Tag: colorado

University Writing Center Rejected Proper English, Calling It “Linguistic White Supremacy”

There was a time when being a white supremacist meant something (for starters, that you were one in a million). Today, though, it appears that anyone can be a white supremacist. Why, all journalist Larry Elder had to do to become “the black face of white supremacy” was seek California’s governorship. And now all you need to do to become the linguistic face of white supremacy is uphold Standard American English (SAE).

That is, according to certain “intellectuals” — such as those at the Metropolitan State University of Denver’s (MSUD’s) Writing Center.

Yes, that’s right. Don’t dare tell students not to speak like a cross between Snoop Dogg and the rapist in the film Deliverance. Otherwise, you could be guilty of “anti-black linguistic racism.”

No, “Woke” Is Not Dead

Reporting on the story Monday, National Review (NR) wrote that MSUD’s writing center urged educators to dispense with SAE

in since-deleted materials published under its “Anti-Racist Practices for Your Classroom” guidance on the university’s website.

The writing center even rejected that SAE exists at all, and “fully support[s] students in using their English (whatever that may be) in communicating their thoughts and ideas,” according to a page that has since been removed from its website.

The center’s reasons for rejecting SAE include the assumption that there is a “correct” way to write, the implication that there is a “standard” when the United States does not have a regulating body, that SAE “is a social construct that privileges white communities and maintains social and racial hierarchies,” and that SAE privileges white society over other ethnicities.

Having gotten blowback, however, the university is now doing damage control. As NR also informs:

MSU Denver told National Review it is aware of the content and that it does not reflect the official policy of the university.

“The University has removed that content and is working with the Writing Center to review it to ensure alignment with the institution’s mission, values and academic best practices,” an MSU Denver spokesperson told NR. “MSU Denver remains committed to rigorous academic standards and preparing all students for success in life and careers.”

So that should be it for the story, right? Not exactly.

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Colorado Power Outage Makes Official US Time Run Slow

America’s official clock briefly lagged this week, thanks to a windstorm in Colorado and a backup system that didn’t kick in as planned. The nation’s time is maintained at the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s lab in Boulder, where 16 atomic clocks feed into what’s known as NIST UTC—official US time as determined by the Commerce Department and the US Navy, per NPR. When severe winds knocked out power to the facility on Wednesday and a backup generator didn’t work, some clocks lost connection to NIST’s measurement and distribution systems, according to supervisory research physicist Jeff Sherman.

The type of NIST-F4 atomic clock used in the Boulder facility “ticks at such a steady rate that if it had started running 100 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed, it would be off by less than a second today,” the agency notes, per CBS News. The clocks themselves kept running on battery backup after last week’s power outage, which Gizmodo notes lasted about two hours, but the disruption left NIST’s version of coordinated universal time 4.8 microseconds—just under 5 millionths of a second—behind where it should have been, per NPR. For comparison, NIST spokesperson Rebecca Jacobson notes it takes about 350,000 microseconds to blink.

Sherman said whether that tiny lag matters depends on who’s describing it. Most people wouldn’t notice, for instance, but that kind of discrepancy can affect high-precision systems, including telecommunications networks, GPS, and other critical infrastructure, Sherman notes. NIST says “high-end” users also have access to other timekeeping networks and were warned of the disruption. By Saturday evening, power to the facility was back, and crews were assessing damage and working to bring NIST’s clocks back into perfect sync.

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Trump denies disaster aid to Colorado for wildfires, flooding

President Trump has denied disaster aid to the state of Colorado in the wake of wildfires and flooding.

The office of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) announced the denial in a Sunday statement. He accused the president of playing “political games” and urged him to reconsider. 

“Coloradans impacted by the Elk and Lee fires and the flooding in Southwestern Colorado deserve better than the political games President Trump is playing,” Polis said in the statement.

“I call on the President’s better angels, and urge him to reconsider these requests. This is about the Coloradans who need this support, and we won’t stop fighting for them to get what they deserve. Colorado will be appealing this decision,” he said.

Under the Stafford Act, a president can unlock additional federal assistance by declaring a major disaster.

The Trump administration, however, has sought to shrink federal disaster assistance to states — and has denied some requests for disaster aid. 

While other presidents have turned down some disaster requests, Trump’s denials come as his administration is expected to try to downsize the Federal Emergency Management Agency and spend less federal money on disaster response. 

