Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Sorted by date Results 76 - 83 of 83
Can the United States avoid war with Russia? Should we avoid war with Russia? Does a nation that spends so much on weaponry that it has built the strongest military force in the history of mankind have a moral obligation to act when lesser armies are slaughtering innocent people in another nation? Why are the innocent people in Ukraine more worthy than the innocent people in Chechnya? It’s estimated that as many as 40,000 civilians were killed in a sloppy, brutish, relentless Russian attack there that included torture, r...
On Jan. 29, a convoy of ticked-off truckers rolling across Canada reached its final destination, Parliament Hill in the capital city of Ottawa. They proceeded to use their trucks to shut down the core of the downtown area to all incoming traffic. They disobeyed police orders, ignored the law and effectively took over as occupiers of that part of the city. We saw those same tactics put to use in the summer of 2020, when protesters demanding police reform temporarily occupied several blocks in Portland, Ore. The Canadian...
State Sen. William Sharer is a marvelous storyteller with the ability to go on at length on a wide variety of subjects. Recently, he regaled his restless Senate colleagues on the final day of the session, as time ran out on a voting rights bill that had been one of the top priorities for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. Sharer took the floor during the “announcements and miscellaneous” portion of the session, when lawmakers can talk about whatever they want for as long as they want. He began by thanking legislative staff for thei...
From the day in 2005 when the agreement between Bill Richardson and Richard Branson for what would later become Spaceport America was first announced, the business model for southern New Mexico has always been to separate wealthy tourists from their not-so-hard-earned vacation money. “... First flights of a suborbital spaceliner [are] now planned in late 2008, early 2009,” Virgin Galactic announced in a 2005 press release, the first of what would be many overly optimistic projections. As the opinion page editor for the Las...
Las Cruces native Stephanie Valencia writes with pride about the role she played in helping Sonia Sotomayor become the first Latina confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Valencia, who had worked on both the campaign and transition team for Barack Obama, was serving as his deputy director in the Office of Public Engagement when Supreme Court Justice David Souter announced his retirement in 2009. She urged Obama to select Sotomayor. When he did — a decision announced when Valencia was back here getting married — she helped lea...
When former Gov. Bill Richardson ended the gross receipts tax on food in 2005, I thought it was a no-brainer. Food and water are the two things we can’t live without, so of course they shouldn’t be taxed. But the experts at New Mexico Voices for Children — who understand the intricacies of our tax system much better than I do and know that when it comes to setting tax policy, everything’s a brainer — disagreed. They predicted correctly that shifting the burden from food to other purchases would hurt the poor more than help th...
Republican lawmakers in New Mexico have alleged for years that our elections are plagued by massive voter fraud. They finally had their chance to prove it in 2011, with Susana Martinez as governor and Dianna Duran as secretary of state. Duran was the first Republican secretary of state since E.A. Perrault in 1929. And, she came into office bound and determined to prove that claims of rampant voter fraud were real. Enlisting the help of the State Police, they combed through seven years of voter registration records, from 2003...
Watching Montana State play in the Football Championship Subdivision national title game Jan. 8, I wondered if Waded Cruzado was still the president there. Sure enough, she has been president since 2010, leading the university through significant increases in enrollment and retention; an all-time high in research expenditures; and advances in academic achievement, including three Rhodes Scholars. She is also, I assume, well liked and respected in Bozeman, just as she was in Las Cruces after being named interim president of...
