Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Every year, during the last few days of June, I sit at my computer and wait impatiently for the most important Supreme Court decisions to be announced. Last year, the picnic brought the Dobbs decision, which ended legalized abortion, so it seemed like anything else would be a let-down. Boy was I wrong. Last month, the Supreme Court announced that giving someone an advantage because of their race was illegal, unconstitutional and dead wrong. If you thought this was already the...
A few years ago, around the time of the last presidential election, a friend told me a story. She was at Mass in the Philly suburbs, and when the homily began, the priest started to tell the congregation why they could not vote for Joe Biden and still be consistent with Catholic doctrine. He told them that while he was not telling anyone to vote for Trump, he could not in good faith remain silent about Biden’s support for abortion. The priest said if Biden were not a s...
Facebook has a feature called Memories, which culls from old posts and allows you to see what was of interest on any given date over the years that you’ve been on the platform. It’s an interesting window into your activities, your priorities and your relationships from the recent, or distant, past. Recently, the overwhelming majority of my posts from mid-June 2020 had to do with a controversy involving the removal of a statue of Christopher Columbus in South Phi...
As I was scrolling through my Facebook “memories,” a video popped up from seven years ago. I was in Harrisburg, Pa., speaking on the steps of the state capitol at a pro-life rally. The thing that struck me, other than the fact that it was such a large crowd of people, were the words I was using about … words. More specifically, I was talking about the importance of using the correct language when talking about pro-life issues. The abortion rights movement has been able to defl...
When you grow up with an Italian mother, you are familiar with the phrase, “let’s go in the kitchen and have coffee.” Most people, regardless of their ethnicity or heritage, are used to the idea of sitting down and having coffee. It’s just that with Italians, this was the female equivalent of war room discussions at the White House. Growing up, I spent a lot of time with the Italian side of my family. My mother, Lucy, would often head down to what we called 49th Street,...
I just saw the trailer for a movie that made me actually tear up. The preview of “Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret” propelled me backward in time, over 50 years, to a moment when I was in the sixth grade and sitting in a corner, falling in love with a book of the same title that changed my life. I think it might have changed the lives of millions of 11-year-olds over the years, which means that Judy Blume, the author, had at least as much impact on the world as J.K. Rowli...
I once had a client from a country where the instability of the government led to widespread chaos. He had supported a candidate who was running against the president in a hotly contested election, and was severely beaten because of his affiliation with the perceived “enemy of the state.” He lost his job, his money, everything. When he came to my office to file for political asylum, I asked rather naively why he had chosen the United States. I remember with a clarity that has...
Several years ago, a women’s working group at the Philadelphia Bar Association invited me to speak to their members about being a conservative woman in the legal profession. When word got out that I was the guest, an online mutiny broke out among lady lawyers who were triggered by the idea that any female could be pro-life. That seemed to be the crux of the problem, even though the Trump thing played into it as well. To their credit, the Bar Association actually had the g...
The late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin embraced a philosophy that perfectly captures the official Catholic position on human value: the “consistent ethic of life,” more commonly known as the “seamless garment.” Bernardin’s philosophy came to mind recently, after six Pennsylvania representatives proposed a bill that would allow the terminally ill to “choose” what they term “death with dignity.” The legislators – all Democrats but one – noted that advancements in modern medicine ha...
I’m sure that regular readers of this column think all I ever talk about, write about, ruminate on and care about is abortion. Those who think I write too often about abortion tend to think women should have access to the procedure with relatively few limitations, and that my continued harping on the essential inhumanity of the act is just wrong, self-defeating, offensive and my favorite recent critique, “misogynistic.” I might even concede I spend far too much time focus...
It’s always good when people take time out of their busy schedules to protest what they believe to be an injustice. And the Cradle of Liberty, good old Philadelphia, is the place to be for protests of all kinds, as we saw last month. On Jan. 24, we had pro-life activists raising their voices in support of one of their own, Mark Houck. Six blocks away, there were Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ, and other acronymed activists protesting at the Union League, a private club founded in 1...
Earlier this month, I was mugged. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, because I didn’t suffer any physical injuries beyond a slight bruise to the hip where the two muggers shoved me into the self-service kiosk at CVS. It was one of those classic “push and grab” affairs, where one person distracts you by pretending to accidentally bump into you and the other takes your wallet. I didn’t make a police report, because I knew it wouldn’t do any good in a city like Philadelphi...
As a child, lying was something I rarely did. This was a function of two things: being Catholic and being lazy. But perhaps the most compelling reason not to lie is that you will always be outed. It may not happen immediately, but there is simply no way to go through life telling lie after lie without someone eventually figuring out that you did not serve with honor in Vietnam, Sen. Blumenthal, that your version of your wife’s tragic death was not accurate, President Biden, a...
