DENVER - A group that claims marijuana use is safer than drinking ran newspaper ads Saturday mentioning allegations that President Bush once drunkenly challenged his father to fight and Vice President Dick Cheney's accidental shooting of a friend after drinking. SAFER Colorado, which put a measure on the Colorado ballot to legalize possession of marijuana, placed an ad in a newspaper in Greeley, where Bush made an appearance on Saturday. The ad in the Greeley Tribune had a photo of Bush accompanied by text that read: "In 1972, this man tried to fight his dad when he was drunk. Just one more reason to vote 'Yes on 44.'" The ad was referring to published reports that in 1972, a 26-year-old Bush had come home drunk and challenged his father to a fight. The matter was reportedly settled without violence. [continues 251 words]
ASPEN, Colo. - Hunter S. Thompson, the hard-living writer who inserted himself into his accounts of America's underbelly and popularized a first-person form of journalism in books such as "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," has committed suicide. Thompson was found dead Sunday in his Aspen-area home of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, sheriff's officials said. He was 67. Thompson's wife, Anita, had gone out before the shooting and was not home at the time. [continues 794 words]
38 Cadets Have Been Ensnared In Scandal AIR FORCE ACADEMY -- The Air Force Academy has stepped up drug testing and is putting more classroom emphasis on ethics amid the biggest drug scandal in the school's 47-year history. Thirty-eight cadets out of 4,300 have been implicated in the scandal that began in December 2000. In addition, six cadets have been charged or convicted of crimes such as larceny and sodomy, including the former president of the class of 2003, who is accused of stealing $9,000 from a class activity fund. [continues 257 words]
AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. - The U.S. Air Force Academy has stepped up drug testing and is putting more classroom emphasis on ethics amid the biggest drug scandal in the school's 47-year history. Thirty-eight cadets out of 4,300 have been implicated in the scandal, which began in December 2000. In addition, six cadets have been charged or convicted of crimes such as larceny and sodomy, including the former president of the Class of 2003, who is accused of stealing $9,000 from a class activity fund. [continues 322 words]
AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. -- The U.S. Air Force Academy has stepped up drug testing and is putting more classroom emphasis on ethics amid the biggest drug scandal in the school's 47-year history. Thirty-eight cadets out of 4,300 have been implicated in the scandal that began in December 2000. In addition, six cadets have been charged or convicted of crimes such as larceny and sodomy, including the former president of the class of 2003, who is accused of stealing $9,000 from a class activity fund. [continues 690 words]
DENVER - Mayor Wellington Webb has seen what drugs can do: He once asked a judge to put his crack-using son in rehab. Now, with 14 months to go in his third and final term, Webb plans to focus on fighting drug abuse. "We need to change our philosophy on how to deal with drug addiction, to treat it as a health issue," the 61-year-old Democrat said recently. Webb has proposed a $1 million plan to study the creation of a city-run drug treatment center and to attack abuse with an additional drug court, housing for binge drinkers and addicts, drug prevention programs in middle schools and a major crackdown on sellers. [continues 539 words]
DENVER - The American Civil Liberties Union accused the Denver Police Department on Monday of keeping illegal files on peaceful protest groups. The ACLU's Colorado legal director, Mark Silverstein, showed reporters files he said came from the police department. "These are a small sampling of documents we have that show Denver police are monitoring peaceful protest activities of individuals and law-abiding groups," he said. The groups included Amnesty International and the American Friends Service Committee. "The mayor thinks their concerns are legitimate and has asked the police for a full report to answer the questions posed to the city," said Andrew Hudson, spokesman for Mayor Wellington Webb. [continues 396 words]
DENVER - The State Board of Health on Tuesday approved a plan to charge $140 for an identification card allowing patients to grow small amounts of marijuana for medicinal purposes. A voter-approved constitutional amendment requires the state to have a system in place June 1 that will make it possible for victims of debilitating maladies to get marijuana. Their doctors must determine that marijuana would be a better treatment than other medications. The plan also promises that applications will be acted on within 30 days, and officials said they would work with possible donors to help people on fixed incomes pay for the cards. [continues 431 words]
Series Of Misdeeds Take Their Toll DENVER Despite a sharp decline in crime, Denver's finest are under the gun in the worst series of police scandals since the city was known as the "crooked cop capital of the United States" in the 1960s. This week, the city paid $400,000 to the family of a man killed in a raid at the wrong house, was fined $10,000 by a federal judge for failing to cooperate with a police-brutality investigation, and swore in a new police officer who admitted he once used cocaine and LSD. [continues 559 words]
DENVER - The U.S. Labor Department has agreed to ban group strip searches at Job Corps sites and will pay undisclosed damages to two victims of such a search in western Colorado, the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday. Greg Whitehair, one of the lawyers who pursued the case for the ACLU, said 25 Job Corps workers were strip-searched at Collbran, near Grand Junction, on March 30, 1997. The agency had received a tip that marijuana was being smuggled into their barracks. [continues 265 words]
