From KOAT-TV.com - SANTA FE, N.M. -- A Rail Runner train carrying about 100 people stopped due to an axle fire on Thursday at about 11:15 a.m. The train stopped at the South Capitol station in Santa Fe, which was one stop short of its destination at the Santa Fe Depot. Rail Runner officials sent a shuttle, but most of the people on board just walked to their destination. The small fire did not affect the schedule any further, according to Rail Runner officials.
From USA Today.com - WASHINGTON (AP) – Federal agents trying to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border say they're hampered by laws that keep them from driving vehicles on huge swaths of land because it falls under U.S. environmental protection, leaving it to wildlife — and illegal immigrants and smugglers who can walk through the territory undisturbed. A growing number of lawmakers are saying such restrictions have turned wilderness areas into highways for criminals. In recent weeks, three congressional panels, including two in the Republican-controlled House and one in the Democratic-controlled Senate, have moved to give the Border Patrol unfettered access to all federally managed lands within 100 miles (160 kilometers) of the border with Mexico. Two of the panels expanded the legislation's reach to include the border with Canada. The votes signal a brewing battle in Congress that will determine whether border agents can disregard environmental protections as they do their job. Dozens of environmental laws were waived for the building of the border fence, and activists say this is just another conservative attempt to find an excuse to do away with environmental protections. But agents who have worked along the border say the laws crimp their power to secure the border. Read more
From Capitol Report New Mexico.com - New Mexico spends an estimated $22 million a year in prison and probation costs for non-violent drug offenders. Is there a better use of that money? Some fiscal conservatives think so and they’re joining with liberals to try to change the way New Mexico — as well as the nation – handles drug users. The Rio Grande Foundation, a free-market think tank based in Albuquerque, and the Drug Policy Alliance co-hosted a forum last Tuesday (Oct. 25) that brought a number of Republican and Democratic state lawmakers as well as state government officials together to talk about finding common ground “to map a more rational public safety and health response to drug policy and criminal justice.” (Full disclosure: Capitol Report New Mexico is funded by the Rio Grande Foundation.) In a nutshell, fiscal conservatives who think there are more financially efficient ways to deal with the drug problem than a ”lock ‘em up” mentality are working with traditional liberals who have generally considered the war on drugs a failure from a policy and civil liberties perspective. Read more
From NM Politics.net - Commentary by Michael Swickard, Ph.D. - The core of our dysfunction is the schools are ignoring the most basic principle of learning. It is driven almost entirely by the curiosity of humans and their need to have the tools to satisfy that curiosity. Speaking for myself, curiosity is the one commonality in my life. Over my 61 years it is the currency of my life and the reason I became educated. Public-school life for me was many long years of an anti-curiosity environment (shut up and sit quietly) and I just barely made it to high-school graduation. They kept trying to teach me stuff in which I had no interest. I retained nothing of that forced upon me when I had no interest. A very few public school teachers did engage my curiosity and interest. It was wonderful each time. Throughout my years of public education I insisted that the schools could not teach me anything in which I had no interest. They said they could. They did not. Nor, when I was a public school teacher (what irony), could I teach students who had no interest in my lessons. The only way for me to prevail was to get the students’ curious about my subjects. Otherwise it was the proverbial trying to teach a pig to whistle. They say you should not try to do so since you cannot do it and it only annoys the pig. Read Commentary
From the Huffington Post - By DINA CAPPIELLO - WASHINGTON -- It's still "drill, baby, drill." After the nation's largest offshore oil spill and a series of pipeline breaks, Republican presidential candidates are pushing an aggressive policy of oil and gas drilling that echoes the party's rallying cry from four years ago. The millions of gallons of oil that spilled into the Gulf of Mexico last year and the crude that flowed from pipelines into Montana's Yellowstone River and Michigan's Kalamazoo River have put a spotlight on the environmental risks of energy production. But with jobs and the economy in the forefront, nearly every GOP White House contender has a plan to harness the nation's resources as a way to create employment by getting rid of environmental rules and opening up vast areas to drilling. Texas Gov. Rick Perry says we are sitting "on a treasure trove of energy in this country." Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has said "we're an energy-rich nation that's acting like an energy-poor nation." And since former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 2008 published his book "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less," he has touted more drilling in Alaska and the West to create jobs and drive down gasoline prices. For some, no place is off limits. Romney thinks the country can drill safely off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Read more
