Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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When Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro engaged in a legal battle with the Little Sisters of the Poor over their refusal to subsidize birth control for their employees, I got very angry. As a Catholic who takes her faith seriously and an asylum lawyer who knows a little something about religious persecution, it seemed to me that the then-attorney general was violating the rights of some women who just wanted to be left alone to serve God’s glory. Of course, there are those who w...
I try and avoid writing about Donald Trump, even though I voted for him twice. But sometimes you cannot avoid the elephant in the room, literally. As a preface, I have to admit that I understand why Trump is particularly upset these days. He has been the target of prosecutions that in most cases seem stretched to the legal limits and designed to influence an election. Liberals reject that premise and believe that Trump incited a riot, that he paid “hush money” to a porn sta...
When you poke a hornet’s nest, you expect to get stung. If that hornet’s nest is filled with young girls in spangles and tutus — and their doting parents — you can expect to get skewered. That is exactly what happens if you criticize the social phenomenon known as Taylor Swift. It is a form of heresy to attack her song catalogue, her lipstick choices and her boyfriends. There is something about Taylor Swift that sticks in my craw, and it has very little to do with her politic...
Schadenfreude is a fabulous word. It means deriving happiness from the pain of others or in literal terms, “joy from damage.” And it’s what I felt watching Joe Biden try and make his grand promises about restoring abortion rights to supporters last month in Virginia. The campaign appearance was supposed to be a victory walk for the president, who is garnering fairly lukewarm support from Democrats. There is no great love for a very old man who is displaying the normal physi...
The other day, I was walking through the bookstore and ended up in the sports section. Perusing the football biographies but deftly avoiding anything that shouted “Eagles” because I’m not a masochist, I found a volume I’d always meant to read: “When Pride Still Mattered.” Its subject is arguably the greatest football coach of all time, Vince Lombardi. So I bought it, probably more because of the title than anything else. Pride doesn’t seem to matter much these days. After the...
There are two things that should be completely off limits: a person’s children and a person’s grief. You do not mock a child, something that we often forget when that child happens to belong to a politician we despise, and you do not make fun of someone in the depths of mourning. I have never had a child, but I have experienced grief. The greatest pain I ever felt, and the greatest I ever will carry, happened 10 years ago when my mother passed away. No matter how deep you...
I’ve been watching with some interest the backlash to Harvard University President Claudine Gay’s resignation. If you were to believe the media reports, at least the ones from The Associated Press and other legacy institutions, Gay was railroaded into a premature departure by bigoted white men who were threatened by her superior intellect and accomplishments because, as we all know, that is the only reason a Black woman would be forced to resign. Gay was not forced to res...
Regular readers weren’t surprised when I voted against John Fetterman in last year’s Senate race in Pennsylvania. I spent months, and ink, sounding the alarm about a man who was to the left of Lenin on all of the social issues that mattered to me, including and most especially his refusal to consider any limits on abortion. I was also angered by his softness toward convicted criminals who came before him when he was on the commonwealth’s parole board, particularly because one...
Around this time of year, I start seeing posts on social media about how Jesus was a refugee, an asylum seeker, an immigrant, etc. It’s based upon a version of the Nativity story, where the Holy Family was forced to “flee” to Bethlehem to avoid persecution. This is at best a “whisper down the lane” misinterpretation of the Christ child’s birth, and at worst an attempt by modern day activists and rhetoricians to frame Jesus as a liberal icon who represents modern day victims...
On March 13, 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was elected by the College of Cardinals to succeed Jozef Ratzinger as pope. Pope Francis was the third non-Italian, after Karol Wotyla of Poland and the aforementioned Ratzinger, to lead the church in over 500 years. There was a great deal of celebration and expectation at his elevation to the papacy, including from this columnist. Unfortunately, the honeymoon didn’t last long. Fairly early into his papacy, Francis began t...
About six years ago, there was a little boy named Charlie Gard. Charlie lived in England, and had two loving parents who begged the country’s National Health Service to provide experimental treatment for the boy, who suffered from a debilitating condition known as mitochondrial disease. At every turn they were stymied because the nihilistic powers that be in the U.K. determined that his life was not worth the effort. Then, the parents tried to have him moved to the U.S. w...
Initially I said to myself, this is not my battle. But then I watched, in horror, as people marched through the streets of Philadelphia chanting the genocidal slogan of the Palestinian people: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free.” Translation: Kill the Jews, push them into the river, keep faith with the ancestors and their desperate attempts at a final solution. In fact, I heard the words “solution” used in exactly that context by young students of all races a...