The White House defended Trump’s decision not to declare the disaster.

“The President responds to each request for Federal assistance under the Stafford Act with great care and consideration, ensuring American tax dollars are used appropriately and efficiently by the states to supplement—not substitute, their obligation to respond to and recover from disasters,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in an email.

Jackson added that “there is no politicization to the President’s decisions on disaster relief.” She said that the Trump administration also mobilized two firefighting planes to help with the response to the fires.

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2 Denver deputy sheriffs arrested, accused of assault on at-risk adult

A sheriff deputy and sergeant in Denver were arrested by the Denver Police Department on Thursday and face charges for third-degree assault of an at-risk adult.

The Denver Sheriff Department said in a press release that Sheriff Deputy Jason Gentempo, who was assigned to the Downtown Detention Center, and Deputy Sheriff Sergeant Carla Gentempo, who was assigned to the Administration Division, were placed on investigatory leave on Thursday.

The charge for third-degree assault of an at-risk adult is a class six felony.

The sheriff’s office said the Office of the Independent Monitor was notified, and the Public Integrity Division opened an investigation.

Police told FOX31 on Friday that Carla and Jason Gentempo were both released on a PR bond.

Affidavit: Alleged assault of man in wheelchair

FOX31 obtained the arrest affidavit for Jason Gentempo on Friday.

According to the affidavit, the victim, a paraplegic man, reported that he was assaulted by two off-duty Denver officers, one male and one female, on Oct. 17.

The victim said he put his dog inside before the off-duty law enforcement officers punched him in the head with a closed fist, kicked him in the chest and stomped on his phone.

The hits knocked the victim out of his wheelchair, and he fell back and hit his head. He said the suspects then took off in a white truck they had left running on the street.

The victim gave investigators the surveillance footage from his porch camera, which the affidavit said showed the victim, his dog and another person exit his ground-floor apartment to the porch. The video also showed a woman get out of the driver’s seat and a man get out of the passenger’s seat of a white truck near the victim’s porch.

According to the affidavit, the victim is seen putting his dog back inside the apartment and as he turned back toward the people on the porch, the white female from the truck hit him in the face with a closed fist and kicked him in the chest. The white man from the truck then struck the man as he was falling backward out of his chair, out of the camera view. The man from the truck then kicked the victim’s phone and stomped on it. The suspects then left the scene.

The victim identified both Carla and Jason Gentempo in photos and by name, according to the affidavit, and said they were the suspects who assaulted him.

The Denver Police Department confirmed to FOX31 that this case is related to another case in which a police officer is accused of not filing proper reports and not submitting evidence after responding to an alleged assault.

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Colorado Medical School Will Pay $10.3 Million After Denying Religious Exemptions for COVID Vaccine

The University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine will pay more than $10.3 million to 18 faculty and students whose religious exemptions to the school’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccine policy were denied, a group representing the plaintiffs announced Monday.

The lawsuit challenged the university’s refusal to accommodate sincerely held religious objections to the COVID-19 vaccine. The plaintiffs, who sued anonymously, included physicians, medical students, nurses and administrative staff.

The Thomas More Society, which filed the lawsuit and represents clients in religious liberty cases nationwide, stated that the settlement is a rare instance in which plaintiffs recovered monetary damages under the First Amendment for a government COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Michael McHale, senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, said the resolution cannot undo the harm inflicted on the plaintiffs.

“No amount of compensation or course-correction” can make up for the damage caused by the university’s vaccine mandate, McHale said. “At great, and sometimes career-ending, costs, our heroic clients fought for the First Amendment freedoms of all Americans who were put to the unconscionable choice of their livelihoods or their faith.”

Details of the settlement, which followed more than a year of negotiations, were not released. According to the Thomas More Society, the school agreed to cover damages, tuition and attorneys’ fees.

The settlement ends nearly five years of related litigation in state and federal courts.

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Parents Sue District After School Forced Daughter to Share Bed with ‘Trans’ Male Student on Trip

A Colorado family’s nightmare school trip has now become a federal case, and they are not alone.

According to a news release from the legal nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, four families are suing Jefferson County Public Schools after learning their children were forced into overnight sleeping arrangements with students of the opposite sex without parental knowledge or consent.

For Joe and Serena Wailes, the breaking point came when their 11-year-old daughter was assigned to share a bed with a male student who identifies as female during a school-sponsored trip.

