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BOULDER — It wasn't exactly pistols at 30 paces, but police say a security company supervisor and a restaurateur shot each other with Tasers in a confrontation over parking. Officers said neither man needed medical attention after the confrontation Saturday, but Harvey Epstein, a co-owner of Mamacitas restaurant in Boulder, was arrested on suspicion of felony menacing and using a stun gun. A police report said Epstein and Casey M. Dane, a supervisor for Colorado Security Services Inc., were arguing over a metal boot that one of Dane's guards had clamped on a wheel of a van parked behind Mamacitas....

A Boulder salon owner ticketed in March for dyeing her poodle pink has made a deal with the city attorney's office that could dismiss the charge against her in six months if she doesn't commit a similar violation in that time. Wednesday morning, Joy Douglas' famous formerly pink poodle, Cici, was seen outside the Zing Salon at 1100 Spruce St. -- and the pooch was white. Douglas only commented to say her case has been dropped and she needs to have an attorney present before saying more. Officials with the city's municipal court said the case isn't dropped yet, and...

Kelly Anderson and Leonard Sun Voted Cutest Vegetarians Alive! For our third annual Cutest Vegetarian Alive contest, peta2 received more than 3,500 entries from adorable vegetarians and vegans around the world. And we asked all of you to help choose the winners. The response was overwhelming this year, with more than 50,000 votes cast. It was a mighty close race, but big congrats go out to Leonard Sun and Kelly Anderson for taking home the top honors.

Adverse possession law set to change. Beginning July 1, people hoping to use "adverse possession" to take control of another person's land had better be prepared to pay for it... The bill, which garnered wide bipartisan support among state lawmakers, requires that an adverse possessor believe in "good faith" that the land is actually his or her own. It also raises the burden of proof in an adverse-possession case and gives judges the power to make plaintiffs payfor any land they are awarded. Witwer on Friday said the bill is a victory for property owners. "This will make it harder...

In what has become an annual rite of passage, University of Colorado students are being subjected this month to a round of diversity workshops preaching that all whites are racist. The latest round, hosted by the university's women's resource center last Friday, was titled "White on White Taskforce: Acting to Dismantle Racism." According to organizers, it was "designed to give White people tools to dismantle racism on campus." At the workshop, students received a handout espousing the "underlying assumptions" of its leaders. Most notably, it read "reverse racism is impossible," meaning that non-whites cannot be racist. And also of interest,...

A Colorado district court judge who awarded part of a million-dollar residential land parcel to a retired judge and his wife under the state's little-used "adverse possession" law will have an opportunity to review his original decision. The Colorado Court of Appeals has agreed to send the controversial case that benefited retired judge Richard McLean and his wife, Edith Stevens, back to Boulder County District Judge James Klein, who made the original decision, according to a report in the Boulder Daily Camera. The couple who lost the property, Don and Susie Kirlin, had asked the appellate court to return the...

A war of words continues in a high-profile Boulder land case, with each side accusing the other of lying. In January, Don and Susie Kirlin appealed an October ruling by Boulder County District Court Judge James C. Klein that awarded a third of their million-dollar lot to neighbors Richard McLean and Edith Stevens, based on the squatter's-rights law of "adverse possession." The Kirlins at the same time filed a request with the Colorado Court of Appeals to send the case back to the district court level to hear additional evidence, alleging their neighbors fabricated evidence to win their case. After...

Woman Faces $1,000 Fine For Pink Poodle Dog Dyed To Help Raise Awareness For Breast CancerThomas Hendrick, News Editor POSTED: 8:11 am EDT March 11, 2008 BOULDER, Colo. -- A Boulder woman said she will fight a $1,000 fine she was given for dyeing her miniature poodle pink. Joy Douglas she dyed Cici pink to help raise awareness for breast cancer. The salon owner said she has used beet juice -- and occasionally Kool-Aid -- for four years now to "stain" her dog. Officials at the Humane Society of Boulder Valley told the Daily Camera Douglas was warned several times...

A witness has surfaced in the Boulder, Colo., case in which a former judge and his wife used a little-known state law concerning "adverse possession" to gain ownership of a significant portion of their neighbor's valuable building lot in a pricy subdivision. It seems one of the neighbors now reports seeing a woman who looked like Edie Stevens, the judge's wife, "tromping, stomping and kicking the ground, causing vegetation and dirt to rise from the ground in the area where the dirt path … later appeared." That statement comes from neighbor Josephine Touchton, whose affidavit, along with other photographic and...

