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Lee Habeeb: “Storytelling is urgent work”
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Lee Habeeb: “Storytelling is urgent work”

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Lee Habeeb is coming to Castle Rock this month, and he's not telling anyone what he's going to say. "A good storyteller always likes surprising the audience," he told RMV. He did offer one detail. The crowd at RMV's Freedom Fest will hear a song they all know and love. They just won't know the story behind the man who wrote it. Not until Habeeb tells them. Habeeb speaks on the main stage Saturday, June 27 at RMV Freedom Fest at the Douglas County Fairgrounds in Castle Rock. What his grandfather taught him Some lessons get taught at the dinner table. Habeeb's grandfather taught his in a courtroom gallery, watching strangers become citizens. "My grandfather made me go to these immigration ceremonies to see first-ha...
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Colorado GOP Chooses Software Engineer Craig Steiner to Lead Party Recovery
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DENVER7, Approved, State

Colorado GOP Chooses Software Engineer Craig Steiner to Lead Party Recovery

By: Colette Bordelon | Denver7 Craig Steiner replaced Brita Horn as the new chair of the Colorado Republican party after Horn resigned from her position before her term ended. EL PASO COUNTY — The Colorado Republican Party has found their next leader, after the last chair of the party resigned from the role early amid a "tremendous divide" in the party. The former chair, Brita Horn, left the position in April, saying "under the continued threat of further division, legal attacks, and escalation within our party, it has become clear that those intent on prolonging this conflict will not stop." Craig Steiner was selected as the new chair of the Colorado GOP. In that role, he told Denver7 he will work to elect more Republicans and try to unite the party, whi...
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PERA Bonus Payouts Draw New Scrutiny From Colorado Lawmakers
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The Colorado Sun, Approved, State

PERA Bonus Payouts Draw New Scrutiny From Colorado Lawmakers

By Brian Eason | The Colorado Sun The proposal comes in response to a Colorado Sun investigation that found PERA has paid its investment staff millions of dollars in performance bonuses in recent years. Democratic lawmaker says he plans to introduce legislation next year to limit the bonuses that the Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement Association pays to its investment staff. The proposal comes in response to The Colorado Sun’s investigation last week that found PERA has paid its investment staff millions of dollars in performance bonuses in recent years — including $10.2 million in payouts following the stock market’s disastrous 2022. That year, the pension lost $9.8 billion on its portfolio, but PERA still beat many of the benchmarks used to measure it...
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The election analyst Newt Gingrich trusts has a word for 2020, and it isn’t “stolen”
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

The election analyst Newt Gingrich trusts has a word for 2020, and it isn’t “stolen”

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Stolen is the wrong word. Seth Keshel says so himself. And Keshel is a retired Army intelligence captain who has spent nearly six years tagged in headlines as an election denier and a conspiracy theorist. Ask him the obvious question—was the 2020 election stolen—and he says no. He says something else. "I don't believe the elections are stolen. I believe that they're rigged," Keshel said. "And that's what Newt Gingrich believes too." Keshel, a former Army captain of military intelligence and Afghanistan veteran, built a second career reading election returns the way he once read a battlefield. His book, The American War on Election Corruption, reached No. 1 in three Amazon categories this spring and carries a foreword by former House ...
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Colorado’s budget keeps growing. Florida just cut spending again
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Complete Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado’s budget keeps growing. Florida just cut spending again

By Nash Herman | Commentary, Complete Colorado While Colorado’s majority Democrats lament the state’s persistent budget challenges, Florida’s Republican majority just celebrated reducing spending for a second consecutive year in another business-as-usual state budget.  Colorado legislators have plenty of lessons they could learn from Florida, instead, they are more likely to double down on more tax and spend, economy-wrecking policies.  How the states compare  Governor Jared Polis recently signed a $46.8 billion state budget, an almost 7 percent increase over last year’s $43.9 billion in spending, this despite legislators’ constant catastrophizing about Colorado’s “budget shortfall.”  That amounts to approximately $7,800 for every Color...
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Colorado seeks feedback from firearms dealers as new regulations take shape
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado seeks feedback from firearms dealers as new regulations take shape

