Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Sorted by date Results 251 - 275 of 1650
The ghost of political déjà vu has revisited the Republican Party, with the GOP suffering humiliating defeats in virtually all of their political contests. The one bright spot was Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves holding onto his seat in a state so ruby red no one expected Democrats to win, anyway. Ohio voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of guaranteeing women the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution. Interestingly, in November 2022, access to abortion measures won in all six state ballot measures where it was up for a vote. On the...
Here in sunny Los Angeles, it’s raining. It’s too bad it didn’t rain real hard on Nov. 11. It might have helped firefighters put out the enormous fire under the 10 Freeway near downtown before the heat weakened the pillars and forced the highway to be closed. The fire – which officials now say was arson – erupted near a village of homeless people living in their colorful tents, trailers and sleeping bags. It was fed by huge stacks of wood pallets that were illegally stored in the underpass. Gov. Newsom would never dare say that “houseles...
It can be cataclysmic when God’s plan for us forces a change in the whole way we’ve lived our lives up to that point. I’ve seen it happen several times since I was called to serve as a pastor. I have no Bible behind me when I say this, but experience leads me to assert that it’s especially difficult for men of action, or activity, to encounter a change in their circumstance that forces them to spend some time in what feels like “doing nothing.” This is because men especially are tempted to view themselves in light of what they do or accompli...
In a state often lacking statesmanship, two crime-fighters are emerging who are giving us hope. Listening to Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman and Attorney General Raúl Torrez talk about crime, you wouldn’t know they’re Democrats. Or Republicans, or independents or anything else for that matter. Few New Mexicans outside law enforcement likely knew that police officers had been prosecuting shoplifting cases in Albuquerque’s Metropolitan Court. And their conviction rates were abysmal, only about 15%. Bregman said the old system was...
Debates over free speech have deeply immersed themselves into the fabric of our culture over the past few years. Wild and sharp finger-pointing has gone in both directions. This month, a Cornell University junior accused of posting violently threatening statements against Jewish people on campus was held without bail after his first appearance in federal court, as he should have been. Patrick Dai, from Rochester, N.Y., has been charged with using interstate communications to post death threats. The graphic, anonymous messages posted on a Greek...
You know how sometimes when you’re going 70 mph and suddenly a stupid fly in the car starts bothering the hell out you? You know how it keeps buzzing around your head, landing on your windshield, and you have to open the window and try to shoo it out without crashing your car? Well, Vivek Ramaswamy reminded me of that fly during the Republican primary debate last Wednesday night. The brash 38-year-old easily stole the show in the third Trump-less contest. And he was dead right on a couple of issues – especially when he attacked the liberal medi...
Well, over the past two weeks, we’ve had Halloween’s spookiness, the idiocy of falling back to end daylight savings time and local elections. While, as I write this, the outcome of the election is unknown, our state and national elections are becoming scarier all the time and our country seems to be falling apart at the seams. Halloween isn’t so bad, and our local elections give us the opportunity to personally represent ourselves regarding taxation for local improvements. Falling back to standard time, on the other hand, mainly just throws our...
At the close of World War II, the United States revealed one of the secrets to the Allied success. It was the discovery in 1942 of a large tungsten deposit in the hills outside of Yellow Pine, Idaho. Tungsten is a rare mineral used to harden artillery shells. With those shells, enemy armored vehicles and tanks were blown up. Tungsten was also used to harden bullets, and its discovery in Yellow Pine was credited with having shortened the war by at least one year and saved the lives of a million American soldiers. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower sent...
When government clearly goes too far, someone may ask whether or not government has the right to do what it did. The honest answer is always “no.” Government has no rights. It’s not that government has no extra rights; government has no rights of any kind. Individuals who work for government have rights. They have the same rights anyone else has. Rights equal and identical to the rights everyone else enjoys, but no more. These individuals don’t magically get extra rights made up out of thin air because they work for government or wear a badge...
Some years ago, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wrote that there were known/knowns, known/unknowns and unknown/unknowns. Think about it. That’s things we know, things we know that we don’t know and things we don’t know we don’t know. It’s that last one that will put you in really deep kimchi. Jake Sullivan’s “Foreign Affairs” article prepared prior to Oct. 7, noting that the Middle East was quieter than it had been in two decades, is a classic example of unknown unknowns. Sullivan didn’t kn...
The second psalm is an amazing song of victory. God triumphs over his enemies and spoils the plans of the kings of the world. He does this primarily by installing the Messiah as his king, over all the rest of them, and by promising the whole earth as the Messiah’s possession. This psalm is quoted in the New Testament, including by Jesus, as an explanation for the suffering and resurrection of Christ, and as a promise of enduring, future victory over evil for the people of God. Jesus is the star of the show in this song. However, you’ve nev...
Sometimes the weight of the world is overwhelming. We see so many ugly things going on around us, whether on television, print, social media or just the messy things people say or do. The good in the world is often drowned out by the noise of bad behavior. It can be soul-crushing, especially as we try to continue on our path while dodging the arrows slung our way. When I find myself in that space, I always think of my dad. He had a no-nonsense way of being in the world. When I’d talk about nonsensical things that people would do, he’d alw...
Ask any parent about the time their kids spend on mobile devices, and you’ll likely hear the same refrain: It’s too much. Excessive use of smartphones and social media is linked to rising rates of teenage depression and self-harm, while also damaging students’ academic performance and exacerbating achievement gaps. At this point, the question isn’t whether phones should be banned from classrooms, but why more schools haven’t done so already. Evidence about the negative effects of mobile devices on learning is overwhelming. Large-sca...
