Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
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Like clockwork, every presidential election we see a new set of attacks on the Electoral College. The Electoral College is the system by which the United States has elected every president since the Founding. As you may be aware, the Electoral College was the result of compromise among the Founding Fathers to resolve conflicting interests among the colonies that ultimately agreed to adopt the U.S. Constitution, thus becoming the first 13 American states under the Constitution. While the Electoral College has several components, the most...
Every two years New Mexico voters get the chance to make changes to our state constitution. Some years they’re big, fundamental changes, like scrapping the old state Board of Education in favor of a secretary appointed by the governor or ending the cash bail system. Some years they are just tinkering around the edges. This is one of those years. Voters will have four constitutional amendments on the ballot this year. Two of them will increase state support for disabled veterans and all veterans who have been honorably discharged. I don’t know h...
It’s usually good to be a purist, but not in politics. Purism in politics is not feasible. The Republicans in the House proved that for the millionth time last week when they tried to pass the Save Act by attaching it to a CR – a continuing resolution that extends the funding of the federal government and prevents a government shutdown. CRs are what have to happen almost every year when Congress fails to pass its annual budget to fund the government — something that it’s constitutionally required to do by Oct. 1. In other words, if Congres...
My Bible tells me that God exists outside of time. God created time. God works in and through time, but time does not affect God. Scripture says of Jesus that “his goings forth have been from of old, from eternity.” It says in another place that a thousand years are like a day to him. The Lord’s experience of time is necessarily different than ours because he is the one who created it, the one who owns and controls it. On the other hand, here we are, stuck on earth, clicking through moments one second after another. We can’t speed it up when...
When New Mexico’s rural hospitals called for help, our entire state came together – hospitals statewide, the governor’s office, NM Health Care Authority and legislators from both sides of the aisle -- to pass the 2024 Health Care Delivery and Access Act. New Mexico is at a pivotal moment as we struggle to address healthcare challenges facing our hardworking families especially when it comes to access to healthcare. Almost half of our residents are enrolled in Medicaid and, frankly, the Medicaid reimbursement rates to pay our doctors, nurse...
What is old is new again, at least in the world of politics. Recently, Fox News host Jesse Watters made a quip questioning the veracity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate during a live edition of The Five. Regardless of whether he was being intellectually dishonest or not, Watters presented the topic of Obama’s birth certificate as somehow fraught with political intrigue and announced he would be dispatching his producer to find out the truth. “That’s why we’ll be sending Johnny to Hawaii to get the truth about the birth certifica...
Trump or Harris? The pundits and so-called political experts in the liberal and conservative media are still arguing over who won last week’s presidential debate. They’ll never agree. And they’re all so biased and partisan, they can’t be trusted to be honest anyway. But both sides did seem to agree on one thing – ABC News was the biggest loser. By far. Whatever shred of legitimacy ABC’s news-gathering operation had left, which wasn’t much, it was destroyed in full public view during the Trump-Harris debate. For 90 minutes millions of p...
I had prepared another article for today's Quay County Sun, but when I realized the issue's date, I decided to write about terrorism despite having written about Patriot Day last year. This article is biblically based, but it's also heavily editorial, and I had to rush to meet the deadline. It seems that since shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, we'd made fairly good headway against global terrorism and, for a brief period, could actually be at some ease knowing our country was being well-protected against it. Now, terrorism has reared its ugly head...
America’s free press is in crisis. Local journalism, necessary to maintaining an informed and active citizenry, is struggling to survive as Big Tech companies — namely Meta and Google — have used their power to manipulate news and magazine publishers for their own financial gain. They set the rules for how, where and when we see news content online and how much revenue is made. By not negotiating with local news publishers on usage terms and refusing to pay them fairly — or at all — for their work, Big Tech has driven many local outlets o...
I heard a report the other day that the St. James Hotel in Cimarron is closing. Another Wild West landmark goes down. The St. James is where I got the best steak I’ve ever eaten, but that wasn’t so long ago, when its owners’ focus was more on fine dining than cowboy accommodations. Back in the day, it was a rough and rowdy place, to say the least. Lots of shoot-em-ups, dozens of killings — one estimate I read had the total at 26 dead. Traveling lawmen and notorious outlaws frequented the place, and stories have been passed down about visits...
“He was on our radar.” How many times have we heard that after a mass shooting at a high school or a shopping mall? We heard it for the umpteenth time again last week after a disturbed 14-year-old kid in Georgia took a rifle to school and killed two students, two teachers, and injured nine others. “He was on our watch list,” the local police said to no one’s surprise. A year ago, after the FBI’s radar picked up Colt Gray reportedly making threats online that he was going to “shoot up a middle school tomorrow,” the feds tipped off the county she...
Mark’s Gospel records this teaching: “And Jesus called them to him and said to them, ‘You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’” (Mark 10:42-45) The Greek word translated “great ones” there is megas, fro...
More than 650,000 Americans experienced homelessness on any given night in 2023 -- a 12% increase since 2022. Chronic homelessness is also worsening, with over 143,000 people homeless for at least a year in 2023 -- an all-time high. I’ve been the mayor of Aurora, Colo. for five years. In my first term, I went undercover and lived among people experiencing homelessness in Aurora and Denver for a week. I wanted to understand why Colorado’s homeless community was growing and how my city could best help. The leading policy approach to hom...
