Opinion

I was on a flight back to Denver when the pilot came on the speaker with an announcement. 

“For those of you following the ‘balloon boy’ story,” he said, “I’ve got great news — they found him in the garage, safe and sound.”

There was some scattered applause and a little excited conversation. 

Hannah Hayes

When Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who directed the Manhattan Project, witnessed the first atomic explosion, he quoted a line from the Bhagavad-Gita, “I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.” The military smiled, and the rest of us started worrying.

Emily’s List, an organization that was formed to support the election of pro-choice Democratic women, is named based upon what has become an increasingly true idiom of political campaigns. Emily stands for “Early money is like yeast.” Candidates’ ability to raise funds in the early stages of campaigns has something to do with how they will use that money in their campaigns, but has much more do to with how their campaigns are viewed by others.

This month, Jefferson County residents will receive mail ballots for the “odd year” election. Among other questions, we will be asked whether to extend term limits for certain county officers and the district attorney, not the county commissioners.

These will be presented as two separate ballot questions. In both cases, a “yes” vote would extend limits from two consecutive four-year terms to three consecutive four-year terms.

I plan to vote “yes” on both.

My fellow community members:

Whenever Colorado’s budget is in distress, it seems that the biggest target is always on the back of higher education. The four biggest pots of general-fund moneys in the state budget are Medicaid, prisons, K-12 education and higher education. For practical, political and legal reasons, the first three are generally pretty protected. Higher education is often left to bear the biggest brunt of the reductions.

One of my dad’s favorite stories about me is when he took me to the Big Top to buy a kite when I was 5. We found everything we needed for 97 cents. I handed my dollar to the store clerk and waited for change. When I asked for it, he told me it was for the governor. I said I didn’t want to buy a governor. After my dad and the clerk explained that the governor was going to use my 3 cents for the road to get to the store and the school I would soon attend, I acquiesced and let him keep the change I had anticipated.

We’re all familiar with the endless solicitations for credit cards in the mailbox, but the most desperate one I ever received was an actual check for $100. All I had to do was endorse it and I’d get the cash — along with a new credit card. No strings attached, right?

After the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy in 1968, his brother Ted ended a moving eulogy by saying, “My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will someday come to pass for all the world.”