The Eastern New Mexico News - Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities

As they prepare to spend $1.2 trillion on a bipartisan infrastructure deal, along with a vastly larger sum on a party-line social-policy bill, Democrats might be expected to defend their ambitions on the merits. Instead,... — Updated 10/12/2021

Social media is a minefield of adolescent anxieties, as any parent can attest. Numerous studies have suggested a connection between excessive use of online platforms (and the devices used to access them) and worrying trends in... — Updated 9/25/2021

U.S. forces killed two high-profile Islamic State members and wounded another in a strike against the terrorist group blamed for the bombing that left at least 88 people dead near Kabul’s airport. The Pentagon raised the toll inf... — Updated 8/28/2021

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Thursday morning there had been an explosion outside of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, hours after the U.S. and U.K. governments warned their citizens to avoid traveling to the... — Updated 8/26/2021 Full story

The past 18 months have shown that accurately counting the dead is vital for protecting the living. At the outset of the pandemic, many countries lacked adequate registration systems, and others saw their processes break down... — Updated 8/17/2021

In the mid-2000s, I spent two years as senior military assistant to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, acting essentially as his military gatekeeper and translating his orders to the U.S. military via the Joint Chiefs of Staff.... — Updated 7/6/2021

President Joe Biden renewed his call for added gun-control laws and ordered U.S. flags to fly at half-staff after a deadly shooting near the Indianapolis airport, the latest in series of massacres that have shaken the nation.... — Updated 4/17/2021

The details of what went wrong in Texas last week — most likely the biggest forced blackout in U.S. history — will take time to establish. So will exactly what to do about it. But this emergency already underlines something... — Updated 2/23/2021

For all its unilateral tendencies, the U.S. typically isn't known as a rogue state. But in one area it has come close: By failing to share information with other countries, it has thwarted global efforts to track down tax cheats,... — Updated 12/26/2020

After the killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientist last month, President-elect Joe Biden is coming under renewed pressure to quickly resume negotiations with the regime. He should slow down and proceed with caution. Biden has... — Updated 12/8/2020

The loss of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a double blow. It will be felt as a personal loss by millions of Americans, and it will stress America's politics at a moment when its fabric is already threatening to come apart. Consider this a... — Updated 9/22/2020

In politics, what looks like sordid intrigue often turns out to be garden-variety incompetence. Case in point: After much testimony and investigation, it seems likely that the U.S. Postal Service was not engaged in a plot to... — Updated 9/1/2020

Kudos to Bernie Sanders for saying that he will celebrate tax day by releasing his tax returns for the last 10 years. Quite right. And congratulations to the Vermont senator and Democratic presidential candidate for acknowledging t... — Updated 4/13/2019

The process of funding the U.S. government begins when the president submits a budget request to Congress in February. Then everything falls apart. At least, that’s the way things have been going, year after year. In a more... — Updated 3/23/2019

Forty years ago, military veterans made up roughly three-quarters of Congress. By 2017, the proportion had dwindled to fewer than one in five. The number of veterans on Capitol Hill will dip slightly again next year, because of... — Updated 1/12/2019

President Donald Trump has announced his first potentially strong action against America’s inordinate prescription drug prices — the first that could meaningfully lower Medicare drug spending. The idea is to narrow the gap... — Updated 11/4/2018

Whether or not U.S. Rep. Chris Collins engaged in insider trading, as federal prosecutors allege, his indictment last week exposes what a poor job Congress has done to guard against such transgressions. Collins, a New York... — Updated 8/15/2018

Having driven his country and its once-rich oil industry into a ditch, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is now pushing for snap elections that would allow him to lock in another term. The U.S. can halt Venezuela’s slide... — Updated 2/4/2018