No parent should have to discover something like that after the fact. Yet that is exactly what happened on a recent outing.

The Wailes family is now joined by Bret and Susanne Roller and Rob and Jade Perlman, who say the district’s policies robbed them of their right to protect their children’s privacy and safety.

According to the ADF brief filed Wednesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, officials at Jefferson County schools assign sleeping arrangements based on gender identity, not sex, while telling parents that boys and girls will be kept on separate floors.

The problem, ADF explained in a news release about the lawsuit, is that the district quietly redefines “boy” and “girl” to mean a student’s gender identity.

Parents are never informed of any of this nonsense.

The result is that families receive a false sense of security, while their children are placed in intimate overnight accommodations with students of the opposite sex.

In the Rollers’ case, they discovered after their young son’s trip that a female student had been assigned to his cabin and was monitoring his showers.

For the Perlmans, whose daughter previously experienced sexual harassment at a district middle school, the risk of her being roomed with a boy was already unacceptable.

The families are asking the court to halt the district’s policy, arguing that it violates parental rights, bodily privacy, and religious freedom.

ADF Senior Counsel Kate Anderson said the district’s refusal to offer sex-based accommodations contradicts its claim that it “freely grant[s] accommodations to all.”

Where is the sanity?

Teachers, administrators, and lawmakers are supposed to be looking out for children.

Instead, in one of Colorado’s most crowded districts, they concealed information parents needed to keep their children safe.

And it’s not just these families who have been failed.

The “trans” boy placed in a girl’s bed has also been failed by a system that treats identity confusion as an unquestionable truth, rather than a situation requiring a difficult conversation.

No little girl should ever be forced to share a bed with a strange boy — even if it hurts someone’s feelings.

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Federal judge rules ICE agents in Colorado may only arrest illegal immigrants likely to flee

A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Colorado may only arrest illegal immigrants without a warrant if the targets are likely to flee.

U.S. District Senior Judge R. Brooke Jackson’s order comes after a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and other lawyers on behalf of four people, including asylum-seekers, who were arrested by ICE without warrants earlier this year as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration.

The lawsuit accuses immigration agents of indiscriminately arresting Latinos to meet the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement goals without evaluating the requirements to legally detain them.

The judge said each of the plaintiffs had long-standing ties to their communities and no reasonable agent could have believed they were likely to flee before obtaining a warrant.

Under federal law, immigration agents must have probable cause to believe someone is in the country illegally and likely to flee before a warrant can be obtained, in order to arrest them without one, Jackson said.

Immigration agents are also required to document the reasons for arresting someone.

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Antifa-Linked Leftist Arrested for Hockey Stick Attack on University of Colorado TPUSA Chapter Secretary

Boulder police have arrested 36-year-old Taylor James Rose of Arvada, Colorado, for assaulting the University of Colorado Turning Point USA chapter secretary with a hockey stick while on rollerblades.

The unprovoked attack, which the victim described as “politically motivated,” occurred just after 7 p.m. on October 23.

The victim, Nathaniel Ellis, a CU Boulder student, was riding his bike when Rose allegedly called him a “fascist” before striking him with the hockey stick.

Rose was arrested on Thursday and charged with second-degree assault, a felony.

Deputy District Attorney McKenna Mayfield explicitly noted the incident was a “politically motivated unprovoked attack.”

Police spoke to a second person of interest, a rollerblader seen with Rose shortly before the assault, who was observed posting flyers near the scene. He is not currently a suspect and is cooperating with detectives.

In a press release about the case, the City of Boulder briefly summed up the incident and charges, but added, “To protect the integrity of this active investigation and future prosecution, the Boulder Police Department is unable to release more specifics at this time.”

According to independent reporting from AntifaWatch, the attack followed the doxxing of Ellis by local Antifa groups who were demanding that he was a “Nazi.”

Rose has allegedly been associated with Denver Communists, where he appeared to introduce himself as an anarchist from Arvada in chat logs discussing protests.

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SCOTUS To Decide If Free Speech Applies To Biology-Affirming Therapists And Their Clients

n Oct. 7, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Chiles v. Salazar. This is the latest in a seemingly unending series of cases from Colorado that my colleagues at Alliance Defending Freedom have argued. The cases stem from the state’s apparent aversion to the First Amendment.

