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The New Mexico Independent going forward

By | 11.16.11

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…

EIB hears more anti-cap-and-trade testimony

Mesa Verde 80
By | 11.10.11

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…

New Mexico’s largest university low in popularity

jobs-80
By | 11.10.11

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.

Local nurse wins First Amendment award

By | 04.28.08 | 8:48 am

 Laura Berg isn’t a household name.  She doesn’t give speeches in front of crowds of thousands of people.  She isn’t a politician, but is instead something every bit as respectable — some would say more.



Berg is a Veterans Affairs nurse in Albuquerque, who got in a bit of trouble a few years back for a letter she wrote to The Alibi, an alt-weekly in Albuquerque. In the letter, Berg said what many were thinking at the time; the Bush administration had screwed up in the handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as well as the War in Iraq.



The letter, where she wrote "Bush, Cheney, Chertoff, Brown and Rice should be tried for criminal negligence," prompted a sedition investigation by the FBI.  Sedition is, according to Princeton University’s WordNet Web site, "an illegal action inciting resistance to lawful authority and tending to cause the disruption or overthrow of the government."



She was cleared of any charges, and now has earned the first PEN/Katherine Anne Porter First Amendment Award from the PEN American Center.  



The PEN American Center is, according to their Web site, "the largest of the 141 centers of International PEN, the world’s oldest human rights organization and the oldest international literary organization."



The announcement came with little fanfare April 11, but gained more attention this week after an editorial in the New York Times.  The editorial says, "It took civil rights litigators and Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico to ‘act forcefully’ in reminding the government of the Constitution and her right to free speech."



You can read the original letter at the Alibi Web site.

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