A Critical Look at Nuclear Energy in Colorado: Overcoming Our Past to Secure Our Future

Colorado has played a pivotal role in the history of nuclear research and technology. Being the first state to produce uranium and later having a near monopoly on the global radium trade, the Centennial state’s complex relationship with nuclear materials highlights both its contributions to the field and the resulting controversies. Despite Colorado’s significant impact […]

“Where the Columbines Grow”—One Last Time

Just before preparing an article on Colorado’s state song, Where the Columbines Grow, for the Colorado Springs Gazette, I noticed something I had not previously seen. As documented in my Issue Paper on the subject, Arthur Fynn’s lyrics are filled with contrasts. The most notable is the contrast between the eagle and the dove, an […]

Colorado’s First State Song: Worthy of Revival

Note: An edited version of this article originally appeared in the Denver Post. This year marks the centennial of the adoption of Where the Columbines Grow as Colorado’s first official state song. Surprisingly, there is little public awareness of Columbines, despite the state legislature’s directive that it be “used on all appropriate occasions.” The neglect […]

New Independence Institute Issue Paper: The Untold Story of the Colorado State Song!

The year 2015 is the centennial of the Colorado General Assembly’s designation of Where the Columbines Grow as the first state song. (The original sheet music appears at the end of this Issue Paper.) Despite the legislature’s direction that the song be played and sung “on all appropriate occasions,” it has been neglected and even maligned.

Embracing Foreign Languages

Republican Congressman Mike Coffman and his Democratic opponent Andrew Romanoff held a public debate yesterday—all in Spanish. It was billed as the first non-English candidate debate in Colorado state history. Well, maybe not. Hispanics settled Colorado long before Anglos did. When I was practicing law in Denver in the 1970s and 1980s (before embarking on […]