When I was a teenager, my father belonged to Philadelphia’s Union League. Back then, in the late 1970s, women were excluded from the membership rolls. I also remember that the female guests who dined with their male friends were politely asked to use the entrance on Sansom Street. It was a delicate way of showing that they were welcome to visit, but not to stay. Unfortunately, I’ve been to see signs recently that it’s women handing out membership cards to the Old Boys Club.... Full story
There is something in asylum law called the “material support to terrorist” bar, which essentially states that if you have given significant assistance to a terrorist organization, you cannot obtain refuge in the United States. In virtually all cases, any kind of support of a financial or tactical nature to a militant of any stripe, even if you have a gun pointed at your head or at the head of your child, will deprive you of the right to asylum. It might seem draconian, but it...
One of the first pieces of verse that I ever memorized was this, from Pastor Martin Neimoller: “First they came for the Communists / and I did not speak out / because I was not a Communist. “Then they came for the Socialists / and I did not speak out / because I was not a Socialist. “Then they came for the trade unionists / and I did not speak out / because I was not a trade unionist. “Then they came for the Jews / and I did not speak out / because I was not a Jew. “Then t...
When I learned that Josh Kruger had been murdered in Philadelphia, I felt the same sense of shock that most people experienced at hearing the news. The media community in the Delaware Valley is fairly insular, even though we happen to be in a rather large market, and most of those who write either know personally, or have had some kind of interaction with, others who write. Josh — I presume to use his first name even though we never actually met — was someone whose pol...
John F. Kennedy’s book “Profiles in Courage” told the story of a rare, few U.S. senators who went against the tide of popular opinion and committed acts that ultimately led to severe criticism and in some cases, political defeat. The names are at best vaguely remembered and in some cases lost to history, but the idea of defying societal standards in service of a higher purpose i.e. “doing the right thing” as Spike Lee might say, is fundamental. I thought of the book last week...
When my father proudly mentioned to one of his colleagues that his firstborn child had just been accepted to Bryn Mawr College, he responded: “Let’s hope she doesn’t stop shaving her underarms.” This quip was relayed to me years later by that same gentleman, with a half apology. While there was some truth to the suggestion that Bryn Mawrters were not exactly glittery Disney princesses, I didn’t notice an unusual amount of hirsute women flooding the campus. We seemed to run th...
Sometimes when I write about my father’s civil rights work in Mississippi, I get emails telling me that I should be proud of his fight against racism at a time when it was neither easy nor accepted, particularly in a young white man. Other times I get comments about how bizarre it is that such a wonderful father sired such a backward daughter, someone who voted for the wrong president and holds bigoted beliefs. But the comments that anger me the most are the ones that d...
I hate to be cliché, but I’m going to tell you a proverb you’ve probably already heard a hundred or so times. There was a frog, and he saw this pot of boiling water and said to himself, “I’m not going there. I’m not crazy.” A few days later, he saw another pot of water, and it looked rather lukewarm. Since the frog wanted to take a quick dip, and he was far from his lily pad, he jumped in and started doing the backstroke. It felt good and he thought, “this isn’t so bad a...
Over the weekend, I was looking for free movies to watch. Fortunately, some of the best films — black and white classics — show up on the budget channels. One of my favorite B movies, the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” was available on demand. So I popped the popcorn, made some tea and settled in. When I first saw this movie I must have been about 10. It scared the beejeezus out of me, and triggered a lifelong fear of whatever was growing under my bed. To this da...
Conservatives are often hesitant to criticize other conservatives. Florida issued its guidelines for teaching history last month, including a set of standards that covered the issue of slavery in grades 6 through 8. It’s likely that what happened next would have been a big yawn for most folks, until Kamala Harris pointed it out in one of the few speeches she’s ever given in coherent English. The vice president referenced a section of the new guidelines that read as fol...
When Democratic wunderkind Josh Shapiro campaigned to become the next governor of Pennsylvania, he tried to assume a centrist, bipartisan tone on “helping kids.” That included supporting Lifeline Scholarships for children in disadvantaged areas, which would allow their parents to put them in better schools with some limited government assistance. This was a rather courageous and tactically savvy move by the governor, given the stranglehold that the public teachers’ union...
Hannah Arendt, who observed the trial of Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann many decades ago in Israel, coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe crimes that were anything but banal. She was actually referring to what kind of person was capable of committing these horrific acts, not the acts themselves. Sadly, while evil clearly exists, it is not so easy to figure out who is likely to be its architect. Eichmann, as Arendt wrote, could be considered an evil per...
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...