Christmas is my favorite holiday. Nothing else even comes close. I don’t think I’m exceptional in this. Most people, unless they have hearts the size of the Grinch’s before he had his Whoville epiphany, would agree there is nothing more magical than the holiday that celebrates the birth of the Christ child. You don’t even need to be Christian to appreciate it. Ironically, the most memorable Christmas holidays in my 61 years have been experienced in the shadow of sadness...
I turned 61 last week. I don’t plan on joining the celestial choir any time soon, but birthdays make me think of the opposite end of the life cycle. Every birthday morning, I have a somewhat ghoulish tradition of writing a mental obituary, composing my own epitaph since I don’t trust others to pen it for me. We all should prepare our own “homegoings,” as my friends in the African American community call it, because there’s been a troubling trend toward speaking ill of the de...
Following the tragic shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, it was predictable that along with the gun control discussions, the conversation would bleed out to include “hate speech.” It was also predictable that only conservatives would be blamed for that speech. I understand the argument that going after someone because of their identity is an aggravating factor, and I even agree that it should be considered in sentencing. Having practiced immigration law for...
This is addressed to the people who remain in a state of shock after Pennsylvania voters chose John Fetterman to represent them in the U.S. Senate come January. Many have said the reason Fetterman won is that Pennsylvanians did not like the “inauthenticity” of his opponent, Mehmet Oz. The Fetterman campaign successfully painted the cardiologist and television star as an elite carpet bagger who had a rich vocabulary. I mean, no Pennsylvanian is smart enough to use the word “cr...
Every one of us has the right to defend our reputations against attack. Over the past few years, I’ve seen reputations destroyed by people with agendas. Those agendas have been personal, political, criminal or simply borne out of the nihilistic desire to hurt a moving human target. Many of these attacks have been unjustified from an objective standpoint, although, like Christine Blasey Ford, they have garnered the support of like-minded social predators with resentment in t...
I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, some of them endearing, most of them not. When Barack Obama referred to conservatives like me as people who cling to our guns and religion, I was offended. Later, when Hillary Clinton called conservatives who weren’t going to vote for her a “basket of deplorables,” it looked as if another Democrat was employing crude, awkward rhetoric to gin up her base. It had the opposite effect, which helped put another guy in office who wasn’t...
A lot of people think the pinnacle of journalism is working for a publication with national exposure, like The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal or The Chicago Tribune. These are the flashy, high-profile jobs that put you in line for the Pulitzers and get you invitations to pontificate on the cable news networks. While there is a definite cachet in being able to put “of The New York Times” after your name, some of the greatest writers and investigative jou...
I was 11 during the summer of 1973 when the Watergate hearings were televised. The memory is still clear in my mind, and it was a watershed moment for a young girl who thought her country was perfect. It clearly wasn’t. Now, almost 50 years later, I am even more cognizant of the flaws in our nation, even though I spend most of my waking hours helping other people become American citizens. The flaws pale in comparison to the problems people face in other countries, mass s...
During the Bicentennial year of 1976, I was a 15-year-old history geek. To be alive for the 200th birthday of our nation, particularly in Philadelphia, where it all began, was intoxicating. My mother got into the act by dressing her five kids as Revolutionary characters: I was Betsey Ross, my three younger brothers were a motley Spirit of ’76 and my 5-year-old sister was trapped in a large papier-mache version of the Liberty Bell. As memory serves, the bell part of the c...
Whenever the Supreme Court comes down with a particularly momentous decision, it’s customary to look at the majority opinion. After all, the majority makes the law. Sometimes, though, it’s the dissenting opinions that are more interesting, more shocking, more passionate and in a very small number of cases, more influential. John Marshall Harlan was nicknamed “The Great Dissenter” because he disagreed with so many of his court’s decisions during a storied lifetime on the bench...
I’ve been in favor of the death penalty since I first knew what it was. I suppose it has something to do with my sense of justice: if you take a life, which is really the only time the death penalty is imposed, you owe a life. That also conflicts somewhat with my Catholic upbringing that teaches all life is precious, but humans have our convenient blind spots, and mine was capital punishment. For most of my life, I’ve been fairly steadfast in my belief that killers des...
I was always a big fan of mythology. My particular favorite is Athena, also known as Minerva, goddess of wisdom. She is said to have sprung fully formed from her father Zeus’ head, which was probably a great relief for his wife Hera. Athena is a myth, but one that ironically calls us to examine the truth. Given what happened recently at the Supreme Court and its aftermath, I think it’s time to dispel some of the myths surrounding the pro-life movement. Myth: Pro-lifers onl...
