Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Should the constitutional amendment that voters overwhelmingly approved last year to reform the bail bond system in New Mexico be repealed and replaced as advocated by Gov. Susana Martinez and others? No. Should the system that has been put in place to implement that amendment be modified so that in practice it does a better job of keeping dangerous defendants in jail pending trial? Absolutely. Unless changes are made, public confidence will erode and we could find ourselves reverting to the old “money for freedom” arr...
It took a court order, but the Archdiocese of Santa Fe this month released nearly 1,000 pages from its personnel files that shed additional light on the unconscionable actions of three pedophile priests over three decades — and the extraordinary efforts taken by the church to cover up the crimes they committed against young New Mexicans. Accompanying the documents was a letter of apology from Archbishop John C. Wester to the survivors “for the pain and suffering you have endured.” “It is my deepest hope that our publica...
New Mexicans have a little extra incentive to tune in to World Series between the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers. It’s not often we get to watch a couple of hometown boys play on baseball’s biggest stage. Two key members of the American League champion Astros, Alex Bregman and Ken Giles, hail from Albuquerque and played high school baseball throughout the state. Giles graduated from Rio Grande High School and has been the Astros’ “closer” this year, racking up 34 saves in 38 chances. Giles struck out 83 batters w...
New Mexico Public Education Department Secretary-designate Christopher Ruszkowski did his cause no favors Monday by skipping a public hearing on his department’s controversial changes to proposed science standards. Ruszkowski’s stunning absence was the most glaring, but far from the only, problem faced by an overflow crowd of scientists, teachers, university professors, faith leaders and students who voiced concerns over the proposed changes: • The venue — the 100-seat auditorium of the Jerry Apodaca Education Buildin...
Activists, local education bureaucrats and teacher unions have been fully on board with the mantra that we just don’t spend enough taxpayer dollars on K-12 education in New Mexico. This is in spite of that fact that when it comes to per-student spending, New Mexico tends to be closer to the middle of the pack — in stark comparison to our achievement rankings and graduation rates that are consistently closer to bottom of the barrel. And it goes far beyond debate. Unable to convince legislators to increase our $2.7 billion educ...
It’s important that Congress come to terms on a meaningful tax-cut package that also simplifies the system. President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are calling for a package of tax cuts that are, in fact, needed to make America more competitive and actually give us a long-term chance of taming the deficit. And Trump is hardly the first. John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton all championed tax cuts of one kind or another with positive results. To be sure, there will be lots of haggling over details. B...
When the New Mexico Supreme Court approved new pretrial detention rules earlier this year — rules designed to help judges determine whether a criminal defendant should be held without bail — it was anticipated that as the sweeping reforms were implemented, fine-tuning would be needed. Now, three months after the rules took effect, eight of the state’s 13 district attorneys are proposing changes that provide needed clarity and uniformity in how detention hearings are conducted. The court should listen to them, just as it li...
The leaked draft of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s recommendations to President Trump on 27 national monuments — including the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument near Las Cruces and the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument west of Questa — is so vague it’s useless to the communities that would be affected by any changes. The lack of specificity, like the Sept. 17 “leaking” of the document to The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, has all the appearances of a half-inflated trial balloon sent up by...
ALBUQUERQUE — A high school secretary from Gallup with family ties to Clovis was among those killed in the mass shooting Sunday night at a Las Vegas, Nev., country music festival. Gallup-McKinley County Schools Superintendent Mike Hyatt sent an email to school employees Monday morning to tell them of the tragedy. "Last night during the mass shooting in Las Vegas we lost one of our staff members," Hyatt wrote. "Lisa Romero, discipline secretary at Miyamura, was a victim in t...
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” — Evelyn Beatrice Hall, paraphrasing Voltaire By calling out National Football League players for not standing during the national anthem, and using profanity to do so, President Trump is only further dividing our already divided nation. Is he doing so just to deflect attention from important issues like North Korea threatening to shoot down U.S. military aircraft over international waters, providing recovery aid to Puerto Rico and another GO...
Many in New Mexico — home to three research universities, three national labs and a penchant for attracting high-tech companies — are aghast that their Public Education Department plans to veer away from hard science in its classrooms. With good reason. While the core recommended standards are based on a science curriculum called the Next Generation Science Standards proposed in 2013 by a consortium of 26 states, just over a week ago, PED Secretary-designate Christopher Ruszkowski unveiled proposed adjustments critics say...
Pete Domenici was relaxed and waxing philosophical about another time.A time when the United States had won the Cold War, and the old Soviet Union was in dissolution and disarray. But that victory, a triumph for Ronald Reagan over the Kremlin and for capitalism over communism, brought with it a new set of challenges and dangers. First and foremost, the vast Soviet nuclear weapons complex was no longer subject to iron-fisted command and control. In fact, it was splintered and spread across several breakaway nations, including...
Bad Idea of the Week: Eliminating the presidentially appointed, nine-member Base Realignment and Closure Commission and relying instead on the Department of Defense and General Accounting Office to decide which U.S. military installations will be closed or shrunk. It comes courtesy of Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, party leads on the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, who are suggesting moving forward with a new BRAC but eliminating the BRAC commission. While there’s no question the m...
