Denver news update: Nuggets even West Finals series, Ethics Comm (still) under fire

§      The Denver Nuggets traded wins with the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Finals’ first appearance in Denver since 1985. The two-game home-stand constituted Games 3 & 4 of the seven-game series. After taking a game in LA to even the series, the Nuggets lost on Saturday at the Pepsi Center 103-97. Two nights later the Nuggets found home-court redemption as they battered the Lakers 120-101.

        With Carmelo Anthony struggling throughout the first three quarters, Kenyon Martin (15 rebounds-13 points), Chauncey Billups (24 points), and the Nuggets’ vaunted bench (42 points, 21 rebounds) took the game over. By the time Melo got his game back in the fourth quarter, his Nuggets teammates had already built an 11-point lead.

        A basic statistical comparison shows how completely the Nuggets outplayed the Lakers, who would have fallen far short of 100 points without Kobe Bryant’s fourth quarter 14-point burst.

        Nuggets Bench: 42 points, 21 rebounds

        Lakers Bench: 24 points, 16 rebounds

        Nuggets Starters: 78 points, 37 rebounds

        Lakers Starters: 77 points, 24 rebounds

        With the series now knotted at two games apiece, Game Five will go down in Los Angeles on Wednesday night at 7pm MDT.

§      Government watchdog groups and Colorado newspapers continued their assault on the young Independent Ethics Commission. The Commission was established after the 2006 approval of Amendment 41, designed to increase government accountability and improve transparency.

        The five-member commission has itself been anything but transparent, however, holding the majority of its 2008 meetings in private before issuing public votes as de facto unanimous decisions. This method raised the ire of Colorado Ethics Watch & Denver District Judge Norman Haglund, along with a number of local newspapers. The Fort Collins Coloradoan, the Pueblo Chieftain, and the Colorado Independent joined forces to file suite against the Ethics Commission, and won the release of documents from closed-door deliberations.

Now the Independent has continued its drive to open the Ethics Commission to public scrutiny by suing to force commissioners to release minutes from previous hearings, and is asking the court to order the Commission to discontinue their policy of “illegal closed-door meetings.”

§      US Court of Appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor has been nominated as Barack Obama’s pick to succeed Justice David Souter in the US Supreme Court. Sotomayor was born in the South Bronx to Puerto Rican immigrants, attended both Princeton and Yale Law School, and worked as a lawyer for eight years before being appointed to her first judgeship by George HW Bush in 1992. Sotomayor, if confirmed, would be the first Hispanic to sit on the United States Supreme Court.

§      A small bomb blew out the windows at a Starbucks on New York’s Upper East Side on Monday. The store was closed, and nobody was hurt. The timing of the explosion drew parallels to a series of unsolved bombings in The City the last four years; at the British Consulate, the Mexican Consulate, & the Armed Forces recruiting booth in Times Square. The small IED was placed on a bench outside of the coffee shop, and exploded around 3:30 in the morning.

§      The Colorado Rockies followed an impressive series win in Detroit with a thoroughly unimpressive dismantling in Denver at the hands of the LA Dodgers. Just hours before another LA team took the court a couple of miles away at the Pepsi Center, the Dodgers finished up a punishing 16-6 rout of the Rockies at Coors Field. The Rockies fell to 18-26 on the season, while the Dodgers rose to 31-15. The Memorial Day blowout was watched by the largest crowd (37,024) in attendance at Coors Field since the home-opener in early April.