So we got a letter from a woman asking that we not print anything about her arrest. She left her name. Thanks for the tip.

Just another foggy, mid-Oct. Colorado day after a late-summer arctic freeze. Questions about global warming?

Here's hoping my iPhone is happier with the new AT&T upgrades they promise will end my constantly interrupted ca

Here's an idea: Completely deregulate insurance companies and create a reasonable public option. Let the competition begin.

All hell broke loose in Aurora this morning. Multiple crashes and highway closures. What a mess.

Don't judge Aurora's books by claims of a cover. http://digg.com/u1DuTm

Huh. Microsoft Windows in launching its own smartphone, an oxymoron if I ever heard one. How do you call for help when it crashes?

Whoa. Loveland opens tomorrow. I feel a sick day coming on.

Gourmet magazine gone? What am I going to make for Thanksgiving? Reservations?

PERRY: Racing to the ends of the Earth for a cure http://digg.com/u1DU5q

Sentinel reporter Brandon Johansson says some of the jurors will talk about the Aaron Thompson trial. More to come.

Aaron Thompson guilty of child abuse resulting in death. Story to follow.

Swine Flu is decimating the ranks here. I just heard someone walking by with a cart asking us to "bring out your deeeaad"

Ky. folks are mad about lynching publicity, saying media make too much when it happens there. Are there revenooer lynchings anywhere else?

Story in tomorro

SCANNER: Traffic backing up in all directions as rescuers work a crash at First & Havana. Crash involved four cars.

University of Wisconsin has discovered, after extensive research, it's unsafe to drive if you have a cast on your right foot. Who knew?

can't decide. Drive to KC for a load of Gates& Jax BBQ & festivals, or stay home and put new windows in the house.

I waited all night for an alien abduction and--nothing. Now I have to face another Monday. I feel silly spending all that time in the alley.

It renews my faith to see Ted Kennedy get as good as play as Michael Jackson did-except at the Denver Post where Jay Cutler leads.

Cheney says CIA agents deserve thanks & praise for threatening to kill a terrorist's children & rape his mom. Glad he's not my dad or VEEP.

I wish I was rich so I could care less whether whackos kill healthcare reform, & then they would have to live with the mess they've created.

ACK! Gotta talk to the food editor. Lead recipe is for "Chicken Wing Confit" and calls for a quart of oil.

Bless the cantankerous Congressman Barney Frank.

The saddest news yet out of this recession is the loss of an independent Frontier Airlines. It really was a whole other animal.

I'm hoping there's a new psych care benefit for health care whackos. http://digg.com/u1AYL2

Home is where the heartache is for slipping test scores. http://digg.com/u1AO2r

Americans eat 20 billion hot dogs a year, 70 per person. I had 1. Did you eat my other 69? Yuck.

Nothing says hate mail like a column about Palin and Churchill. http://digg.com/u18Bdm

The NRA says it has "very serious concerns" about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Any other questions?

German Chancellor Angela Merkel tells Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "We will not forget this." I'd be afraid, Mr. Ahmadinejad, very afraid.

Aurora's chicken snit just poultry emotion. http://digg.com/u16kxq

Ha ha. Insurance terrified by govt. health plan& starting 2 panic. Music 2 ears of every overcharged, fed up American.http://digg.com/u16UM3

OMG. GM has made the former head of AT&T the new GM board chair. THE PHONE COMPANY? Oh yeah. Innovation & customer service incarnate - NOT!

Who needs the U.S. Senate? This just in from CNN: "CNN confirms Sonia Sotomayor as Obama's Supreme Court Justice"

SCANNER: 5 inured, 2 critically on southbound I-225 rollover, north of Colfax. Traffic at a standstill.

Betchya love it

How rich is this? Sarah Palin promises to write her memoirs next year. Really, is there nothing this woman won't do to ensure she never runs for public office again?

Please, oh please, let me write the title for what promises to be the definitive work on America's favorite piece of work?

Try these on for size:

"Darned If It Really Isn't All About Me,"

"They Call Me Salmon-Ella,"

"Kids Say The Darnedest Things On TV Talk Shows,"

"Sarah!!! Nonfiltered At Last,"

"Chocolate Moose and Wolfs Too: Recipes for A Conservative Paradise,"

"God I Hate That Tina Fey,"

"Six Packs For Success,"

"Crazy Like A Box,"

"With Skeletons Like These, Who Needs Closets?"

