Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Boy, it sure is hot today. How hot is it? It’s so hot I bought a loaf of bread and by the time I got home it was toast. It’s so hot my grandfather’s chicken laid an omelet. It’s so hot his cows are producing evaporated milk. It’s so hot the catfish are fried by the time you reel them in. It’s so hot the Statue of Liberty disrobed. It’s so hot I went to Congress just to be around some shady characters. It’s so hot I intentionally leave the toilet seat up to get icy stares from my wife. It’s so hot my children’s crayon...
District Judge Fred Van Soelen of Clovis has until Oct. 1 to decide if the redistricting map that allowed Democrats to wrest control of the 2nd Congressional District will still be in place for the 2024 election. Recently the state Supreme Court sent a lawsuit filed by Republicans seeking to overturn the new map back to District Court, while also giving Judge Van Soelen guidance on what he should consider in making his decision. The order instructs that “a reasonable degree” of partisan gerrymandering is permissible, so lon...
In my last column, I explained why I think the secretary of state should not interfere in an effort to force a referendum on six bills passed this year by the state Legislature. Now I’d like to look at two of the bills being targeted. House Bill 4 will make it easier for more New Mexico residents to exercise their right to vote. More specifically, the bill will automatically register voters through the Motor Vehicle Division, bringing more eligible voters onto the rolls. It will restore the voting rights of convicted f...
I love democracy … the purer the better. And so, I’ve always been a big fan of the referendum process, which allows citizens to circumvent the representative system and take their issue directly to the voters. The angriest I’ve ever been with the Las Cruces City Council was in 2014 when they relied on slimy legal tricks to stop a successful effort to use the referendum process to raise the minimum wage. I had mixed feelings about the wage, but my feelings about the City Council’s maneuvering were anything but mixed. Now, a...
The effort to create a civilian review board for the Las Cruces Police Department threatens to create a rift between the City Council and some progressive voters during a municipal election year, when police and crime will undoubtedly be a major topic. There’s little disagreement as to the need for reform. Fatal police interactions with Amelia Baca (settled for $2.5 million) and Antonio Valenzuela (settled for $6.5 million) have cost taxpayers $9 million, and taken beloved members from two families. Jonathan Strickland s...
Have drones made it too easy for the U.S. military to commit murder from thousands of miles away? Last month, U.S. Central Command issued a tweet announcing that an Al Qaeda leader had been killed by a drone strike in Northeast Syria. “This operation reaffirms CENTCOM’s steadfast commitment to the region and the enduring defeat of ISIS and Al Qaeda,” CENTCOM Commander Gen. Michael “Eric” Kurilla said. The tweet promised that more information about the strike would be released “as operational details become available.” That ne...
The United States government has a nuclear waste storage problem, and it sees its solution in southeast New Mexico. Earlier this month, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the application by a Florida-based company named Holtec to build a new waste storage facility in Lea County. The license authorizes Holtec to store 500 canisters holding 100,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel. Holtec plans to eventually store up to 10,000 canisters, shipped in from nuclear power plants around the country. Which gives state...
My unsolicited advice for this year’s graduates is simple: Move slow and fix things. In 2014, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg coined the phrase “move fast and break things” to describe the mentality of our new 20-year-old tech-sector corporate leaders who believed all human knowledge gained over the centuries had been made obsolete by quantum computing. “The idea is that if you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough,” Zuckerberg explained. He expounded on the idea during a college lecture. “A lot of t...
I doubt there are many people over the age of 50 who grew up in this country and have not experienced some form of hazing, including the governor. I still remember sprinting home following the last day of class in elementary school to avoid the horrors of having lipstick smeared over my face, which had somehow become a tradition. Later, when I was in Boy Scouts, the initiation to join a group called Order of the Arrow was to spend the day being bossed around by older boys already in the group as we cleaned and made minor...
In 1981, Sally Field won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of an ambitious and reckless newspaper reporter in the film “Absence of Malice.” The reporter uses information leaked by a federal prosecutor for a front-page story wrongfully accusing the character played by Paul Newman of the murder of a union boss. The evil newspaper gets away with it because of a 1964 Supreme Court ruling. The film’s title comes from the standard set in the case of New York Times Co. v Sullivan. Former Public Safety Commissioner L.B. Sulli...
“The only clocks in a Major League stadium should tell us the time of day, and they should do so using hands, not digits.” That was my posting on our fantasy baseball message board a couple of years ago when Major League officials began toying with the idea of a pitch clock. Baseball has long provided refuge to curmudgeonly traditionalists like me who revere the sport’s history and fret over anything that would change the game that I learned to love as a child. Other Johnny-come-latelies like the NBA and NFL can tinker with...
Do we have the right to see Donald Trump’s mug shot? Do we have the right to see anybody’s mug shot if they haven’t had their day in court yet? The second question came up during this year’s Sunshine Week event, which featured an outstanding panel of local journalists talking about crime reporting. The consensus was that, while we all have the right to view any public document, the media also has a responsibility as to what it publishes. Bob Moore, the former editor of the El Paso Times who is now heading El Paso Matters...
