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An Aurora woman who pimped and assaulted an 18-year-old woman was sentenced to 12 years in state prison, according to 17th Judicial District spokeswoman Sue Lindsay.

Jefferson County sheriff's investigators say the death of a woman whose body was found Thursday on Lookout Mountain is suspicious.

Landowners leasing property to marijuana businesses could join the financial cooperatives under consideration by state legislators in a bill intended to solve the inability of that industry to get banking services.

When David Lin was contemplating ideas for a name for his brewery, he explored the theme of camaraderie among craft brewers. Of course "camaraderie" is a long word, so he chose the shorter "comrade."

Gov. John Hickenlooper beats all four Republican rivals in a new poll that shows he's favored by women voters and has a slight advantage with crucial unaffiliated voters.

Aurora police have arrested one man who allegedly stabbed two roommates during an early-morning fight Tuesday morning, authorities say.

To illustrate them, Chait imagines what would happen if one of the conservative Supreme Court Justices died unexpectedly:

The material has the potential to change the electronics industry, and recently researchers have focused on how to produce it commercially.

Six habanero peppers are being blamed for Monday afternoon's haz-mat situation at a Lakewood school.

After seeing two dogs battle cancer she believes was caused by playing in a dog park next to the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons factory, Denver resident Alesya Casse has started a campaign to educate dog owners about the area's history.

Cameras that bust drivers for speeding or running red lights could be banished in Colorado after a bipartisan group in the state legislature reached consensus on the controversial devices.

“Imagine this. Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, Elizabeth Warren and multiple lesser Democratic notables travel halfway across the country to kiss the ring of a Palestinian-American billionaire who has shown himself willing to spend tens of millions of dollars subsidizing presidential campaigns. The billionaire has some provocative views. Six months earlier, he suggested that if Israel does not end its nuclear weapons program, America should drop an “atomic weapon…in the middle of the [Negev] desert that doesn’t hurt a soul.” If that doesn’t work, America should drop “the next one…in the middle of” Tel Aviv. The billionaire insists that there is no such thing as the Jewish people. It’s a hoax; the Jews “have fooled the world very successfully.” And he declares that “There isn’t a” Jew “alive who wasn’t raised on a curriculum of hatred and hostility toward the” Palestinians.

Change the words “Democrat” to “Republican,” “Israel” to “Iran” and “Palestinian” to “Jewish,” and that’s exactly what just happened. Leading contenders for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination spent last weekend wooing and feting a billionaire, Sheldon Adelson, whose views – if directed at Jews—would put him in the company of Louis Farrakhan and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” – Peter Beinart, Haaretz.

(Photo: Getty Images)

Glenn Reynolds has a terrific, and very short, paper on SSRN on Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime , which I highly recommend.  (Conor…

A very interesting concurring opinion yesterday, in United States v. Craig (7th Cir. Dec. 18, 2012); here’s a slightly trimmed version: [From the panel opinion,…

Say hello to the U.S. away kit.

The United States has a new change kit and just in time for the World Cup. More accurately, it's for the World Cup, when fans are most excited and, as a result, more likely to buy kits, but that's neither here nor there.

Presenting, lots of red, white and blue.

It appears as if Nike took the exact opposite approach to the away kits as they did the home kit, opting for colors, lines and essentially, notability, while the home kit is a white polo shirt that could look like any other white polo shirt with a badge sown on.

If anything, the away kit will be very fitting for a hot American summer, seeing as it takes its inspiration from a bomb pop*.

Two weeks ago I wrote, “When Steven Spielberg makes a movie about the Holocaust, he focuses on a German. When he makes a movie about abolition, he focuses on a…

DEER TRAIL, Colo.—Voting is underway in a small Colorado community that wants to issue licenses to drone hunters.

The Mexican club Puebla said it would not release its two American defenders, DaMarcus Beasley and Michael Orozco, to join the United States national team for Wednesday’s exhibition game against Mexico in Glendale, Ariz.

