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.
Vermont, like a lot of states, is struggling with public employee pension costs. But the state just struck an agreement with teachers that may avoid the possibility of a lawsuit and may offer a model for other states, Stateline.org reports.
Vermont and its teachers union agreed that teachers would work longer, and contribute more toward their pensions, in return for greater pension benefits once they retire. The move is expected to save Vermont money at a time that it is financially strapped.
Meanwhile in Kansas, hiring a prostitute could land you on a sex offender registry under legislation working its way through the Kansas Legislature, according to the Kansas City Star. The legislation would have people convicted of hiring a prostitute put on a sex offender registry for 10 years, the paper reports. The bill has passed the House, and still must clear the Senate.
Starbucks finds itself in the hot seat over the right of gun owners to openly carry firearms into the chain’s coffeehouses, reports the Christian Science Monitor. The coffee chain is in the middle of a controversy in California after gun owners openly carrying firearms began meeting at its stores.
The Catholic Church, and the Pope, are in the spotlight again over an decades-old sex abuse case. The church, and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in his role as the Vatican’s chief enforcer of canon law prior to his becoming Pope, failed to act in the case of a Wisconsin priest who was said to have molested hundreds of deaf children over decades of work, the New York Times reports.
Historian Ira Berlin tells us that heavy migration of people from Africa and the Caribbean over the last 30 years is stretching what it means to be African American. Berlin takes on that subject in the Smithsonian Magazine.
