Mark Hillman

The state commission charged with adjudicating which Colorado schools must expunge their “American Indian mascots” devolved further into a kangaroo court last week.  Chaired by Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera, the Colorado Commission on Indian Affairs was required to “identify each public school in the state that is using an American Indian mascot” by July 28 of last year.

More than eight months later, the commission is now considering whether to add seven new schools as potential violators for using “Thunderbird” as their mascot.  At an April 6 meeting, CCIA began discussing whether these mascots violate the law which prohibits “names, symbols or images that depict or refer to an American Indian tribe, individual, custom or tradition.”

Ironically, when the commission released its initial list of schools with affected mascots last July, it did include one with a Thunderbird mascot – Johnson Elementary in Montrose which fields no teams and merely displays a Thunderbird logo.

So, how did CCIA find little Johnson Elementary but fail to notice at least seven other schools, including Aurora’s Hinkley High School and Cherry Creek’s Thunder Ridge Middle School, that use the same mascot? (more…)

This year’s Colorado Republican Assembly was a discouraging experience for this conservative Republican who has been attending since I was 19 years old.  It wasn’t discouraging because some of my candidates didn’t do as well as I had hoped.  That goes with the territory and, if you have any class or character, you learn to roll with the punches. (more…)

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Democrats at the state legislature made a remarkable choice in recent weeks to burnish their “reproductive rights” bona fides by passing a bill that stakes out perhaps the most extreme position possible on abortion by explicitly depriving an unborn child of any legal rights whatsoever until the moment after birth.

A premature over-reaction to fears that the U.S. Supreme Court may strike down Roe v. Wade, the bill strangely ignores Colorado’s history as one of the most permissive in the nation on abortion.  In 1967 – six years before Roe – Colorado became the first state to union to make abortion legal.  If Roe falls, abortion won’t become illegal.  Instead, Colorado law will govern here.

Even without House Bill 1279, which Governor Polis will sign, Colorado is one of only a few states that puts no restrictions on when a woman may have an abortion.  Since 2000, Colorado voters have rejected multiple pro-life ballot measures ranging from restrictions on late-term abortions to giving full legal rights to an unborn child. (more…)

Nearly 160 years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, his place in history as “The Great Emancipator” of black slaves is firmly established.  Nevertheless, a defense of Lincoln is a required response to the fallacy-ridden 1619 Project in which the New York Times seeks to rewrite American history through a racist lens.

In 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project, Peter W. Wood performs documented research that 1619 neglected by citing no sources and providing no footnotes or bibliography.  Readers of 1619, including school children who find its “curriculum” woven into their classrooms, are expected to accept this wholly-biased account on faith.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, lead author of 1619, claims Lincoln was a racist.  She arrives here, Wood writes, not through intense scholarly research, but because in high school she became enamored with the writing of Lerone Bennett Jr., an editor at Ebony magazine who wrote an article titled, “Was Abe Lincoln a White Supremacist?”

Her evidence is Lincoln’s August 1862 meeting with five black leaders in which he discussed shipping freed slaves out of the country. (more…)

Confidence in elections is paramount to our system of self-government.  Those we elect have an obligation to work together to build security and transparency in those elections.

Today, both parties are largely failing that test.

After the 2020 election, President Trump’s falsehoods about a “stolen election” set the stage for him to agitate a crowd that gathered on Jan. 6 to “fight like hell” or “you’re not going to have a country anymore.”  At least several hundred demonstrators took those words seriously and broke into the U.S. Capitol intent on disrupting certification of electoral votes.

Remarkably, after justly criticizing Trump’s rhetoric, Democrats are now copying his playbook.  They claim future elections won’t be legitimate unless Democrats pass radical legislation to usurp state control of elections and concentrate still more power in Washington – epicenter of dysfunctional government.

As their public support collapses, President Biden, Sen. Chuck Schumer and other Democrats proclaim that if Republicans win in 2022, “it could be the last election.” (more…)

Like a demolition team swinging a sledgehammer, legislators intent on purging Native American mascots from Colorado schools smashed their opposition with little consideration of the wreckage they were creating.  So certain of the righteousness of their cause, they denied even mere consideration to the communities upon which they imposed their will.

Two of Colorado’s smallest districts – Arickaree (103 students) and Mountain Valley (153 students) – are being severely harmed by this legislation which isn’t just about mascots but instead prohibits any sort of Native American imagery “used as a mascot, nickname, logo, letterhead or team name” by a school.

Surrounded by prairie and farmland on the plains of Washington County, Arickaree School is one of Colorado’s few remaining country schools, located between Cope (population 230) and Anton (155).

Arickaree derives its name from the Arikaree River, which begins near Cope and was named for the Arikara tribe.  Given its location and history, it’s hardly surprising that the community selected “Indians” as the name for school teams.  Critics could just as easily argue that ignoring the area’s Indian heritage – by changing the name to, say, Arickaree Guardians – would be disrespectful, too. (more…)

Republicans must confront the “elephant in the room” – former President Trump’s persistent claims that the 2020 election was stolen.  Many Republicans believe him.  Most Americans do not.

Trump recently said Republicans “will not be voting in ’22 or ‘24” unless the “Election Fraud of 2020” is “solved.”  Democrats laughed and cheered!  They know the one thing that can rescue them from the growing anti-Biden backlash is Republicans foolishly sitting out elections.

All election complaints are not created equal, so let’s consider them on their own merits. (more…)

On Sept. 11, 2001, Islamic terrorists on a murder-suicide mission flew commercial airliners into the two World Trade Center towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington.  A fourth crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

The attacks against our country unified Americans in a sense that’s almost inconceivable today.  Together, we mourned the 2,600 people killed in the collapse of the twin towers and were horrified to watch many leap to their deaths to escape the inferno.

We celebrated the courage of the emergency workers who rushed into the burning towers to save lives, and we grieved for 400 who died while bravely working to save others.

We admired the selfless courage of the passengers on United Flight 93 who, having learned that other planes had been crashed into buildings, confronted their hijackers, resulting in their plane ultimately crashing in a Pennsylvania field killing those on board but not killing hundreds more at the U.S. Capitol, its intended target.

Today, nearly one in three Americans has only a textbook knowledge of that day.  Either they were not yet born or were too young to remember it.  They should learn from us that  9/11 was a tragedy that pulled Americans together and often brought out the best in us. (more…)