Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
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Violence and horror continue to haunt Black Americans. Most Americans are likely to be aware of the horrific death of Sonya Massey at the hands of a sadistic police officer. Massey, a 36-year-old Illinois mother, had called 911 because she believed an intruder had entered her home. Two Sangamon County deputies arrived, and one of them, Sean Grayson, began spewing a tirade of profanity-laced threats during an argument over a pot of boiling water she was holding. Grayson shot Massey at close range as she ducked behind a counter saying she was...
You might still have questions about how the Biden Coup of 2024 went down. Or maybe you still want to know who has really been calling the shots in the Biden administration during Joe’s afternoon naps. But it looks like you’ll have to wait for the historians. The liberal journalists who control our mainstream media don’t care how Joe Biden was dethroned by his own party – not now and not when it happened. They don’t care that Vice President Kamala Harris – the reigning laughingstock of American politics until 10 minutes ago – was undemocratica...
Revelation 1:5 calls Jesus Christ “the faithful witness.” If I can get on my preacher’s soapbox for just a moment: Christians have so focused on the Revelation as a map to the end-times, they routinely miss what the stated purpose of the book is. According to its opening words, it is “the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Whatever you think the proper interpretation of the book’s images may be, or what it was meant to predict, it is first and foremost a revelation, a “revealing,” of Jesus. It’s about him, not the antichrist. Revelation’s main...
Homelessness isn’t as far away from home anymore. January “point in time” counts show that New Mexico’s unhoused population has been growing in recent years, while nationally it’s at a 15-year high. Last year’s count found a 48% increase in New Mexico’s homeless population from a year earlier, and this year’s count showed a 62% increase. This is more than a perception; it’s a reality. It’s not just in the cities these days. Where I live, along Interstate 40 in Santa Rosa, we get our share of transients, sometimes hoofing or hitchhiking their wa...
One would be hard-pressed to think of a vice president in recent memory placed under as much of a political microscope as Kamala Harris. She can hardly sneeze without someone, somewhere analyzing or dissecting her every move. And let’s not get started on how some of her critics attack her supposed “strange” laugh. Some on the right have insinuated Harris slept her way to the top. Some, including Donald Trump, falsely claim she’s not really Black because her father is light-skinned and her mother was from India. The founder of Pastors for Trump,...
Last week our lame duck President Joe Biden came out of hiding and called for some major changes in how the U.S. Supreme Court operates. His proposals — another election-time pander to his party’s progressive base – were liberal, pie-in-the-sky ideas that everyone knows will never materialize in the real world. They included getting Congress to impose term limits and a binding code of ethics on justices, neither of which could get the required votes in a divided Congress. Biden’s most foolish idea of the week, however, was his call for a const...
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle should have saved herself from being roasted for 4 hours and 40 minutes last week by justifiably angry members of the House Oversight Committee livid over the failures of the Secret Service to prevent the shooting of Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally. She should have resigned rather than sit there and make the situation worse. Instead, she quit later. Trump thankfully survived, but rallygoer Corey Comperatore died, as did a lot of the agency’s credibility and Cheatle’s reputation. Cheatle said in her...
After all the speculation about whom he would choose, Donald Trump selected JD Vance, the junior senator of Ohio, as his running mate in the presidential race. A former “public affairs” marine turned venture capitalist, Vance rose to fame in 2016 with the publication of “Hillbilly Elegy,” an engaging narrative that detailed his challenging and adversarial upbringing in poverty-stricken southwestern Ohio and his later experiences at Yale law school. The book became a national bestseller and the subject of the Ron Howard-directed 2020 film starri...
We had two big speeches from Washington last Wednesday. Neither one was very encouraging for those of us who worry about our fragile democracy and the futures of our kids and grandkids. Bibi Netanyahu gave a great speech in the House of Representatives, defending Israel’s war in Gaza and trying to rally support from U.S. politicians – i.e., Republicans, mostly. Many Democrats stayed away from Bibi’s speech or cut out early, including Sen. Chuck Schumer. They were afraid to offend the left-wing Democrats that have fractured their party by suppo...
My last article in the Quay County Sun on July 17 was about the splendors of God’s love for us with an introduction that our appropriate response to that love through obedience to become his child (John 14:15-21; Acts 2:38-39; 5:32; Galatians 3:26-4:7; Romans 8:9-17). We’re to continue in that relationship of love by loving others as he loved us because he loves the whole world and wants them as his children (John 3:16; 13:34-35; Ephesians 5:1-2; Romans 5:6-8; 2 Peter 3:9). Love, therefore, is the basis for the first and second greatest com...
In the Bible-reading plan I’ve designed for myself, I come to the book of Ecclesiastes about twice a year; and every time I read it, I end up thinking, “I should read this more often.” As a brand-new believer in my 20, all those decades ago, Ecclesiastes was confusing to me and even a little depressing. Now, it’s a welcomed friend who continues, somehow, to keep reminding me of the things I’ve managed to forget since I last read it. Young men, as designed by God, should be filled with fire, eager to conquer the world and unsatisfied until it...
Turns out, Democrats have a mind of their own. You can see it in the fallout from Joe Biden’s weak debate performance, when the president showed his age. And you could see it in last week’s special session of the New Mexico Legislature, when Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham attempted to run roughshod over her party with poorly vetted legislation. It should have been a humbling experience from our second-term governor, who has been getting things done her way for nearly six years now. But instead of coming out, hat in hand, to apologize for her fai...
