Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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When the New Mexico Legislature passed Senate Bill 94 earlier this year, allowing college athletes to profit from the use of their name, image or likeness, some lawmakers feared we were picking a fight with the mighty NCAA. If that were the case, the masters of collegiate sports just cried uncle. The NCAA has changed its rules, just as new laws here and in other states were taking effect. College athletes will now be able to hire agents, sign endorsement deals, make commercials, leverage their presence on social media and...
Frank and I were home after our first year of college and Bruce had just graduated from high school in the summer of 1977 when we decided it would be safe to smoke pot in an abandoned field off a quiet road. We were in an abandoned field because none of us had a home of our own at the time. We were all staying with our parents for the summer. The abandoned field wasn’t a great hideout. The police officers dumped our baggie into the wind, took down information from our IDs, gave us a stern talking-to and ended by t...
I wish Couy Griffin would do us all a favor the next time he goes on national television. Tell them you’re from Texas. Griffin was one of a handful of Jan. 6 insurrectionists featured June 20 on a two-hour CNN special about the riot that day at the U.S. Capitol. He was arrested by FBI agents on federal charges of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority. Among the pearls of wisdom he dispensed were the belief that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick and protester A...
I rise today in support of leakers. Here’s to Daniel Ellsberg, a former Marine who was working as a private-sector military analyst in 1971 when he leaked the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret study on U.S. activities in Vietnam dating back to the Truman administration. It revealed a decades-long history of lies to the American public by both military and civilian leaders, including their denials at the time of bombing raids beyond Vietnam’s borders. The 7,000-page document could not be smuggled out on a thumb drive in 1971. It...
There’s a great scene in the movie “Bull Durham” where “Crash” Davis, the veteran catcher, teaches hotshot pitching prospect “Nuke” LaLoosh how to talk to the media: “We’ve got to play ‘em one game at a time.” “I’m just happy to be here, and hope I can help the ballclub.” “I just want to give it my best shot. And, the good Lord willing, things will work out.” As a former sportswriter, I thought director Ron Shelton gave it 110 percent in capturing the typical locker-room exchanges. Players and coaches lean on cliches because...
Thanks to solid investigative reporting by Searchlight New Mexico, the state Children, Youth and Families Department is no longer using a secure messaging system designed to circumvent open records laws by automatically deleting records before a request can be made. The system allowed CYFD officials to automatically delete their text messages. According to former CYFD Chief Public Information Officer Cliff Gilmore, Department Secretary Brian Blalock told top staff members that they should set their messages to automatically d...
I graduated from both high school and college thinking that the Underground Railroad was an actual train, with Harriet Tubman at the controls. When I read recently about the controversy regarding plans by the Las Cruces school district to develop a more equitable curriculum, I thought back to my school days and how shallow and misleading my education was as to the contributions made by those who did not sail over willingly from Europe, and their descendants. The history of our nation taught when I was in school was one that...
For the past four years, our nation’s immigration policy was the equivalent of a “Keep Out” sign on the front yard. That didn’t stop desperate migrants from seeking refuge. The border wall was the physical embodiment of that policy. It was the top priority for the previous administration, and the most motivating issue for the Republican base, who were promised that Mexico would pay for construction. Former President Donald Trump routinely battled with members of Congress, including those from his own party, over funding...
I realize there are other issues higher on his priority list, but I hope President Joe Biden clarifies the federal government’s position on the enforcement of marijuana laws before legal sales begin here next year. New Mexico was the 18th state to legalize adult marijuana use, and all of those states have a conflict with the federal government. But the situation in southern New Mexico is unique because of the Border Patrol checkpoints along all of our highways. Kyle Williamson, special agent in charge of the El Paso Sector o...
In his 2007 book, former CIA Director George Tenet boasts that the first U.S. covert teams were in Afghanistan 16 days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “Less than two and a half months later, a core group of 90 CIA paramilitary officers, along with a small number of special forces units, in combination with Afghan militias and supported by a massive aerial bombardment by the U.S. military, had defeated the Taliban and killed or captured one quarter of Usama bin Ladin’s top lieutenants, including his mil...
I will be fully vaccinated in a couple of weeks. The pandemic, for me, is almost over, and I’m incredibly grateful to the brilliant men and women who developed these safe and effective vaccines. But this doesn’t feel like victory. Until March of last year, Americans saw pandemics as something that happen every few years in Africa or Asia. We were confident that our modern healthcare system would protect us. The notion of more than 562,000 U.S. deaths, and still growing every day, was inconceivable then. We’ve been livin...
The government has no right to tell me what I can eat, drink, smoke, snort or inject. It can prevent me from doing those things in public. And it can hold me responsible for any crimes I commit after having done those things, including driving. But that’s all. Not only does the government lack the right to prevent me from eating, drinking, smoking, snorting or injecting anything I want, it also lacks the ability. Desperate attempts to disprove that reality through mass incarceration have only served to highlight the deeply i...