My best friend Kelly and I frequently had loud, boisterous arguments over politics that led folks to believe that we disagreed about everything. They were mistaken. His views were influenced by watching Fox News, and mine are influenced by watching CNN, so that’s where the arguments would start. But they didn’t end there. It usually didn’t take long for both of us to call BS on the TV talking points and get to the heart of the matter. That didn’t always lead to an agreement, but it almost always led to a common understanding. Of course,...
Hollywood can’t always be trusted to accurately portray reality or history, to say the least. But I fully enjoyed watching the facts go by in the premier of “Reagan,” which I saw last week at the famous Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. “Reagan,” which stars Dennis Quaid as my father, covers my father’s career from Illinois lifeguard to the American president who set out to bankrupt the Soviet Union – and did it. It took an international team of freedom fighters like Maggie Thatcher and Pope John Paul II to bring down the USSR and end...
On the first day of school last week, we attended the “Meet the Rattlers” event for Tucumcari’s fall athletes, including two of our grandsons. The program included a video promoting good sportsmanship, including by fans. I suspect that was appropriate because the event was likely attended by the most potentially rabid fans — parents and grandparents. While the video was right on about good sportsmanship, it included statements that the main goal shouldn’t be to win. I agree with that philosophy only to an extent because it’s likely that insuff...
In her speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris offered a withering indictment of her opponent. Donald J. Trump, she rightly observed, is in many ways “an unserious man,” but the consequences of returning him to the White House “are extremely serious.” She asked her audience to “consider the power he will have, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court just ruled that he would be immune from criminal prosecution. Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails …” She introduced herself to vo...
Donald Trump’s campaign is in a fierce tailspin as his failed attacks on Kamala Harris haven’t been able to slow down her growing popularity. “It’s very clear the former president is unraveling. He’s having a complete meltdown,” Ashley Etienne, a former Joe Biden staffer and political advisor, said during a recent segment on Anderson Cooper’s CNN show. “Kamala Harris has got him a chokehold that is really driving him to the point of insanity, and really driving his campaign to the point of paralysis.” Harris is officially the Democratic presid...
Thank goodness the Democrat Party’s magic act in Chicago is finally over. For four days we had to watch the liberal media drool over Kamala Harris and her unimpressive VP choice, Tim Walz, like they were the greatest team of presidential candidates since JFK picked LBJ in 1960. We’ve had to listen to a parade of angry Democrats bigshots complain about what a broken, unfair and unfree place America has become and how Harris is going to fix everything and restore democracy. We’ve had to hear a string of Democrat nobodies get up on stage and r...
“The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.” (1 Corinthians 2:15) This is the closest thing I’ve found in the Scripture to a definition of a spiritual person. There are two more that are similar. In Philippians we’re urged to develop the ability to distinguish between things that are excellent, versus those that aren’t. Hebrews says that maturity in the faith means having your senses trained to discern good and evil. “Discernment” is the watch-word in all of this. True, mature spirituality is about being a...
Since President Joe Biden ducked out of the presidential race last month, Vice President Kamala Harris has made steady gains against Donald Trump in most polls. If she wants that lead to endure past a honeymoon phase, she’ll need to articulate an agenda that appeals to persuadable but as-yet-undecided voters. The positions that will work most effectively just happen to be exactly those the country needs. No doubt, Harris has reason to hesitate before adopting any such approach. As ever, Trump is his own worst enemy. The vice president might b...
Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz and his fellow Democrats ratified ample changes during the two years they’ve had control of the Minnesota Legislature -- from expansions of abortion and LGBTQIA+ rights to tax credits and other forward initiatives aimed at making life easier for families. Walz has been an activist governor of Minnesota with a strong progressive agenda. And I’d like to focus on one key element of that agenda: requiring public and charter schools to provide free breakfasts and lunches to all students. Walz was lit...
For Democrats this historic election is about only one issue – Trump. Whoever wins the White House, it won’t be because of issues like high inflation, trillion-dollar annual budget deficits or the humiliation of Afghanistan. It’s going to come down to one simple but big thing: How many Americans love Kamala Harris and how many hate Donald Trump. Democrats know that if they can convince voters to hate Trump more than they hate high interest rates, higher taxes and the open border, Harris will win. It won’t matter if she makes a fool of herself i...
Recently, I participated in a Facebook conversation initiated when someone complained about getting an opened bag of corn chips from the cabinet, only to find that someone else had left only the crumby remnants. I and many others understood the disappointment, but several of us commented about the beneficial use of such leftovers for cooking or as a treat. Shortly after my initial response, I realized the topic was a food-for-thought opportunity. So here’s what came tumbling out of my mind. Crumbs are associated with less-than-desirable t...
Clovis Police Chief Roy Rice is facing harsh criticism for his handling of criminal allegations against a former cop. From here, it looks like Rice is not the only one to blame for justice delayed. The trouble began in February 2023 when a burglary suspect told Clovis police investigators she “knew some information about a cop who was providing her with information and drugs,” court records show. Eighteen months later, that Clovis police officer, Frank Careri, was arrested on charges that include drug trafficking and accessory to res...