VAIL — Vail police are looking for two high-end shoplifters suspected of stealing $95,000 and $50,000 coats from two stores over the weekend.

A Lakewood Republican on Thursday said he is dropping his brief candidacy for the state House after publicity about his arrest record and ties to white-supremacy movements made him a target for Democrats and members of his own party.

TRVE Brewing’s barrel-aging program has been getting well-deserved praise since its debut last year – and the small but ambitious Denver brewery soon will have room for a lot more oak.

Owner Nick Nunns said TRVE just signed a lease on a 5,000-square-foot space at 2620 W. 2nd Avenue that will be dedicated solely to brewing and aging wild and sour beers. Nunns is calling it “The Acid Temple.” The brewery’s tasting room on Broadway, with the metal music soundtrack and long wooden community table, will live on.

“The plan is to keep this place moving exactly the way it is,” Nunns said. “It’ll be the focal point, the place you can come hang out and have a beer. But we’ll have more cool bottled stuff to serve you while you’re here.”

TRVE’s barrel-aging program is headed up by Zach Coleman, who was lured away from Big Choice Brewing in Broomfield. Nunns said the Broadway location just doesn’t have the space for the program.

The beers produced so far have made an impression on Denver’s beer scene. Eastern Candle, a crisp, fizzy ale 100 percent fermented with Brett in white wine barrels, is in its fourth release. We chose Manannan, a sour brown ale fermented in whiskey barrels with two strains of Brettanomyces yeast and soured with lactobacillus, as one of our favorite beers of 2013 and Best in Show at the stacked Denver Beer Festivus in December.

Nunns said the plan is to install a 7-barrel brewing system at the second location, which would be three barrels larger than the setup on Broadway. There are no immediate plans for a tasting room at the barrel-aging location, Nunns said. The lease begins in May.

The space is right across from Colorado Cider Company and around the corner from Wit’s End, which is undergoing its own expansion.

Nunns said TRVE (pronounced “true”) is also switching over to 375 milliliter bottles, part of a recent wave of craft breweries including Crooked Stave and Trinity Brewing opting for smaller packages.

Donald Rumsfeld, whose mastery of foreign policy was amply displayed in Iraq, thinks that “a trained ape” could have done a better job handling Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, than President Obama and his team have. The problem, Rumsfeld told Greta Van Susteren, of Fox, on Monday night, is that Obama has not been deferential enough to Karzai: “The President has been unpleasant to him.” His entire Administration has dealt with Karzai “repeatedly and publicly in an abusive, unpleasant manner.” Is that perhaps what Rumsfeld considers untrained?

...read more

Sue Thomas, author of Technobiophilia: Nature and Cyberspace, looks at how spiritual seekers are using apps and social media to enhance their meditation sessions. Consider Insight Timer, an app that offers guided meditations and connects users in real time across the globe:

So how does it feel to meditate alongside invisible people? Well if, like me, you’ve spent a lot of time in virtual worlds, gaming online, or even just chatting in Facebook, you’ll know that there can often be a strong sense of co-presence. During research for my book on technobiophilia, our love of nature in cyberspace, I found that as early as 1995 the Californian magazine Shambhala Sun described the internet as an esoteric place for meditation which provided “a feeling of complete and total immersion, in which the individual’s observer-self has thoroughly and effortlessly integrated.” I have felt that “experience of the moment” many times while using Insight Timer to spend time “on the cushion” alongside others in virtual space.

Previous Dish on technobiophilia here.

First kisses, as one reader puts it, can be “sweet, awkward, and hot”:

(The video already has 9 million views since launching yesterday.)

Score a big win for small beer.

Odell Brewing’s Loose Leaf American Session Ale, introduced last spring in relative obscurity as part of the Montage seasonal mixed 12-pack, will get much wider exposure come April when it debuts in its own six pack.

At just 4.5 percent alcohol by volume, Loose Leaf represents the most significant investment in a hop-forward session beer to date by a Colorado brewery. The beer will be available year-round, said Odell marketing and brand manager Amanda Johnson-King.

