The Durango Herald

Striking the balance between a free press and protecting national security is a long-established tension in the United States, and one that frequently puts the media at odds with the administrations they cover. As much as the notion of a free press is held sacred, both culturally and institutionally through the First Amendment, those charged with...

Colorado has long established itself as a resource-rich state that is host to a robust natural-gas industry. As that industry has grown, so have the state and its localities in addressing the effects that gas and oil production brings to communities where the activity occurs. The evolution has not necessarily been wholly smooth, nor is it...

Critics of President Barack Obama have long sought a scandal with which to tar his administration and with revelations of the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups they have a legitimate complaint. That it will probably not lead to the Oval Office itself should not deter them from fully investigating and exposing what...

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper signed Senate Bill 200 on Monday, and with that, an estimated 189,000 more Coloradans will be eligible for Medicaid. Enacting that expansion of government health care was the right thing to do on a number of levels.

Not that critics of Obamacare would agree. The expansion of government health care SB 200...

Any question as to what direction La Plata Electric Association is headed were laid to rest Saturday with the results of this year’s board election. Alternative energy sources and conservation are where things are headed. The co-op’s membership has made that clear.

LPEA provides electricity primarily for La Plata and...

While the Affordable Health Care Act that will begin to be implemented at the beginning of 2014 is producing plenty of criticism about what is known and unknown about its mandated insurance coverage, a topic that is certain to loom large soon after has been with this country for decades: wildly disparate hospital charges with no transparency or...

No one can say Colorado lawmakers did not earn their pay this year. Whether positively progressive or dangerously liberal, the just-concluded session of the state Legislature accomplished more than any in memory. And on balance, Coloradans probably approve.

The contrast with our dysfunctional Congress is stark. And our bet is Colorado...

The warm season has had a slow start this year with a series of cool, windy days interspersed with some warm sun followed by this week’s spate of much-needed moisture. But summer will come, and there is no surer sign of its arrival each year than the season’s first Durango Farmers Market, which will take place Saturday morning in the...

Members of the armed services in the last two years have seen sexual assault in their midst increase at an alarming rate. More than 26,000 military members reported having been sexually assaulted in the last year, up from 19,600 in 2010. That amounts to a 35 percent increase and demands immediate action. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel responded...

Monday evening, Colorado lawmakers tried to put a hold on marijuana sales approved by voters as Amendment 64 last November. It was a convoluted legislative maneuver, and went nowhere, but the idea was to tie pot sales to voter approval of a tax on marijuana – in part by giving Amendment 64 supports an incentive to back the tax with the same...

La Plata Electric Association members have until Friday to turn in their ballots for the selection of board members to govern the rural electric cooperative. Recognizing the value of experience and new ideas, The Durango Herald recommends La Plata County residents choose Herb Brodsky and Michael Rendon to represent them on the LPEA board.

Celebratory days and weeks abound in this country, with some of them initiated and supported by corporate interests. Hallmark works hard to sell greeting cards for something such as “Grandparents’ Day.”

In a last-ditch effort to forestall the future, critics are urging Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper to veto Senate Bill 252. That measure, approved by both houses of the Legislature, requires electric cooperatives and their supplier, Tri-State Generation and Transmission, to get 20 percent of their power from renewable energy sources by 2020. That...

When Colorado voters in November approved marijuana for recreational use, they thrust lawmakers into uncharted territory. Passing the amendment that legalizes marijuana use, possession and sales was one thing; implementing it is something far more complex.