Freedom Unaffiliated

Why I’m voting for Donald Trump By Jon Caldara Former President Donald Trump’s action, or more specifically inaction, on Jan. 6, 2021, was unforgivable. Stolen election or not, the nation’s Capitol was being attacked by his diehard supporters as he hid for hours. No, he didn’t incite a riot or “ insurrection, ” but he did nothing to stop it. He, our chief law-enforcement officer, refused to take t...

Legislating behind closed doors has become legal in Colorado. By Jon Caldara What’s worse: people in political power shielding their activity from public oversight or the media celebrating them for doing so? Fortunately, in Colorado, we don’t have to choose. We get both! The Colorado Press Association has bestowed its “Defender of Free Press” award to the very legislators who passed a law to keep...

Learning to live without a functional Colorado GOP By Jon Caldara ’m trying to come up with the right analogy. I’m sure you can do much better. I’m thinking of a bunch of little kids playing king of the hill. In their minds, they think the pile of dirt is Mount Everest, when, in fact, it’s the size of a pitching mound. Or maybe one of those Japanese soldiers who was left on a small, isolated islan...

Denver’s record-high homeless entirely predictable By Jon Caldara Cyril Northcote Parkinson was a famed British naval historian (I mean really, just try to make up a snootier British name) who died in 1993. He is most noted for predicting, with complete accuracy, that in 2024 the Denver metro area would have more homeless than ever. Well, he might have used slightly different words, but lo and beh...

Surgeon General has wrong prescription for gun violence By Mike Rosen In a July speech advocating for more stringent gun control, President Biden claimed that “More children are killed by a bullet than any other cause of death.” That’s surely an alarming and tragic statistic but a very misleading one. The use of the word “children” is deceptive, emotionally bringing to mind infants, toddlers and k...

Raise a glass to the Coors Foundation By Jon Caldara When I was a kid, I’d collect old tin cans and the newfangled aluminum beer cans. My father would drive me down to the Coors distribution warehouse in Littleton. They’d weigh them and they gave me cash, real cash in my hand for recycling. This was my first interaction with “Coors.” Coors invented the completely recyclable aluminum beverage conta...

Political minorities must be protected, whether you like them or not. By Jon Caldara Hunters are deviant perverts. Men convinced they’re women are to be celebrated. The left works hard to make the bizarre mainstream. The transgender movement is a shining example of just how good they are at it. Ya know, if only you’d learn about all 64 genders and the associated newspeak, you’d understand. You’d l...

Republican convention was a grand old party By Mike Rosen Well, the Grand Old Party certainly threw a grand old party in Milwaukee. The delegates and spectators were revved up and joyous from start to finish. What could have been a tragic and somber mood — with who knows what outcome — had Trump not miraculously dodged an assassin’s bullet, turned out to be a glorious and thankful celebr...

Colorado legislature anti-choice when it comes to your wallet By Jon Caldara Maybe you disagree, but I think competition and innovation are good things because, though they cause disruptions, consumers win. The Colorado legislature strongly disagrees. If there were an award for sabotaging financial innovation and harming consumers, they’d be giving an acceptance speech right now. Please don’t let...

Men don’t talk about suicidal thoughts, but they should By Jon Caldara A friend just told me of his relatively recent suicide attempt. Like me he’s around 60 years old. Unlike me he survived a great deal of war trauma in the military. And trauma will come for you sooner or later no matter how far down and how long you bury it. The suicide rate f or men my age is staggering . Don’t call the suicide...

How many Coloradans will green energy kill? By Jon Caldara How many people might green energy kill this summer? If you are reading this column in a comfortably air-conditioned room on a stifling hot day, thank fossil fuels. I’ll spell it out: Green energy is weather-dependent. And, though Colorado recently baked with  triple digit temperatures , there was little wind blowing to spin windmills...

Beware the ranked-choice voting Trojan horse By Mike Rosen In the last hours of the 2024 Colorado legislative session, a group of county clerks crafted an amendment to  Senate Bill 24-210  to temper the rush-to-judgment of a November ballot initiative that would impose statewide ranked-choice voting. They were concerned about public confusion over RCV, added costs, errors, and long...