“Our feedback was overwhelming – ‘I want more of these, put it in its own package,’” Johnson-King said. “Session beers are kind of a hot thing right now. People want to be able to enjoy a few at a time without feeling like they can’t function, and it’s a flavorable option at that low ABV.”

Odell recognizes it is part of something: It is debuting Loose Leaf six packs on April 7, Session Beer Day. The celebration of beer that is low in alcohol but high in taste began two years, the brainchild of session beer evangelist Lew Bryson. Although there is disagreement on how low you have to go to be a session, Bryson’s Session Beer Project sets the bar at 4.5 percent.

Plenty of beer styles lend themselves to the session definition, including stouts, wheat beers, pilsners and saisons. Many of those beers are born session beers. The latest batch of sessions involves more intentional efforts to dial down the alcohol content on hoppy beers, an effort to capitalize on the seemingly insatiable thirst for IPAs in the craft beer segment.

The crisp and balanced Loose Leaf, which originally was produced on Odell’s five-barrel pilot system, features five different hops including a generous dose of whole-flower Cascade hops in the hop back.

Stone Brewing Co. of San Diego this month entered the session market with Stone Go To IPA, which is brewed with nine different hop varieties and clocks in at 4.5 percent. Founders Brewing’s All-Day IPA, a tad higher at 4.7 percent ABV, quickly went from seasonal status to year-round and is now the Michigan brewery’s biggest-seller.

Great Divide’s Lasso IPA is 5 percent ABV, short of a session but well below the ABV of other IPAs brewed in Colorado.

As this piece from Brewbound points out, the session beer wave is not just about meeting consumer demand for flavorful but lower-octane beers. They are also potentially more profitable, since consumers are more likely to down several.

The wider release of Loose Leaf, by the way, means one of First Drafts’ prophesies for 2014 is closer to coming to pass (hat tip, Troy Casey).

A couple of other news items from the Fort Collins craft brewery …

- Keep your eyes open for a nitro version of Lugene Chocolate Milk Stout on draft. The popular seasonal, which was introduced last year and sold better than anticipated according to Johnson-King, is well-suited for the nitro treatment. The lactose in the beer already gives it a creamy texture and putting it on nitro makes it taste even more like a chocolate bar. Johnson-King said the kegs will go primarily to Colorado accounts and may appear in small numbers in other markets. Johnson-King said there are no plans to bottle a nitro version of Lugene, a niche that has been owned by Left Hand Brewing of Longmont among U.S. craft brewers since its bottled Nitro Milk Stout debuted at the 2011 Great American Beer Festival.

- Coming the last week of March is a new beer, Fifty Niner, a golden ale bottle-conditioned with Brettanoymces named in homage to the Colorado gold rush of 1859. This 750-milliliter release is no session beer – it’s 10 percent ABV. Odell has used Brett before – Deconstruction has made a couple of memorable appearances. This one uses Brett not in the primary fermentation but in bottle conditioning, giving the beer an earthy, slightly pineapple finish, Johnson-King said.

And then there were four...

We asked and you delivered.

Unhappy with the current U.S. Soccer crest, we launched a contest to design a new one. Seeing as MS Paint 1994 was good enough for the official one, we figured all you fancy Photoshop folks could do better. And you all did.

We received more than 20 submissions and they all had pretty unique visions. Some were minimalist and others very complex. Most tried to work the bald eagle into their designs, but some opted for the rattlesnake from the Gadsden Flag. A handful of people tried to work a subtle sash into their crests, while a few more worked in the year the USSF was founded. Everyone used some combination of red, white and blue, with gold as a popular fourth color.

The result was a lot of tough choice cutting things down to four finalists, but the four we have are all outstanding and they are all a bit different. Thank you to everyone who entered, but these are the four left standing.

By Mark Yesilevskiy

By Max Taylor

By Evan Accardi

By Andre Araujo

The winner will be announced on Friday, and the winner will get a $100 gift certificate to World Soccer Shop.

