Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Sorted by date Results 251 - 267 of 267
Dear Editor: The editorial in Wednesday’s paper inferred the people of Texas do not want the blatant gerrymandering of the federal House districts to even up the House representation. Just because political columnist Molly Ivins and the liberal media around Austin say so, it doesn’t mean the people of Texas say so. For as long as I can remember, the Democrats who controlled redistricting tried to lump Republican votes (up to 75 percent or more) so that Republican candidates would not have a chance in other districts. The sta...
Since early in its history America has been a world power and has been called upon increasingly by other nations to fight on their behalf. World War I, for example, would not have turned out as it did without the United States’ role in it, and many in Europe wouldn’t have it any other way; even more so with World War II. Korea was a bit less clear, but even then most civilized nations supported America’s entry, whatever one might think in terms of proper foreign policy. Vietnam, too, was full of difficulties, and argua...
Editor’s note: Pat Merritt, president of American Postal Workers Union, Clovis Local, said her letter represents the opinions of the majority of area APWU members. Dear Editor: The President’s Commission on the U.S. Postal Service, appointed in December, is considering a major overhaul of the nation’s mail system. In a report due to President Bush by Thursday, the commission could recommend drastic changes in mail service — changes that would result in increased postage costs and curtailed services for individuals and sma...
Dog's death outrageous Nothing will change what happened to the police dog in Muleshoe, but the circumstances and explanation for the July 14 death of Sandor are outrageous. Officer Rodney Stevens’ statement about feeling “frustrated” just doesn’t seem quite enough. Clearly, he and the Muleshoe Police Department have not taken responsibility for the action that led to Sandor’s death, and blame it on the air-conditioner. My question is this: Would a reasonable person (even more — a trained police officer) have left an ani...
It is always the burden of principled men and women to defend the liberty of some who aren’t the paragons of virtue, certainly not of ordinary morality. While there may be nothing amiss with sodomy — intimacy between people of the same sex — lots of folks think there is. Among these seem to be many legislators across this country — 13 states have laws banning sodomy — and perhaps some folks on the U.S. Supreme Court. In any case, what certain influential people have been arguing is that if sodomy may not be outlawed...
Santa Fe is a well known and fashionable New Mexico desert city and largely in the hands of a bunch of meddlesome lefties. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, Santa Fe recently enacted an ordinance that mandates — that is to say, coercively imposes — a minimum wage of $10 plus that every employer must pay. There is no opportunity to come to terms with potential employees — the politicians have taken things over. Of course, there is already a national minimum wage, so these statists are not breaking any new ground. They perpe...
Canada is now recognizing gay marriages, and many in America think it is embarrassing that our country is lagging behind. Well, just wait a minute. When gay marriages are not being recognized it isn’t just that one is opposed to them. There can be full acceptance of such marriages while still resisting them, not because one wants to impose one’s moral or religious standards on other people, but simply because one doesn’t want to give economic support to them and so impose such standards on some others. The fact is that by no...
Two years ago, a shark bit off the arm of a boy in Florida and was shot by a ranger in an effort to recover the boy’s arm. I wrote about how revealing it is that animal rights/liberation folks — those who claim there’s no basic difference between people and other species — didn’t protest the killing of the shark. None showed up on TV, none wrote op-ed pieces for prominent papers. Nada. More recently there has been more deafening silence by animal rights/liberation folks, this time in the wake of the SARS viral attack on...
Imagine you are a plumber or a teacher or a guitar player, working in Maine. Imagine that some people who want your services just don’t want to pay your wages. They think you cost too much. So, they go to the government and get it to order you to work at the price they like. When this is resisted, they turn to a bunch of appointed officials in your community — let’s call them Justices of the Maine Supreme Court — and plead their case: “Let the government make those plumbers, teachers or guitar players do their thing for us no...
In light of the very real threat of more terrorism to come, targeting Western-type institutions around the globe, there is great temptation to simply abandon various rules of law, especially due process, in the name of effective response. Not all that surprisingly, many U.S. citizens are going along with this idea, having long ago abandoned any principled commitment to what due process is all about. When the bulk of the citizenry is perfectly willing to enlist the government to abandon such legal principles as the right to...
This idea that Iraqis are criminals for looting is full of problems. To begin with, can you loot from a dictator? What about from a dictator who isn’t even in power any longer? After the dictatorship collapses, whose stuff is being looted anyway? To whom does the money in those government banks belong? To whom do the artifacts in museums belong? Well, they belong to no one — or to everyone. If they do not belong to no one, then there is no looting going on, only some grabbing of stuff that’s lying about, left there by, well,...
This idea that Iraqis are criminals for looting is full of problems. To begin with, can you loot from a dictator? What about from a dictator who isn’t even in power any longer? After the dictatorship collapses, whose stuff is being looted anyway? To whom does the money in those government banks belong? To whom do the artifacts in museums belong? Well, they belong to no one — or to everyone. If they do not belong to no one, then there is no looting going on, only some grabbing of stuff that’s lying about,...
Every time I drive to school, I listen to Rush Limbaugh for about five minutes. It is cultural anthropology for me more than an interest in his latest ridicule of Daschle & Co., although I sympathize with that. Last time I tuned in, Limbaugh was trying hard to explain away the fact that no weapons of mass destruction had yet been found in Iraq. His take was there were other good reasons to go to war there, namely the alleged connection between Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda, the terrorist network, and Hussein’s sadistic dic...
Every time I drive to school, I listen to Rush Limbaugh for about five minutes. It is cultural anthropology for me more than an interest in his latest ridicule of Daschle & Co., although I sympathize with that. Last time I tuned in, Limbaugh was trying hard to explain away the fact that no weapons of mass destruction had yet been found in Iraq. His take was there were other good reasons to go to war there, namely the alleged connection between Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda, the terrorist network, and Hussein’s sadistic dic...
The thing about this Iraqi war plan is that in a republic -- or representative democracy, which is not the best form of government... Which is a constitutionally limited democracy wherein the "people" -- i. e., the majority of them -- can decided only a few matters and a sound, libertarian constitution guides public policy -- people elect some to make and administer the law, who then appoint a bunch of other people to carry out various jobs, including gathering information on where there may be serious threats against the...
Back in the early 1970s a friend of mine in the Louisiana state house told me a lesson he learned. Trying to indicate to his colleagues the absurdity of government micromanagement of the state’s economy. He introduced a bill that would have government regulate water diviners. By his lights, these folks were not professionals of any kind, just hoaxers, would be magicians. Regulating them would be totally ridiculous. So he thought, that would teach us all! Sadly, a sizable portion of the body politic of his state didn’t get...
The thing about this Iraqi war plan is that in a republic -- or representative democracy, which is not the best form of government... Which is a constitutionally limited democracy wherein the "people" -- i. e., the majority of them -- can decided only a few matters and a sound, libertarian constitution guides public policy -- people elect some to make and administer the law, who then appoint a bunch of other people to carry out various jobs, including gathering information on where there may be serious threats against the...
