Today is Dec. 11, 2023, and here’s what you need to know:

Colorado’s top Republican and Democratic legislative leaders offered a unified front against what they described as the rising tide of destructive discourse that’s been creeping up at the state Capitol during a forum on Friday.

The legislative breakfast at the Warwick Hotel was sponsored by Colorado Politics, the Denver Gazette and AARP of Colorado.

All four leaders – House Speaker Julie McCluskie, House Minority Leader Mike Lynch, Senate President Steve Fenberg and Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen – vowed to address the problem head on, both in their capacity as party leaders and as individual legislators.  

Wendi Strom was sworn in as mayor of Lakewood on Nov. 27 following the former city council member and mayor pro team’s election weeks earlier to the part-time position leading the Colorado city.

With a population estimated at just over 157,000, Lakewood is Colorado’s fifth-largest city, behind Denver, Colorado Springs, Aurora and Fort Collins, and ahead of Thornton, Arvada, Pueblo and Westminster.

While the maturing suburb on Denver’s western flank has had just seven mayors – Lakewood only incorporated as a city in 1969 – it’s facing many of the same pressures as its neighbors, from housing affordability and homelessness to increasing crime.

Strom replaces term-limited Mayor Adam Paul, who joined Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration this fall as the larger city’s director of regional affairs in the mayor’s office.

Two of Colorado’s federal judges on Thursday provided a rare behind-the-scenes look at the performance reviews attorneys have given them, including those that are less-than-flattering.

“He looks embarrassing on the bench. Disheveled, disinterested and unprepared,” wrote one lawyer.

“Disheveled?” said the target of the review, U.S. Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter. “Sometimes I ride my bike to work.”

Neureiter and U.S. Magistrate Judge Scott T. Varholak, speaking at the Alfred A. Arraj U.S. Courthouse in downtown Denver, clarified that attorneys’ reviews are not publicly available and their colleagues are entitled to keep their performance evaluations private. However, the two men chose to pull back the curtain on their own evaluations to explain why they adhere to certain courtroom protocols and illustrate how they have changed their approaches in response to criticism.

Shortly after Denver Mayor Mike Johnston took office in July, his administration planned an in-depth, internal survey of public safety employees.

Presumably, the new mayor wanted to get the workers’ feedback before appointing the agency’s leaders.

None of that happened.

Nearly five months later, he reappointed Public Safety Executive Director Armando Saldate and Police Chief Ron Thomas to their posts – after conducting a separate and shorter survey of employees.   

In his latest column, Eric Sondermann explores the “extreme crazy” in politics:

Elisabeth Epps, meet Lauren Boebert.

Tim Hernandez, let me introduce you to Dave Williams.

And so on.

Nationally and here at home, purveyors of extremism on both political poles are gaining currency at the same time they grow ever more annoying and poisonous to any attempt at improved discourse and governance.

Off the top, let me rebut the reflexive retort that this constitutes a false equivalency. Clearly, players on the hard left and hard right are not cut from the same cloth. Antifa’s Nicole Armbruster, even with her fondness for violence and penchant for getting arrested, is hardly a menace on the order of avowed white supremacist and Jan. 6th instigator, Nick Fuentes.