Denver Westword's Eric Dexheimer details his experiences fighting the Hayman Fire, a monster that consumed 137,000 acres of Colorado forest. At times it was horrifying, writes Dexheimer. As for the rest of the time? Well, between the scrounging opportunities that could make a U.S. Army quartermaster blush, the spectacular grub, the huge amounts of money changing hands via a bureaucratic ballet, and the constant struggle between bawdy firefighter humor and the federal "sensitivity police," let's just say this wasn't your grandfather's forest fire.
Boulder, Colo., has one of the lowest childhood immunization rates in the state. Pamela White of Boulder Weekly looks at this resistance to the principle of "herd immunity" that drives vaccination campaigns and the effects of immunization on both individual families and society.
The Tennessean reports that Joe Sullivan, publisher of Knoxville, Tenn.'s, Metro Pulse, wrote a withering profile of GOP gubernatorial candidate Van Hilleary without disclosing that he had made a $2,500 contribution to Hilleary's primary opponent's campaign. The profile was also published in the Nashville Scene. Sullivan tells the Nashville daily he is a political activist and sees nothing inherently wrong with the two roles -- journalist and contributor. Nashville Scene Editor Bruce Dobie, however, says he wouldn't have run the article had he known about the contribution.
Michael Frattini allegedly pistol-whipped a man outside a restaurant; he spent one night in jail. His friend Willie Beasley took the gun away and threw it in the street; he's going to prison for almost four years. Gabrielle Banks of the San Francisco Bay Guardian looks at Operation Triggerlock, a well-intentioned law that lets police go around a liberal D.A., federalize crimes and send young men to jail for "ridiculously long times."
California's Proposition 21, a result of the state's recent get-tough-on-crime kick, allows prosecutors unprecedented power to drag mentally retarded minors into the adult court system and demand the harshest penalties. Sacramento News & Review's Cosmo Garvin follows one such case: a 15-year-old autistic boy with an IQ of about 60 who is being tried in adult court for attempted premeditated murder.
