My Page: Amy Brouillette

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ROCKY MOUNTAIN HAZE

A private breakfast meeting for VIP industry and government folk was held Wednesday morning at the posh downtown law offices of McKenna Long & Aldridge in Denver. The topic: how potential changes to state and federal air-quality regulations in national parks could affect Colorado’s business community. An invite-only, rather coveted industry briefing—a name-tag-only affair closed to environmental lobbyists and the press—the event was billed as a chance for insiders to get “ahead of the curve� on several key issues, according to a confidential invite obtained by New West. [more]

HATE CRIME SPREE

As if the festering heap of controversy could pile atop CU any higher, a recent scourge of racist crimes on (or near) campus has university officials once again scrambling to contain another certain enrollment-threatening pr disaster. In response to last Friday’s “incident,� in which a 22-year-old student was beaten, his jaw broken, in a racially-motivated assault on the Hill, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Ron Stump issued a campus-wide email condemning the act and pressing for the still-at-large suspect’s arrest—even throwing in a extra $1000 toward the reward, bringing the total pot to a whopping $5,500. (Note: the Daily Camera yesterday and the Denver Post today reported the total reward at $2,500, a figure which does not include additional money offered by the university late yesterday afternoon.)
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JOURNALISM CONFERENCE

Journalists from around the country and globe gathered last weekend in Denver at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference, an annual event that draws an impressive cast of journalism’s glitteriti and street-level reports to schmooze, share tips and congratulate themselves for jobs well done.
Among this year’s celebrity line-up was Seymour M. Hersh, the New Yorker’s legendary investigative reporter who broke the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse story last spring, who (in a panel Friday with Denver Post’s investigative reporter Miles Moffeit) blasted the Bush administration’s scourge against civil liberties and a free press.
But it was Dan Rather, who delivered the keynote luncheon address to a packed ballroom at the Grand Hyatt Saturday, who stole the show. The embattled news anchor who stepped down in March from ABC after running a doomed segment on Bush’s favored treatment in the National Guard (further bruising journalism’s credibility in the public’s eye), Rather gave a passionate pitch on the lessons of Watergate and the importance of journalist’s role as watchdogs—twice choking back tears. [more]

FOWL PLAY

You’ve got to hand it to the masterminds behind this year’s senior prank at Fairview High School. A group of soon-to-be-graduates, in their ritualistic last stab at authority, let loose 39 chickens donning red vests and capes into the school’s hallways Tuesday, according to a Daily Camera story yesterday.
While innocent-seeming enough, the prank reportedly riled staffers at the Humane Society, who were called to the scene after police and school administrators rounded up the chickens and sent them straight to the vice principal’s office (where the costumed birds were lectured and given a week’s detention for roaming the halls without a pass).
Only one student culprit has so far been fingered by the administration, according to the Camera, but surely this was a group effort—imagine what it would take to outfit 39 clucking chickens into miniature vests, fasten tiny capes around their necks, and then transport the flock into the school.
For now, the birds are recovering at the Humane Society. [more]

CITY GROWTH

It’s hard not to be nostalgic for old Boulder, a city so clearly struggling to square its bohemian roots with its reality as a growing city. A surge of new development here and all along the Front Range has brought with it a straighter, business-savvy crew into the Republic of Boulder, poised to domesticate places and storefronts where hippies once ruled.
Meanwhile, tucked behind the city’s constantly-evolving, increasingly upscale downtown, one old Boulder tradition has endured: the Farmer's Market—at least on Wednesdays—is evidence the city’s hippie heart still beats. On a one-block stretch on 14th Street between Canyon and Arapaho is the spot where locals still go during summer to get their week’s produce, upholding a Boulder ritual nearly three decades old. [more]

ANTI-WAR PROTEST

Boulder’s annual Memorial Day race became a battle ground for free speech, as anti-war protesters clashed with police and race organizers at Folsom Field during the city’s Bolder Boulder 10K Monday. A group of activists with the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center claim their first amendment rights were violated by race officials who demanded protesters remove banners that read “End the Occupation of Iraq Now.� When they refused, security confiscated the apparent contraband. Three protesters then produced another banner that read “Protect Free Speech� and were ousted by Boulder police and issued citations for illegal conduct on public property. (Protesters then formed a human banner, donning T-shirts that spelled out “Troops Come Home,� and were allowed to stay.)
At the crux of the issue is whether Folsom Field constitutes a public place—and therefore fair ground for first amendment expression. “The event is free and open to the public,� said Carolyn Bninski, organizer and activist with RMP&JC, one of the Folsom Three who police escorted from the stadium. “In our eyes, that means it is open to free speech.�
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JUVENILE JUSTICE