Well, well, well … look at what’s transpired in Trump World over the past few days. Two of Donald Trump’s most ardent defenders have decided to switch teams and testify against the former president. Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro have agreed to take last-minute plea deals, turn state’s evidence, and testify against their former boss. Chesebro has agreed to testify in future cases if called to do so. What a difference a few days before an upcoming trial can seem to make. After an unsuccessful attempt to keep Trump in the White House in an a...
“The more we learn about the 2020 election the more ILLEGITIMATE it becomes. America deserves to know whether we have a FAKE president in the oval office.” How could Republicans in the House struggle for three weeks and then unanimously elect a man who said this kind of irresponsible stuff to be their new speaker? How could the hapless House Republicans – Oh, wait a minute. My mistake. There’s a typo in that first sentence. It should be “the 2016 election,” not the 2020 election. Oh, and another thing. It wasn’t the new Republican Ho...
Many people have put up decorations, told creepy stories, watched spooky movies and selected costumes during this Halloween season. Although not particularly Halloween-related, while going to church recently, one of our 3-year-old granddaughters sang the “Itsy, Bitsy Spider” nursery rhyme song. You’ve probably heard it, “The itsy bitsy spider crawled up the water spout. Down came the rain, and washed the spider out. Out came the sun, and dried up all the rain, and the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again.” Often, children repeat songs ove...
Portales judge failed to stand up for justice Editor’s note: Portales District Judge Donna Mowrer on Sept. 7 declined to hear arguments in private citizens’ efforts to force a referendum on bills passed this year by the state Legislature. Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver has said the bills are not subject to referendum. Mowrer told petitioners she was declining to exercise jurisdiction since petitioners had also asked the state’s Supreme Court to exercise jurisdiction. I sat in the courtroom of Judge Mowrer in Portales, expec...
The nation and much of the world is reeling from the horrific and unsettling events that have occurred between Israel and Hamas. There’s also a war still going on in Ukraine, and looming overhead is the possibility the federal government may shut down in about a month. Amid it all, the House Republican majority is making a mockery of effective governance. As I’m writing this column, two weeks out from the removal of Kevin McCarthy, Republicans have yet to elect speaker to succeed him. Clown show doesn’t even seem the perfect term to descr...
The world is going to hell and taking America’s wealth, military power and geopolitical influence with it. Thanks to the terrorists of Hamas, we’re slowly being pulled deeper into a war in Israel that could set the whole Middle East on fire. And remember the bloody war in Ukraine? It’s been blasted off the front page, but after 20 months it’s still an ongoing slaughter, despite more than $100 billion from U.S. taxpayers to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia. It would be fair to argue that if Donald Trump or any random Republican had been...
Do humans have an inherent right to self-defense, including the use of violence? What about Christ’s consistent ethic of non-violent resistance toward evil? The Bible mostly assumes that people have the right to defend themselves. There are places, though, where this right becomes plain and is dealt with openly. At the beginning of the Bible, God pronounces a death-penalty on murderers. Since humans are made in his image, to commit murder is to strike out at God and is rewarded with death. It would seem logical that, if human life is worth t...
I remember the first time I met Jerry Seidenwurm. He told me the saddest baseball story I think I’ve ever heard. Jerry was maybe 10 years old, growing up a Giants fan in New York in the mid-1950s. His dad was drinking buddies with Giants Owner Horace Stoneham. When Jerry learned that his dad knew Stoneham, he made it his mission to speak with the team boss so he could ask him about a dream held by every baseball-obsessed young man: Could he be a batboy for the Giants? Stoneham sized him up and asked if he were serious, because a batboy had a l...
More than a century ago in 1900, Black intellectual extraordinaire W.E.B. Du Bois stated the problem of the 20th century would be the problem of the color line. He was right on target. This prophetic message remains relevant today in the 21st century. If the past several years have taught us anything, it is as a country we’re in a perpetual state of crisis when it comes to the racial situation plaguing our nation. A Pew Research Center poll conducted in August asked more than 5,000 adults their views on the state of race relations in A...
It turns out that some of our smartest college kids aren’t just stupid about things like microaggressions and gender pronouns. The reaction on many campuses to the slaughter of innocent Israelis by Hamas terrorists showed that many students are just as a stupid about Israel and the rest of the world. It was shocking – and sad – to see American college students marching around, openly rooting for Palestine and celebrating Hamas’ “victory” over Israel. It proved how deeply and dangerously our country’s higher education system has been poisoned by...
When the revolution in higher education finally arrives, how will we know? I have a simple metric: When universities change how they measure faculty work time. Using this yardstick, the U.S. system remains far from a fundamental transformation. It is no accident that former college president Brian Rosenberg titled his new book, "‘Whatever It Is, I’m Against It’: Resistance to Change in Higher Education." Some background: Faculty at Tier 1 research universities (which includes my own employer, George Mason University) typically bargain for w...
Oct. 3 will go down in American history as the first time a speaker of the House was expelled from Congress by his own peers. Kevin McCarthy, a man consumed of blind personal ambition and self-interest, was shown the exit door by his congressional colleagues. Eight Republicans – Andy Biggs, Ken Buck, Tim Burchett, Eli Crane, Matt Gaetz, Bob Good, Nancy Mace and Matt Rosendale – joined all Democrats (who were unanimous) in voting out McCarthy. The American public witnessed Republican members of the House of Representatives engage in an int...