From YahooNews.com - By Liz Goodwin The Lookout - Nearly half of Americans say they have a gun in their household, the highest percentage since 1993, according to a new Gallup poll. Forty-seven percent of Americans say they have a gun on their property. Gun ownership is up among Republicans as well as Democrats, though only 40 percent of Democrats say their home has a gun, compared to 55 percent of Republicans. Support for personal gun-ownership rights is also at a high. (The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus four points.) Reported gun ownership dropped sharply in the early 1990s and remained in the low 40s until today. Gallup says it's hard to know whether fewer people actually owned guns over that period or if they felt uncomfortable saying they did due to lower public support for gun ownership. Read more
From FoxNews.com - House Republicans on Wednesday turned their sharp questioning over "Operation Fast and Furious" toward Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who acknowledged her agents were twice told to "stand down" in deference to what she called a "very troublesome" operation. Napolitano, at one point likening the questioning to a cross-examination, said repeatedly she only learned of "Fast and Furious" after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in December. She emphasized the operation, conceived and run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, "was an ATF operation," under the auspices of the Justice Department, not her department. Napolitano said she has never spoken with Attorney General Eric Holder about "Fast and Furious," a revelation Republicans strongly criticized. Napolitano said one reason she hasn't spoken to Holder directly about "Fast and Furious" is that the Justice Department's inspector general is currently engaged in an investigation into the matter, and she said she wouldn't know details about "Fast and Furious" because it "was an ATF operation." During a lengthy back-and-forth, Napolitano acknowledged that wiretap applications are approved by the Justice Department and include a "summary" or "narrative" of the case. But when Rep. Trey Gowdy asked Napolitano. "If there were [wiretaps] approved in 'Fast and Furious' -- and there were -- the Department of Justice would had to have known about it, correct?" Napolitano wouldn't comment, telling lawmakers she would "leave that for your own investigation." Read more
From the LA times.com - by George Skelton - California urgently needs more money to rebuild its public facilities. Increasing the gas tax, last boosted 21 years ago, would let the state pay for much-needed transportation projects without costly borrowing. There are three main reasons why the state has not been rapidly rebuilding California's public facilities, despite an urgent need. Two of them I've written about recently: gubernatorial ambivalence and bureaucratic inertia. But the third is a more long-term problem. The state simply does not have enough money to build all that it needs.A massive public works program is essential to stimulate the stagnant economy, create tens of thousands of jobs and — over the long haul — restore California to greatness after decades of sweeping its decaying infrastructure under the political rug. Read commentary
From FoxNews.com - NEW YORK – Once a rag-tag group that relied on donated pizzas for sustenance, the protesters camped out in a Lower Manhattan park are grappling with a new problem: how to manage and spend the nearly $500,000 they've raised in five weeks.
Daily Caller - President Barack Obama’s new student loan policy will force working class Americans to pay the ballooning college costs of middle class Americans, and will also hinder needed reform of the bloated education sector, say critics. Obama is “shifting the burden of paying for college to all of those Americans who did not graduate from college — the waitresses, construction workers, mechanics — and that should infuriate the taxpayers who worked hard to pay off their loans, who decided to live a modest lifestyle to pay off their loans,” said Lindsey Burke, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation. Obama’s policy is also widening the class division between working-class Americans and those with college credentials, said Matthew Denhart, a researcher at the Center for College Affordability and Productivity in Washington, D.C. Whatever the real costs, the new subsidy could benefit Obama’s standing among the disenchanted voters in the coveted 20-something demographic. Almost 70 percent of that group voted for him overwhelmingly in 2008. Read full story here: News New Mexico
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