Author: Denver Gazette Editorial Board

Aurora has never before had a mayor quite like Mike Coffman. And it’s not just because of the lifelong Auroran’s extraordinary resume: U.S. Marine Corps Reserve officer; longtime state legislator; Colorado state treasurer; Colorado secretary of state; five-term U.S. congressman. It’s also because he speaks his mind, does what he thinks is right and blazes…

Being falsely accused of abusing one’s children is among the worst nightmares of any parent. And if the bogus allegation is ginned up by an employee of the very same government agency that is charged with investigating child abuse – it’s an unconscionable breach of the public trust and an abuse of power. Aurora City…

No question about it, Colorado’s political trajectory has favored ruling Democrats for the last several elections and likely will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Republicans can blame in part their own state party’s disarray as well as a former, one-term Republican president who, for all his appeal in some climes of the…

It’s no surprise Colorado’s small businesses aren’t buying Proposition HH, the bait-and-shaft tax measure on this fall’s statewide ballot. After all, the resilient mom ‘n’ pop shops, upstart entrepreneurs and other small-scale employers who create so many of our jobs and bring us so many of our goods and services – are used to scrutinizing…

Mayor Mike Johnston’s proposal in the news this week to spend $8 million in the next city budget on 167 police recruits – expanding police ranks – can’t come soon enough. Especially for beleaguered downtown Denver. Colorado’s No. 1 city has been reeling from a years-long crime wave, and probably no neighborhood has been hit…

It’s no longer about kids stealing candy bars from convenience stores. Remember those days? The store clerk would call the cops, who called mom or dad, and the kid got grounded – lesson learned. Not anymore. As an in-depth – and galling – Gazette news report made clear over the weekend, the explosion in retail…

Looks like freshman Mayor Mike Johnston is all in on his ambitious pledge to take 1,000 people off of Denver’s streets by year’s end and “house” them so that, technically speaking, they won’t be homeless anymore. The price tag, as reported by The Gazette: about $52 million. That’s the upshot of a news conference this…

It is reassuring for Coloradans that key members of our state’s D.C. delegation are united to secure the future of strategically vital Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora. As reported last week by Colorado Politics, U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper on Friday joined 6th Congressional District U.S. Rep. Jason Crow – who represents…

The late conservative icon Irving Kristol memorably quipped that a “neo-conservative” – i.e., a reformed leftist, like him – is “a liberal who has been mugged by reality.” Kristol, who came of age amid the economic upheaval of the Great Depression in 1930s New York City, emerged from college as a member of the Young…

There was a time when only in Boulder would you find local police proposing to make fewer arrests – amid an epic crime wave – in pursuit of “holistic governance.” The rest of the state likely would have given it an eye roll and just shrugged it off as Boulder being Boulder. Well, Boulder is…