Heather Wilson Fundraising With Lisa Murkowski

Heather Wilson

From huffingtonpost.com -Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski is flying from Alaska all the way to New Mexico to hold a fundraiser for fellow Republican Rep. Heather Wilson. Republicans are hoping Wilson will be able to take over a U.S. Senate seat for the party in that state.  The luncheon fundraiser will take place Tuesday in Carlsbad, N.M., and will cost at least $1,000 to attend, according to the invitation. Both parties have high hopes for filling the seat of retiring Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat. Wilson is expected to compete against Democratic Rep. Martin Heinrich. Polls show a tight general election race between the two.  Murkowski recently made national headlines for criticizing her party for its focus on reproductive rights. "It makes no sense to make this attack on women," she said on KBBI AM's "Coffee Table" program, according to the Homer News. "If you don't feel this is an attack, you need to go home and talk to your wife and your daughters." Murkowski, who is one of a dwindling number of pro-choice Republicans in Congress, also said that she would continue to support funding for Planned Parenthood. More here

Heather Wilson Fundraising With Lisa Murkowski

Why We Need Voter I.D. Laws Now

National Review - Attorney General Eric Holder is a staunch opponent of laws requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls to improve ballot security. He calls them “unnecessary” and has blocked their implementation in Texas and South Carolina, citing the fear they would discriminate against minorities.
I wonder what Holder will think when he learns just how easy it was for someone to be offered his ballot just by mentioning his name in a Washington, D.C., polling place in Tuesday’s primaries.

Holder’s opposition to ID laws comes in spite of the Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision in 2008, authored by liberal Justice John Paul Stevens, that upheld the constitutionality of Indiana’s tough ID requirement. When groups sue to block photo-ID laws in court, they can’t seem to produce real-world examples of people who have actually been denied the right to vote. According to opinion polls, over 75 percent of Americans — including majorities of Hispanics and African-Americans — routinely support such laws.

Eric Holder

One reason is that people know you can’t function in the modern world without showing ID — you can’t cash a check, travel by plane or even train, or rent a video without being asked for one. In fact, PJ Media recently proved that you can’t even enter the Justice Department in Washington without showing a photo ID. Average voters understand that it’s only common sense to require ID because of how easy it is for people to pretend they are someone else. Read full story here: News New Mexico

Why We Need Voter I.D. Laws Now

Forecast predicts dismal runoff for NM

Las Cruces Sun-News - Gary Esslinger's chosen profession, delivering irrigation water to southern New Mexico farmers, looks like some sort of cruel joke these days. The latest punch line came this week in the form the federal government's April Rio Grande runoff forecast, which calls for just 29 percent of normal spring and summer runoff into Elephant Butte Reservoir. That's the reservoir that supplies water to farmers in the Elephant Butte Irrigation District, in the Hatch and Mesilla valleys of southern New Mexico. Esslinger, the district's general manager, faces the unhappy task of going back to his farmers next week and telling them to expect even less than the meager allotment they had been counting on. "The business that I'm in, of supplying surface water, is kinda like going out of business," Esslinger said Thursday. This week's preliminary forecast, after a hot, dry March, showed a drop from expectations just a month ago that New Mexico State University hydrologist Phil King called "pretty catastrophic." "Things in one month basically just went away," said Rolf Schmidt-Petersen, Rio Grande basin manager for the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission. Low elevation snow is largely gone, and much of what has already melted has soaked into soil left bone dry from last year's drought, rather than flowing into New Mexico's rivers, King said Thursday. The latest weekly federal Drought Monitor showed an expansion of dry conditions, with the entire state ranging from "abnormally dry" in the northwest to "exceptional drought" in the southeast. The federal forecast calls for 151,000 acre feet of water flowing into Elephant Butte between now and the end of July, which is the main snowmelt runoff season. That is 29 percent of the 1971-2000 average, which federal managers define as their long term "normal" for water management planning purposes. Read More News New Mexico

Forecast predicts dismal runoff for NM

Fill Up at Home?

NewsNM note - If you have natural gas in your home you have the basic infrastructure to fill up your car with fuel that costs about 60 cents a gallon.

Business Insider - CNBC's Rick Santelli will be making some noise on Monday. He plans on demonstrating to the world that cars can easily be converted to run on natural gas. Remember, Santelli arguably started the whole Tea Party movement with his famous rant about paying for his neighbors' mortgage. Santelli was interviewed by King World News: "But, being somewhat of a mechanic by hobby, I had an idea several weeks ago. I’m from the Midwest and I remember lots of guys I went to college with, in Champaign, telling me how they converted various vehicles, trucks, tractors, on the farms to natural gas, and it was no big deal. Well, we’re drowning in natural gas. To me it should be the energy that every politician should be pushing. I think we could have an energy revolution, create boatloads of jobs, have lower energy (costs) and cleaner energy. So, to that end, this Monday I am going to be in Oklahoma City at CNG Industries...

What I’m going to do personally is drive in a brand new Ford, F-150, 5-liter V-8, that runs on gas, and convert it to run both on natural gas and regular gasoline. I will then drive it out on natural gas by the end of the day, probably during one of the afternoon shows."

Read full story here: News New Mexico

Fill Up at Home?

70 Years Ago Today, the Fall of Bataan

From New Mexico Watchdog -On April 9, 1942, approximately 70,000 American and Filipino soldiers surrendered after the fall of Bataan, including members of the 515th and the 200th Coastal Artillery of the New Mexico National Guard who were taken on the infamous Bataan death march that immediately followed. The circumstances of Bataan have had a profound on New Mexico as some 1,800 Guardsmen were deployed to the Phillipines during World War II and only half would return alive.
On this 70th anniverary, we pause, reflect, remember and salute.

