Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 1618
Every now and then, someone comes along who makes a unique contribution to the world in which he live. Kris Kristofferson, who died recently at age 88, was that sort of man. Kristofferson hit Nashville and the country music scene in the 1970s, first as a broom-pushing songwriter on Music Row, then as a gravel-voiced singer/songwriter on the Nashville scene, and finally as a movie star in Hollywood. But before all that, he was a standout athlete in rugby, football and boxing, a Rhodes Scholar and an Army officer. He was even offered a teaching...
It still seems so surreal. Sean Combs’s arrest last month on charges including sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy represents a stunning reversal of fortune for the hip-hop impresario. As recently as a year ago, Combs was feted as an industry visionary before a sudden series of sexual assault accusations emerged. Prosecutors said in an indictment that, since 2008, Combs (aka Diddy) has been the puppet master of a colossal criminal outfit that included employees and engaged in various sordid antics, including kidnapping, threats of v...
Tim Walz did a lot better than I thought he would in his debate with J.D. Vance on Oct. 1. Walz didn’t knock himself out of the race like Joe Biden. And he flashed some of the human skills and policy smarts that got him elected and re-elected as a congressman and governor by the good people of Minnesota. But Vance clearly won – throwing the baseball equivalent of a one-hit shutout. He quickly took charge of the debate and showed the 40 million Americans tuning in he was the smart guy who went to Yale, and Walz was the former high school foo...
The story is told of a tight-rope walker 100 years ago. He amazed crowds by working high above the ground, without a net. He displayed superhuman dexterity. He would go across the chasm of certain death, perched on a single, thin cable. He went forward and backward. He used a large pole for balance and then went without it. He’d cross on a unicycle, then on a unicycle while juggling. The crowds were delighted. He certainly seemed to have that high wire mastered. At one point, he pushed a wheelbarrow across and back, to thunderous applause. U...
Other than the presidential election and a super-tight congressional race down south, it’s a fairly tame general election in New Mexico. It could have been a more consequential year, with a mid-term, term-limited governor struggling to keep her party in lockstep on issues like crime containment and school calendars — while every seat in both the state House and Senate are up for election. Currently the New Mexico Senate is run by the Democrats, who command a 27-15 supermajority. All 42 Senate seats are up for election this year, but only 14...
When new Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham fired her first education secretary, Karen Trujillo, in July 2019 after just six months on the job, I thought it was a rash decision. But to be fair, I was biased. Like many people in Las Cruces, I knew Karen a little bit, and liked her. Still, the governor’s explanation seemed weak. “It is absolutely imperative that we genuinely transform public education in this state,” she said. “We must identify a vibrant and ambitious new leader for the Public Education Department as soon as we can.” “She just didn’t ha...
Are you better off than you were four years ago? That simple question to America’s voters was coined in 1980 by my father when he debated Jimmy Carter on TV. Part of my father’s closing statement, it probably won the night for him. Since then, it’s become a question that has been asked to voters in some form or another in every televised presidential debate. My father followed it up with several other rhetorical questions that are just as relevant today as they were 44 years ago: “Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it...
I have great respect for those talented in other languages. My father was a second-generation missionary in South America who became a Bible translator, developed a written language for a Peruvian tribe and wrote down their folklore so they could learn to read, after which he translated the New Testament for them. I also have great respect for those who’ve figured out how to communicate with people who cannot see, speak and/or hear. However, as proud as I am that we can communicate by various means, a recent event concerned me. I passed s...
Like clockwork, every presidential election we see a new set of attacks on the Electoral College. The Electoral College is the system by which the United States has elected every president since the Founding. As you may be aware, the Electoral College was the result of compromise among the Founding Fathers to resolve conflicting interests among the colonies that ultimately agreed to adopt the U.S. Constitution, thus becoming the first 13 American states under the Constitution. While the Electoral College has several components, the most...
Every two years New Mexico voters get the chance to make changes to our state constitution. Some years they’re big, fundamental changes, like scrapping the old state Board of Education in favor of a secretary appointed by the governor or ending the cash bail system. Some years they are just tinkering around the edges. This is one of those years. Voters will have four constitutional amendments on the ballot this year. Two of them will increase state support for disabled veterans and all veterans who have been honorably discharged. I don’t know h...
It’s usually good to be a purist, but not in politics. Purism in politics is not feasible. The Republicans in the House proved that for the millionth time last week when they tried to pass the Save Act by attaching it to a CR – a continuing resolution that extends the funding of the federal government and prevents a government shutdown. CRs are what have to happen almost every year when Congress fails to pass its annual budget to fund the government — something that it’s constitutionally required to do by Oct. 1. In other words, if Congres...
My Bible tells me that God exists outside of time. God created time. God works in and through time, but time does not affect God. Scripture says of Jesus that “his goings forth have been from of old, from eternity.” It says in another place that a thousand years are like a day to him. The Lord’s experience of time is necessarily different than ours because he is the one who created it, the one who owns and controls it. On the other hand, here we are, stuck on earth, clicking through moments one second after another. We can’t speed it up when...