Why we’re not spending money to bring ballot initiatives this year By Jon Caldara In the fight for limited government, resources are remarkably scarce. Many of Colorado’s right-leaning donors are understandably fatigued of putting money into losing efforts. By contrast, the left’s deep pockets have seen incredible political returns on their investments. There are two reasons for this. First, they...

Democrats hammer gun owners, coddle criminals By Jon Caldara Politics has the best euphemisms. “Undocumented residents” are illegal aliens. “Investing in children” is a tax increase. “Celebrating diversity” is racial quotas. “Currently experiencing homelessness” is, well you know. It’s “I want to spend more time with my family,” not “What hooker?” And “racist” is someone who agrees with Martin Lut...

My very first heart attack By Jon Caldara I am writing this from my hospital bed in the intensive care unit at Denver Health. I’m recovering from my very first heart attack. You can only imagine my pride of reaching my goal of a heart attack before 60. While driving to my job at Independence Institute my chest started feeling, well, really weird — like someone was sitting on it, and not someone I...

While the state party implodes, GOP lawmakers lead By Jon Caldara God hates the Colorado GOP. But oddly not Republican legislators. The Colorado GOP again became a  national laughingstock  by suggesting we should burn gay pride flags. Their blast email, video and slogan “God hates flags,” was of course meant to parrot the Westboro Baptist Church slogan of “God hates fags.” Admittedly, I...

Democrats gaslighting on judicial activism By Mike Rosen Getting creamed in the polls on illegal immigration, the economy, inflation, Biden’s creeping senility, betraying Israel, and Kamala’s incompetence, Democrats are hanging reelection hopes on the abortion issue, a low priority for most voters and with the pro-abortion faction already committed to Democrats on most other issues anyway. No...

Bidenflation explained By Mike Rosen Joe Biden’s speechwriters are grasping at straws to give him something positive to say about the economy, hoping he doesn’t go off script and fumble it too badly. When the April Consumer Price Index (CPI) came out in May, he bragged that year-to-year inflation had increased a mere 3.4%. But prices are still increasing, they’re not coming down. Since h...

Sterilizing history at Arvada High condemns the young to repeat it. By Jon Caldara Kill the Redskins! Remember the scene from Charlton Heston’s “The 10 Commandments” where the pharaoh orders Moses’ name stricken from the history books? The state of Colorado is now pharaoh. So let it be written, so let it be done. Arvada High School has been around for more than 100 years, one of the oldest high sc...

Investors should consider what scholarships promote in future. By Jon Caldara Canceling college loan debt isn’t enough! You heard me. Confiscating money from people who never went to college, as well as those who foolishly paid off their own college loans, to give the booty to those who knowingly agreed to pay back their loans isn’t enough. Why? Well, duh — it doesn’t memorialize acts of violence...

Looming gas price hike entirely Jared Polis’ doing By Jon Caldara The Hayman fire in 2002 was one of the worst in Colorado’s history. What’s more appalling is it was started by one person whose responsibility it was to make sure forest fires don’t happen in the first place. That’s what is going on today with the one person who should have prevented our gasoline prices from spiking $0.50 to $1 per...

The Colorado state Capitol in Denver... By Jon Caldara I was that kid in high school who would wait until the night before the term paper was due to even get started, as you can tell, a practice I honor to this day with this column. Of course, it was good enough to slide through high school; the paper was always lousy. That’s OK, coming from a sloppy high school kid. But would you trust that kid t...

Ignore ‘demands’ of campus Hamas apologists By Mike Rosen The outbreak of disruptive protests by anti-Israel students on college campuses and the predictably feeble response of many school administrators and faculty leftists brought to mind the turmoil of an earlier era. During the Vietnam War, America was sharply divided with many millions opposed to it. Anti-war protestors acted out on camp...

Legacy lacking long-term commitment to charter not legacy at all By Jon Caldara You are going to die. It brings me no pleasure to inform you of this. But, unless you are Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones, someday you are going to die. Which begs a question: what are you going to do about it? We pack our lives with distractions to avoid thinking of our own mortality. Coming to grips with the fac...

Opponents of educational choice target charter schools By Pam Benigno One of the most, if not the most, reprehensible anti-charter bills ever introduced in Colorado,  House Bill 24-1363 , was soundly killed in the House Education Committee. Five Democrats and all three Republicans voted against the bill, while three Democrats voted in support. This 55-page bill contained provisions aimed to w...