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Colorado Department of Revenue seeks feedback from Firearms Dealers The Colorado Department of Revenue (DOR) was tasked with regulating — on top of the ATF and existing federal regulation — firearms dealers in the state. They are the ones who make the rules to enforce recently passed requirements on Colorado firearm dealers. I got an email from DOR last week announcing an upcoming rulemaking relevant to firearms dealers. The Department has an existing working group which will be doing the rulemaking, but that doesn’t mean you cannot weigh in. You can provide public comment to the group and can also send in written comment. The announcement of the meeting along with all links to draft rules, agendas, ...
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Colorado Quietly Repeals Anti-ICE Loyalty Pledge Imposed on Lawyers Following Constitutional Scrutiny
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Just The News, Approved, State

Colorado Quietly Repeals Anti-ICE Loyalty Pledge Imposed on Lawyers Following Constitutional Scrutiny

By Greg Piper | Just the News Centennial State quietly eliminates anti-ICE loyalty oath it imposed on lawyers ahead of promised lawsuit. Justice Department still defending constitutionality of settlement gag orders even after SEC, CFTC disavow them. Colorado imposed a loyalty oath on lawyers as a condition of access to the state's court system, pledging they would not assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some federal agencies required defendants to accept gag orders as a condition of civil settlements, pledging they would not question the government's case, no matter how weak they thought it. These speech mandates, some going back more than 50 years, have come crashing down in recent weeks as The Centennial State opts against further cementing its reputation as ...
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Federal Challenge Puts Colorado AI Antidiscrimination Law on Hold
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Telehealth, Approved, State

Federal Challenge Puts Colorado AI Antidiscrimination Law on Hold

By: Julia Ivanova, PhD, MA | TeleHealth Key Takeaways Colorado’s first-in-the-nation AI law was significantly revised after legal challenges from Elon Musk’s xAI and the U.S. Department of Justice, highlighting growing tensions between AI oversight and innovation. The dispute could shape how healthcare AI is regulated nationwide, particularly for systems used in patient access, care management, insurance decisions, remote monitoring, and clinical operations. As federal AI policy remains fragmented, states are increasingly developing their own governance frameworks, creating compliance uncertainty for clinicians, healthcare organizations, and digital health companies operating across multiple jurisdictions. After the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed&n...
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Eleven Colorado lawmakers on the ballot first reached office through appointment
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Eleven Colorado lawmakers on the ballot first reached office through appointment

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Every Coloradan who feels ignored at the Capitol can take comfort in this: they have not one but two people assigned to listen. Your House member splits attention among roughly 92,500 residents. Your senator, among about 171,800. As ballots arrive across the state this week ahead of the June 30 primary election, some of those lawmakers earned their seat with less than 50 votes, and one with only 10—from a committee.  Among the names appearing on those ballots are 11 current lawmakers who were never elected to the seats they now hold. Some were selected by vacancy committees after lawmakers resigned. One was ultimately appointed by Gov. Jared Polis after a vacancy committee failed to submit paperwork before a statutory deadline. ...
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The conservation success story hidden in Colorado’s coal country
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GregWalcher.com, Approved, Commentary, State

The conservation success story hidden in Colorado’s coal country

By Greg Walcher | Commentary, GregWalcher.com In a popular Substack publication called Asterisk Magazine, a California physicist named Casey Handmer wrote a great piece titled “It’s 2024 and Drought is Optional,” about desalination technology. But he also touched on an even more fundamental point about how people don’t want to think about the importance of infrastructure. “The past century of prosperity has produced a culture happily ignorant of this weight-bearing infrastructure — a culture foreign to, if not hostile toward, the idea that humans can positively improve the natural environment.” Indeed, mankind is the only species that not only can improve the environment, but regularly does so, on purpose. That’s because people believe nature has its own intrinsic value, completely a...
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