Politics / Current Events

In a sweeping move showing the depth and scope of local Republican strategizing, the profound humanity and insight of conservatism, Rio Rancor legislator Craig Brandt wants to prohibit some public school activity fees because they are, in his humble opinion, UNCONSTITUTIONAL!

You know, junk like science lab class fees where they might teach evolution and garbage like that, or fine arts class fees that encourage students to become culturally corrupted, or special education fees that promote the coddling of inferior children, or library fees that might stimulate free thinking, reading banned books and other executable offenses...

Periodically one nation or group attacks another. The assault can be shocking. The corporate press, eager to sell news, keeps the headlines going as long as possible. Governments and pundits who have the power to use what’s happened in support of their interests, extrapolate from the particular to the general. They spew accusations that instill fear of everyone who shares a racial or cultural identity with the perpetrators. Before we know it the situation escalates, and we may have another Inquisition, Middle Passage, invasion of First Nations, Holocaust, Patriot Act, or rash of police murders of unarmed youth on our hands...

Mexico’s President, Enrique Peña Nieto has just completed his lightning fast January 5 visit to Washington to meet with President Obama, a report has been issued, citing their areas of discussion and the meeting could, in normal times, be considered a success. The press coverage was so minimal, however, that Mexico is obviously not a priority issue in the United States. Besides, the real “Mexico issues” are back home in Mexico and they are not favorable to Peña Nieto. This is bad news for us as well.

First, take Iguala where 43 students were kidnapped and later killed last September...

On Wednesday, January 7, 2015 three armed men burst into the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical paper that has published a number of extreme caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in recent years, some of them frankly pornographic. The men were Muslim fundamentalist extremists, out for revenge. They opened fire on an editorial meeting, killing the editor and several cartoonists. Before the horrific incident was over, 12 people were dead.

In the finely honed spirit of French satire, Charlie Hebdo has been poking what some would term religious fundamentalism’s defensive self-image since 2006...

A century ago on the holiday’s eve, weeks of miserable rain gave way to the stillness of a freeze. Tiny ice crystals held the earth, and, with the sun long retired, warm breaths condensed into motion.

“English soldier, English soldier, a merry Christmas, a merry Christmas!” Frederick Heath, a British private, wrote in a letter home as he remembered hearing the greeting in his trench along the Western Front. “Come out, English soldier; come out here to us.” Heath’s 1914 letter continues describing what is known as the First World War’s Christmas Truce...

Due to the vicissitudes of our flailing media, the best and the worst economic news of the year, both released over the holidays, seem to have gone entirely unreported. The explanation is that the media are short staffed over the holidays. But so what? News is news.

First, the worst. It has been repeatedly reported that the state’s long term population growth has slowed sharply. This downturn is due to the fact that more people have been moving out of the state than into it. But it had also been repeatedly reported that due to natural population increase—the excess of births over deaths—the population was still growing. Now we know that comforting thought is a fiction...

Our once and forever governor has once and forever shown the brilliant executive smarts to tap State Dept. of Tourism head Monique Jacobson to run CYFD because Monique knows two things: how to market stuff, how to bleed more money from Nuevo Mexico to feed vampires from out of state who seem to be Monique’s and Susana’s best friends...

While profitable corporations require roads, police protection, and other public infrastructure and services as much as the rest of us, New Mexico has ensured that they will be paying much less of the cost to maintain them. The tax cuts for corporations enacted by the state Legislature and signed by the Governor in 2013 are proving to be much more expensive than originally estimated. So much so that within the next few years we will lose 60 percent of our corporate income tax revenue...

The United States and Cuba are set to re-establish diplomatic relations. Someone pinch me. I didn’t expect this. I long ago concluded that it would never happen in my lifetime. I am elated that I have lived to see this moment.

Now then comes the really hard part, and I have two questions. Will the United States unilaterally end its draconian economic embargo of Cuba, in effect since the early 1960s and roundly condemned throughout the world? Or will it set unnecessary barriers to full normalization by demanding concessions from Cuba that are linked to the lifting of that embargo?...