The Beats

The police officers who shot Ryan Ronquillo were in compliance with department policy and will not be disciplined, the Denver Police Department announced Thursday morning. The ruling, which comes after an extended secondary investigation by multiple agencies, is the same as that made by Denver’s district attorney more than a year and a half ago, devastating Ronquillo’s family.

The voters have finally spoken, and, in a surprise, at least to the pollsters, it turns out they had a lot to say. First, they handed the Donald his first-in-the-nation loss, and to Ted Cruz at that. Trump gave a brief, humbled, un-Trump-like concession speech which made you wonder, now that his winners-win tour is over, if we shouldn’t have seen this coming.

We can now all agree on the Trump Effect. The Donald wins when he’s there. He wins when he isn’t there.

The Colorado Independent has sued the City and County of Denver demanding the release of videotapes showing sheriff’s deputies’ fatal confrontation with Michael Lee Marshall, a mentally ill, homeless man, in the city jail.

Since January 2, a crew of self-proclaimed militiamen have occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon. The occupation is a reaction to the sentencing for arson of Dwight and Steve Hammond, local ranchers who have become symbols of the Sagebrush Rebellion over the last two decades. But the action goes far beyond just one family’s fight with the federal government. It’s an escalation of a Westwide insurgency sparked by the Bundy Ranch standoff in 2014.

OK, I admit it it, I’m a silver-lining kind of guy. And so when I read Donald Trump’s round-up-the-illegals-and-ship-‘em-out manifesto – a point-by-point policy paper to follow up on his illegal-immigrants-as-rapists commentary — I knew we were finally getting somewhere.

“Yeah, we’re over fire code,” a security guard said with a laugh and a shrug while eying the crowd at Bernie Sanders’ jam-packed town-hall meeting Saturday night. Around 5,000 people showed up to see the left-wing dark horse give his first stump speech in Colorado since launching his presidential campaign in May. People of all ages – mostly white – filled the air-conditioned gymnasium at Denver University well before the event was billed to start, though latecomers – or on-time comers – could still watch a live video feed on the outdoor lacrosse field.

Colorado’s three Democratic members of Congress joined 178 of their colleagues in signing onto a 50-page brief in a court case that has temporarily halted President Obama’s executive actions on immigration announced last November, which halted deportations of immigrants without documentation who were brought here as children or who are parents of U.S. citizen-family members.

Students may have rallied against a Colorado school boards proposed changes to the AP curricula, but it doesn't mean youth anger will spill over into the ballot box.

Former Congressman Bob Beauprez seemed determined to move the needle in the dead-heat governor's race by taking wide swings at incumbent Democratic John Hickenlooper.
But Hickenlooper delivered his most confident performance yet.