Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Earlier this year, South African-born comedian Trevor Noah hit at the heart of a serious problem hurting America right now. “Nuance doesn’t sell as well in America,” Noah said in an interview with CBS. “Nuance means you can’t just take a stand and fight the other person. Nuance means we have to talk a little bit more. And until the American political system can find a way to represent the nuance that exists within America, you are going to create this false impression that there is This or That.” In a nation sharply div...
The constant churn of our own politics has obscured a recent event that should have gotten more attention in the U.S. because it was a moment of hope for a more peaceful future. We are talking about the historic agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, a piece of classic diplomacy that signals progress toward lasting peace in the Middle East. The accord between the two countries promises full normalization of relations in exchange for Israel ending the contested plan to annex occupied territory in the West...
WASHINGTON — The president’s new campaign manager scoffed Friday at the idea that Joe Biden could beat Donald Trump in Texas, despite a raft of recent polls showing a dead heat and one that has the Democrat leading by 5 points. “I would love — I would invite the Biden campaign to play in Texas,” Bill Stepien told reporters in a state-of-the-race briefing call. “They should play hard. They should go after Texas really, really heavily — you know, spend a lot of money in the Houston and Dallas media markets. “I would invite th...
As protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer continue across the country, police procedures and budgets everywhere are coming in for a reexamination. Our advice in this debate is focus on a few facts. We need the police even as we also need to address underlying issues in how communities are policed and how and why progress leaves some communities behind. So beyond the rhetoric, proposed reforms shouldn’t center on disbanding police departments, but what they can focus on is reducing c...
The last time we flew out of Shanghai, China, it was 2015 and we stumbled across a sign hanging from the airport ceiling that seemed like an historical relic even then. It gave instructions — in English — for all travelers on domestic Chinese flights to head one direction and for all international travelers (which included those headed for Hong Kong and Taiwan) to head in the other direction. At the time, we smiled at the admission. The people of both places would appreciate that sign, but Beijing likes to think that bot...
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said his statewide stay-at-home order on coronavirus will expire on Thursday as scheduled, while Texas malls, stores, movie theaters and restaurants may open the next day — with 25% occupancy. Barber shops, hair salons, gyms, massage establishments, tattoo parlors, video arcades and bowling alleys must wait until mid-May at the earliest to reopen, he said. Outdoor sports such as golf and tennis may resume with no more than four participants in a match, and they must observe social distancing g... Full story
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has called for an investigation into why the Federal Aviation Administration certified the Boeing 737 Max and whether the agency is getting too close to the corporations it regulates. The Texas Republican is right. After two of the new 737 Max airplanes crashed, aviation regulators around the world grounded the planes. The FAA took longer to do so, and Cruz said at a speech to the Texas Lyceum that’s a concern. Cruz held hearings on the state of aviation safety in his role as chairman of the Senate s...
The government shutdown has no end in sight because our leaders in Washington don’t seem to want an end that doesn’t amount to political humiliation of the opposition. But imagine for a moment that President Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer could see their way to a compromise that Americans would support and that would greatly benefit this country. To us, it would look like this: The president would get the funding he seeks to enhance border security, including some 230 mil...
Political incivility is too rapidly devolving in America into harassment and violence. The news of explosive devices being mailed to President Barack Obama and the home of Bill and Hillary Clinton is the latest in a string of incidents that reveals an ugliness in our political culture that is leading us ever closer to tragic and destructive consequences. We wrote in June of our dismay over the breakdown of civility in today’s political culture. The seemingly expanding incidents of violence and its lesser cousin, harassment, o...
Aside from the prime-time hype and prolonged standing ovation, President Donald Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court on Monday evening was a sober and dignified occasion worthy of our nation’s highest court and highest office — no small feat in our current political climate. Whether or not the 53-year-old Kavanaugh — a Yale Law School graduate, former clerk for retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy and federal judge who has written over 300 opinions during his 12 years on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals — i...
In the melee that is the debate over mass shootings, we can’t help but return to a singular thought: There are a great many reforms that could make a meaningful difference and win broad support, if only they could get a fair hearing. So we were encouraged to see Texas Gov. Greg Abbott respond to the shooting at Santa Fe High School by holding a series of roundtable discussions with important stakeholders. With the governor now announcing proposals out of those discussions, we are both heartened by what we are hearing and c...
It’s easy to forget how young the Silicon Valley companies that dominate so much of our lives really are. One need be only a freshman in high school to have been born in a time before Facebook existed. And a baby delivered on the day Google was incorporated would turn 20 only this September. In just the single lifespan of a teenager, those two firms — along with many other competitors and allies — have generated riches and international clout to rival the nation’s grandest commercial enterprises. Ad sales made Google...
Imagine learning that you have only minutes to live. That was the challenge posed by an irate Hawaii resident for whom the notion wasn’t a conceptual exercise, but a terrifying reality. A million and a half Americans in the Aloha State were scared out of their gourds this month — as would be any of us — to receive a stark state-issued warning on their cell phones: MISSILE THREAT INBOUND ... THIS IS NOT A DRILL. It was neither threat nor drill, but human error. And it has provided rich fodder for television comedians, but to H...
Everyone gripes about air travel. The complaints are universal: bare-it-all security checks; shoving matches over cabin bin space; economy seats increasingly reminiscent of a miniature medieval torture cell maliciously called the “little ease.” Oh, for those glamorous jet-set days of yesteryear, when fliers were treated like royalty starting at airport curbside. Can modern air travel really be called an improvement? Yes, in the starkest and most critical terms: You’ll get there in one piece. Year’s-end reports show 2017 wa...
DALLAS — Two decades ago, Harris County planners predicted with chilling accuracy just how devastating a storm like Hurricane Harvey would be to the Houston area. Far lesser storms, they determined, could wreck a large swath of the city and its western suburbs. In a report dated May 1996, engineers for the Harris County Flood Control District concluded the area’s reservoir system was severely insufficient and imperiled thousands of properties. The report’s authors proposed a $400 million fix: constructing a massive undergroun...
It's hard to take seriously the thousands of people who have signed a petition urging Texas to amicably divorce the rest of the union. Even in the fiercely independent Lone Star State, this idea is roadkill. While the signatories are exercising their right to free speech, this idea is just plumb screwy and an odd rejection of basic American principles. Besides, as in any divorce, shouldn't we worry about the children? The Texas petition says the United States is suffering from economic troubles stemming from the federal...
F or five days this month, Texas presented its best arguments for why its Voter ID law does not discriminate against minorities. The federal government offered its own critical assessment. The political nature of this national debate over access to the polls, which largely pits Republicans against Democrats, predictably resulted in widely divergent analyses. Before we address the particulars, a reminder of what's at stake: The importance of this case extends beyond our borders because Texas and other Republican-controlled...
F or five days this month, Texas presented its best arguments for why its Voter ID law does not discriminate against minorities. The federal government offered its own critical assessment. The political nature of this national debate over access to the polls, which largely pits Republicans against Democrats, predictably resulted in widely divergent analyses. Before we address the particulars, a reminder of what's at stake: The importance of this case extends beyond our borders because Texas and other Republican-controlled...
The drama was impossibly lost in the cobwebs of history, dating back 120 years this Juneteenth. Not even the descendants of Isaac "Ike" Bruce knew the account of his close call with vigilante justice in the raw, young state of Texas. In important ways, the case has eerie parallels with stories of justice gone awry today, both disturbing and uplifting. Rough-hewn Texas of 1892 did not take crime lightly. Twelve men were hanged that year in official executions, nine of them black. Texas was also a hotbed of lynchings, and 1892...
