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…
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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 Westboro funeral protest. Photo by k763.
New Mexico Attorney General Gary King has written a brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a lower court’s decision in favor of Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church. Phelps is a Kansas preacher who has made a career out of picketing funerals of U.S. soldiers; his followers carry signs emblazoned with slogans such as “God Hates Fags.” War deaths, and the deaths of gays and lesbians (among others) are God’s way of showing his anger at America’s acceptance of homosexuality, members of the church believe.
The family of Marine Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq in 2006, sued Phelps and the church after they picketed their son’s funeral. The family initially won a $10 million verdict, but an appeals court said the protesters were exercising free speech. Now 48 states and the District of Columbia are asking the Supreme Court to overturn that decision.
“I joined 47 other states in support of the the soldier’s family lawsuit because, even though I strongly believe in our First Amendment right, it was never intended to give extremists the right to attack private individuals the way this family was victimized,” AG King said in a press release. “Fred Phelps and his followers inflicted immeasurable pain and suffering on the family of Lance Corporal Mathew Snyder by their vitriolic, hate-filled attacks on his character and service. They then hid behind the First Amendment and that is just plain wrong.”
“The Phelpses are not war protesters; they are zealots who target private citizens for harassment and psychological attack, exploiting those citizens’ private grief and unbearable suffering to gain public attention and notoriety for the Phelpses’ causes,” King wrote in the brief.
