QUID HAS HEARD that your local elected nabobs are worried they’re playing into the hands of a Stephen King novel in the making. Seems that for years, and years, and years, Charlie Richardson was city council’s right-hand man as city attorney, always chummy and willing to go the distance for the city’s kings and queens. Richardson retired and in 2015 got himself elected to the city council. Since then, he’s turned into nightmare material for some on city council — oh, let’s just put it out there: Mayor Steve Hogan, councilmen Brad Pierce and Bob LeGare, and City Manager Skip Noe. Perhaps it’s truly just coincidence that these old-guard types seem to always be attached to Richardson’s cause celebres. Perhaps Richardson doesn’t take a shining to their misery, as some council hoo-haws suspect. It could well be that it’s just Richardson taking a stand on pet peeves. Your faithful hack will just carry on with all this scary worry and see what it turns out to be.
AND QUID HAS HEARD that stupid, mean and criminal run in the same gene pool in Colorado’s third-largest city. Seems some creepy anti-semitic types stayed up past their bed time last week to spray-paint what they thought were Nazi swastikas on the mail box and garage door of an Aurora Jewish couple. What they painted, however, were “svasti” used primarily by Buddhists, signifying good luck and good health. It’s not the Hindu svasti that was hijacked by the German Nazis and Adolph Hitler, forever tainting it with white supremacy and the Holocaust. Quid sees it as just another symbol of another failed hate crime.
AND QUID HAS HEARD that there is only one thing scarier than a murderous authoritarian thug who executes suspected criminals on a whim way outside any kind of law and order. Your faithful hack is talking Philippine President Rodrgio “Snuff ‘Em” Duterte. This old codger got elected by promising to kill thousands of criminals to make his country safer, although human rights watchers say “criminals” are often just drug addicts and homeless street children. What’s scarier than a despot who kills kids? Colorado Democrats. Colorado GOP Sen. Cory Gardner is under flack attack for quietly slipping off recently to the Philippines to meet with hit-man Duterte, impressing yours truly and many others with such flagrant courage. So what scares a guy who can shake hands with a man who said he personally has killed “bad” guys? Holding a town meeting so Democrats and other critics can yell at him. Gardner should take lessons from Aurora Congressman Mike Coffman, who braved the dreaded Democrat whiners, held such a town meeting, and lived to tell about it.
AND THAT’S ALL THE NEWS THAT FITS.