Author Archives

New Years Resolutions

I’ve always been ambivalent about New Year’s resolutions.  Some years I’ve made them, some years not.  Rarely do people keep them.  In tongue in cheek recognition of this, my friend Bob Cornelius wrote on Facebook last night: 1st Resolution: Go to the gym every day. 2nd: Feel guilty for not going. 3rd: Pie & ice [...]

Pain

Today I read a New York Times column that made my blood run cold. It was from two days ago, written by Emily Rapp, a woman who happens to live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, as I do. A woman who is a mother, as I am. A woman who has faced pain I cannot [...]

Of cakes and congressmen

I spent the morning baking a cake (two cakes, actually) for my daughter’s 6th birthday, and honest to goodness I wish I could bake one for Paul Ryan, too.  Watch the video of him explaining his budget plan, or if you’re feeling wonkish, read the whole 73-page plan and see why. A massive budget crisis [...]

New Mexico in Focus

I’ll be a panelist on The Line this afternoon, the talking heads portion of New Mexico in Focus, a public television show taped at KNME in Albuquerque.    The show airs on Channel 5 (if you have Comcast) Friday at 7:00 pm and Sunday at 6:30 a.m., but if you’re like me and watch pretty much [...]

Life after the legislative session

At long last, I’m writing again. Not that I haven’t been writing, of course. For the past two months, as an analyst at the New Mexico House of Representatives, I did a great deal of writing, but writing analysis of proposed legislation is a very different business from blogging.   At least it was until the [...]

Going offline for a while

For reasons I am not at liberty to discuss, I will be unable to write again here until March 19. My column at Capitol Report and my appearances on KSNM News New Mexico will resume after that date as well.

On liberty, civility, and the lessons of history

My latest column at Capitol Report New Mexico is up. I’ll be on the radio on KSNM at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow (Wed., Jan. 26).  My regular time will be Tuesdays at 7:00, but this week had to reschedule to Wednesday.  Schedule of the show’s other interesting New Mexico guests is in the right column here.

Youngest blogger in Santa Fe?

My 7-year-old daughter wants to start a blog. Yes, really.  She writes long stories for her sisters and friends already (she’s the one who started reading when she was 3) so I know she’s serious. She’s has had a g-mail account for a long time, so setting up a blog for her on Blogger will [...]

The earnestness of being important

My fellow Capitol Report New Mexico columnist, former State Sen. John Grubesic, observes in today’s column: Ninety-five percent of the people in that building think that they are the most important people in New Mexico (myself included). Ninety-six percent of the people outside of that building would have a tough time naming who represents them [...]

News New Mexico

I was on News New Mexico with Jim Spence and Dr. Michael Swickard on KSNM 570 this morning, and am going to be a weekly contributor to the show.  Once we pick a regular time, I’ll post it. The show airs from Las Cruces, NM, but they have a very user-friendly podcast. There is also [...]

My new jobs

This is my new office.  Yes, it’s the Roundhouse, home of the New Mexico State Legislature.  No, they didn’t do a recount and discover I’d won the election after all.  I’m working as a bill analyst, poring over every piece of proposed education legislation proposed in the House and producing analyses for the Republican members. [...]

Reflections on the campaign

The election is over, at long last.  I didn’t win, but with only 16% of the voters in the district being Republican, that wasn’t entirely a surprise.  I hope to be blogging regularly again as soon as the dust settles.  In the meantime, here’s a piece I wrote for Capitol Report New Mexico, one of [...]

I miss my blog

Several people have told me over the last few months that they miss my blog. I miss it, too. I knew it had been a long time since I’d written, but when I looked today and saw that my last post was in May, I was stunned. I hadn’t realized it had been that long. [...]

Rally at the Roundhouse

Tomorrow morning  I’ll be at a rally for Republican Candidate for Governor, Susana Martinez Friday, May 28, 2010 at 10:00 am At the Front of the State Capitol Building 490 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, New Mexico If you’re there, please introduce yourself. I’ll be the one with all the kids.

My daughters’ political ad debut

The Russell girls, in a tiny but spectacular portion Adam Kokesh’s ad: Kokesh for Congress Ad

Projections…and projection

Joe Monahan writes about the New Mexico governor’s race, [S]ome of our analysts see a developing problem for Susana [Martinez] — the strength of GOP lieutenant governor candidate John Sanchez. He is spending heavily on TV and is the favorite to take the prize over Brian Moore and Kent Cravens. But will many GOP voters [...]

Federal health care law hurts New Mexicans

According to the New Mexico Independent, a “quirk” in the Federal Health Care Monstrosity of 2010 will mean higher premiums for thousands of New Mexicans. Why? It’s complicated. My eyes started to glaze over the first time I read the story and I had to backtrack several times to figure out exactly what was going [...]