I had hoped that legislators would take advantage of the unprecedented $9.4 billion budget this year to begin the transition away from an economy that is dependent on oil and gas revenue, but I don’t think that was ever on the agenda. The governor had promised before the election that we would all get checks in the mail if she won, so that was a given. Legislators also passed new tax credits for the film industry, and a phased-in reduction of the gross receipts tax. Those moves will help, but seem inadequate to the c...
I’m not at all comfortable with my new position to the right of Republican leaders on foreign policy. As a child who grew up watching the Vietnam War on the nightly news and fearing it would still be raging when I turned 18, I have always opposed the military adventurism of Republican leaders, whether it was Richard Nixon in Vietnam and Cambodia, Ronald Reagan in Central America or George W. Bush in Iraq. We all knew our roles back then. Republican leaders saw the world as a threat to be neutralized and an economic o...
New Mexico’s unpaid, part-time Legislature has 15 members who are attorneys, including both the speaker of the House and the majority leader of the Senate. There are only two medical doctors, and one of them is retired. Perhaps that’s why our medical malpractice laws are so skewed in favor of the lawyers. In 2021, lawmakers passed a multifaceted bill to reform our malpractice laws. Like many bills that work their way through the Legislature’s committee process, it started as one thing and finished as something compl...
Change at the New Mexico Legislature usually comes in small steps taken over a long period of time. That’s especially true with gun laws. The last significant changes came in 2019 with a bill to expand background checks and in 2020 with one to allow the courts to file an emergency order temporarily taking guns from those proven to be at risk to themselves or others. This year, I had high hopes for House Bill 101, which would ban assault rifles and high-capacity magazines. It cleared its first committee fairly early in the pro...
During the 2013 session of the New Mexico Legislature, Rep. Mary Helen Garcia introduced House Memorial 79, “celebrating the adventurous life of former State Rep. J. Paul Taylor.” I was working in Santa Fe covering the Legislature in 2005 for Taylor’s final session after having represented District 33 for 18 years. The farewell ceremony for him in the rotunda of the Roundhouse was a genuine display of bipartisan affection. Even those who disagreed with him fiercely on policy couldn’t help but love and respect the man. As I in...
Term limits can be incredibly liberating, as former Republican Gov. Gary Johnson demonstrated when he professed his love for marijuana shortly after winning reelection in 1998. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has the twin advantages of not having to run again, and going into her second term with financial resources that are beyond the wildest dreams of her predecessors. The state exceeded revenue estimates by $3.6 billion during the last fiscal year. The proposed $9.44 billion budget now under consideration is up by $4 billion...
Did they ever pry that gun away from Charlton Heston, or did they just bury him with it? Inspired by Heston, U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, made a similar vow recently, though it will be tougher to bury him with the object of his devotion. “If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold, dead hands,” he declared. I assume he’ll die with oven mitts on? The freakout following a suggestion by a member of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission that a ban on gas stoves could be under...
I was walking along a public sidewalk the other day when a woman’s voice came from a nearby house informing me that I was being recorded. So, I belted out a medley of Broadway show tunes. There was once a time when constant surveillance conjured up Orwellian images of Big Brother. Now, it’s just a routine part of life. And so, I don’t expect there to be much objection to the recent announcement by Las Cruces Police Chief Miguel Dominguez that the city plans to purchase more “eye in the sky” cameras in response to an increa...
The last time the New Mexico State University Board of Regents set out to pick a new leader, after having unceremoniously ridded themselves of Garrey Carruthers, they had a hard time picking between the two finalists for the job. And so they hired both of them. At a combined salary of almost $1 million. Let’s hope there’s a clear frontrunner this time. The decision in 2018 to hire both Dan Arvizu, at a yearly salary of $500,000, and John Floros, at $450,000, came as a complete surprise to NMSU faculty, staff and stu...
Attorneys seeking to overturn the will of voters who approved a constitutional amendment in 2020 reforming the state Public Regulation Commission had to make two conflicting arguments. The first was that voters weren’t bright enough to read the amendment and understand that it would result in PRC members being appointed and not elected. The second was that voters are the only ones bright enough to be entrusted with the task of selecting utility regulators. The New Mexico Supreme Court disagreed, and dismissed a lawsuit r...
In June 2012, I succumbed to the hype and joined with millions of others to watch Nik Wallenda attempt to cross over Niagara Falls on a high wire. A few minutes into the walk I realized that, because so much of the promotion had been about the fact he could fall off and die at any moment, a little part of me would feel cheated if he made it across alive. Disgusted by my own human nature, I rushed to change the channel. I got that same vibe recently while watching the new show “On Patrol: Live,” which broadcasts live eve...
In a year of national political turmoil and upheaval, it proved to be a status quo election in New Mexico. The only real changes came as a result of redistricting, most notably in the 2nd Congressional District. The victory by Gabe Vasquez flips a seat that has been (mostly) Republican ever since the state gained a third district following the 1980 census. Vasquez won by a little more than 1,000 votes. If Democrats can hold the seat, and much of that may depend on a challenge to the new district maps now pending in the state...
During an interview for a podcast before the election, I referred to the elusive youth vote as “fool’s gold.” Young voters are too busy raising their families and starting their careers, I said. They aren’t as invested in the community. Their growing numbers make leaders in both parties dream about the possibilities, but that always ends in disappointment. Elections are a time when our assumptions and preconceptions get put to the test. And this year, mine were wrong. According to data from the Center for Information and Res...
