Free Republic

Two of the country’s most powerful and politically influential labor unions are backing President Obama in the recent court challenge to his 2014 executive action on illegal immigration, saying they support the president’s effort because "undocumented workers" need more workplace protection and their participation helps the U.S. economy. The AFL-CIO and the National Education Association on Monday each filed so-called amicus briefs in a federal appeals court case in which Texas and 26 other states are challenges the president’s 2014 memorandum on illegal immigration. The memorandum essentially expands work authorization and delayed-deportation programs for illegal immigrants. And it provides similar...

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez signed a bill to abolish civil asset forfeiture Friday. She signed just before the noon deadline that would have pocket vetoed the legislation. “As an attorney and career prosecutor, I understand how important it is that we ensure safeguards are in place to protect our constitutional rights,” Martinez said in a letter announcing her decision. “On balance, the changes made by this legislation improve the transparency and accountability of the forfeiture process and provide further protections to innocent property owners.” Civil asset forfeiture is a practice where police can seize your property and keep it...

Competition to highlight desalination technology By Cheyenne Cope Published: April 9, 2015, 6:54 am Updated: April 9, 2015, 4:50 pm   ALAMOGORDO, N.M. (KRQE) – Desalination is the process removing salt from water. The process is complicated, but the reason for it is simple. New Mexico is running out of fresh water for drinking.“Desalination is real important for this region there is very little freshwater and what little freshwater is available is usually stressed, there’s more demand than there is supply,” said Randy Shaw, facility manager of the Bureau of Reclamation Brackish Groundwater National Desalination and Research Facility.For years there has...

ROSWELL – Gasoline prices in New Mexico could drop to as low as $1.60 a gallon this year as the United States and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries engage in an outgoing crude oil price war, an expert told the New Mexico Landmen’s Association on March 27. Dr. Daniel Fine, associate director of the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, said at the landmen’s association’s monthly meeting recently that crude oil storage in the United States is at a near maximum, meaning it will be some time before crude oil prices...

Opposition to the Common Core education reforms embraced by the Obama Administration is growing, and not just on the political right. The latest issue of the decidedly left-wing journal Rethinking Schools carries two items on Common Core protests in, respectively, Long Island and New Mexico. “Beth Dimino is an 8th-grade teacher and president of the Port Jefferson Station Teachers Association in New York,” RT reported in Spring 2015. “She announced in February that she would not administer the Common Core tests to her students.” “Dimino is one of the leaders of a growing opt-out movement in the area and throughout...

The Western Governors' Association released a report today highlighting the voluntary efforts in 11 states to conserve the habitat of sage-grouse as part of an effort to avoid a federal listing of the bird under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The association, which represents the governors of 19 Western states, said that “the breadth and depth of voluntary conservation efforts across the region, if allowed to run their course, will provide the bird with the necessary habitat to live and thrive.” The greater sage grouse is found in 11 states and its habitat encompasses 186 million acres . The U.S....

Potentially millions of current and former illegal immigrants now have the opportunity to fly their children to the U.S. with taxpayer dollars. Once they arrive, they will be eligible for benefits including a free education, healthcare and food stamps. The State Department and Department of Homeland Security will administer the program, ... Some of the benefits they will receive are a free education, medical care, living expenses and food stamps. ... The U.S. has already sent staff to the region and began accepting applications in December. If applicants don’t qualify for refugee status, they can be considered for parole status

It’s not even 8 a.m. and rush hour is on in northwestern New Mexico. Dozens of big white trucks and water tankers, neon flags flying, head north to the gas patch. I’m driving south, through Aztec, and as I pass the retro-orange A&W on the edge of town, I pull up alongside a drilling rig. The thing’s huge, too huge, it seems, to be rolling along the same road as my little Nissan. Yet the strange, rolling infrastructure has been a familiar site around here for decades — back in 1948, when a UFO purportedly crashed out on a nearby...

This afternoon, Fact Check.org produced a fact-check that ostensibly criticizes U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) for his contention that there has never been an instance of ground water contamination caused by hydraulic fracturing. Of course, this piece isn’t really about Inhofe at all; but before we get into that, we can’t help but wonder why they are fact-checking Inhofe and not former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson … or Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz … or Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell — all of whom have said exactly the same thing. Rather than a “fact-check,” it reads more like an advocacy...

Seven Southwestern states will soon be infiltrated by 1,200 military special ops personnel as part of a controversial domestic military training in which some of the elite soldiers will operate undetected among civilians. Operation Jade Helm begins in July and will last for eight weeks. Soldiers will operate in and around towns in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado where some of them wil drop from planes while carrying weapons loaded with blanks in what military officials have dubbed Realistic Military Training. But with residents of the entire states of Texas and Utah dubbed 'hostile' for the...