As expected, the Trump administration announced Tuesday it will phase out the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. It protected from deportation nearly 800,000 young immigrants who as children were brought here illegally by their parents. Although the DACA rollback was announced by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump said in a statement, “… I am not going to just cut DACA off, but rather provide a window of opportunity for Congress to finally act.” That window is six months long, after...
Last week, President Trump raised the possibility of shutting down the federal government unless Congress agrees to fund his “big, beautiful border wall” along the 1,989-mile U.S.-Mexico border — a wall he still says Mexico will pay for, despite repeated denials by the Mexican government. There’s little question border security is as important as it is non-existent. Border states like New Mexico that are dealing with drugs and crime know that better than anyone. But New Mexico is also highly dependent on federal jobs, a...
CLOVIS — Lupe Aguirre had just watched his wife and stepson walk into the Clovis-Carver Public Library on Monday afternoon. A few minutes later, a family came running out of the building, screaming that there had been a shooting. Aguirre said he ran in to look for his family and instead found smoke clearing from gunfire, casings on the floor and parents and children hiding under tables and behind locked doors. He was calling police on his cell phone when he found himself c...
We thought a federal court settled it in 1996. Or that the N.M. Secretary of State’s Office did last year. So why is it taking so long to get an answer in 2017? U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, a Republican, has filed a federal lawsuit against New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat, over whether Pearce can transfer all of his roughly $1 million federal war chest to his campaign for New Mexico governor. Toulouse Oliver’s office has imposed state campaign contribution limits — $5,500 per contributor for both...
A bullish stock market and improved oil revenues boosted New Mexico’s largest permanent funds by $2.1 billion last fiscal year, meaning an extra $61 million will go into state coffers this fiscal year, which began July 1. And like a kid in a candy story waiting for his/her allowance, there is a faction of New Mexicans already planning how to spend it. That’s understandable. But what’s worrisome are the community activists and legislators who will undoubtedly start lobbying early and often to spend more of the $22.3 billion in...
They have yet to define it and haven’t trained enough people to diagnose it. So it’s little wonder the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs finds itself ill-equipped to deal with Gulf War Illness — a multi-symptom malady linked to military service in the Middle East and first identified in the early 1990s. The VA estimates that about 44 percent of the 700,000 Gulf War veterans have symptoms associated with Gulf War Illness, or GWI. Yet given the lack of a definition and trained diagnosticians, it’s also not surprising that ve...
It is deeply regrettable that we, as a nation, have given the minuscule, barely-on-the-fringe white supremacist movement the very notoriety its bigoted disciples crave by mishandling a “march” protesting the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia. There is plenty of blame to go around, but the lion’s share of fault for the death, injuries and political upheaval triggered by the Aug. 11 march goes to the white supremacists/nationalists, neo-Nazi, skinhead thugs who showe...
Change is hard. It’s really hard when you’re talking about a system that has part of its basic architecture enshrined in the state constitution and all of it ingrained in the social and economic fabric of communities across the state. But change we must, in some way, if New Mexico is going to have a viable, high-quality system of higher education that will survive and prosper in a changing world. So give credit to the administration of Gov. Susana Martinez, leaders of New Mexico’s institutions of higher education and key l...
Last week, it was crystal clear where 6-year-old Joel Anthony Suina got his loving and giving nature. A shocking April traffic accident with an Albuquerque Police Department cruiser in the Northeast Heights injured Anthony, his sister and mother. Anthony died after being taken off life support. Yet, even in a time of all-encompassing grief, his mother had the presence of mind to donate Anthony’s organs. He saved the lives of a 52-year-old man, a 46-year-old woman, an 11-year-old boy and a 4-month-old boy. In addition to t...
Just 12 days after undergoing surgery to remove a blood clot above his left eye — a surgery that revealed he has an aggressive brain tumor — Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, delivered a 15-minute speech to his fellow senators that was as inspirational as it was instructional. It may be the best speech he’s ever given. Calling his 30 years in the Senate “the most important job I’ve had in my life,” the 80-year-old McCain urged a return to the days when bipartisanship was key to good government, when senators could trust one anothe...
In a classic New Mexico case of “Ready, Fire, Aim,” New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas has filed a lawsuit accusing Presbyterian Healthcare Services of defrauding the state and possibly engaging in criminal conduct as part of a long-running dispute over the amount of premium taxes the company owes. Except the lawsuit doesn’t actually say how much the AG thinks the state’s largest health care provider should fork over — because a separate audit of premium tax payments by Presbyterian and several other health pl...
Americans have always been proud we live in a country where anybody can grow up to become president. Barack Obama is an excellent example: A biracial kid raised by his white grandparents of modest means who became leader of the free world. Agree or disagree with his politics, Obama was an outstanding role model when it came to civility and manners. Agree or disagree with his politics, you certainly can’t say that about the current resident of the White House. Donald Trump shocked the world with his election last November a...
