Freedom Unaffiliated

On TABOR Talk we discuss how Colorado Legislators are trying to get you to give up your TABOR refunds forever. Will you let them have it?

Do you want the Broncos to win the Super Bowl?

Then you’d better hope Amendment 87, which brings back Colorado’s economy-strangling “graduated” income tax, loses at the ballot box this fall. Seriously.

Forget Republicans and Democrats. Forget tax policy. This is about Xs and Os, and whether Denver can afford the players who execute them and win a Super Bowl.

The Manning effect

Every successful business has star employees: rare talents without whom the enterprise simply doesn’t work. Same goes for an NFL franchise.

Every business has star emplo...

Ayn Rand recommended a technique for understanding, if not resolving, irreconcilable differences of opinion: “First, check your premises.” It’s pointless to argue with someone when your basic assumptions and goals are unalterably different. In politics these aren’t discussions, they’re unproductive exercises in rhetoric, gamesmanship and grandstanding ,at least on one side.

Imagine an argument on economics between Milton Friedman and Bernie Sanders.

A profound illustration of this concept was provided by James Burnham in his classic book, “Suicide of the West,” published in 1964. It addressed the fundamental conflict in world view and the order of v...

“Youth is wasted on all the wrong people.”

That’s one of my favorite lines from “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The older I get, the less it sounds like a joke.

Every generation inherits victories it did not win. Young Americans never experienced the Cold War, the draft or stagflation. Double-digit inflation is something grandpa now mentions in one of his rambling monologues about how good we have it.

The young don’t remember bracket creep because why would they? They never, ever experienced it. A previous generation defeated it for them.

The year...

Who’d have believed that Bernie Sanders, a ranting disheveled old man could rise to become the modern-day reincarnation of Vladimir Lenin, with a Brooklyn accent, evangelizing for socialism in the USA and building a legion of useful idiots? (Clue: Bernie and his wife honeymooned in the Soviet Union.) He’s certainly not charismatic. So, he shrewdly recruited AOC as his partner, a weird May-December relationship, for a road show last winter called the “Fighting Oligarchy Tour.”

Bernie’s schtick is throwing around a barrage of angry, demagogic, simplistic, exaggerated, inflammatory slogans to rile up gullible malcontents. The slogan...

On TABOR Talk we discuss how Colorado Legislators are trying to get you to give up your TABOR refunds forever. Will you let them have it?

Mayor Mike Johnston proclaimed, “It is past time Big Tobacco cleaned up the big mess it’s created.”

Yep. Denver is suing tobacco companies for the cigarette butts littering the city.

Because Denver’s Big Mess couldn’t possibly be the fault of the mayor, the city council or the people actually dropping garbage on the ground. It must be the fault of — let me check the Progressive Wheel of Blame here — Big Tobacco.

Ignore the graffiti

When you drive through Denver, the first thing you notice is obviously the cigarette-butt epidemic. Not...

Hey, Colorado Democrats! All the fun you’ve had watching Republican dysfunction in Colorado for the last 20 years was just a preview of what is about to happen to you.

The Colorado Republican Party no longer exists as a competitive institution.

Republicans did it to themselves. They built a culture around purity tests, with no curiosity about winning elections. Anyone suggesting an appeal to unaffiliated voters was identified as a Republican in Name Only and bounced from the building.

Deep-pocketed conservatives kept funding candidates while neglecting the boring, unsatisfying work of winning future el...

Ethical historians condemn the practice, known as “presentism,” of judging historical events, people or cultures, through the lens of today’s moral standards, political beliefs or social norms, rather than understanding them within their own time frame. This is an element of the strategy of the radical left to undermine our pride in America by magnifying our faults and downplaying our virtues and achievements. It’s roots are in higher education where leftist academics dominate faculties and indoctrinate students. It seeps down into public schools controlled by leftist teacher unions, is amplified by the dominant liberal media and echoed in enter...

We are finally getting a clearer picture of what happened during COVID. Not because the people who locked us up, masked our faces and forced unproven chemicals into our bodies have suddenly become transparent, but because Anthony Fauci’s COVID-era diary is coming into public view.

This long document makes one thing painfully clear: the people who forced us to surrender our lives to their expertise did not have the expertise they claimed.

At best, they were guessing.

And when their guesses failed, they did not retreat. They didn’t come clean. They doub...

Colorado wants taxpayers to spend another $4.73 billion on passenger rail.

Don’t worry. They have a plan.

