It’s safe to say that aphids don’t have many friends in Aspen these days, what with their blanketing the town in their poop and denuding our cottonwood trees.

But as of last night, not only do the aphids have few friends; they have hundreds of thousands of enemies brought in to kill and eat them.

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Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III said Thursday in Aspen that the United States should aim nuclear weapons at Iran, just as it aimed them at the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

“We still have all those nukes, 2,200 of them, and it doesn’t take 20 seconds to re-aim them at Iran,” said Baker, who was secretary of state from 1989 to 1992 under President George H.W. Bush. “And we ought to let those hard-line mullahs know that if they continue to pursue their nuclear program, we’re gonna re-aim them at them. And those people may be flaky and crazy, but they are not so flaky that they want themselves blown off the face of the earth.”

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A whirlybird operation that shut down Aspen’s back yard (aka Smuggler Mountain) on Thursday apparently went according to plan.

City forester Chris Forman, who assisting in the operation, said the helicopter pilot adroitly executed his mission: Picking up 202 beetle-infested trees that were felled and scattered throughout 130 acres of open space and dropping them off at a centralized location on top of Smuggler Mountain, where they are getting processed.

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With a handful of medical marijuana dispensaries moving toward opening in the Roaring Fork Valley, the state of Colorado is looking to change the rules governing medical pot, which would make dispensaries much harder or impossible to operate by limiting the number of people they are able to serve.

    Since 2000, people in Colorado with medical conditions that could be alleviated with marijuana, and who get approval from a physician and register with the state, can possess up to two ounces of the otherwise illegal dried bud and grow up to six of the otherwise illegal plants.

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Sarah Palin’s unexpected announcement that she will resign as Alaska’s governor at the end of this month left political experts scratching their heads — and one likely Republican presidential candidate cornered — at the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival on Friday afternoon.

“I’m dumbfounded,” said CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer. “I have no idea what this is about and I think it will catch most people by surprise.”

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There was plenty of red-meat foreign policy rhetoric during “An Afternoon of Conversation” in the Benedict Music Tent on Thursday during the Aspen Ideas Festival.

In addition to former Secretary of State James Baker suggesting the United States should aim nuclear weapons at the “flaky and crazy” hard-line mullahs in Tehran, the new Israeli ambassador to the U.S. said the country would “take whatever actions are necessary to protect its citizens” from a nuclear-armed Iran.

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Although it may have seemed like the rainiest June ever, it wasn’t. But on top of a rather soggy May, this week’s sun has been a welcome relief, especially for those who couldn’t escape to sunnier locales this off-season.

Total rainfall in June was 1.47 inches, not too much higher than the average precipitation of 1.29 inches, according to preliminary data from the city of Aspen water department. City water treatment plant supervisor Laura Taylor said she was surprised when she did the calculations that June didn’t come out wetter.

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Imagine Yo-Yo Ma jamming out on Guitar Hero or hitting the high notes on Rock Band. Intrigued?

Well it was Yo-Yo Ma who was indeed the original Guitar Hero, or should I say violin hero. Thanks to Ma’s talented movements measured by world-famous composer and pioneer in the application of the technology of music, Tod Machover, our world is currently blessed with the musical stylings of tweens and drunken college kids everywhere strumming on fake guitars and belting out horrid sounds on Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

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EL JEBEL — The suicide rate in the Roaring Fork Valley is disproportionately high and after another life was taken here earlier this week, the head of the Aspen Valley Medical Foundation remarked that “it feels like an epidemic.”

Kris Marsh, president and CEO of the Aspen Valley Medical Foundation, said mental health services in Aspen need improvement and the time is now.

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