How to Place an Obituary

Click Here to Submit an Obituary Online

After your loved one passes away, you have so many contractual details to deal with, like home, finances, burial and funeral arrangements, the last thing you want to think about is placing an obituary in your local paper, but doing so is very important. A published obituary can be used in many cases with insurance companies and creditors to help prove the official death of a loved one, as well as letting all of your neighbors, friends and loved ones know of the passing in an efficient manner.

Although this may seem like an insurmountable task, The Mountain-Ear can help. We have a simple form to help you get started. We can put it all together into a story format for you. The cost to place an obituary is $25. That includes a photo and 750 words. Need an extended obituary? No problem. We can do that too. We can help make the process as simple as possible, for you and your family. To get your forms, more information and to see examples of published obituaries, please email publisher@themountainear.com.

Trump and McCarthy


Dear Editor,

We now have a new twist. The Republican Party is required to embrace the lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. My heavens, 18 months after this election, we still have people putting out the false belief that the election was stolen.

About three weeks ago, multiple county clerks from all over Colorado demonstrated against this “big lie” saying, show us the evidence. Stop insinuating. Then the next week the Colorado Republican Party Assembly voted Tina Peters to be their standard bearer to run for Secretary of State. They were chanting her name. Peters is the County Clerk for Mesa County who is charged with multiple felonies for election security violations and is a major spokesperson for the false claim that Trump actually won the 2020 election. It is true that Trump brought out more voters than ever before, both for and against. He engendered such passions that we had the highest turnout in US history… by a lot. And he brought in more Republican voters than ever… by a lot. Those who were under the spell of the former president, couldn’t believe that he could ever lose, and Trump told them so. “The only way we can lose is if the election is rigged.”

But those against Trump were equally ardent, fed up with his bungling on the Covid response, his flouting of the Constitution, his continual flow of lies, the angry and insulting tweets, the fear that Trump made decisions to help himself first and not the country. Biden beat Trump by over 7 million votes, which was enough to overcome the bias in the Electoral College for smaller “red” states.

Not long ago, United States District Judge David O. Carter of the United States District Court for the Central District of California ordered John Eastman to disclose 101 documents to the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. Eastman is a former law school dean at Chapman University and author of the Eastman memo outlining a plan for Vice President Mike Pence to throw the 2020 election to Donald Trump. He also spoke at Trump’s January 6 rally telling the crowd: “We know there was fraud…. We know that dead people voted.” Eastman, among others, had been blocking the investigation by claiming Executive Privilege.

Judge Carter stated that Eastman and Trump “launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history,”

“Their campaign was…a coup in search of a legal theory…. If [the] plan had worked, it would have permanently ended the peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy and the Constitution. If the country does not commit to investigating and pursuing accountability for those responsible, the Court fears January 6 will repeat itself.” Judge Carter outlined how in the months after the election, multiple sources told Trump and Eastman that there was no evidence of election fraud. Christopher Krebs of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said that “[t]he November 3rd election [was] the most secure in American history,” and that it found “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

An internal memo from the Trump campaign said the fraud claims about Dominion voting machines were baseless. In early December, Barr said publicly there was no evidence of fraud, and on December 27, Acting Attorney General Donoghue told Trump that after “dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews,” the Justice Department had concluded that there was no evidence of voter fraud that had changed the election results.

Sixty plus lawsuits claiming election irregularities were all thrown out. Homeland Security refused to take up Trump’s claims. Mike Pompeo told Trump he lost. So did Kevin McCarthy. So did Trump’s whole family. So did Lindsey Graham. So did Mitch McConnell.

Here is part of what McConnell said in front of Congress as they began certifying the election victory for Biden, “This election actually was not unusually close. Just in recent history, 2000, 2004, and 2016 were closer than this one. The Electoral College margin is almost identical to what it was in 2016. If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral. We’d never see the whole nation accept an election again. Every four years there would be a scramble for power at any cost. The Electoral College, which most of us on this side have been defending for years, would cease to exist, leaving many of our states with no real say at all in choosing a president.”

Still, Trump insisted that the Department of Justice say that the election was fraudulent. Judge Carter concluded that Trump’s actions “more likely than not constitute attempts to obstruct an official proceeding.” He also concluded that “Trump likely knew the electoral count plan had no factual justification.” The plan, Carter wrote, “was a last-ditch attempt to secure the Presidency by any means.” He also found that “it is more likely than not that President Trump and Dr. Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”

Then a new drama unfolded a while ago. Kevin McCarthy, Republican minority leader in the House, was found guilty of telling the truth. McCarthy was apparently appalled by the actions of the mob at that time on January 6th because he said, “Let me be very clear to all of you, and I have been very clear to the president: He bears responsibilities for his words and actions,” Mr. McCarthy told House Republicans on a January 11 conference call.

“No if, ands or buts.”

“I asked him personally today: Does he hold responsibility for what happened?” Mr. McCarthy said.

“Does he feel bad about what happened? He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened, and he’d need to acknowledge that.”

McCarthy later said, “I’m through with this guy,” meaning Trump.

Two days later, McCarthy flew to Mar- a-Lago to tell Trump he was still the core of the party. When McCarthy denied criticizing Trump, the recording came out. McCarthy somehow ignored the obvious hypocrisy of his denial and switched to supporting Trump, and when he appeared before Congress, the Republicans gave him a standing ovation, not for telling the truth, but for worming out of an obvious lie and bonding with Trump again.

And why are all these politicians standing on their heads to please Trump? Because he holds the key to this unruly, contrarian, sometimes angry mob of followers, some of whom are the “death threat” folks that have been plaguing BI- PARTISAN election officials for the past 18 months.

One must wonder what the gut reaction by our former president was when the mob that he had summoned turned violent and began to ransack the Capital and tried to hang Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi. Did he say to himself, “What have I done?” Is he capable of such self-reflection? And can the Republicans actually control this anti- democratic movement?

People, if you are tired of all this lying, note that it is coming from one party alone. Vote the bums out.

Bill Thibedeau
Gilpin County