Columns

When you think about the act of “self-pardoning,” as in President Trump’s assertion that he has the “absolute right” to get away with anything he wants to because the office of president is “sacred,” as his lawyers contend, it doesn’t take long to arrive at the bottom-line conclusion: self pardoning is what all mafia dons […]

If you are angry — knowing anger at injustice and cruel stupidity is not a moral fault — you have to find your inspiration for action wherever it appears. For me, when all else fails, I turn to Albert Camus. And this moment in history, six short months from a national midterm election, we are […]

Seemingly right out of the blue, New Mexicans are facing the chilling possibility that despite their protestations, as much as half of the nation’s highly dangerous spent nuclear fuel rods might be “temporarily” stored (for many decades) at a site somewhere between Carlsbad and Hobbs, operated by the New Jersey firm Holtec International. And in […]

[For Young Writers and Artists Trying to Keep Afloat]   SQUANDERING It’s the fulfillment of whims, the robotic gushing of money, of time spurting out, cascading, vanishing for nothing as if you will always have enough of everything—you’re just a programmed culprit of what you abhor, a modified spigot that won’t turn off, trained by […]

I’m always interested to get in the mail the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority’s “Water Quality Report” brochure. But I’m also usually disappointed by what I read and what I don’t read. And this time I’m particularly irked by the rosy nature of the report. It just doesn’t meet what author Jared Diamond might […]

The University of New Mexico is one of Albuquerque’s and the state’s greatest assets. And it’s not because of the football and basketball programs, which don’t need to be de-emphasized but put in their place as tiny parts of UNM’s overall impact. In most practical ways, UNM’s importance to the Middle Rio Grande Valley and […]

It took us a long time in America before we realized that we were ruining our environment, the habitat we depend on, with waste from the things we make and use. But it took the Republican Party less than a decade to realize that giving birth to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), created by one […]