A move to draft a Boulder City Council resolution supporting the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney likely won't get enough support to get off the ground Tuesday. A canvass of the City Council shows there aren't likely to be the five votes required to draft, debate and eventually hold a vote on the measure as activists have requested. Snip

The Boulder couple who successfully sued for part of their neighbors' land mailed a letter this week to "those who have supported us," saying they hoped to restore peace in their neighborhood. Richard McLean and Edith Stevens, plaintiffs in the controversial adverse-possession case against Don and Susie Kirlin, spelled out their side of the story in the four-page letter -- obtained by the Camera from a recipient who wished to remain anonymous. "We still hope that we can reconcile our differences with the Kirlins and restore peace in our neighborhood and community," McLean and Stevens wrote. Contacted at her home...

Galen Foster's home and business of 23 years is supposed to make way for parking for the Wadsworth Boulevard light-rail station in Lakewood. But what chaps Foster's hide is that there already are conceptual plans showing his property being used not for transit parking, but for a five-story commercial office building. While government's right of condemnation, more politely called eminent domain, has been recognized for centuries, the Regional Transportation District is entering an untested area that includes economic development in its efforts to build the FasTracks West Corridor line. While there is little room to challenge RTD's acquisition of land...

The land-dispute case on Hardscrabble Drive isn't the first time a former Boulder judge has used the legal concept of "adverse possession" to win land from a neighbor. Earlier this year, the secretary of the Indian Peaks chapter of the Sierra Club and his wife lost about 100 square feet of their property to Marsha Yeager, a former judge, and her husband, John Yeager. The issue of adverse possession hit the spotlight earlier this month when Don and Susie Kirlin lost about a third of their property to their neighbors — former judge Richard McLean and his wife, Edith Stevens...

A judge who granted a couple part of their neighbors' property in an adverse-possession lawsuit has denied their request to add on a strip of land 9 inches wide. Richard McLean and Edith Stevens, of Boulder, had asked for the full width of a disputed path on land purchased by their neighbors Don and Susie Kirlin. In October, McLean and Stevens were awarded about a third of the Kirlins' lot, or more than 1,400 square feet... A judge said last week he could only consider evidence presented at trial ...

Don and Susie Kirlin of Boulder, Colordao. How many times have we heard about government abuses of the right to own property going on in neighborhoods across America, in the form of the invoking of the right of ‘eminent domain’, and the corruption of other legal concepts? Kelo vs. New London is probably the most publicized of such unconstitutional atrocities, but similar atrocities occur daily across this country. How many of us have attempted to help the victims of such abuses of power? I myself have done so no more than once or twice. I ask any FReeper who...

A Bonners Ferry woman says she was humiliated when security guards at the federal courthouse in Coeur d'Alene told her she'd have to remove her underwire bra to get inside. Lori Plato said she was going into the courthouse for a court hearing Sept. 20 when the metal detector went off as she passed through security. "When I walked through, the gentleman said, "'Do you have an underwire bra on?'." Plato said. "I said, 'Yeah.' He said, 'You have to remove it.' " But there was nowhere private to remove her bra, she said. The guards suggested she go out...

Waving signs and American flags, Boulder High School students this morning will stage the first of what could become many Pledge of Allegiance protests in the school courtyard. Members of the activist Student Worker club are inviting their peers to leave class every Thursday at 8:30 a.m. — when the pledge is recited over the intercom — and meet in the courtyard to say a revised version of the pledge that doesn't reference God. Club President Emma Martens, a Boulder High senior who's leading the protest, wrote this new version: "I pledge allegiance to the flag and my constitutional rights...

Boulder High School students are planning a protest against the Pledge of Allegiance in the courtyard of their school tomorrow morning. Students with the activist club "Student Worker" organized the protest for 8:30 a.m., when the pledge is recited over the intercom. They're concerned that it takes away from school time and that the phrase "one nation, under God" violates the separation of church and state, club President Emma Martens wrote in an e-mail. "Boulder High has a highly diverse population, not all of whom believe in God, or One God," she wrote. She said the group would rather the...

Boulder High School students are planning a protest against the Pledge of Allegiance in the courtyard of their school Thursday morning.