Category Archives: New Mexico Independent columns

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, [...]

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 blog [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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.

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 [...]

They’re Uncle Sam’s kids now — he paid for them

My NMI column this week will, I think, become one of my all-time favorites.  Here’s the opening.
When the news came that Santa Fe’s public schools would get some of the federal stimulus bounty being handed out by a benevolent Democratic Congress and president, few suspected that some of that federal pork would turn rancid.
One of [...]

Our tax dollars at work

I don’t often advocate spending taxpayers’ money, but amid all the waste and pork, there are some public works projects that need doing, including an I-25 interchange at Richards Avenue in Santa Fe.  My NMI column explains why.

The most sense I’ve heard anyone make yet about health care reform

A Facebook friend posted the link to this article, and because my friend leans leftward, and the piece is in the Atlantic, and ran six pages, and is entitled “How American Health Care Killed My Father” (here we go with a diatribe about the evils of health care being a commodity not a right, I [...]

Raising hell in defense of liberty

My New Mexico Independent column is up.
Update:  This is rich.  And they accuse us of astroturfing.  I guess it’s that old “plank in my own eye” thing.  HT:  Patterico.

Solving the problems of the world, one crusade at a time

My local paper, the Santa Fe New Mexican, is experiencing financial difficulty.  Join the club.  And no wonder, since how on earth can a print newspaper compete financially with internet news sites that run on a fraction of the cost and provide faster and more diverse content?   Some people think this spells doom for us [...]

Can big government make us thin?

I’m posting the link to my NMI column late, since I was traveling back to New Mexico today, and it wasn’t up yet before I left for the airport.
Since I was in vacation mode, I had no idea what to write for NMI this week.  I had been trolling the internet for something other than [...]

Do the math

That was my title for my NM Independent column that runs today (or ran yesterday, since I’m late posting the link and most of you won’t read this until Wednesday morning) but my editor changed it.  There are already 16 comments, but I haven’t read them yet as I just arrived at my friend’s house [...]

Confirming the wise Latina

The confirmation controversy over Judge Sonia Sotomayor is the subject of my New Mexico Indpendent column this week.

Ben Ray Lujan among the most far left in Congress

Today my NMI column discusses northern New Mexico’s Congressman, Ben Ray Lujan, was one of a small House minority voting against an amendment to prevent federal money being used to employ illegal aliens. The issue was such a no-brainer that the Democrat-controlled House voted 349-84 in favor of the amendment, with both other New [...]

Let them read the Constitution

My NMI column this week isi a response to last week’s piece on socialized medicine, which generated over 100 comments, breaking the NMI record. The comment war on today’s column has already begun.

Angry leftists help right wing nut job break record

My editor at NMI tells me I’ve broken their record for comments — 100 so far on my health care column. Many of these, naturally, are from leftists insulting me, telling me I have no idea what I’m talking about, that there are no facts or evidence in the column (um, it’s an opinion [...]

Health care is broken but the government can’t fix it

This week’s NM Independent column. It’s already been up long enough for teenage commenters to begin calling me ignorant.

When murder isn’t murder at all

Last month, a Santa Fe man killed his girlfriend Sarah Lovato, their unborn child, and Lovato’s father. Even though the baby was full term, due any day, and he shot his girlfriend in the belly multiple times, Mariano Leyba, Jr., can’t be charged with the baby’s murder, because the baby wasn’t a human being, [...]

Selfishness as social policy

My NMI column today explores how a Santa Fe elementary school’s reprieve from closure — thanks to Governor Bill Richardson’s spreading around some of the New Mexico taxpayers’ wealth — illustrates a very big problem in American society as a whole.

The best government your money can buy

My New Mexico Independent column today is partly a rehash of this post on the Block scandal, but goes farther in meditating on the differences between our purportedly enlightened system and that of the Roman Republic, where the linkage between money and power was straightforward and uncomplicated.

Life, liberty and faith

I was so busy yesterday I didn’t even get a chance to link to my NMI column about Daniel Hauser, the 13-year-old boy who has been ordered by a court to undergo chemotherapy against his own and his parents’ wishes. They claim their right to the free exercise of their religion is being infringed. [...]

Billions and billions…

I can still hear Carl Sagan’s voice saying it in those old documentaries. He was talking about stars, of course. Today, we think of dollars. Billions and billions of them, swelling our national debt, mortgaging the futures of your children and mine. I get almost physically sick when I dwell for [...]

Penny wise, pound foolish on Santa Fe plaza

This week, my New Mexico Independent column is less controversial than usual. At least I think it is. I’m suppose my adoring fan club over there will manage to find something in there proving that I’m a heartless bigot for wanting to keep the grass on Santa Fe plaza.

100 down, 1,350 to go

Days, that is, of the momentous and historic Obama Presidency’s first term. 2,800 if he’s a two-termer, of course, but I’m trying to be optimistic. Tomorrow (Wed., April 29) is the actual 100 day marker, but my New Mexico Independent column comes out on Tuesdays, so I thought I’d take the liberty of [...]

Sarcasm in defense of liberalism is no vice

Or so the editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican would seem to believe.
Today my column in the New Mexico Independent addresses a recent New Mexican editorial mocking Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Alabama) for purported red-baiting.
The latest Democratic talking point is that all good progressives should mock conservatives for their fear of socialism, painting us as [...]

Can’t pay for the government you’ve already got? Make it bigger!

This would be hilarious if it wasn’t so damnably sad.  The New Mexico state legislature had a devil of a time balancing its budget this year, so what did those geniuses do?  Why, they passed a bill creating a new cabinet department!  In this case, the Department of Hispanic Affairs, which, as I explain in [...]

Disenfranchisement comes for the archbishop

My column in the New Mexico Independent this week is the involvement of the Catholic Church in the legislative process. There has been much criticism of Archbishop Sheehan’s vocal opposition to the domestic partners bill that was recently defeated in the New Mexico State Senate. The archbishop wrote a piece in the editorial [...]

Building houses and bilking firemen in the City Different

My column in the New Mexico Independent today discusses the relationship between the government-financed building of “affordable housing” and the fiscal belt-tightening that has led the top brass of the Santa Fe Fire Department in its entirety to take early retirement.
Our local city government cutting costs in a destructive way with its right hand, while [...]

Bribes, bonuses and bills of attainder

My column at the New Mexico Independent this week concerns the AIG bonus scandal and the ensuing hypocrisy and unconstitutional legislation coming out of Congress. Already the comments decrying my “partisan ranting” have begun. So odd, because I don’t think I ranted in the least. Decide for yourself.

Casting the first stone

Apart from being St. Patrick’s Day, today is also Tuesday, which means my weekly column in the New Mexico Independent is out. This week’s topic is the death penalty, which I naturally support, since I’m also one of those heartless Republicans whom liberals believe take no small joy in causing misery in the lives [...]

The New Mexico Independent’s newest columnist

Today marks the debut of my column in the New Mexico Independent. My political commentary will be published every Tuesday, a lone conservative voice meant to bring some diversity of opinion to a publication whose other columnists….well, let’s just say it may be no accident that the commentary is on the left column of [...]