70 Years Ago Today, the Fall of Bataan

GOP Senate Candidates Weigh In On Mexico's Drug War

From nmpolitics.net- (Heath Haussaman) -Greg Sowards says the long-term solution to Mexico’s drug war is to help Mexicans “realize their own potential” by encouraging free-market reforms; Heather Wilson says the United States must control its borders and disrupt the operations of Mexican drug cartels.  Sowards, a Republican candidate for New Mexico’s open U.S. Senate seat, said the situation in Mexico is not just a drug war, but is “lawlessness that has pervaded the society at every level” as “the societal structure has broken down.” Securing the border, supporting the Mexican military’s efforts to fight drug traffickers and gangs, and ensuring access to areas where undocumented immigrants travel by opposing wilderness designations along the border are steps Sowards wants to take to combat the spillover violence in the United States.  But, in the long run, he said, “the key metric for success comes from encouraging free-market reform in Mexico to bring more people above their poverty line,” which he said would “give Mexicans the economic opportunity to provide for their families closer to home instead of desperately taking to criminal acts or coming to America illegally.” “Mexico is a resource-rich nation, with a wonderful cultural society and social mores, if allowed to survive,” Sowards said. More Here

GOP Senate Candidates Weigh In On Mexico's Drug War

The George Washington sinks in the Pecos

From the Carlsbad Current-Argus - By Stella Davis - CARLSBAD — Residents living along the Pecos River and recreational boaters on the water sprang into action Saturday afternoon to rescue passengers from a sinking paddleboat. The George Washington stern-wheeler had a load of 44 signtseers when it began going down near the north end of its route. "The residents that launched their boats and others who had been boating on the river really helped us out," said Earl Phelps, Carlsbad Fire Department engineer. "By the time we got to the scene nearly all the people on the George Washington had been brought to safety and there were no injuries. The slightly wet passengers were taken to nearby residential docks and from there returned to port. "We were able to account for everyone that was on the boat," Phelps said.  As passengers were brought to the private docks, a party boat arrived to take them back to the landing dock at Port Jefferson Beach where the trip originated. Read more

The George Washington sinks in the Pecos

Romney and Netanyahu Have Long History

From nytimes.com -The two young men had woefully little in common: one was a wealthy Mormon from Michigan, the other a middle-class Jew from Israel.   But in 1976, the lives of Mitt Romney and Benjamin Netanyahu intersected, briefly but indelibly, in the 16th-floor offices of the Boston Consulting Group, where both had been recruited as corporate advisers. At the most formative time of their careers, they sized each other up during the firm’s weekly brainstorming sessions, absorbing the same profoundly analytical view of the world. That shared experience decades ago led to a warm friendship, little known to outsiders, that is now rich with political intrigue. Mr. Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, is making the case for military action against Iran as Mr. Romney, the likely Republican presidential nominee, is attacking the Obama administration for not supporting Mr. Netanyahu more robustly.

The relationship between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Romney — nurtured over meals in Boston, New York and Jerusalem, strengthened by a network of mutual friends and heightened by their conservative ideologies — has resulted in an unusually frank exchange of advice and insights on topics like politics, economics and the Middle East.  More here

Romney and Netanyahu Have Long History

Obama Admin Blocking Fast and Furious Witness Testimony

From dailycaller.com -Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz told the Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly on Friday that although a key White House witness in the ill-fated Operation Fast and Furious gun-walking program is willing to testify about what he knows, the Obama administration won’t let him appear before Congress. White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler sent a letter Thursday to Republican lawmakers Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley, refusing their request to speak with Kevin O’Reilly, a former National Security staff member whose emails place him in the middle of the unfolding scandal. Issa and Grassley had written to Ruemmler on March 28, asking the White House to step aside and let O’Reilly talk to investigators. Grassley is the GOP ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Issa chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, whose members include Chaffetz. “[O’Reilly’s] personal attorney indicated that he’s more than willing to talk to the committee, on the record, under oath”” Chaffetz told Kelly during her Friday afternoon broadcast. “It is only the White House and the White House Counsel that is saying they will not make him available.”   More here

Obama Admin Blocking Fast and Furious Witness Testimony

NM Retired Teacher Arrested on Fed. Child Porn Charges

From politicalnews.me -A 72-year-old retired teacher residing in Raton, N.M., was arrested on Wednesday on a criminal complaint alleging that he distributed, received and possessed child pornography between Oct. 14, 2011 and April 4. Joseph F. Zinkiewicz made his initial appearance Thursday in federal court in Albuquerque; he is scheduled for a preliminary hearing April 6. Zinkiewicz is temporarily detained pending a detention hearing which also is scheduled for Friday. U.S. Attorney Kenneth J. Gonzales, District of New Mexico, said that Zinkiewicz was arrested as the result of an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) that initially targeted a suspect in the District of Colorado.  According to the criminal complaint, an HSI special agent who was acting in an undercover capacity, communicated with the Colorado suspect and learned that the suspect was a member of a group that used e-mail accounts to distribute and receive child pornography. In November 2011, after the undercover special agent obtained a hard drive containing thousands of child pornography images and videos from the Colorado suspect, HSI obtained a search warrant for the e-mail account used by the Colorado suspect. HSI special agents identified the e-mail accounts of individuals, including Zinkiewicz, who allegedly shared child pornography with the Colorado suspect.  More here

NM Retired Teacher Arrested on Fed. Child Porn Charges