Which is a little like your brother-in-law announcing he’s launching another exciting restaurant venture after his last three restaurants ended in bankruptcy.

Please. Tell me where to send the check.

The money train

This week the Front Range Passenger Rail District released its “plan” for their choo-choo, laughingly branded “CoCo,” a desire named streetcar stretching from Fort Collins to Pueblo.

According to Independence Institute transportation analyst Randall O’Toole, the project wi...

On TABOR Talk we discuss how Colorado Legislators are trying to get you to give up your TABOR refunds forever. Will you let them have it?

It was no surprise that the Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s executive order denying citizenship to children born in the U.S. to parents who were here illegally or were birthright tourists visiting the country on a temporary visa. The latter group is made up of foreigners who game the system by coming here for the sole purpose of birthing a child (or twins) to get the kid(s) U.S. citizenship, then returning home with their anchor baby for future use.

While I agree with Trump’s intent, doing this with an executive order clea...

Why is it that Victor Marx is going to become a superb governor? Because he’s the self-proclaimed world’s fastest at disarming someone holding a gun to his head. Seriously, watch the videos. It’s pretty impressive.

How could I not vote for him?

Think that’s ridiculous? During negotiations over the Colorado River Compact, things will get heated. A governor who can snatch a pistol away with his bare hands might just save Colorado’s water supply.

If Attorney General Phil Weiser could disarm an armed attacker just a little faster, he’d proba...

Happy 250th Birthday, America! You look fabulous. As all the cool countries are saying, “250 is the new 230.”

The Declaration of Independence wasn’t merely an announcement of war against a tyrant. It was the most revolutionary political document ever written.

The Declaration was a landmark in human development, perhaps the landmark of all human history.

For the first time government was no longer affirmed sovereign. The individual was.

That simple idea changed the world.

You rule yourself. Your life belongs to you. Your liberty belongs to you. Your happiness is you...

On June 23, 2026, the federal U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas sentenced eight violent protestors convicted of assaulting the Prairieland Detention Center, an ICE facility in Alvarado, Texas, in an anti-Independence Day attack on July 4, 2025. Their stiff punishments rangedfrom 30 to 70 years in prison for rioting and providing material support to terrorists, among other charges. An exception was made for Benjamin Song, the group’s leader, who got a total of 100 years with an additional conviction piled on for attempted murder.

Texas is a Republican red state that isn’t soft on these kinds of crim...

If you’ve been reading my columns, you’ve noticed I’m basically illiterate. I blame my dyslexia and public education, but my Olympic-level laziness could be the driving factor.

Anyway, I basically can’t read (and, still, I graduated from CU Boulder, so another endorsement of public higher education).

So, for me to recommend a book is like a nun recommending sexy lingerie. How can you take it seriously? But how can it not get you thinking?

As we celebrate Colorado’s 150th birthday, may I strongly suggest you read, or re-read, James Mich...

The simultaneous NBA and NFL playoffs, known as the second season, can be almost as exhausting and frustrating for the fans as it is for the players. For Avs and Nuggets fans, this year was especially disappointing, even though we knew that 15 of the 16 teams in the playoff bracket are fated to lose their last game.

It’s an alleged truism that the NBA and NHL playoffs require a different kind of play than in the regular season. I think that’s a falseism. The leagues don’t change the rules for the playoffs, they change the way re...

There are few things more satisfying to watch than socialists getting mugged by reality.

The Sundance Film Festival is invading my hometown of Boulder early next year. Sundance drew 85,000 attendees last year in Park City, Utah. Boulder’s hotel room inventory is about 2,900.

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when Hollywood’s anti-capitalist elite collide with basic supply and demand, we’re about to find out.

When things don’t go as planned, the planner-class doubles down on its religion: more planning. When restrictions, rules, permits and fees don’t produce the desired outc...

On TABOR Talk we discuss how Colorado Legislators are trying to get you to give up your TABOR refunds forever. Will you let them have it?

It makes no sense to be a Republican in Colorado. Or a Democrat for that matter.

On the day I turned 18, even before I bought my first legal 3.2 beer (remember 3.2 beer?), I went to the courthouse and registered to vote (remember registering to vote?). I joined the Republican Party.

Even at 18, I knew not affiliating with a party diluted the power of my vote.

Sure, everyone gets to vote in November. But one vote among millions isn’t nearly as powerful as a vote in a primary.

Back then, unaffiliated voters we...

I am personally responsible for helping overpay socialists to make Colorado unaffordable, overregulated and one windstorm away from a power blackout. I failed you.

