Musings before a Deadline

The moments between finishing our radio show at 10 am. Wednesday and submitting my Sunday newspaper column at noon Wednesday aren’t usually too contemplative.

Today my head is spinning from discussions of high school acting, the gruesome facts of global climate madness (euphemized “long-term weather patterns” in federal grant applications), and our county commission realizing you can’t always trust big-money folks.

We got to talk to a couple of people who, like our radio station, help our community understand what’s happening: state climatologist Dave Dubois, a favorite guest whose joyful manner contrasts sharply with the bad news he relates, and Heath Haussamen, whose local reporting helps us see through the political haze. (Maybe, next life, I’ll get first and last names starting with the same letter.)

Talking about acting reminds me of a play I didn’t see, an amateur production of Agatha Christie’s suspense play (its name sanitized to “Ten Little Indians” and then to “And then there Were None”), in which ten strangers are lured to a remote island where someone slowly kills them all, in ways from a nursery rhyme, and, as the group dwindles, each survivor reasonably supposes the killer is one of the remaining survivors. The last two – a war hero whose speeding car killed two kids and a former governess whose inattention caused a child’s death – are (a) slowly falling in love with each other and (b) increasingly sure the other is the killer. In one amateur production, right after World War II, the roles were played by a Marine bomber pilot who’d flown in the Pacific and his new bride, a former governess for a prominent family in Washington D.C.

I wish I could ask them how that felt, the similarities between roles and lives, and the dramatically mixed feelings their characters portrayed. I wish we’d had videotape back then, so’s I could watch, too, because a some months later I was born to them.

As always, the climate tragedy sets my mind spinning like a top: what to say about a federal government with its head willfully in the sand and county commissioners who just wouldn’t listen to folks suggesting more care and judgment in dealing with the rolling-in-money Project Jupiter folks. “Yo, they’ll have an army of top lawyers looking at every document!” we all shouted, hoping the commissioners understood that corporations’ sole duty is to maximize profits.

Our folks blissfully approved a deal that, as Commissioner Susie Chaparro (spoilsport!) complained, was still full of blank pages. Surely violating our open meetings law, they assigned one commissioner to “fix it” in secret meetings with the developers. Heath says a key change involved “potable water.” Now we learn that the project, which had billed itself as posing no problem for our parched community, will use insanely more water than planned. But it’s “non-potable.” Do our leaders know that all that water comes from the same underground pool, just maybe from from higher or lower levels? (The folks supplying the water have applied to dig deeper wells.)

As always, all this climate doom-and-gloom seems absurd, when the sun is shining, the sky is blue, the birds are singing away, and the hummingbirds are enjoying our bright red flowers. Who can imagine your grandchildren will be climbing a huge border wall, desperately trying to reach an increasingly crowded Canada?

It’s a terrible, wonderful world. Let’s enjoy what’s great, and fight for what’s right.

                         – 30 --

 

The above column appeared Sunday, 19 April 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper’s website and (presently) on KRWG’s website. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/ ).

Not mentioned in the column is that 14April this year would have been my father’s 117^th birthday, helping put that Agatha Christie play in my mind. I never got to see my father act, although he had done plenty of it in his youth, and although all through childhood my mother often played the lead in area productions.

Mentioned is Heath Haussamen. You can read his local stories at https://haussamen.com/ .

 

Ideas for Young Local Lawyers

 Lawyering gets really fun when you not only do good, but (a) win and (b) get paid. I’m urging younger lawyers to pick up some brilliant opportunities to enjoy their practices.

First, representing folks whose legitimate Inspection of Public Records Act requests get denied or bungled by arrogant or incompetent local governments. IPRA makes those straightforward and guarantees that winning gets you fairly paid, because our state strongly favors the public seeing public records. Courts must award attorney fees if you win. Winning is defined, in part, as procuring at least one document previously withheld. Since you gambled for a good cause, the fees may be more than your normal hourly rate.

You’re also defending democracy. Democracy depends on an informed citizenry. Free access to public documents is essential. The law also requires that a government denying access must specify the exception(s) in writing and describe the withheld documents. Sounds easy, but in my last big IPRA case, we explained that in detail to an inept, arrogant city attorney who refused to comply – which increased our damage award by $100 per day. These cases are made easy because they serve the public good. Your clients are often public-spirited folks trying to use the documents to expose problems in local government or demand government behave reasonably. And you get paid.

Secondly: local governments that allow public input can’t deny that right to speak without due process: written notice with clear and specific reasons, and a fair hearing before a neutral decision-maker, and narrow tailoring of any ban. As I’ve described in earlier columns, the County banned citizen Derrick Pacheco with zero due process. The county manager and the “acting county attorney” sent him a letter purporting to “trespass” him from the county building. Inadequate reasons given, no hearing, let alone any appeal. Just, “Don’t Come Back.” When he next attended a county meeting and sought to speak, he was tossed on the ground, handcuffed, and spent 20 hours in jail.

That’s an exceptionally blatant and stupid violation. There was no emergency, the County knew the rules, and he ended up in jail, adding to his damages. The case is a surefire winner and surer than some to result in some financial damages as well as an injunction. Further, even trivial damages can trigger mandatory attorney’s fees under federal civil rights law.

