Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities

Articles written by John Micek


Sorted by date  Results 1 - 5 of 5

  • Opinion: Might be hope for working government after all

    John Micek, Syndicated content|Updated Dec 24, 2022

    There’s a school of political thought that divided government is the government that governs best. Put the White House in the hands of one party, and Congress in the hands of the other, the argument goes, and the two sides inevitably will have to come to the negotiating table to work things out. Much like New Coke, or electing a faded reality television star president, it’s something that initially sounds good in theory, but tends to be utterly unworkable in practice. Heck, sometimes it doesn’t even work when one party has c...

  • Opinion: Maybe back on road to decency

    John Micek, Syndicated columnist|Updated Nov 14, 2020

    I was walking along the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg on Saturday when the world learned that Joe Biden had bested Donald Trump to become the president-elect of the United States. The November sun was unseasonably warm on my face, and a cool breeze blew in from the west. I took a deep breath and exhaled. And in that moment, the tensions of the last four years seemed to go with them. There was a sense, however briefly, that, after four years of chaos, division, and just plain mean-spiritedness at the very top of our...

  • Opinion: Republicans lending QAnon legitimacy

    John Micek, Syndicated columnist|Updated Oct 31, 2020

    In a normal universe, the baseless and appalling QAnon conspiracy theory would be the plot to the worst action thriller you’ve ever seen. If you don’t know by now, QAnon adherents subscribe to the utterly bonkers proposition that President Donald Trump is heroically fighting against a diffuse and secretive cabal of devil worshipers and child molesters scattered across the most elite levels of government, business, and the media. To take it to its “Sharknado-iest” extremes, the theory also posits that a violent reckoni...

  • Opinion: Trump stoops to using children as political pawns

    John Micek|Updated Jul 11, 2020

    Here’s how far Donald Trump is willing to go to ensure his re-election: After trying to normalize COVID-19 deaths among senior citizens and asking us to just get used to the fact that more people will die, he’s now willing to use America’s schoolchildren as pawns in a proxy fight with Democrats. That is the only reasonable way to read the vitriol packed into the presidential Twitter feed recently, as Trump upped the pressure on state governors to reopen schools in the fall. (News update, Mr. President: Many districts have...

  • Micek: Don't waste crisis with fear, paranoia

    John Micek|Updated Mar 21, 2020

    Shortly after Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009, then-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel got into a bit of hot water when he observed to an interviewer, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” A decade-and-a-half ago, America was in the throes of The Great Recession, and Emanuel rightfully took a bit of heat for seeming to suggest that it was acceptable for the White House to capitalize on a time of great uncertainty to maximize its political advantage. However clunky Emanuel’s borrowing an epigram...