Balloting underway
• Starting this week, voters can cast their ballots early at the City Clerk’s Office, 600 Second NW, and at the Albuquerque Records Center, 604 Menaul NW, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
• Ten other early-voting locations open Oct. 30.
• The clerk is mailing absentee ballots. Applications can be downloaded from cabq.gov. Scroll down to the “vote” link.
• Sample ballots are available at cabq.gov. The ballot is long because the abortion ordinance is printed in its entirety.
• Voters must present a photo ID to vote in person.
• Voters in District 7 get one ballot with both the City Council runoff and the abortion ordinance on it. Voters registered in other districts get only the abortion question
I’m stunned that the opening assertion by opponents to marriage equality is that the state’s foremost inteterst is in marriage for procreation. You have got to be kidding. Moreover, the argument continues that same-sex marriage would discourage heterosexuals from marrying AND lead to more out-of-wedlock births. This argument is particularly absurd in New Mexico with our very high out-of-wedlock birth rate.
The procreation argument is an insult to couples like us, who married with no intent to spawn, and to gay couples with children. It sounded like the Justices weren’t buying it.
NM Supreme Court: No immediate ruling on same-sex marriage, but plenty of tough questions
During the two-hour oral arguments, several Supreme Court justices had pointed questions for James Campbell, an Arizona-based attorney representing Sharer and other GOP legislators.
At one point, justice Richard Bosson appeared to take issue with Campbell’s argument that the state has an interest in ensuring that marriage remains limited to between one man and one woman.
“Marriage is much more than just a vehicle for natural procreation,” Bosson said, pointing out the state does not ask heterosexual couples whether they plan to have children.
From http: //www.abqjournal.com/287115/politics/nm-supreme-court-no-immediate-ruling-on-same-sex-marriage-but-plenty-of-tough-questions.html
[T]he proposal to add the UNM location failed on a 5-3 party-line vote.
In favor of adding a UNM location were Democrats Garduno, Ken Sanchez and Isaac Benton. Voting “no” on the proposal were Republicans Dan Lewis, Roxanna Meyers, Janice Arnold-Jones, Trudy Jones and Don Harris. Republican Brad Winter was absent.
Garduno accused the council of disenfranchising people who want to vote. Harris responded that Garduno deserved blame for not trying to add a voting location earlier when it would have been more practical.
On the Nov. 19 ballot are a proposal to ban abortions in Albuquerque after 20 weeks of pregnancy and a runoff election to choose a councilor for the Uptown-area District 7.
[mjh: That runoff is between Arnold-Jones and Gibson and will decide the majority of the council.]
I have a stiff middle digit for “superfan” David Layman and his cohort for spoiling the end of Breaking Bad for “ordinary” fans who have to wait until the episodes are released to us. Thanks, Dick! And thank you to the Albuquerque Journal for tooting its own horn on the front page about how much impact something in the Journal can have on Social Media. The fact that it was an ad, not an article, just gives the owner a bigger boner. Finally, thanks to reporter Rick Nathanson for his fair and balanced observation that in all the world one person was unhappy with this spoiler(it’s at least two, you tool).
Thank god social media was non-existent when the Empire Strikes Back and the Crying Game came out.
SANTA FE (AP) — Tens of thousands of New Mexicans will find new opportunities to shop for health insurance through an online marketplace that’s opening for business.
New Mexico’s health insurance exchange begins operating today and there also will be a toll-free hotline providing assistance.
Small businesses — those with 50 or fewer workers — can sign up for health insurance coverage through the state-run exchange: http://www.bewellnm.com/.
Individuals can use the New Mexico exchange to link to a federal government website that will handle their enrollment until the state has its computer system ready to assume that responsibility.
Enrollment also can be done by phone or in person at clinics and other sites across the state
About 80,000 New Mexicans are expected to enroll in insurance plans through the exchange in its first year.
SANTA FE (AP) — New Mexico and other states are expanding how businesses and individuals can obtain health insurance. Here are five things to know about New Mexico’s health insurance exchange that starts operating today.
Here is also an excerpt of a letter written on CNN’s website from Bourdain:
“The upcoming New Mexico show is not about guns. Though there are, as in much of America between the coasts, many guns there.
This show is about the American cowboy ideal, about the romantic promise of the American West, about individuality and the freedom to be weird. New Mexico, where Spanish, Mexican, Pueblo, Navajo and European cultures mix and have mixed — at times painfully and lately, more easily. New Mexico, where everyone from artists, hippies, cowboys, poets, misfits, refugees and tourists of every political stripe have interpreted the promise of its gorgeous, wide-open spaces and the freedom that it offers in their own, very different ways.
New Mexico is an enchanted land, where people are largely free to create their own world.”
Tara Calico, who has been missing for 25 years, is pictured here about one year before her disappearance on a vacation with her mother, Patty, in the mountains of Mexico.