Finally, a citizen is suing the state over Project Jupiter, arguing that our rights under the New Mexico State Constitution require the State to mandate more use of renewable energy. He hopes to compel Project Jupiter to revise its potentially environmentally devastating microgrid gas model toward more use of renewable energy.

Our Constitution guarantees our right to “enjoy life and liberty” and “seek and obtain safety and happiness.” Those are broader than some states’ provisions, but do not specify “a beneficial environment” as some newer provisions do. It’d be tough to find safety or happiness, or maintain life very long, without breathable air and safe water. If my apartment lease guaranteed my right to enjoy life and be safe and happy, you sure couldn’t deprive me of healthy air to breathe.

This case I wouldn’t bet my life on winning; but the argument is reasonable, New Mexico has a thoughtful Supreme Court, and the argument deserves effective presentation, and should not be denied a hearing at the highest level because one side knows legal tricks and procedures and the other doesn’t.
                        -- 30 -- 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 12 April 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper’s website (sub nom Lawyers Can Do Good and Get Paid ) and on KRWG’s website. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/).]

[I’m old, and a year ago I went inactive as a lawyer, or I’d be enjoying these cases as counsel.] 

 

 

 

 

"No Kings" Rallies Ain't the Sixties

Saturday morning, after writing about a fictional family with one son in ‘Nam, and one opposing the war, I attended the third No King’s Rally. Headlines proclaiming “Huge antiwar demonstrations April 15^th [1967]” merged in my mind with Internet posts from the “3^rd No Kings Rally.”

Those feel so different.

Our generation was shocked when we had to face how awful and stupid the Viet Nam War was. We’d grown up believing that the U.S. was a shining democracy under God, envied by all the world for our decency and democracy. I had no idea that we were destroying indigenous populations to help United Fruit Company control Latin America, or that Vietnamese leaders simply sought independence, as we had.

Our protesting was an unpleasant surprise to our country. In 1966, our first small peaceful vigil in front of the draft board in conservative Lancaster, Pennsylvania was broken up by motorcyclists riding onto the sidewalk and hitting people. As the cops took us down an alley toward the station to report, they stopped, and the driver looked back at him and growled, “You’re the ones we ought to be getting. And we will.” (Those cops and motorcyclists had brothers or pals fighting.) Here, a certain LCPD detective filmed every demonstration. Everyone, even Walter Cronkite, credited Administration with a little candor and believed the war wasn’t completely insane; and

Opposition to the war grew. It brought down an otherwise popular sitting president. Eventually, the war ended. Pentagon lying and Richard Nixon’s Watergate fiasco shot credibility all to hell. People got more cynical about their government than during my childhood.

The “we” expanded, too. To include Blacks, women, atheists, and folks whose sexual drives and gender identities varied.

But all that triggered a reaction.

While I celebrate other nations’ independence, and being able to form friendships and relationships with folks of any ethnicity, and letting consenting adults love each other however suits them, others find that threatening, somehow. And our rulers love to divide us.

With tremendous Democratic help, Donald Trump has cleverly ridden popular anger to the White House, although most folks disagree with him on most issues.

“No Kings” rallies are not a small minority desperately trying to awaken Americans to well-camouflaged and tragic idiocy, but millions of citizens trying to remind others who the United States is, or was, or aspired to be. Mature folks are as numerous as young. There’s joy, not fear. Passing cars honk their support instead of throwing rocks at us. Proprietors of neighborhood luncheonettes don’t spill coffee on us intentionally for being traitors.

These protest an obvious departure from our governmental norms. No previous President demanded his face on money, changed a tower’s name to the Bush-Washington Monument, or held up highway funding to get a major airport named after him. Unfortunately, our limited democracy is more obviously endangered than ever.

Most folks want us to be a democracy, though they may differ on means. Unlike the huge majority who supported or accepted the Viet Nam conflict so long, a significant majority of us oppose Trump’s Iran lurch (“excursion”) from the gitgo.

These rallies are fun; they’re therapeutic; some signs are wonderfully witty; but they are not an end in themselves. They must not only expand the majority that favors saving democracy from Mr. Trump, they should generate action, electoral or otherwise (but always peaceful) that builds some serious speedbumps under the Trump bandwagon.

                                                      – 30 –

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 5 April 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and will presently appear on the newspaper's website and on KRWG’s website shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/).

[ I guess a further difference is that I watched the Movement – civil rights and peace – go from embattled minority to (mostly) accepted dogma. I opposed my own country’s government and did not expect to win. I understand why we won, but I think I was surprised; and the path was roundabout, in that we initially got Richard Nixon. But I think most folks had some faith that if somehow a large majority freaked out about ‘Nam, the government would give in. When Nixon turned out to have broken laws to maintain power, even members of his own party joined the demand that he resign.]

[ That’s no longer so. We sure hope that a majority can stem the tide. But Republicans, recognizing their mid-term vulnerability, are tryiing to pass laws making voting harder. Our cartoonish Defense Secretary – excuse me, War Boss, is firing top military leaders that might have enough character to resist an illegal order. Congressional Republicans lack backbones. The significant majority ALREADY against the Iran debacle isn’t stopping the conflict. ]