What do you think of the four finalists? Which is your favorite? Would you be happy to see one (or any) of these replace the current crest?

We're down to the final four. In two days, we will have a winner.

From the macro to the (very) micro. First, from the Washington Post:

The Justice Department on Monday will instruct all of its employees across the country, for the first time, to give lawful same-sex marriages sweeping equal protection under the law in every program it administers, from courthouse proceedings to prison visits to the compensation of surviving spouses of public safety officers.

In a new policy memo, the department will spell out the rights of same-sex couples, including the right to decline to give testimony that might incriminate their spouses, even if their marriages are not recognized in the state where the couple lives…

“This means that, in every courthouse, in every proceeding and in every place where a member of the Department of Justice stands on behalf of the United States — they will strive to ensure that same-sex marriages receive the same privileges, protections, and rights as opposite-sex marriages under federal law,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a speech Saturday night at the Human Rights Campaign’s Greater New York Gala at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, where he announced the new policy…

The Justice Department will also recognize same-sex couples in a number of key benefits programs it administers, such as the Radiation Exposure Compensation Program, the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund and the Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Program, which provides death benefits and educational benefits to surviving spouses of public safety officers…

We know it was a good move, because the grossly misnamed National Organization for Marriage is already “decrying” it.

Second Happy Sunday news, the AOL douchecanoe whining about ‘distressed babies’ and Obamacare has crawfished:

AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong told employees in an e-mail Saturday evening that he was reversing the company’s 401(k) policy and apologized for his controversial comments last week…

Third, Taneisha Berg’s Kickstarter campaign has succeeded, so we can look forward to The Tenor from Abidjan documentary!

And, finally, Coca-Cola has bought an interest in Keurig’s new “cold beverage platform… for the production and sale of The Coca-Cola Company-branded single-serve, pod-based cold beverages“. I can’t be the only addict who dreams of a Coke fountain in my own kitchen…
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Large or small, what’s on the agenda for the day?

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If you haven’t seen our announcement post, you can read it here. (It was posted with a perhaps too-cute title, so some people might have missed it.)

Via twitter:

Some earlier commadic fun: "Merle Haggard's ex-wives", 10/24/2010; "Visual aid for the final serial comma", 9/18/2011.

Peter Gordon reviews Carlos Fraenkel’s Philosophical Religions, a tour of medieval and early modern thinkers’ attempt to square rational inquiry with divine revelation:

The guiding thought of Fraenkel’s study is that what may strike us as an unforgivably elitist distinction, between philosophers and non-philosophers, actually went along with a universalistic acknowledgment that diverse religious traditions share a common core. For it is precisely the social distinction between philosophers and non-philosophers that permitted philosophers to claim that, despite variations in literal content, religion bears an invariant allegorical truth—the insight that God and Reason are one. Plato, for example, believed that the laws of Crete and the laws of Sparta were essentially the same: variations in appearances could be explained by the philosopher as due to the influence of historical and cultural context. It was therefore possible for Plato, in Fraenkel’s assessment, to endorse both contextual pluralism (about variations in religious representations and practices) and universalism (about the inner meaning of religion itself).

The tenth-century Islamic philosopher Al-Fārābī—known in Muslim circles as the “second teacher,” following only Aristotle in his importance—appears in Fraenkel’s account as one of the greatest medieval exemplars of philosophical religion. Adopting the now-standard distinction between literal and allegorical senses of Scripture, Al-Fārābī applied that distinction even to the idea of God as a “king,” which he interpreted as a means of explaining God’s “ontological rank.” Following Plato, Al-Fārābī also endorsed a certain kind of contextual religious pluralism that allowed for the possibility of more than one virtuous religion. “But what is best known often varies among nations,” he explained. “Hence these things are expressed for each nation in parables other than those used for another nation. Therefore it is possible that virtuous nations and virtuous cities exist whose religions differ, although they all have as their goal one and the same happiness.”

(Image of Al-Farabi via Wikimedia Commons)