Author: By Hal Bidlack

Way back in the 1970s, when I was an undergraduate studying political science at the University of Michigan, I took classes that examined the environmental issues involved in politics. Later, during my Ph.D. studies at Michigan in the early 1990s, I focused my research on the issues surrounding environmental security concerns that faced the U.S.…

If you are like most people, you are wearing a face mask much less of the time, if at all, than you did at this time back in 2020. According to a New York Times story, around Christmas time two years ago, more than 90% of Americans stated they were wearing masks, which was a…

At some point, every parent has said to their child their actions have consequences, or some version of that idea. Spill the milk because you are being silly? Well, clean it up. Don’t get your homework done? OK, you can’t go out with your friends until it is done. The circumstances vary, but the core…

Back in 2008 when I first decided to run for Congress, I thought through the issues that I would like to confront directly, should a miracle happen, and I be elected as a moderate Democrat in the deep red district around Colorado Springs in which I lived. And I admit, when I spent hour after…

Well, it’s mid-December, and the Colorado state Republican Party has begun that awkward and unpleasant task required of all political parties following massive electoral defeats: a look back at what went wrong and why. And as these GOPers ponder their shortcomings, the winners are moving forward. Two recent Colorado Politics stories highlight these differences and…

If there is one thing that I’m quite sure people are sick of talking about, it is the 2022 election. With the runoff election in Georgia extending an already-long campaign season, I think most Americans are sick and tired of talking about the election of 2022. For goodness’ sake, can we please stop talking about…

When you go to graduate school to earn a Ph.D. in political science, you learn about lots of things. But there are some parts of our political system that are really, really tough to truly learn about. Make sense (ed: not so much…)? In political science, there are lots of things that we can know,…

Like most of you, I awoke Sunday morning to the horrific news about the mass murder at Club Q here in Colorado Springs. More lives lost and other lives shattered here in our Colorado, a state that has a dreadful history of such wholesale killings, including Columbine in 1999 and the Aurora movie theater shooting…

As is pretty much always the case, there are just too many interesting things appearing in Colorado Politics these days, making my job as a commentator challenging (ed: seriously?). As a huge space program nut, I’m tempted to write about the recent launch of the Artemis spacecraft, now on its way to the Moon. There…