By Chris Frates

A proposed Colorado ballot initiative to limit government services for undocumented immigrants would cost taxpayers more to implement than it would save, according to a report released Thursday by a liberal think tank.

The report’s release was an early salvo in what is shaping up to be a contentious fight next year over the state’s role in immigration policy. >> MORE

By Mike Soraghan

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has begun reviewing its policies on drilling for federally owned gas on private land in the West and has established a website where people can submit comments. >> MORE

By Jim Hughes

More than 30 Iraq and Persian Gulf War veterans have entered congressional races across the country as Democrats, hoping to capitalize on their military experience to topple the incumbent Republican majority.

In Colorado, two former military men, Jay Fawcett and Bill Winter, are vying for the House seats of two strong, entrenched Republicans: Rep. Joel Hefley (pictured) of the 5th Congressional District and Rep. Tom Tancredo of the 6th Congressional District, respectively. >> MORE

By Beth Potter

Peace activist Bill Sulzman in Colorado Springs protests the war in Iraq by refusing to pay the federal excise tax of about 50 cents on his monthly phone bill.

Sulzman also recruits others who are against U.S. military involvement in Iraq to stop paying the tax, which was first adopted in 1898 to pay for the Spanish- American War.

The tax raises about $5 billion a year, which activists say goes to fund war efforts. The Internal Revenue Service won’t confirm that the money goes exclusively to the military but instead says it goes for general fund expenditures, including military spending. >> MORE

By Robert Sanchez

An international tribunal was asked Tuesday to hear a complaint from a former Castle Rock woman whose three children were slain by her estranged husband six years ago, because, her attorneys say, she has “exhausted” her legal remedies in U.S. courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to take the case.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the 86-page petition with the Washington, D.C.-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of Jessica Gonzales, who alleges that Castle Rock police failed to enforce a restraining order against Simon Gonzales just hours before he killed her daughters in 1999. >> MORE

By Anne C. Mulkern

Washington - As the Senate raced to end its work for the year, Democrat Ken Salazar stood next to two Republicans on the Senate floor, counting votes and counting on an unconventional victory.

For weeks, Salazar had worked across party lines to delay renewal of the USA Patriot Act, fearing that the measure aimed at fighting terrorism violated civil liberties. He joined forces with Republican stalwarts and liberal Democrats.

Last week, his bipartisan group prevailed, pushing through only a short extension of the Patriot Act, further shortened in the House, and giving moderates another crack at it after the first of the year. The administration and Republican congressional leadership had wanted it reauthorized as it stood.

It was a telling end to Salazar’s first year in the Senate.

Elected in a state that helped send President Bush back to the White House in 2004, Salazar was hailed by Democrats as a conquering hero. Now, he’s defined less by his Democratic label and more by such terms as centrist, moderate, independent. >> MORE

By Electa Draper

Dove Creek - The notion of wild horses roaming the American West might be more a national delusion than a reality.

Almost 35 years ago, Congress proclaimed that the West’s wild horses were an American treasure. It passed a law in 1971 to protect them from slaughter.

But the realities of the Bureau of Land Management wild horse and burro program are different from the romantic images painted then by Congress and still held by many Americans. Roughly 32,000 wild horses and burros roam the range in 10 Western states, but there were, by October of this year, another 24,500 wild horses and burros in holding facilities. >> MORE

Washington - In the year 112, the Roman governor Pliny the Younger dispatched a letter to the Emperor Trajan, asking how to handle the emergence of a “mad sect” in the Middle East.

The Roman temples in Pliny’s jurisdiction were deserted. Tithing was down; no one was sacrificing to the pagan gods.

“This superstition is spread like a contagion,” Pliny complained. “There are many of every age, of every rank, and of both sexes.”

The good news, Pliny told the emperor, was that these “Christians” didn’t appear to be a threat to Roman national security. His legionnaires had tortured and interrogated several members of the sect before putting them to death. >> MORE

By Bruce Finley

Goma, Congo - Militiamen from neighboring Rwanda barged into her mud-brick hut at night. They stabbed and sliced Farijika Nzigire’s husband to death. Then five men raped her. They burned the hut and left her beaten and bloody.

Now, a year later, a baby girl, Ajibu, tugs at Nzigire’s tattered shirt. “I don’t know who her father is,” she said looking down, trying to coax milk from her depleted body here at a hospital in eastern Congo.

Nzigire, 22, is part of a forgotten exodus, thousands of ragged gang-raped women and other victims staggering from forests where atrocities happen every day.

Nearly 4 million people have died in a war that began around 1998. U.S. officials estimate 1,000 more die each day across a Europe-sized area.

Such is the suffering that two U.S. senators who visited Goma this month - Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill. - want the United States to get more involved. Brownback said he’s working on legislation, with help from Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., that would send $200 million to $300 million a year to Congo for basic needs such as access to safe water. >> MORE

By Alicia Caldwell

One of three candidates for the U.S. attorney job in Colorado has dropped out of contention, saying the year-long process has dragged on too long.

The withdrawal of Stu VanMeveren (pictured), a veteran state prosecutor from Fort Collins, underscores what is a growing concern about the delay in appointing a permanent top federal prosecutor in Colorado.

“A year is, quite frankly, ridiculous,” said Sean Conway, chief of staff for U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard. “Sen. Allard is not happy. It’s been a frustrating process.” >> MORE

As George W. Bush explains why he didn’t need court permission to let the National Security Agency wiretap terrorism suspects, mail from the FBI trickles into the Colorado chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The gathering correspondence makes a better case than the president on whether Americans need judicial oversight of domestic intelligence. >> MORE

By Bruce Finley

While Congress wrestles with new legislation to crack down on employers who hire illegal-immigrant workers, enforcement of an existing prohibition has all but ceased.

Not a single employer in the Denver area has been fined for three years, records show, and federal authorities have targeted only a handful of employers nationwide.

This week, experts on all sides of the intensifying national immigration debate agreed: Work- site enforcement will be crucial in efforts to deal effectively with growing numbers of illegal foreign-born workers. >> MORE

By Katy Human and Kim McGuire

Scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden created breakthroughs that led to solar panels so thin and flexible they can be rolled onto rooftops.

NREL engineers made refrigerators more efficient, wind turbines more powerful and agricultural waste more useful, but today, many of them are facing layoffs, and renewable energy advocates are furious.

“There’s no excuse for these cuts. You just don’t do this at a time when energy is such a big issue,” said Scott Sklar, president of the Stella Group Ltd., a Washington, D.C.-based energy consulting group. >> MORE

By Mike Soraghan

Washington � Congress has dropped a plan to speed up oil-shale development in western Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

The proposal by House Resources Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., would have eliminated requirements for consultation with state and local officials, limited environmental reviews and capped royalty payments. It would have thrown out a compromise on shale development worked out with Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., in the energy bill that passed last summer. >> MORE

I need to apologize. I owe it to so many of you out there. You know who you are.

You have called to tell me about the funny clicking sounds on your telephone calls, the peculiar hiccups in your Internet e-mail service, the cars parked in the alleys outside your houses, and I always blew you off.

I suggested counseling. I recommended support groups. I told you to call Mike Littwin at the Rocky Mountain News. >> MORE