Colorado legislators already get automatic inflation raises. You know, just like your job (I’m assuming the sarcasm bled through that one).

No private-sector worker has that kind of protection forever. Even union jobs eventually meet reality. Ask Spirit Airlines employees.

And that’s the problem.

What happens when lawmakers no longer depend on the private sector for most of their livelihood? They stop understanding the people they...

DENVER–Gov. Jared Polis last week rejected another handful of bills passed by the Democrat-controlled Colorado legislature, bringing his veto total for the recently adjourned session to an even dozen. Modest sounding enough given the more than 400 bills passed, but still a personal record for the term-limited Polis over his eight years in office.

As reported by Complete Colorado, the prior week saw Polis take his veto pen to a half-dozen other bills, including a highly contentious effort by his fellow Democrats to unwind Colorado’s longstanding two-vote process for private sector unionization.

The latest batc...

The word “moderate” is a fashionable term these days as the remedy to the nation’s sharply divided politics, but it’s highly overrated and largely inaccurate. A stark example is Democrat Abibail Spanberger who was elected governor of Virginia in 2025 as a self-declared moderate, promising not to redistrict the state if elected, having branded gerrymandering as “detrimental to our democracy” as a Congresswoman in 2019. In her first year in office, she signed a bill that would gerrymander Virginia giving Democrats a 10-1 advantage in the U.S. House, from 6-5. (Her voting record in Congress was anything but moderate wit...

The recent strike by unionized public school teachers in the Sheridan School District finally ended after 28 days, Colorado’s longest teacher strike in 45 years. Private sector unionized employees have a legal right to strike, but government employees have more restrictions.

Members of our armed forces are forbidden to unionize, collectively bargain, or strike for obvious national security reasons. In 1981, President Reagan declared a strike of unionized air traffic controllers illegal, gave them 48 hours to return to work, fired 11,000 who didn’t, and decertified the union. In 1937, President Roosevelt informed the president of the National Federation of Federal Empl...

Another week, another column about Colorado’s ruling class treating democracy like a state trooper treats the speed limit. It’s for other people.

I swear, I want to write about literally anything else — aliens, sports, lab-grown meat, Bigfoot opening a vape shop in Pueblo.

But Colorado’s legislature has never been more abusive to the citizenry, or hypocritical.

The kings of Colorado

To save time, I won’t rehash the endless “No Kings,” “Trump is destroying democracy,” “our sacred duty is protecting democracy, so be happy you have us” self-promotion constantly ejaculated...

Alexander Fraser Tytler was a judge, historian and professor of history in Scotland, born in 1747, who observed that, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship.”

Tytler further observed, “The average of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liber...

We the people of Colorado no longer control our own state constitution. I found this out the hard way.

In Colorado, a government for, by, and of the people is a fib.

We lowly citizens no longer have much of a say in altering our own state constitution. Even though that seems to violate the whole meaning of our constitution in the first place.

We the people

Like the US Constitution, Colorado’s constitution contains a Bill of Rights making clear we are the ones who empower the state government, not th...

DENVER–A Democrat-sponsored Senate bill changing the boundaries of the Front Range Passenger Rail special taxing district passed through its first committee hearing on Monday. The bill excludes certain conservative-leaning communities from the district as a tax hike looms for the November ballot.

As previously reported by Complete Colorado, the Front Range Passenger Rail, recently named CoCo, short for Colorado Connector, has been in the works since 2021. The plan is to have an up and running passenger rail system operating from Fort Collins to Pueblo by 2029.

The current special taxing district is the largest in th...

DENVER—The Colorado Senate Agriculture Committee on April 22 rejected two of the three appointments made by Governor Polis to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) Commission.

By state law, the CPW commission contains 13 members, 11 of which are appointed by the governor and approved by the Senate. The remaining two members include the executive director of the Department of Natural Resources, and the Colorado Agriculture Commissioner.

Frances Blayney, co-owner of a fly-fishing business in Colorado Springs, was approved by the committee unanimously to represent outfitters on the commission, but two others were denied.

Thumbs do...

The great 20th-century historian Lord Acton said it best: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Acton was building on the teachings of his mentor, Homer Simpson, who put it more plainly: “The more power you have, the more you can mess things up. Woo-hoo!”

And many in Colorado’s political elite have studied under the original oracle of power, Eric Cartman: “Respect my authoritah!”

If there were a motto for the progressive machine that now rules Colorado, it would be simple: “Because we f***ing can, that’s why.”

