The Colorado Independent

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Colorado ‘Treatment’ Facility Held Mentally Disabled Teen in Solitary for 25 Days

By | 05.09.13 | 12:31 pm

Fourteen-year-old Kiondre Davison had a habit of acting up in school and running away from home. Social services officials stepped in to help. They sent him to El Pueblo Boys and Girls Ranch, a teen treatment center that touts its “environment of safety and loving care.”

Weld County Board Renews Decision to Ban Plan B at Health Clinics

By | 05.08.13 | 6:28 pm

Colorado’s Weld County Board on Monday renewed a 2010 policy that prevented county health clinics funded by the federal Title X women’s health program from dispensing Plan B emergency contraception to their mostly young and low-income patients.

Colorado Supreme Court Punts on Fetal Rights, Rejects Catholic Health Case

By | 05.06.13 | 3:23 pm

DENVER– The national media storm came and went. The Colorado bishops issued their condemnation. And the state Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Same-Sex Celebration: Opening Day in Colorado for Civil Unions

By | 05.01.13 | 12:35 am

Almost a year ago, Erika Highstead and Sarah Musick rented a party space, dressed in their finest and vowed their commitment to each other in front of a hundred friends.

On Hot-Button Election-Reform Bill, It’s Gessler Versus the Clerks

By | 05.01.13 | 12:14 am

DENVER — Colorado’s Republican Secretary of State Scott Gessler arrived late to testify at the Senate committee hearing, but he came prepared. A practiced courtroom lawyer, he began slowly. He threw in folksy asides. He answered his own rhetorical questions. And he smiled at the majority-Democratic committee members as he railed against the election-reform bill they all support and that he wants desperately to derail. It was a dramatic moment in Colorado politics that had been building since Gessler took office two years ago.

Clements Murder Suspect Ebel Was Anxious about Walking Free, Documents Show

By | 04.26.13 | 3:17 pm

Evan Ebel, suspected murderer of Prisons Chief Tom Clements, filed a series of grievances with the Department of Corrections shortly before his release from prison that document his concerns about transitioning directly from years in solitary confinement to the free world.

Pueblo Treatment Center Draws Scrutiny for Alleged Teen Solitary Policies

By | 04.19.13 | 2:33 pm

A residential teen treatment center in Pueblo, Colorado, is under fire for housing children in prolonged solitary confinement.

Ebel Friend: Suicide Note Shows Parolee ‘Ruined’ by Solitary, Bent on Revenge

By | 04.11.13 | 10:12 am

About two weeks before his death, Evan Ebel — suspect in last month’s murders of pizza delivery man Nate Leon and Colorado corrections chief Tom Clements — wrote a suicide note to a longtime friend who says Ebel was unhinged by his abrupt release from solitary confinement and seeking revenge for years of humiliation and torture behind bars.

Decrying ‘Photocopy Journalism’, FreePress Spotlighted Denver TV News Merger

By | 04.06.13 | 10:28 am

FreePress has come to Denver to hold its biennial National Conference on Media Reform. Denver is a great place to gather, a sunny square state ringed by jagged mountains and host to a major middle-continent airline hub. It’s also a place suffering from a collapsed and consolidated media market, as alert citizens well know and as FreePress has highlighted for years.

TCI Editor Greene on Democracy Now Talks Evan Ebel, Solitary Confinement, Indy Media

By | 04.05.13 | 11:04 am

Colorado Independent Editor Susan Greene appeared Friday morning on Democracy Now with hosts Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, who are in Denver this weekend for the National Conference on Media Reform and broadcasting from Denver’s public-access Open Media Foundation studio. The three discussed the Colorado gun violence that has regularly made national headlines over the last few years and months, including the recent shooting of Tom Clements, head of the state’s department of corrections.

Spotlight On: Marriage equality

House committee uses Regnerus parenting study to defend DOMA

A Republican-controlled congressional body this week used a controversial new parenting study to argue that the Defense of Marriage Act is constitutional.

UT fights to keep parenting study documents under wraps

The University of Texas says it should not have to release documents related to a controversial parenting study conducted by one of its professors, citing as one of its reasons an “ongoing compliance investigation” into allegations of scientific misconduct.

Study funded by social conservatives claims that heterosexual parents are best

A dozen groups fighting against marriage equality are touting a controversial study about gay and lesbian parenting that was funded by two conservative organizations.

Fed court ruling in DOMA case a victory for states’ rights

A unanimous federal appeals court ruling issued in Boston today found the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional in that it discriminates against same-sex couples. The ruling is a victory for the Obama administration and supporters of both gay rights and states’ rights and a blow for the national anti-gay marriage movement and for Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, who filed a controversial and critics say confused amicus brief in the case last year in support of the embattled federal law.