Stop the carnage

The drunk driver who killed an 18-year-old woman last month had a blood alcohol level five times the legal limit.   When I saw the photos of the twisted wreckage and read that Cecilio Jaramillo had been driving in the wrong direction when he crashed head-on into Mariah Arguello, I would have bet that his BAC [...]

Michelle Malkin vs. Adam Kokesh

Adam Kokesh is a candidate in the Republican primary for a New Mexico Congressional seat that Republicans virtually never win.  Third District GOP candidates rarely make it onto the radar screens of the Big Guns of the national political scene.  To be sure, Michelle Malkin is one of those Big Guns, and the day before [...]

Why I don’t blog much these days (part 3)

This is Cordelia at the ice rink, where the three big girls and I have been spending quite a bit of our time lately. Skating is great exercise, and great fun, but it eats into my writing time. As if I didn’t have time management problems enough, my husband and I are going to take [...]

Why I don’t blog much these days (part 2)

At the moment, I can be thin or I can be interesting, but I cannot possibly be both.

Why I don’t blog much these days (part 1)

This is Portia’s new hobby. It’s only fun if she has on her clothes and, ideally, her shoes as well. Therefore, anytime I fill or drain the bathtub, I need to stay in the room, or post a guard. Regrettably, the guards (the older girls) are the sort that would get themselves and their fellow [...]

Did the Iranians hack Facebook this time?

I was just wondering, because I’ve been having a world of trouble with it the past few days. Were I superstitious, I might suspect it was a sign I should be doing something more productive with my time. Mercifully, I am not.

Is he or isn’t he? Only his bartender knows for sure.

I just discovered another very cool thing WordPress 2.9 lets you do — embed video right into your blog just by pasting the You Tuble URL. You don’t have to use the “insert video” icon, or even paste in the embed code. Just the URL text, right into the post. I know, I know. It’s [...]

Just because I can

I have nothing in particular to say about Raphael’s School of Athens, but uploaded it just because I like it, and just because I can. If I was going to write something interesting, it would be about my insane fellow countrymen who think we should all have to take our shoes off to get on [...]

Why I am so clever

The post title is pinched from a chapter title in one of Friedrich Nietzsche’s books.  I cannot remember which one, because I had time either to look it up or pinch and upload a picture of philosophy’s bad boy, but not both, so I chose the latter. And yes, that means that I can now [...]

So you think I’m too young to use a knife?

Go ahead and try to take it…out of my cold, dead hands. Obviously, I figured out how to get a new photo onto the blog, since Portia was a little bitty baby when my technical difficulties began.  I still can’t upload pictures to the blog, but I can upload them to Flickr or Picasa and [...]

Am I blue

You’ve seen this picture before.  You’re not seeing a new one because I have been unable to upload new images to my blog for many, many months now, and it’s really got me, well, blue. It used to be so easy.  I’d press the “insert an image” icon, and then click the “Choose files to [...]

How the other half lives

Not the rich other half, or the poor other half, but the other half that has two children.  What’s the average for American couples now?  2.1 children?  1.9?  Something like that.  This week, I have 2.0 because 2.0 of my 4.0 are in California with my husband.  The house is quieter.  The laundry doesn’t pile [...]

Take two aspirin and call me when you’re terminal

First we heard that 40-something women like myself no longer need to have mammograms, and women over 50 don’t need them annually.  Now we get to cut back on Pap smears to test for cervical cancer as well. Over the next week or so, presumably, we can expect to hear that prostate screenings can be [...]

Transparency in action: your tax dollars into the abyss

Jim Scarantino of the New Mexico Watchdog reports that $6.4 billion in federal stimulus dollars has gone to non-existent congressional districts.  Yes, you read that right:  non-existent districts. Ed Pound at the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, blamed the apparent disbursement of your tax dollars into non-existent congressional districts on the recipients not knowing in [...]

A post, finally, amid snow flurries, typing lessons and sneaky back-door tax increase elections

Just a quick note to let my readers know I haven’t taken leave of the land of the living.  It’s been a very busy couple of weeks.  I’ve done some reassessment of priorities, and have really focused on getting our schooing routine in order and, to a lesser extent, getting my exercise regimen going again.  [...]

What’s new

My posts have been few and far between lately, compared to my output a few months ago, say.  This business of educating one’s own children is a responsibility that’s been weighing heavily upon me of late.  When you homeschool, and your kids turn out to be ignorami, there’s nobody else to blame.  That’s some pressure, [...]

The personal and the political

The personal — On the bright side, no one in my house has swine flu yet.  On the not quite so bright side, my washing machine died with a load full of sopping wet, not-yet-clean clothes inside. The political — I’d say Chris Christie is going to win a big, fat gubernatorial victory, wouldn’t you? [...]