Ethics don’t matte...

I know this will shock you, but the system is rigged.

Maybe not in the conspiracy-theory, tinfoil-hat way. In the simple, obvious, right-in-front-of-your-face way: politicians get to play by rules you don’t.

And every now and then they get so brazen about it, you have to stop and admire the hustle.

We Coloradans have been painfully clear for decades: We want our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR). We want government spending limits. And, yes, we want our refunds when government takes too much.

How many times do we have to s...

Obviously, that hasn’t come to pass. There’s little doubt that congressional Democrats who’ve attacked Trump’s every move in this Iran war would be praising a Democrat president who had the foresight and courage to do so on his watch. None did, but if one had, most patriotic Republicans would have surely cheered him on. As for the dominant liberal media, the negative spin in their news stories and commentary about the war have been blatantly dishonest about this overwhelmingly successful campaign.

From the very start of the war the stock market plunged, crude oil pric...

In 2024, Donald Trump was elected president by 77 million Americans, two million more than voted for Kamala Harris. Republicans also won a majority in the U.S. House and Senate, giving the GOP a federal trifecta and a governing mandate. Democrats had a similar governing mandate during the first two years of both the Obama and Biden administrations.

Now relegated to minority party status, progressive Democrats are powerless to deliver their socialist paradise on Earth. So, they’re frustrated, angry, stricken with Trump Derangement Syndrome, and have gone stark raving mad. Lacking a realistic or rational public policy ag...

Politics is a game of narrative. Whoever controls the narrative wins.

Sure, the truth is interesting. But truth doesn’t sell. It takes time to uncover, assuming people care enough to go digging for it.

Narratives are easier. They’re simple, comforting and come pre-approved by the crowd.

Groupthink isn’t just easy. It’s safe. The truth, on the other hand, requires work and enough bravery to risk being out of step with people who judge you.

And we’re busy. So, we outsource our thinking to the media, entertainment and school...

This is a selfish column. The legislature is about to hurt my disabled son.

My son, Chance, has Down syndrome and a few years ago would have been labeled “retarded.” Then “developmentally delayed.” Now the hypersensitive prefer “intellectually disabled.”

Whatever the term is this week, the reality hasn’t changed.

This 21-year-old man cannot consistently count to five, can’t read and can’t write his own name. He needs constant supervision for choking risks. He still needs help toileting. And that’s just the start.

Medicaid was designed for people like him, our most v...

DENVER–The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) quarterly oil and gas lease sale in Colorado generated over $8 million, the most successful such sale the federal lands agency has enjoyed in recent years. The BLM, as well as energy policy experts credit the successful lease sale in large part to the Trump administration’s pro-energy production policies.

According to its recent press release, the BLM on March 31 leased 68 parcels of federal land for drilling in Colorado, generating $8.1 million. Over 42,000 acres were leased across Weld, Jackson, Routt, Arapahoe, Delta, Mesa, Rio Blanco, Gunnison, and Garfield counties.

This s...

Governor Jared Polis on April 6 signed Senate Bill 26-004, dramatically expanding those eligible to petition courts to confiscate guns under Colorado’s “red flag” law.

DENVER–A series of gun rights restrictions are at various stages in the Colorado’s legislative process, with some bills awaiting action by Gov. Polis, others still in the committee process, and a heavily negotiated gun barrel regulation bill held up in its final reading in the House.

Red flag expansion

Senate Bill 26-004 ‘Expand List of Petitioners for Protection Orders’ passed third reading in the House on March 20 with...

Though most of us celebrate “No Kings Day” on July 4, the Trump-deranged got a head start last weekend with rallies around the state.

Attendees bravely fought oppression by blocking traffic for people with jobs. Rally-goers demanded freedom from tyranny, many right after voting to ban all but beige house paint at their HOA meetings.

After pausing briefly to DoorDash something gluten-free, they returned to the barricades to secure democracy in Colorado for one more day.

They risked everything, except mild discomfort, to call the guy who won both the popular vote and the elec...

Obviously, the outcome of the war with Iran remains to be seen. The best outcome is a US military victory followed by regime change freeing Iranians from the tyranny of their government. With that may come a more peaceful and stable Middle East removing the existential danger of nuclear weapons in the hands of religious fanatics who have plagued the region for the last 47 years.

In 1979, a revolution deposed an oppressive unpopular monarch, the Shah of Iran who, at least, was a pro-western modernist. It brought Ayatollah Khomeini to absolute power as Iran’s Supreme Leader. Protected by...