The political world was shaken by the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. Footage from the event showed Trump clutch his right ear and go down after gunshots rang out. Quickly rising to his feet amid a phalanx of U.S. Secret Service agents, Trump pumped a fist at the crowd as blood seeped from the side of his head. The agents responded swiftly to protect the former president and shot the apparent attacker, a registered Republican, to death. From the outset, both Democrat and Republican leaders denounced the attack....
“This isn’t my father’s Secret Service.” That’s what I immediately tweeted in response to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. Little did I know. Every day, drip by drip, we get more proof of the incredible incompetence of the agency that is supposed to prevent the kind of shooting that happened in broad daylight near Pittsburgh. While we wait for the inevitable shocking new revelations about the attempt on Trump’s life, he, his family and millions of other people are saying they believe it was not just luck but an act of God that saved...
I was recently reminded of the Andy Williams song, "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing," which describes some of the splendors of love with these phrases: "It's the April rose that only grows in early spring; love is nature's way of giving a reason to be living; the golden crown that makes a man a king." These words put limits on love that weren't intended from the beginning because they're based on whimsical emotion triggered by physical contact (the kiss and the touch). Although, I like that,...
By now, most New Mexicans are aware of the case against the movie star Alec Baldwin. It was getting plenty of play both here at home and abroad until, poof, it went away. It shouldn’t disappear so easily. There are more than enough questions still left to answer. The case against Baldwin was dismissed Friday after it was discovered that ammunition from the set of “Rust” had been “misfiled” and was not disclosed to the defense. That was enough to compel Santa Fe’s First Judicial District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer to grant a motion to dismiss the...
If you need assistance with your federal benefits, you can speak with staff members for U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Lujan at their district offices. If you have issues with the city or county that need to be resolved, you can reach your representative on the city council and county commission at their offices. Constituent services are a vital part of the job for most elected officials. If, however, your problems are with the state, you can try reaching your state senator and representative, but they don’t have an office and there’s a...
Being far away from home in Iceland and Britain for the last two weeks was perfect timing. Just as President Biden was proving to the whole country that he’s incapable of being president for another four years, or another week, I left the madness of American politics and flew off to Europe for a vacation cruise. As I often have had the pleasure of doing, I traveled with my travel-agent wife Colleen and a bunch of her clients. This time, though, we also took along my two kids, Cameron and Ashley, and their families. We Reagans had an e...
Evangelical Christians might be scandalized to realize how strongly the God of the Bible comes down on the side of festivals, parties, and days off. They know what tithing is, but they’ve never seen the rule saying that a third of the tithe was meant to save up for the feasts. Basically, one facet of tithing was to build up your vacation fund. It gets worse, though. God comes right out and encourages the (moderate) enjoyment of wine and other strong drink during those festivals. Jesus would not be a good Southern Baptist. There were initially t...
About 12 years ago, when I was at the Las Vegas Optic, we worked up a special section on the seven-county region of Northeast New Mexico. Not surprisingly, our lead story was about water. At the time, Las Vegas was facing some serious drought conditions that had slowed the Gallinas River to little more than a trickle, leaving the city — which gets nearly all its water from the Gallinas — with only a couple months of water in reserve. City officials at that time said the reservoirs were only 68% full and sinking. Also around that time, I got...
For the past five decades or longer, the state Legislature has been planning for what we will do when the oil runs out. We’ve set up permanent funds to ensure we’ll be able to keep our schools open and provide other essential services, tucking away money that is not needed now. We haven’t planned nearly as well for the depletion of an even more precious resource — water. The state didn’t even have a water plan until 1987, and the one drafted that year led more to regional competition than conservation. Many of the plans submitted to the Inter...
The latest edition of Kids Count provides more devastating news about New Mexico and the condition of our children. The report, created by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (a center/left non-profit that works nationwide) analyzes and ranks all 50 states based on 16 variables relating to childhood outcomes. Surprising absolutely no one, New Mexico was once again at 50th. I analyzed the report and counted seven variables that improved, seven that got worse, and two that stayed the same relative to last year’s report. Based on this it is hard to p...
Ruby, our latest rescue dog, is a hoarder. She has a kennel in the living room, a good-sized wire kennel. We set that up the evening we trapped her. We floofed blankets and I put a couple of my t-shirts in there for her. The first couple of nights, I slept in the living room, just to keep her company. She never made a peep. She loves that kennel. She can come and go as she pleases. She has blankets, toys and a giant tennis ball in there. And if we don’t watch her, she’ll have slippers, pillows, and anything else within teeth-range. She doe...
Set aside for a moment Joe Biden’s haunting performance at the debate last week, there was something even more troubling that just took place. It’s not getting as much attention because we’re used to it. The debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is an example of style versus substance. Trump won on style and Biden won, by default, on substance. Biden supporters blamed a head cold on their man’s hoarse voice and subdued manner, while Trump’s supporters declared Biden ready for the nursing home. Meanwhile, Trump used his arsenal of misinform...
Several years ago, when I was covering state government from Santa Fe, I attended the annual briefing given to reporters prior to the upcoming wildfire season. After going over the current conditions and expectations for the coming months, the discussion turned to reporters’ safety. We were warned about the unpredictable nature of fire and the importance of following their directions at all times. At the end, they talked about worst-case scenarios. The instructor pulled out what looked like an aluminum-foil blanket and explained that when a...