Officials say protesters held illegal march down Central Avenue

From KOB-TV.com - Albuquerque police said hundreds of people who protested against corporate greed, bank bailouts and high unemployment over the weekend never got a permit for the march. Police estimate more than 200 protesters illegally marched on Central Avenue Saturday and said arrests could have been made but chose not to. Officers conducted rolling street closures instead, keeping cars of Central Avenue and protestors safe. "We felt like we were able to minimize any problems…and we did," said APD spokesperson Trish Hoffman. During the march, an ambulance had to follow the detour around the unexpected roadblock. A war protest turned into a riot against police 10 years ago. Officers arrested protesters and the city was sued for police misconduct. "It was a totally different situation. It was not a calm situation like this one was," Hoffman explained. The protesters set up "Camp Coyote" at the corner of University Boulevard and Central Avenue at UNM Saturday night. They have been sleeping there ever since. "We're not fighting against all systems, just the systems that deny basic needs like food, water, shelter and education," said protestor Lisa McCellon. UNM police have told the group if they try to sleep there again Monday night, they will arrest the group. Read more
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Egolf Wants Hometown Redistricting Referees

State Representative Brian Egolf of Santa Fe knows how to try to stack the officiating of the political games with his favorite referees. And he will accomplish just that, if he gets his way with the NM Supreme Court. The court is considering whether it will consolidate several redistricting lawsuits around the state to local Santa Fe courts. And the high court instructed all lawyers to submit their arguments on the proposal by Oct. 10th. Egolf's tactics come as no surprise. Within hours of the end of the special legislative session last month, he and a few of his buddies went to work. Within hours they were asking the high court justices to "consolidate" all redistricting cases filed around the state and appoint one judge from the notoriously partisan big government town of Santa Fe. Clearly Egolf wants local partisan help to retain his region's iron grip on power over the rest of the state.
Brian Egolf
Unfortunately for fair-minded citizens, in recent months New Mexicans have learned that our state is one where lawyers and district judges give and receive campaign contributions as a matter of routine. And somehow normal conflict constraints and ethics rules that the state bar usually abides by, seem to be tossed out of the window.......especially in Santa Fe.
In the legal maneuvers associated with redistricting, the Egolf camp did not even bother to disguise the goal of strong arming opponents that file claims against what they feel was an unabashed partisan redistricting process. Forcing his opponents into his jurisdiction seems to have been the Egolf plan all along. And moving the final decision on redistricting to Santa Fe will most likely continue the process of concentrating power far away from those New Mexico citiznes most affected by the big government forces in New Mexico.
For those who find themselves arguing their cases before what figures to be a party activist that happens to be a judge, they may soon learn the hard way that the "one man-one-vote" ideal is actually an idealistic myth. Take heart....an ace of hearts. There is an additional bonus in all of this for the Egolf crowd. The taxpayers will fund what columnist Jay Miller calls the "full employment act" for lawyers. New Mexico can do better.

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Two members of NM environmental board recuse themselves from cap and trade debate

From Capitol Report New Mexico - Two members of the newly-constituted Environmental Improvement Board (EIB) recused themselves on Monday (Oct. 3) from an upcoming review that could potentially roll back the cap and trade regulations the previous EIB passed at the end of the Bill Richardson administration. In response to a series of complaints made by the environmental group called the New Energy Economy (NEE), EIB members James Casciano and Greg Fulfer announced at the monthy board meeting Monday they’ll step aside because of a possible appearance of being less than impartial. Before being appointed to the newly-installed board by current Gov. Susana Martinez, both Casciano and Fulfer had expressed their opposition to the greenhouse gas emissions standards. “I try to do what’s best for the state of New Mexico,” Fulfer told the board. ”I’m going to recuse myself.” Fulfer is the son-in-law of Sen. Carroll Leavell (R-Jal), who has expressed his opposition to the new environmental regulations. After the meeting, Fulfer told Capitol Report New Mexico that last year as chairman of the county commission in Hobbs, he had made a public comment opposing cap and trade. Fulfer said his decision Monday “would help preserve the integrity of the board.” As for Casciano, he had sent an e-mail to the the EIB last year stating his opposition to cap and trade. “It was too directly related to the issues under appeal,” Casciano said after the meeting. “I didn’t want to take away from the perception of fairness of the rest of the board.” The lawyer for NEE, Bruce Frederick, said he was happy with the decisions by Casciano and Fulfer. “They did the right thing,” Frederic said. “They have integrity. It was a classy move.” NEE had also called for EIB chairwoman Deborah Peacock to step down as well, claiming she is biased towards overturning the regulations but Peacock said at Monday’s meeting there is no reason for her recuse herself. “I have never discussed any outcome,” Peacock told board members. “I can be fair and impartial.” Read more
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Cain Momentum Continues with GOP Women

Herman Cain
RTT News - Herman Cain won his second straight straw poll as his campaign continues to gather momentum in the race for the Republican Party's 2012 presidential nomination. On Sunday, Cain won by a wide margin the National Federation of Republican Women's straw poll, drawing 48.9 percent of the vote. Texas governor Rick Perry was a very distant second with 14.1 percent and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney was third at 13.3 percent. Read full story here: News New Mexico
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Barone: Cain is a Contender

Michael Barone
Washington Examiner - Is Herman Cain a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination? It's a question no one in the pundit world was asking until the past week. Cain has never held public office. When he ran for the Senate in Georgia in 2004 he lost the primary by a 52 to 26 percent margin. He has zero experience in foreign or defense policy, where presidents have the most leeway to set policy. When questioned about the Middle East earlier this year he clearly had no idea what the "right of return" is. His solid performance in the Fox News/Google debate Sept. 22 didn't get pundits to take his chances seriously. Neither did his 37 to 15 percent victory over Rick Perry in the Florida straw poll Sept. 24. That was taken as a response to Perry's weak debate performance and a tribute to Cain for showing up and speaking before the 2,657 people who voted.
But Republicans around the nation seem to have responded the same way. The Fox News poll conducted Sept. 25-27 showed Cain with 17 percent of the vote -- a statistically significant jump from the 5 percent he had been averaging in polls taken in previous weeks. And a SurveyUSA poll of Florida Republicans conducted Sept. 24-27 showed Cain trailing Mitt Romney by only 27 to 25 percent, a statistical tie. That's very different from the Florida polls conducted by Public Policy Polling Sept. 22-25 and Quinnipiac Sept. 14-19, both of which showed Cain with 7 percent. We will see whether other national or state polls show Cain with a similar surge. If so, then there's a real possibility that Cain could win enough primaries and caucuses to be a real contender. That possibility is already being taken seriously by the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger. Henninger argued in a Sept. 29 column that Cain's success in business -- engineering turnarounds in Burger King's Philadelphia stores and Godfather's Pizza nationally -- made him a plausible candidate. "Unlike the incumbent," Henninger wrote, "Herman Cain has at least twice identified the causes of a large failing enterprise, designed goals, achieved them and by all accounts inspired the people he was supposed to lead." Read full analysis here: News New Mexico

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