A bitter mix of justice and compassion was meted out in Boulder District Court yesterday, as a judge approved a plea agreement in the case of a Boulder teenager charged with homicide in the shooting death of her father. Dressed in a black T-shirt and sweatpants, and bound by shackles, the tiny 14-year-old defendant (whose name New West is not publishing because she is a juvenile) appeared for arraignment in juvenile court Wednesday morning, where prosecutors dropped the second-degree murder charge in exchange for a guilty plea to manslaughter and first-degree assault. In March, the girl was charged with manslaughter after police found her father, Garrett Rich, dead of two gun shot wounds in their east Boulder home. She told police shot her father to end his suffering from a botched suicide attempt. In April, prosecutors upped the charge to homocide. Under the plea agreement yesterday, the girl was sentenced to two years at a youth correctional facility for manslaughter and five years probation for first-degree assault. She was also credited 73 days for time served.
While the plea deal represents a win for the defense (sort of), and for more compassionate juvenile justice over the iron-fisted charge of homicide, the legal outcome seems trivial compared to the psychological wreckage this young girl now faces. [more]

TEEN FACES HOMOCIDE CHARGES

A 14-year-old teen accused of second-degree murder in the shooting death of her father in March is expected to enter a plea in Boulder County juvenile court Wednesday, the Daily Camera’s Christine Reid reported Saturday.
While a judge-issued gag order has barred those directly involved from speaking with the press and sealed police records from public reach, here’s what we do know: Garrett Rich, 52, died of two gunshot wounds, one each to the head and chest, according to the autopsy report obtained by New West. The girl claims she found her father suffering from a botched suicide attempt, and under his direction, shot him in the chest to “put him out of his misery,� according to a police statement to the Camera in March.
In April, the Boulder County District Attorney upped the charge from manslaughter, a mandatory charge in assisted suicide, to juvenile homicide, shocking friends and family who support the girl’s claim and say Rich was an abusive father, a biker who drank heavily, used cocaine and often spoke of suicide, according to the Longmont Daily Times-Call. After divorcing his wife, Mary Dolson, Rich and his daughter moved to Florida last year, where the two lived out of Rich’s truck. His daughter was never enrolled in school. The two returned to Rich’s residence in east Boulder County early this year, and month later, Garrett Rich was dead. [more]

NOBO RULES

Here, at the edge of town in North Boulder, cool things are afoot. Boulder’s experiment in sustainable living, festively called the Holiday neighborhood, is finally taking root, transforming that once-bleak stretch of dilapidated storefronts strung out along North Broadway into the city’s hip new locale.
A compact mixed-use eco-village, a town within a town, that combines residential with commercial properties, affordable housing with $400,000-plus lofts, it’s Boulder’s first and wildly-successfully stab at “new urbanism,� a growing trend in sustainable community building. The neighborhood’s recent debut sent swarms of young Boulder yuppies to the town’s north end who helped christen the area with a cultural identity all its own: NoBo. [more]

BASE CLOSURES

Phase one of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's extreme military makeover was unveiled last week, sending shock waves through military communities nationwide and politicians scrambling to save their state’s endangered miltary bases. Part of Rumsfeld’s vision for a trimmed-down, less-is-more fighting force, the plan calls for closing or restructuring 150 small bases and 33 major installations , a move he says would save $50 billion over the next two decades.
Military outposts in Colorado, meanwhile, and other key red states managed to survive Rumsfeld’s hatchet, while those in blue states like Connecticut and Maine got the ax, sparking a round of media speculation and criticism over how heavily red v. blue politics played in Rumsfeld’s decision. While Rumsfeld defends his base-closure plan as essential to a much-needed military overhaul, the facts speak for themselves: red states, under the proposal, would gain 12,000 military jobs compared to blue states, which would lose twice that number, 24, 289 jobs, according to the Department of Defense data. The USA Today reports the sweeping overhaul indeed contains a clear red-state bias, shifting military bases—along with thousands of jobs—into regions in the south and the west that supported Bush last November. [more]

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