Rocky Mountain News - Opinion Columns

Paul Anthony Baker is Exhibit A for why many people have mixed feelings about a broad federal bailout of those at risk of losing their homes. He's an Aurora-based mortgage broker - or was, until he agreed to surrender his license - who was co-owner of Encore Lending. He is also a cheat and a scoundrel whose career provides a bracing peek at the lengths that some people are willing to go to buy property.

'There's a tired old saw in the news business that if both sides criticize you for what you've reported, you must be doing a good job." Those, the words of Fred Brown in a recent Denver Post column, establishing his credentials as a balanced columnist by providing examples of criticism he's received from readers on both the left and right. But this old saw is anecdotal and simplistic. Some people in Nazi Germany loved Hitler and some people hated him. Did that make him a moderate?

What's wrong with this picture: Colorado State University President Larry Penley resigns this month and the CSU board hands him a year's salary, or nearly $400,000, on the way out the door.

If you work for the city of Denver, you can stay home the day after Thanksgiving, but with the following catch: You won't get paid. The mayor is trying to save money in this rough economic stretch and is offering an unpaid furlough to those who want it.

Last week I gave a talk before the Boulder Ensemble Theatre's production of Neil LaBute's play Fat Pig. The play revolves around a workplace romance between a conventionally attractive (read: slim) man and a fat woman.

Public school teachers nationwide have their eyes on Washington, D.C. The reason is not the upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama. It is the bread-and-butter issue of tenure. The battle is being waged between Michelle Rhee, the tough chancellor of the Washington public schools, and the 4,000-member Washington Teachers’ Union.

The seepage of government into everywhere is, we are assured, to be temporary and nonpolitical. Well.

Now clarity is emerging. The fault line is the auto industry bailout. The Democrats are pushing hard for it. The White House is resisting.

How accurate were the pre-election polls in the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post? Pretty good on the presidential and Senate contests, but inconsistent on the statewide ballot issues.

The "core mission" of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce "is to fight for business and free enterprise." It is also "to advance human progress through an economic, political and social system based on individual freedom, incentive, initiative, opportunity and responsibility."

"I will never be a subscriber while you are a writer for the rocky mountain news. Why don't you get on the bandwagon of what you can do for this country in these hard times instead of knock things down."

So Sarah Palin is, like, ready to run for president in 2012 if, like, it is something that is going to be good for ... no, wait: Let's have her tell us, shall we?

About 10 years ago, I read a remarkable essay about an obscure tennis player named Michael Joyce. Joyce, a Californian who at his professional peak was ranked just inside the world's top 100 players, was attempting to qualify for the main draw of a big tournament in Montreal, and the author of the essay, David Foster Wallace, chronicled the attempt.

When the world changes, for good or bad, some people seem to get carried away.

Does Obama’s victory signal a decisive blue shift in the United States? Or did voters merely seek change after eight controversial years of Republican governance?

The election of an African-American discomfits the Democratic Party. It practices identity politics, stressing the relevance of “race-conscious” policies, defending racial preferences in public hiring, contracting and education. But the election of Barack Obama is an American majority’s self-emancipation: We are free at last from the inexpressible tedium of the preoccupation with skin pigmentation.

In the excitement and decisiveness of Barack Obama’s victory, we forget that in the first weeks of September, John McCain was actually ahead. Then Lehman collapsed, and the financial system went off a cliff.

I love to hear about journalists who lob a softball question at a high muck-a-muck - and get an unexpected answer.

The Candidate is a 1972 movie starring Robert Redford as Bill McKay, a young, attractive, charismatic, inexperienced, idealistic, liberal California lawyer who takes on the conservative establishment and runs for U.S. Senate as a political long shot in order to change the world.

Even in the powerful afterglow of historic Election Day 2008, realism makes us ask: What will Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office mean for us?