Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
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Joe Biden lies. He stumbles. He has the beginnings of dementia. Everything Fox News says about his incompetence and his horrible domestic and foreign policies is absolutely true. Everyone knows America will be more prosperous and safe when he is no longer in the White House. But Joe Biden isn’t leaving. He’s decided he can run for re-election in 2024 for one simple reason – the Republican Party nomination is in the pocket of Donald Trump. I’m not a Never Trumper. I voted for him twice and I think he did a good job as president. But like ev...
We were invited to spend spring break this year with family who live at the southern Gulf Coast of Texas. We had a great time, even stopping on the way there and back to visit with various other dear friends and family (also dear to us), but that’s not related to this article. To spend as much time as possible and be there for church on Sunday morning, we left early on Friday, March 17. Those, like us, of Irish descent, and probably many others recognize March 17 as St. Patrick’s Day, which we’re supposed to celebrate by eating corned beef...
The state of New Mexico is unique in both its demographics and geographical features. Our vast land area, diverse topography, and sparse population have proven to be a significant barrier when it comes to broadband deployment and internet connectivity. This affects New Mexicans from the eastern prairie to the Rio Grande Valley. This challenge is particularly evident across low-income communities and on tribal lands. Billions of federal and state tax dollars have been spent on broadband in recent years, but the problems persist because too...
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. Sullivan successfully sued the T...
Violent events in the last few days prove how edgy Americans are. A 16-year-old boy who knocked on the wrong door was shot through the glass by a scared old man. A 20-year-old was shot because she pulled into the wrong driveway. A cheerleader was shot after she accidentally got in the wrong car at a shopping center. Everyone is so on edge today because of the madness and lawlessness they see on TV and the Internet. Every day brings new video of gas station smash-and-grabs, flash mobs looting retail stores, mini-riots taking over streets in down...
But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you. — Jesus Christ, in Luke 11:41 This puzzling sentence appears in a discussion about the system of ritual washing that the first-century Jews practiced as a matter of tradition. There were detailed procedures for washing this and that which, they believed, protected their spiritual status. These requirements kept them from becoming defiled, or “unclean.” They had developed these traditions themselves over generations. God had not commanded them. (Funny how t...
It’s the year before a presidential election, which means it’s once again time for a group to call for a unity ticket of a Democratic and a Republican for president and vice president or for an independent candidate to avoid the dysfunction of the parties entirely. The current effort by the No Labels group to get a presidential ballot line in all 50 states for 2024 is being treated as something of a novelty, but we’ve seen something like this in most modern presidential elections. Just four years ago Unite America was proposing a bipar...
When it comes to Big Media news, all eyes this week will be on the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News as it goes to trial in a Delaware courthouse. It’s one of the most significant media trials in decades, with ramifications that strike at the heart of what we call a “free press.” Somewhere in Journalism 101, or maybe it was 201, I learned that a news reporting operation can get away with not telling the truth if it was done without malice. To prosecute a news outlet for an unintended error in reporting would have a chilling effect on those...
My governor Gavin Newsom has finally found an excuse to get out of the state he’s been tyrannizing for the last three years. He’s going around to red states like Florida, telling them how they’re the ones that are doing everything wrong. While Newsom is AWOL, which actually is a good thing for the over-taxed people of California, the state continues to fall apart. Its great cities continue to suffer from high crime and homelessness. Its budget deficit for 2023 is $22 billion. And so many people are moving away that California is leading the c...
I use all kinds of things as the bases for my articles. While considering this one, to be published on April 12, I heard Acts 4:12 read, making me wonder what the other Bible books had for chapter 4, verse 12. So, I checked that out. Of the 66 Bible books, 11 didn’t have four chapters and another four didn’t have 12 verses in their fourth chapter. Two of the latter books, Jonah and Revelation, stopped at 4:11. Because those verses are pretty neat, I’ve included them in this introduction. Revelation 4:11 recognizes God as the Creator, while...
What I remember most about that dark early morning of crouching on the prairie is the rhythmic sound of pounding. It was so loud, I wondered if someone had put a microphone near the skinny legs of the dozen birds dancing on the turf. As the sun rose above the horizon in southeastern New Mexico, the male lesser prairie chickens continued their ritual performance, each hoping to entice a female. They strutted, leaped in the air with feathers spread, and bowed, but the greatest thrill was watching them puff up the garish, red-orange air sacs on ei...
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, noted that it is ofte...
