophy also study human nature. Whereas these studies can affect us at different times, the economy constantly affects us. An economy is a massive interchange of one product for another. It is more complex than weather prediction. Yet one economic system excels at recognizing human nature to its fullest. And that system relies on the one thing the left tells us is wrong: self-interest. Human nature requires self-interest in order to perpetuate, survive, and thrive. If pursued by a...
Read More
The Discretion Weapon: Hey Diddle Diddle (When the Church Goes Helter-Skelter)
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Devotional, Top Stories

The Discretion Weapon: Hey Diddle Diddle (When the Church Goes Helter-Skelter)

By Drake Hunter | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Hey diddle diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laughedTo see such sport, And the dish ran away with the spoon. As children, we probably never stopped to consider just how helter-skelter that little nursery rhyme really is. The cat is playing a fiddle. The cow is flying over the moon. The dog is laughing, and apparently the dish and spoon have decided they have had enough of the kitchen and are running away together. You see… everything is moving, but nothing is functioning as it should. Reflecting on it, Hey Diddle Diddle might mirror our world today—and, sadly, it can also represent the condition of the Christian individual, marriage, family, church, business, and government. I...
Read More
A change order, not an amendment: How Denver moved $18 million past City Council
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

A change order, not an amendment: How Denver moved $18 million past City Council

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice A contractor digging up 16th Street hit a brick sewer the city hadn't mapped. The cost of Denver's signature downtown project jumped by $18 million, the finish line slid back nearly a year, and City Council found out after the deal was done. That sequence sits at the heart of a new audit from Denver Auditor Timothy O'Brien, released Aug. 20. The report walks through how the 16th Street Improvement Project grew from a $149 million council approval in 2021 to a final cost of about $175.6 million, and how the single biggest change along the way never came to a council vote. How $18 million skipped the council The Department of Transportation & Infrastructure (DOTI) hired PCL Construction Services to rebuild the roa...
Read More
Colorado funded ads telling kids they can get therapy without parental consent
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado funded ads telling kids they can get therapy without parental consent

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice A child in Colorado can sign up for state-funded therapy at age 12 without a parent knowing. That is not a loophole. It is how the program is built. The program is called I Matter.  It offers up to six free counseling sessions to any young person 18 or under, or up to 21 for those receiving special-education services, and is delivered mostly by telehealth.  According to a report released this month by the medical advocacy group Do No Harm, the state funded a youth-targeted advertising push built around one message. Youth 12 and older don't need a parent to sign off. A consent waiver written into law Do No Harm reviewed 279 files obtained through the Colorado Open Records Act. Its report covers severa...
Read More
Three laws, one result: A federal suit says Colorado and Denver leave some visitors no way to carry
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Three laws, one result: A federal suit says Colorado and Denver leave some visitors no way to carry

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice He says he passed a background check stricter than Colorado's. He holds a carry permit that is good in more than 30 states. He owns a second home in Weld County. And when Greg Howeth applied for a Colorado permit this spring, a Weld County employee called to tell him no — because he does not have a Colorado ID. That denial, delivered by email on May 28, is now Exhibit 2 in a federal lawsuit against the City and County of Denver, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, and five other officials.  Howeth, a South Carolina man named Zackary Dougherty, and the National Rifle Association filed the case in U.S. District Court in Denver on Aug. 12. Their claim is not that any single Colorado law is unconstitutional. It ...
Read More