When New Mexico’s rural hospitals called for help, our entire state came together – hospitals statewide, the governor’s office, NM Health Care Authority and legislators from both sides of the aisle -- to pass the 2024 Health Care Delivery and Access Act. New Mexico is at a pivotal moment as we struggle to address healthcare challenges facing our hardworking families especially when it comes to access to healthcare. Almost half of our residents are enrolled in Medicaid and, frankly, the Medicaid reimbursement rates to pay our doctors, nurse...
What is old is new again, at least in the world of politics. Recently, Fox News host Jesse Watters made a quip questioning the veracity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate during a live edition of The Five. Regardless of whether he was being intellectually dishonest or not, Watters presented the topic of Obama’s birth certificate as somehow fraught with political intrigue and announced he would be dispatching his producer to find out the truth. “That’s why we’ll be sending Johnny to Hawaii to get the truth about the birth certifica...
Trump or Harris? The pundits and so-called political experts in the liberal and conservative media are still arguing over who won last week’s presidential debate. They’ll never agree. And they’re all so biased and partisan, they can’t be trusted to be honest anyway. But both sides did seem to agree on one thing – ABC News was the biggest loser. By far. Whatever shred of legitimacy ABC’s news-gathering operation had left, which wasn’t much, it was destroyed in full public view during the Trump-Harris debate. For 90 minutes millions of p...
I had prepared another article for today's Quay County Sun, but when I realized the issue's date, I decided to write about terrorism despite having written about Patriot Day last year. This article is biblically based, but it's also heavily editorial, and I had to rush to meet the deadline. It seems that since shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, we'd made fairly good headway against global terrorism and, for a brief period, could actually be at some ease knowing our country was being well-protected against it. Now, terrorism has reared its ugly head...
America’s free press is in crisis. Local journalism, necessary to maintaining an informed and active citizenry, is struggling to survive as Big Tech companies — namely Meta and Google — have used their power to manipulate news and magazine publishers for their own financial gain. They set the rules for how, where and when we see news content online and how much revenue is made. By not negotiating with local news publishers on usage terms and refusing to pay them fairly — or at all — for their work, Big Tech has driven many local outlets o...
I heard a report the other day that the St. James Hotel in Cimarron is closing. Another Wild West landmark goes down. The St. James is where I got the best steak I’ve ever eaten, but that wasn’t so long ago, when its owners’ focus was more on fine dining than cowboy accommodations. Back in the day, it was a rough and rowdy place, to say the least. Lots of shoot-em-ups, dozens of killings — one estimate I read had the total at 26 dead. Traveling lawmen and notorious outlaws frequented the place, and stories have been passed down about visits...
“He was on our radar.” How many times have we heard that after a mass shooting at a high school or a shopping mall? We heard it for the umpteenth time again last week after a disturbed 14-year-old kid in Georgia took a rifle to school and killed two students, two teachers, and injured nine others. “He was on our watch list,” the local police said to no one’s surprise. A year ago, after the FBI’s radar picked up Colt Gray reportedly making threats online that he was going to “shoot up a middle school tomorrow,” the feds tipped off the county she...
Mark’s Gospel records this teaching: “And Jesus called them to him and said to them, ‘You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’” (Mark 10:42-45) The Greek word translated “great ones” there is megas, fro...
More than 650,000 Americans experienced homelessness on any given night in 2023 -- a 12% increase since 2022. Chronic homelessness is also worsening, with over 143,000 people homeless for at least a year in 2023 -- an all-time high. I’ve been the mayor of Aurora, Colo. for five years. In my first term, I went undercover and lived among people experiencing homelessness in Aurora and Denver for a week. I wanted to understand why Colorado’s homeless community was growing and how my city could best help. The leading policy approach to hom...
My best friend Kelly and I frequently had loud, boisterous arguments over politics that led folks to believe that we disagreed about everything. They were mistaken. His views were influenced by watching Fox News, and mine are influenced by watching CNN, so that’s where the arguments would start. But they didn’t end there. It usually didn’t take long for both of us to call BS on the TV talking points and get to the heart of the matter. That didn’t always lead to an agreement, but it almost always led to a common understanding. Of course,...
Hollywood can’t always be trusted to accurately portray reality or history, to say the least. But I fully enjoyed watching the facts go by in the premier of “Reagan,” which I saw last week at the famous Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. “Reagan,” which stars Dennis Quaid as my father, covers my father’s career from Illinois lifeguard to the American president who set out to bankrupt the Soviet Union – and did it. It took an international team of freedom fighters like Maggie Thatcher and Pope John Paul II to bring down the USSR and end...
On the first day of school last week, we attended the “Meet the Rattlers” event for Tucumcari’s fall athletes, including two of our grandsons. The program included a video promoting good sportsmanship, including by fans. I suspect that was appropriate because the event was likely attended by the most potentially rabid fans — parents and grandparents. While the video was right on about good sportsmanship, it included statements that the main goal shouldn’t be to win. I agree with that philosophy only to an extent because it’s likely that insuff...
In her speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris offered a withering indictment of her opponent. Donald J. Trump, she rightly observed, is in many ways “an unserious man,” but the consequences of returning him to the White House “are extremely serious.” She asked her audience to “consider the power he will have, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court just ruled that he would be immune from criminal prosecution. Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails …” She introduced herself to vo...