Author: Mark Hillman

Mark Hillman Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District has produced some of the finest Republican leaders in our state’s recent history: ? Decorated for his Navy combat duty in Vietnam, Greeley’s Hank Brown represented CD4 for 10 years before his election to the U.S. Senate. He later served as president of University of Colorado and the Daniels…

Mark Hillman Businesses that fuel Colorado’s economic engine can’t be blamed for cringing at the specter of the Colorado legislature’s return this month. Plaintiff lawyers, however, are not cringing.  Instead, the people who pay to put their faces on billboards along our busiest highways are licking their chops. Last year, lawmakers went on a lawsuit…

Mark Hillman For the first time I can recall, this year’s session of the Colorado General Assembly concluded with frenzy and confusion more typical of what we see in Washington, D.C., than what’s expected of our citizen legislature. It’s not unusual for a few complicated bills to linger until the waning hours.  However, this year’s…

Mark Hillman For the past two weeks, Democrats and Republicans have engaged in a test of wills in the Colorado House of Representatives. Democrats are using their 46-19 majority to pass bills which they consider essential to address shootings in public places and to establish Colorado as a regional refuge for “reproductive health care.” Republicans…

Mark Hillman State Rep. David Ortiz, D-Littleton, makes a compelling advocate for the rights and struggles of disabled Coloradans. “I lived 30 years as an able-bodied leg-walker, a five-minute-mile running, hard-charging combat aviator – until a crash in Afghanistan left me paralyzed from the waist down,” he told the House Judiciary Committee. He understandably views himself…

Mark Hillman “Democracy,” wrote H.L. Mencken, “is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” A majority of Colorado voters have made it clear that they want to be governed by Democrats. With Democrats presiding over a struggling economy, widespread crime and social disorder, this…

Mark Hillman God saw fit to stop at 10 commandments, but politicians can’t leave well enough alone, so a series of “Eleventh Commandments” apply to them. One of those admonishes: Thou shall not make the voters more cynical. This year, Democrats at our State Capitol are breaking that commandment, too. With polls showing that Colorado…

Mark Hillman The state commission charged with adjudicating which Colorado schools must expunge their “American Indian mascots” devolved further into a kangaroo court last week. Chaired by Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera, the Colorado Commission on Indian Affairs was required to “identify each public school in the state that is using an American Indian mascot” by…

Mark Hillman Nearly 160 years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, his place in history as “The Great Emancipator” of black slaves is firmly established. Nevertheless, a defense of Lincoln is a required response to the fallacy-ridden 1619 Project in which the New York Times seeks to rewrite American history through a racist lens.…

Mark Hillman Confidence in our elections is paramount to our system of self-government.  Those we elect have an obligation to work together to build security and transparency in those elections. Today, both parties are largely failing that test. After the 2020 election, President Trump’s falsehoods about a “stolen election” set the stage for him to…