Not content with their failed attempts to coerce speech from artists like Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop or Lorie Smith of 303 Creative, and not deterred by clear rebukes from the Supreme Court in those cases, the state of Colorado has set its sights on professional counselors.

The law in question bans specific, voluntary counseling conversations, silences the viewpoint disfavored by the government, and leaves struggling youth and their parents with only one government-approved option. Colorado’s law bans counselors like Kaley Chiles from helping minors realign their thoughts and feelings with their biological sex — even when that is the young person’s goal for counseling.

Counseling that affirms so-called “gender transition” is fine by Colorado. Counseling that affirms biological reality is fined by Colorado, up to $5,000 per offense, and could include the loss of licensure.

This is not just an esoteric debate for law school faculty lounges; children’s health and well-being are at stake. Colorado’s defense of this blatant viewpoint discrimination and government censorship hinges on the contention, without a hint of irony, that the state is regulating conduct, not speech. How do Kaley Chiles and her clients engage in the “conduct” of talk therapy without it being speech? Perhaps a high-stakes game of charades? The notion would be laughable if the consequences were not so serious.

If government places an authoritarian thumb on the scale, allowing only one viewpoint, invading the vulnerable space between counselor and client, and dictating one outcome, the victims are children and their families. If the Supreme Court does not protect the speech of counselors like Kaley Chiles and her clients, children in Colorado and more than 20 other states with similar censorship laws will be trapped on a one-way journey to the perils of “gender transition.”

The eventual destination is one of irreversible physical damage, potential sterilization, and a lifetime of being a patient. Our nation’s struggling youth deserve compassionate counseling directed by their goals with assistance from loving parents and professionals, not a government-sponsored pathway to chemicals and surgeries that can leave permanent mental and physical scars.

Adding rhetorical insult to injury is the fact that under Colorado’s law, counseling clients to align their feelings with their biology is deemed “conversion therapy,” while counseling a client to transition from his or her sex to the opposite sex is “gender affirming care.” The assault on common sense and the English language may pale in comparison to the harm suffered by Chiles and her clients, but the First Amendment protects speech because words matter, truth matters, and any attempt by government to silence citizens matters.

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‘Blatant Viewpoint Discrimination’: Alito Slams Colorado For Telling Therapists They Can’t Affirm Kids’ Natural Sex

Associate Justice Samuel Alito exposed the absurdity of a Colorado law prohibiting so-called “conversion therapy” for minors during a high-profile case before the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

The moment came during oral arguments in Chiles v. Salazar, a case focused on a legal challenge brought by Colorado resident Kaley Chiles. A licensed therapist who provides counseling to children struggling with issues related to sexual orientation and gender dysphoria, Chiles alleges that the Centennial State’s “conversion therapy” law infringes upon her First Amendment right to free speech by inhibiting the types of discussions she has with her minor clients.

When questioning Colorado Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson, Alito posed a pair of hypothetical scenarios undermining the state’s argument that the statute does not engage in “viewpoint discrimination.” Alito’s questioning exposed the state’s policy of permitting therapists to encourage a child’s homosexual- or transgenderism-related behaviors, while at the same time prohibiting therapists from offering counseling that could help a child overcome them.

“So in the first situation, an adolescent male comes to a licensed therapist and says he’s attracted to other males, but he feels uneasy and guilty with those feelings. He wants to end or lessen them, and he asks for the therapist’s help in doing so,” Alito said. “The other situation is a similar adolescent male comes to a licensed therapist, says he’s attracted to other males, feels uneasy and guilty about those feelings, and he wants the therapist’s help so he will feel comfortable as a gay young man.”

The Bush appointee went on to argue that Colorado’s interpretation of the statute “dictates opposite results in those two situations … based on the viewpoint expressed.” “One viewpoint,” he noted, “is the viewpoint that a minor should be able to obtain talk therapy to overcome same-sex attraction, if that’s what … he or she wants,” while “the other is the viewpoint that the minor should not be able to obtain talk therapy to overcome same-sex attraction, even if that is what he or she wants.”

This “[l]ooks like blatant viewpoint discrimination,” Alito said.

In response, Stevenson claimed that both examples would “be permissible” under Colorado’s law “because it didn’t sound like in either case the goal was to actually change sexual orientation.”

“And again, that’s the touchstone because that’s where the harms come from,” Stevenson said.

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