The Boulder Daily Camera reports how “A University of Colorado professor who’s been criticized for his writings about climate change has been caught up in WikiLeaks’ dump of emails involving John Podesta, campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton.” Roger Pielke Jr., a faculty member on the Boulder campus since 2001, “was the subject of a July 2014 email about an essay he wrote on climate change for the website FiveThirtyEight,” the paper reports. “The email was sent by Judd Legum, the editor of ThinkProgress, a site that’s part of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the advocacy arm of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, which was founded by Podesta in 2003. In his email to billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, Legum described how he believed Climate Progress, the environmental arm of ThinkProgress, got Pielke to stop writing about climate change for FiveThirtyEight. “I think it’s fair say that, without Climate Progress, Pielke would still be writing on climate change for 538,” Legum wrote.
This fall’s unusual warmth is hampering the success of Colorado elk hunters, reports The Glenwood Springs Post-Independent. “It’s definitely out of the norm with this weather,” area wildlife manager Perry Will told the paper. “It has not been a bumper crop season by any stretch due to the weather. The weather alone — the full moon and the dry, warm weather — has caused problems for hunters.”
The Longmont Times Call reports how the city is headed for more water rate hikes. “The decision, along with the March decision to participate in the water storage project at 10,000 acre-feet, will likely mean water rate increases of 8 percent in both 2017 and 2018, above the 9 percent increases in both years that have already been approved.”
There are political campaign sign wars raging on the Western Slope, reports The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. “It’s been bad out there with the vandalism,” said Richard Hathorne, who coordinates with the Republican campaigns, including Trump and Senate candidate Darryl Glenn, for signs. “We’ve had a lot of them taken and I’m sure the other side has too,” Pyle said. “I haven’t noticed a lot of Trump signs out there,” Mary Beth Pyle, head of the Mesa County Democrats, told the paper.
The ACLU is filing a lawsuit challenging sweeps of the homeless in downtown Denver, according to a report on today’s front page of The Durango Herald.
The Pueblo Chieftain reports on a homeless man who is urging the city to build a shelter instead of booting out area campers. “I feel like I was targeted,” the 58-year-old Carlisle said Wednesday. “I’d been living there for six months and the police knew I was there. There were 15 other camps near mine, but I was the only one they rousted that night.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz came back to Colorado— a state whose Republicans loved him— to campaign for GOP U.S. Senate nominee Darryl Glenn in Loveland, reports The Fort Collins Coloradoan. “Cruz, who took all of Colorado’s delegates during the Republican presidential caucus, spoke to a crowd of about 200. One family waved pro-Cruz signs, including switching a spinning Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s ‘Lyin’ Ted’ insult into ‘Lion Ted’ — and other memorabilia.”
The Loveland Reporter-Herald has a video of the Cruz-Glenn campaign event.
The Pitkin County clerk and the Secretary of State’s office tell The Aspen Times that election rigging is “highly unlikely.” For it to happen in Colorado would require “a massive conspiracy of all 64 county clerks and the secretary of state,” SOS spokeswoman Lynn Bartels told the paper, “noting that clerks statewide can be Democrats, Republicans or independents.”
The Denver Post reports how the Denver Police Department is re-writing its use-of-force policy. “The new policy will shift the department’s focus from telling officers what is legally allowed when using force against citizens to one that encourages officers to use the minimum amount of force necessary. It also will provide specific scenarios and a decisionmaking model to guide officers on how they should react to those situations, Chief Robert White told The Denver Post during an interview Wednesday.”
Donald Trump’s running mate Mike Pence was in Colorado Springs for the third time yesterday, urging voters to “come home,” reports The Gazette. “Pence spent much of his 40-minute speech outlining how Trump planned to cut taxes for both individuals and businesses, halt illegal immigration, renegotiate trade deals, repeal the Affordable Care Act, put a moratorium on new federal regulations and end what he called “the war on coal.” He also said told the crowd, which included dozens of veterans, that Trump would rebuild the nation’s military, restore the “arsenal of democracy and give the military the resources they need to so they can hunt down and destroy ISIS (the Islamic State) at the source.”