"When I Am President: The End Of Newspapers"

and my favorite:

"Everything I Know I Learned In Kindergarten, Really"

OMG! Txting ban? How dumb r u?http://digg.com/u11Eb6

OMG. How dum r u?

OMG. How dum r u?
You've got to ask that question after the state senate yesterday gutted a bill meant to get cell phones out of the hands of people behind the wheel of a car.
The state House had heroically passed a compromise bill that didn't ban the use of cell phones in a car, it just said that you couldn't use the kind of phone that made you take your hands off the wheel and your eyes off the road and spend 30 seconds or scrolling through dozens of phone numbers only to have to punch in the right buttons as you blazed at the speed of light along Interstate 225. If you simply must maneuver around other blabbing baboons on the interstate as you tell your wife, "Now I'm at Colfax. What's for dinner? Now I'm at Sixth Avenue. I'm so tired. Now I'm at Alameda and the traffic is — OH MY GOD. That jerk almost took me out. He's too busy talking on his stupid cell phone to ..." you would have to do it using a hands-free cell phone.
Making those demands on Colorado motorists , mostly Republican members of the Senate said, makes for too much "nannyism."
I can only thank God that juggling and accordions aren't as popular as cell phones because, clearly, your GOP state senators would think those are perfectly fine ways of passing the time as you navigate through school zones and perky little intersections like the one at Havana and Mississippi.
So these Live Free Or Die Hard members of the GOP agreed that it's not nannyistic to forbid teenagers from using cell phones while driving, just adults.
Talk about hypocrisy. You know full well these folks hand their cell phones to their teenagers several times a week in hopes they can make them work right. Teenagers can skateboard, listen to music, flirt and study for a chemistry final all while texting their pals in the rain. I know for a fact that the bulk of my fellow geezers down on the floor of the Senate pretty much have to silence the room while sitting in their big-blue chairs dozing off just to ANSWER their cell phones. There's a lot of mouth opening, shushing and redials involved in making a call. These are folks who probably shouldn't be able to sit in the Legislature and vote while they have their cell phones, let alone drive.
So you think that's pretty dumb? There's more.
Senate Republicans believe you should be able to knit a sweater or work the NY Times crossword puzzle while you're flying along Parker Road, but it's not too nannyistic to forbid everybody from texting and driving.
Wait for it. Wait for it. Wait for it.
Ding.
So how, do you think police or anyone else will be able to easily tell whether some idiot on wheels is texting or calling as they weave down E-470, and just how different are those tasks at 75 miles per hour?
Can you hear me now, Senate Republicans?
This guy can't. State Sen. Shawn Mitchell, Far-R, Broomfield, told the Denver Post yesterday that we must protect the citizens from an overprotective government.Oy. This from a state Senate that repeatedly kills seat-belt law enforcement because it might turn police officers into fire-breathing KKK members seeking out scofflaw blacks and Hispanics for recreational roadside beratings.
"I'm glad we throttled back our paternalism," Mitchell told the Post. "I still think this is a misguided effort to protect people from themselves."
Wrong again, senator. The measure was going to protect us from you. For the sake of us all. Hang up and vote.

I survived the swine flu pandemic of 3:38 a.m. - 9:02 p.m. May 4, 2009.

Hey, Justice Roberts, don't talk dirty to me.http://digg.com/u12B6j

isn't worried that Joe Biden says we're all going to die. He just means someday.

HAH! It wasn't a likely robber with his hoodie up in north Aurora, maybe just a guy with a Swine Flu mask. Cops still investigating.

I'm such a hypochondriac. I have Swine Flu symptoms. Good thing it's not a hemorrhoid pandemic.

Cheney unhappy Obama apologizing for agonizing Bush years. I'm unhappy Cheney won't see jail time for his misdeeds.http://digg.com/u11Eb6

Who's sorrry now?

You've got to admit, whether you love or hate former veep Darth Cheney, the man has nerve. On Fox News, which is more of an oxymoron than ever, Cheney told Sean Hannity that he was unhappy that President Barack Obama was wandering all over the world apologizing for the mess Cheney and his little buddy caused.

That would be messes. Many of them.

"I don’t think we’ve got much to apologize for," Cheney told Hannity, with a straight face no less.