Surrender Dede

That’s the headline emblazoned across the sky in this brilliant bit of photoshoppery.  It’s done in the style of the “Surrender Dorothy” the Wicked Witch of the West wrote in the sky with her broomstick.  I can’t insert it here, because of technical difficulties, but the picture is at Nice Deb and Frugal Cafe).  Nice [...]

Look who’s shaving her head

My friend Tanya Van Dyke, that’s who.  She’s doing it through St. Baldrick’s, an organization that raises money for childhood cancer research.  It works like this:  someone, like Tanya, agrees to shave her head in order to get her friends and family to donate money to St. Baldrick’s for cancer research. Personally, you couldn’t pay [...]

Sarah Palin endorses Doug Hoffman

I cannot tell you the joy with which I read that headline, via Memeorandum. Newt, digging himself in ever deeper with the party’s conservative base, reiterates his support for Dede Scozzafava. If Doug Hoffman does defeat the GOP’s appalling nominee in the NY23 race, it just may be the wake-up call the party needs.  Or [...]

Pearls before swine

Via Memeorandum, I read TV Newser’s report that President Obama spent two and a half hours giving an off-the-record briefing to a small coterie of left-wing media luminaries including Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC (which, unlike Fox News, actually is a news organization), Maureen Dowd, best known for overuse of sexy double-entendres in [...]

Absentee blogger

That’s me this week, still trying to get our school routine back on track after the vacation.  There just isn’t a lot of creative energy left over for writing.  Oh, and you didn’t miss the NMI link; I took this week off, the first time I’ve done so since I began writing the column. I’m [...]

The end of the vacation and the Nobel Peace Prize

Today I woke up in my own bed again after ten nights in various hotel beds, couches and air mattresses on the floor.  My back will take a few days to recover, both from that and from far too many hours in the car.  I’d give just about anything to spend the morning at home, [...]

My mom went to Nordstrom and all I got was this lousy blog post

In the information age, having too few computers with online connections is an even greater hardship than having too few bathrooms.  Here, belatedly, is the link to my column at NMI this week.  It’s about Obama and the Olympics (and old story by now) and my take on it may surprise you. There were so many [...]

Because bloggers are supposed to post every day

Or at least every weekday.  That’s what they say.  They.  You know they, right?  I’m not sure exactly who they are, but they probably have fewer children than I do.  Or they might have more, but they are guys, and have wives to go along with all those kids. This week, my four children and I [...]

Throw enough money at Johnny and surely he’ll read

This is the title of my NMI column that ran yesterday.  Normally it runs on Tuesdays, but they ran it early.  I wanted to leave the Allen Weh interview as the top story on Monday, so I did not link to the column until today. Coincidentally, a commenter on the Weh interview linked to his [...]

Allen Weh, candidate for governor of New Mexico

The first time I saw Allen Weh was when he addressed a meeting of the Santa Fe County GOP a little over a year ago. Weh was then chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, and as he spoke, my husband leaned over and whispered, “I’ll bet that guy’s a Marine.” Indeed he is.  Not [...]

You’re all racists

Update:  NMI published this column today, September 27, 2009.  Original post (written September 21) below: You’re all racists — that was to have been the title of my New Mexico Independent column today.  But about an hour after I submitted it, I received an e-mail from my new editor (my previous editor, David Alire Garcia, [...]

Worth a click

I’ve been working on the speech I’m giving at the New Mexico Turn Around conference in Albuquerque tomorrow, so I didn’t have time to write a post today. I did want to take time to link to Nice Deb’s excellent post debunking the leftist charges of racism again anyone who has the temerity to criticize [...]

Ignore them and maybe they’ll just go away

This, apparently, was the line of reasoning at the Santa Fe New Mexican, whose editorial staff elected not to cover the Tea Party held here in Santa Fe at the State Capitol on Saturday, September 12.  This egregious example of biased journalismis the subject of my New Mexico Independent column today.

Santa Fe Tea Party: the sequel

Just a reminder that Santa Fe’s second Tea Party will take place tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. at the east side of the Capitol building.  Speeches begin at 2:00.  More information here. It’s going to be a very long day for me, with Fiesta, the Tea Party, followed by choir practice for the girls and mass [...]

Guys who would never get laid if they weren’t politicians

I can’t say what I’d like to do to that disgusting lout Mike Duvall because it would be (a) unladylike and (b) illegal.  Duvall, Larry Craig, Mark Sanford and a host of other selfish narcissists who do their thinking with the little head act as though they’re trying to destroy the Repubilcan Party just when [...]

Obama and the nation’s kids; me and my kids

My NMI column this week.  I have more to say on the topic — and related topics — but I was in Albuquerque with the kids all day and am dead exhausted, so will wait until they’re asleep to write it.  Unless I fall into an exhausted sleep the minute they’re in bed, in which [...]