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.
It’s a slow day here as we gear up for the special session, so I’ve actually had time to read news published on sites other than my own. Shocking–but true! Here’s what’s got me interested today:
Is that guy who flew his plane into an IRS building in Austin “The First Tea-Party Terrorist?” So asks opinion columnist Robert Wright asks in today’s New York Times.
Wright is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation who has taught philosophy at Princeton and religion at the University of Pennsylvania. In the end (I hate to spoil it for you) he argues that we should NOT call Stack a terrorist. But he makes some interesting points along the way:
…The core unifying theme of the Tea Partiers is populist rage, and this is the core theme in Stack’s ramblings, whether the rage is directed at corporate titans (“plunderers”), the government (“totalitarian”) or individual politicians (“liars”).
…I emphasize that I’m talking about his ideology, not his penchant for flying planes into buildings. Still, some of the ingredients of that penchant — a conspiratorial bent, a deep and personal sense of oppression, an attendant resentful rage — can be found in the movement, if mainly on its fringes. There are some excitable Tea Partiers out there.
You could, on the one hand, follow this logic to the conclusion that Joseph Stack was the first Tea Party terrorist.
But you could instead conclude, as both [Matt] Yglesias and the blogger Glenn Greenwald kind of suggest in their posts on the Stack episode, that maybe we should just quit using the word “terrorist.” After all, if we start thinking of the Tea Party movement as housing terrorists, then — “terrorist” being the policy-shaping word that it is — we’ll be more inclined to wiretap Tea Partiers and infiltrate their gatherings. And subjecting excitable people with a persecution complex to actual persecution could lead to more excitement than I’m in the mood for.
Also in The Times today, a story about how, “Fearing Obama Agenda, States Push to Loosen Gun Laws.” Although there has been much hand-wringing about how Obama might take away everyone’s guns (just let him try to grab my Daisy Red Ryder!) the President hasn’t actually done squat about guns, the Times says. Instead, the states have taken the matter into their own hands, liberalizing gun laws as quickly as they can. We’ve seen this here, with the passage of a bill that would allow guns in restaurants that serve beer and wine, despite the opposition of restaurant owners and law enforcement.
More from the story:
“We expected a very different picture at this stage,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun control group that last month issued areport card failing the administration in all seven of the group’s major indicators.
Still, gun rights groups remain skeptical of the administration.…“The watchword for gun owners is stay ready,” said Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the National Rifle Association. “We have had some successes, but we know that the first chance Obama gets, he will pounce on us.”
