the colorado independent

There is much to be said in the aftermath of yet another mass shooting, of yet another mass school killing, of yet 10 more gun deaths, of yet another emotional Obama speech, of yet more charges of politicizing a tragedy, of yet more unserious hearings on the intersection of mental illness and gun violence, of…

Maybe the most telling moment of Pope Francis’s address to Congress came when he finally got to abortion. This would be, at last, the Republicans’ turn to glow in the papal light. Sure, the pope had come to chide them – if in the gentlest of tones – on immigration, on climate change, on poverty,…

The shooter, we’re told, was a drifter, a word you rarely hear outside Hollywood westerns. But this couldn’t be a western, because in the West, they took your guns at the town limits. Or at least that’s how they did it in the movies. Anyway, the drifter, a 59-year-old man named John Russell Houser, had…