Guest Columns

Last summer I wrote about the departure of Colorado Army National Guard Space Support Teams 15 & 28 for their active duty deployment to Afghanistan. Last week they returned home following nine months of barracks life in Kandahar and at Camp Leatherneck, respectively. Their welcoming ceremony was held in the Air and Space Museum at Petersen Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. The crowd was about half the size of the one that saw them off on the first of July, and was largely composed of family members.

In his April 6 guest column in The Colorado Statesman, Miller Hudson asserts that Colorado voters should “think long and hard” before they approve proposed changes to a State personnel system “that has served them well for nearly a century.” While we agree with him wholeheartedly on the importance of a sound personnel system, it is a disservice to the dedicated public servants who work for the State to let sentimentality impede the progress necessary to deliver effective, efficient and elegant service to the people of Colorado.

April 13, 1970 — Apollo 13 — “Hey, we’ve got a problem here.”

Well folks, ‘tis the season for Presidential-year Political Conventions!

Ah yes — more political games and trickery! Smoke filled rooms, counterfeit admission tickets, well-heeled East Coast financiers trying to strong arm western voters, organized and paid shouters and cheerleaders, rumor-mongering, threats of party defections, promises of cabinet posts and other patronage in exchange for support, the raising of absurd sums of money for political action, etc, etc.