I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
A former U.S. attorney for New Mexico said Tuesday that federal prosecutors across the nation are studying the arrest and prosecution of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Not only because it’s juicy, but because if and when Blagojevich pleads guilty or if he is convicted, the facts and legal strategy employed to lead to a successful prosecution could amount to another arrow in the prosecutorial quiver.
“It’s as the case plays out, as it ultimately reaches a plea,” John Kelly, a U.S. attorney for New Mexico during the 1990s, told NMI. “There become lessons learned from that particular case. I don’t think that the mere fact of indictments tells us anything.”
In fact, indictments such as the ones filed against Blagojevich and his chief of staff Tuesday are “common in Chicago and Cook County,” Kelly said.
Blagojevich’s arrest dominated cable news and this morning’s news cycle. But it’s important to remember that Illinois isn’t the only place plagued with corruption.
In the last three years New Mexico has endured its share of exposed corruption. Manny Aragon, a former Senate president pro tem and one of the state’s most powerful politicians for decades, pleaded guilty to several corruption charges prior to this year’s election. And two former state treasurers sit in federal prison as a result of another recent federal investigation.
There are some who say the ferreting out of corruption isn’t over in the Land of Enchantment.