Naaaah. The Skipper and Curious George, only started one of the most expensive and disruptive wars in history under false pretenses, ruined the world's economy, held up any progress on dealing with global warming, saddled the world's leading economy with unprecedented debt, allowed grave situations in Africa to become catastrophic, seriously damaged U.S-Russian relations, ignored humaitarian crises in Haiti, infuriated the entire Muslim world and let the real Sept. 11 terrorist in chief, Osama bin Laden, get away.

Apologize? We should apoligize for having elected Tweedle One and Tweedle Two, not once, but twice. We should throw ourselves on the mercy of the world court for what we allowed them to do the planet for eight years.

Cheney, however, would do well to keep from drawing attention to himself and how prudent it would be to bring criminal charges against him. But then he wouldn't be the man he used to be.

is choking in Texas Toast and G. Rick Perry's two-step.http://digg.com/u11Eb6

Texas toast?

You gotta love Texas Governor-turned-Emperor Ricky Perry's Texas Two Step. During his do-si-do with neo-cons at a big Tea Party event on April 15, he played to a crowd calling for secession from the United States.

Now how un-American is all that? Texas Republicans were at the front of the line in Washington to saddle the United States with the biggest debt in the country's history, they worked hard to destroy the economy, lock us into the most expensive war ever and generally make the world hate us. Now, a new administration has come to clean up the mess and keep the country from seeing its citizens starve to death, homeless in the streets, and folks no longer want to pay the taxes the Republican president and Congress saddled us with. And Texas wants out of the union.

If these were Obama or Hillary supporters at these events, it'd be called treason. Letting Texas take its hate state mentality on the road seems like a pretty good idea at this point.

feels sorry for the trees that leafed early in March, froze, releafed last week and are losing new growth again. Forget any apples in Denver

For the second time in weeks, Texans are talking about secession. I don't hear any objections.

just finished Ken Follett's "Pillars" novel. Kind of an Atlas Shrugged set in Medieval England or "Ye Old Days of Our Lives. Don't bother.

I wonder if Martha Stewart and Joe Nacchio might share an inside joke on all of this some day.

My Texas Toast

Well that settles it. It’ll be best for all concerned if Texas secedes from the Union.
Chuck Norris, a fine, fine actor and obviously an equally skilled political leader, wrote in a blog that he would be interested in running for president of the Lone Star state, should it unbuckle itself from the other rabidly liberal 49 states.
“I may run for president of Texas,” Norris said in his WorldNetDaily.com opinion. “That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not me, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state.”
Hmmm. Where can I sign that petition?
I can’t imagine why Norris wants out of the union. It seems like the other 49 would get the best part of that deal. Maybe it’s that pesky U.S. Constitution thing he doesn’t like. Do they want to execute people without any trial down there? Not pay one got-durned penny in taxes to them revenooers? Deport anyone who doesn’t speak English, at least as good as they do?
Out of fairness to both sides, of course, New Mexico would have to annex Austin, but as for Lubbock, Dallas and every gun-totin’, immigrant-hatin’, Huckabee-lovin’ town in between, I wish them luck with the Republic of Texas. Please don’t feel the need to visit, annual e-mail updates will suffice.

So long, sucker

Let me tell you, 13 is a hard age for parents and adolescents alike. Isabella had a tiff on Valentine's Day with her, ummm, boyfriend. I still have problems with that word.

Guys are such jerks.

Anyway, to save her from terminal sullenness, my wife suggested we take Isabella to see Twilight, which I cannot believe she has not yet seen. This girl has read ALL the books, SEVERAL times. It turns out the boyfriend has as much interest in this flick as do I.

So off we go to the cheapo theater to sit in, I kid you not, a PACKED theater months after this film was first released. Patrons were visibly tense in anticipation of what was to come: vampire love.

Oy.

I never struggled with inappropriate laughter so hard in my life. The woman in front of me was crying because she was so touched by the vampire love thing. Tears were streaming down my face snickering over tree-climbing, blood-sucking, puppy-eyed stalkers who had the worst case of psoriasis I'd ever seen.

I never got into the Ann Rice thing either, but at least with those stories, you got to spend time in Romantic and mysterious New Orleans. This movie drags you to the dreariest part of the Northwest where there's so many things besides vampires to suck the life right out of you. Halfway through this very, very long movie, I was ready to pound a stake through my own heart.

On the way into the cinema, I said to Isabella, "Do you know how much I love you that I would go see this movie? Now I have to break it to her that I don't love her enough to see the sequel. Sorry. I'll upgrade your cellphone or something. Parenting is hard in ways you never expect.