Rodeo may be the only college sport that isn’t knee-deep in hypocrisy. That’s because rodeo is not part of the NCAA, and has never held romanticized notions about the purity of amateur athletics. The sport has always been about prize money. The Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association champion each year is the one who wins the most money. Marginal athletes in rodeo don’t get cut or put on waivers. They know it’s time to quit when they can’t earn enough gas money to get to the next event. And so, college athletes in rodeo compete f...
The New Mexico Legislature is not a co-equal branch of government, and that’s by design. The New Mexico Governor’s Office is modern and up-to-date; and operates much like other governor’s offices throughout the country. The last major update came in 2020 when a new Cabinet-level department was added to coordinate services for young children. The New Mexico Legislature is antiquated and out-of-date; and is thoroughly unlike any other state legislature in the country. I’m not sure when (or if) the last major update was, bu...
Every bill passed by the New Mexico Legislature begins with a conspiracy to break the rules and then cover it up. And every member is in on it. Before the start of floor debate on any bill, the sponsor has to read the following disclaimer: “I ask unanimous consent that the rules be suspended and the record reflect that all actions have been taken …” for final passage of the bill. I always wondered why they didn’t just change the rule, instead of agreeing to break it every time. And I wondered what would happen if just on...
I did not like “Green Eggs and Ham.” I thought the book to be a scam. I knew that it could not be right for all the eggs I'd seen were white. I was then too young to see the humor in absurdity. The notion of an egg gone green seemed a most distasteful thing. But I did so love that scruffy cat with the yellow fur and floppy hat. His face would twist into disgust when offered up his green breakfast. It did not matter what time or place he would not have a single taste. Until many days had long gone by he finally gave green foo...
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” The above quote is attributed to Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat, but the first time I heard it was in a George Harrison song, and it stuck with me. I could hear George singing in my head as I watched the Conservative Political Action Conference last month. The Republican Party is operating without a platform. That’s not an opinion. At the 2020 Republican Convention they decided not to update the party platform. They issued a resolution instead, stating, “T...
I’m not sure if the Super Bowl is a testament to our persistence and ability to overcome challenges, or more evidence that our priorities are all screwed up. But I will admit that I’m surprised they made it to the finish. When Major League Baseball stumbled out of the gate in July, with the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals both having to shut down in the first week, I didn’t see much hope for the NFL being able to complete its season. They didn’t get here without paying a cost. According to USA Today, 262 players...
LAS CRUCES — Today I can report that the state of our state is … TBD. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham broke with tradition and skipped the State of the State address, which has always been given by the governor a couple of hours after the start of each legislative session. And I’m not sure why. The governor did finally give the address Jan. 26 in a taped speech in which the feed became frozen a few minutes in. The governor was reportedly concerned about both the threat of civil unrest and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. One of th...
LAS CRUCES — Trumpism was an ugly and violent political movement that was always destined to die an ugly and violent death. A mere election loss was never going to be enough to kill the movement, regardless of how decisive that loss may have been. Donald Trump told us before the vote in 2016 that he was bigger than our elections. Of course he wouldn’t agree to abide by the final decision. If he lost, it must be rigged. Five people died in the riot on the U.S. Capitol, including Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick. He...
This is the time of year when people all over the world join in a collective wish that next year will be better than the last one. Never in my lifetime has that bar been set so low. Former children’s TV host Fred Rogers famously passed along the advice his mother gave him when he was a child and images on the TV news were frightening and confusing. Always look for the helpers, she said. In any disaster, there will always be people helping others get through it. And so, with respect and sympathies for the 1.8 million souls wor...
Sen. John Arthur Smith told me several years ago that he was sold on the potential for Spaceport America after hearing space industry executives gush about the possibility to conduct secretive testing and research in the remote New Mexico desert. In the hypercompetitive private space industry, secrecy is a selling point for recruiters looking to lure more new businesses to the spaceport. But for those concerned about government transparency and accountability, that same secrecy is a sticking point. In 2017, officials at...
LAS CRUCES — I was originally not going to include Libertarian candidate Bob Walsh in the U.S. Senate election interviews we conducted recently on community radio, but my co-host, Peter Goodman, argued that if Walsh was on the ballot he needed to be invited. I’m glad he did, as Walsh provided my favorite moment of all the campaign interviews this year. I asked him about the government’s role in healthcare, and put it in the most basic terms I could think of. “I have no money. I have no insurance. I get in a car crash....
Every four years at this time, I have the same thought: Isn’t there a better way to do this? Much of my frustration is tied to the fact that we don’t pick our nation’s leader in a national election. Instead, we have 50 local elections held on the same day, providing 50 opportunities for local officials to tinker with the process. For example, the governor of Texas ordered that there be just one ballot drop-off box for the 2.3 million residents of Houston. I didn’t really care in 2018 when the only polling site in Dodge C...