At least 2,000 jobs will likely be lost in New Mexico’s oil and gas industry in the coming months because of sharp declines in the price of crude oil, according to estimates by the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department.

A massive U.S. military drill dubbed “Jade Helm 15” lists Texas, Utah, and part of California as “hostile” or “insurgent pocket” territory. The unclassified information about this drill is causing widespread alarm nationwide, with more than a few analysts suggesting it may be some sort of exercise practicing to impose martial law on Americans fed up with an out-of-control federal government. During the exercises, which will take place over the summer, Special Forces from various branches of the military will work with local law-enforcement in scenarios that, to critics at least, sound suspiciously like they are aimed at subduing rebellious...

WASHINGTON — U.S. Army Special Operations Command is pushing back against alarmist claims that an upcoming U.S. military exercise is a preparation for imposing martial law or subduing right-leaning groups and individuals. Conspiracy theories about the exercise, known as JADE HELM 15, appeared online this week. Some commentators railing against the event referred to an online slide show allegedly created by USASOC, which outlined a special operations exercise slated to take place across multiple states, outside the confines of U.S. military bases. In the slide show, a map of the southwest region of the United States labels Texas and other...

... Civil asset forfeiture is one of those issues where Americans of all political persuasions grasp the truth that government has grown far too powerful and arrogant, with officials serving their own interests rather than those of the public. Some officials have badly overreached, using their power to engage in what Frederic Bastiat called “legal plunder” and thereby awakened a huge cross section of the populace to the fact that government is often more about helping itself than about serving the public interest. The silver lining to civil asset forfeiture is that it helps people to understand that, as Albert...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is set to issue the first major federal regulations on hydraulic fracturing on Friday, with new mandates targeting oil and gas wells on public land. The Interior Department rule reflects years of work by regulators seeking to balance environmental interests and economic imperatives in setting baseline standards for the way wells are constructed and stimulated for oil and gas production. But the final version, set to be unveiled Friday by Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, according to stakeholders familiar with the timeline, is unlikely to appease environmentalists who have argued for strong protections or oil...

predation, not human activity, has reduced bird’s numbers. A coalition of rural Western counties and business interests is contesting the science being used to decide whether to list the Greater sage-grouse as endangered or threatened, accusing the Obama administration of relying on “selective, false and biased” research. Denver attorney Kent Holsinger filed three Data Quality Act challenges Wednesday with the Department of the Interior on behalf of the coalition, which includes the Western Energy Alliance, ranchers, mining and drilling companies and 19 counties in Colorado, Montana, Nevada and Utah. “We’ve documented real issues with transparency and scientific integrity ... The...

Last week, Jeb Bush was in New Hampshire, pressing on with his sordid campaign to delude conservatives into swallowing Common Core and massive, unfettered immigration policies. He has fashioned himself a champion of the American worker, even as he pompously pushes Gang of Eight amnesty as the “adult” plan in the room. And he has fashioned himself a champion of “school choice,” even as he zealously crusades for failed Fed Ed rackets and data-mining schemes masquerading as “higher standards.” The condescending Bush attitude is familiar to grass-roots activists and parents in Florida and across the country who have fought Club...

Sixteen months after leaving the New Mexico State Police amid controversy surrounding an officer-involved shooting in which he fired at the tires of a fleeing minivan carrying a woman and her five children, Elias Montoya is wearing a badge again. Montoya is among the Taos County Sheriff’s newest deputies. Chosen from among 17 candidates who applied for two open positions, he is expected to be back on patrol by month’s end. While describing Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe’s decision to hire him as “a gutsy move,” Montoya was unreserved Monday in discussing the incident Oct. 28, 2013 that ended his career as...

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – Seniors at an Albuquerque high school whose plans for an unusual prom theme sparked interest and criticism from around the country have landed on a new prom theme: Prom. It’s their way of taking back ownership of their prom theme, after the suggestion of a communism connotation created a backlash they weren’t anticipating. After KRQE News 13 reported that students at Cottonwood Classical Preparatory School voted on “Prom-munism” as the theme for their spring formal dance, news traveled fast. Some headlines pointed out the irony of the theme: “Students democratically pick communism-themed prom.” Others were outraged. According...

The state parole board has received 500 letters in anticipation of a hearing today over whether convicted cop-killer Joel Lee Compton will be released from prison. But to the widow of Albuquerque police officer Gerald Cline – who Compton shot and killed 32 years ago – one particular letter stands out. “We were very touched, and we appreciate it,” said Yolanda Cline. “You’re not defined by what your relatives did. You can’t choose them.” In fewer than 200 words, Sharron Compton, sister of Joel Lee Compton, spells out why her brother should not be released from prison despite three decades...