Everyone knows the felony charges against Donald Trump for paying hush-money to a porn star are ridiculous. Everyone knows that charging Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records was just a slimy political stunt by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Everyone knows that Bragg’s legally dubious indictment is just the latest desperate attempt by Democrats to prevent Trump from running for president in 2024. And, along with a handful of honest Democrats and liberal media pundits, even diehard Trump-hater Mitt Romney admits that B...
I love spring. I’m antsy to clean up garden areas, and plant things. There are green blobs already sprouting in various tubs throughout the yards. Could be weeds. Could be flowers. Could be one of a thousand seeds I planted last year coming back to life. There’s a sense of promise in the air. Anticipation. Hope. As a kid, I’d all but throw a party when the seed packets showed up in store aisles. I’d have to pick up and read each packet, explore the garden pots, the figurines, windchimes, the works. Fast forward a few decades, and not a lot has...
I’m sick of being told what the experts say. Specifically, I’ve had it with experts who take it upon themselves to tell us how the world needs to change (and right now, mister) or else. I can’t even blame the experts themselves too much: they’re simply giving their opinion. The real culprits are the non-experts who constantly insist that the exalted ones should be regarded as oracles. The appeal to supposed expertise has taken on a religious flavor in our day. It’s a flavor that colors everything we argue about publicly. You can’t hold to Opi...
It was entirely predictable, but still despicable, that right-wing demagogues like Sen. Josh Hawley are trying to spin the Nashville school shooting into an indictment of transgender Americans generally because the assailant happened to identify as trans. That was the obvious thrust of a Fox News discussion between the Missouri Republican and host Laura Ingraham that was initially about the shooting but morphed seamlessly into the utter non sequitur of transgender medicine. “We’ve got to tell the truth about what happened in Nashville,” inton...
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 challenge that everybody s...
We know the whole world has gone crazy. Nowhere has it become more insane than what’s been going on in women’s collegiate and high school sports. Biological males have been allowed to compete against girls and women in swimming, softball and even weightlifting, which, to people who are not woked out of their minds, is patently unfair to girl and women athletes. The poster child for how crazy women’s sports have become is Lia Thomas. Born William Thomas, he identified as a woman in his senior year at Penn, won many women’s collegiate swimmin...
I suspect most of us have survived and adjusted to what many consider the foolishness of springing our clocks forward for daylight saving time recently. April Fool’s Day is looming this Saturday. At least that only comes once each year, while the clock “foolishness” happens twice. We’ve all likely heard the saying, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Balaam’s donkey saved him from certain death three times before he accused her of making a fool of him at which time she reminded him she’d been faithful to him throughout...
No one sells the future more masterfully than the tech industry. According to its proponents, we will all live in the “metaverse,” build our financial infrastructure on “web3” and power our lives with “artificial intelligence.” All three of these terms are mirages that have raked in billions of dollars, despite bite back by reality. Artificial intelligence in particular conjures the notion of thinking machines. But no machine can think, and no software is truly intelligent. The phrase alone may be one of the most successful marketing t...
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 opportunity to be e...
Everyone in the national media is worrying about whether Donald Trump is going to be arrested in New York. Not me. In a radio interview with San Diego talk show host Mark Larson, I said I didn’t care what was going to happen to Trump. “What I’m really worried about,” I said to my old friend, “is the meeting going on in Moscow between the two most dangerous men in the world – Xi and Putin.” The head despots of Russia and China were having a meet-up in person to get control of half of the world and what was the president of the United States...
As a volunteer pastor, I’ve come to believe that the No. 1 threat to my congregation is fear. As it turns out, though, I’m not their only preacher. The other ones are broadcast at them. Twenty-four-hour news channels bombard them with reasons to be terrified. What’s coming next? A new virus? Conflict with Russia? China? Remember when the “murder hornets” were coming for us? Part of my answer to all that is this: Jesus fed 5,000 men and their families with a few pieces of bread and a plate of fish in Mark 6. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying th...
I am against the Ute Pipeline project. In fact, I am convinced that if it goes on as planned it will be the biggest waste of taxpayer money in New Mexico history. When you realize that I am a Logan resident and business owner your first reaction will probably be that you can’t listen to my opinion because I am not objective. Although that is true -- I am not objective -- hear me out. Facts are still facts regardless of where they come from. I acknowledge that Curry and Roosevelt counties need water. The problem is they are about to spend m...
Public officials and employees love transparency in the abstract. In reality: not so much. Transparency in government is a crowd-pleasing election promise that gets set aside in practice. It happens in part because openness takes effort. It takes a daily commitment by public entities to provide access to records, to inform the public as to what is going on, and to allow participation. Transparency also invites scrutiny, and not all public officials and employees want that. Open government also suffers because public officials often choose to...