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I call bullshit. Let's have a solid statistic on that. I seriously doubt that you can come up with ONE hospital that closed down due to non-payment BY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS in ERs. I'm sure there are hospitals that have closed due to non-payment in ERs, but the vast majority of those non-payers are US citizens. Remember that 30% of Americans are uninsured, and VERY few of those people will actually pay a $100,000 ER bill.

Statistics I have seen show that illegal immigrants use up about 3% of public hospital resources annually. This is consistent with their percentage of the population. Remember that out of nearly 300 million Americans, only 15 million of them are illegal aliens. That's about 5%. Most studies show that illegal aliens, per capita, use LESS government resources than the average citizen, mainly because far less is available to them. It's very difficult for me to believe that such a small percentage of the population is WHOLLY responsible for the healthcare crisis in the US without overwhelming evidence, which you have not presented.

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/980.html

That's one of 120,000 results I get on Google with "illegal immigrants hospitals shut down". Hospitals can't afford to give away free medical care. With uninsured citizens, their assets can be seized or liened, and usually are. With illegals, there's no such thing.

Who gets to define what's "stupid"? I think drinking to excess is pretty stupid. Should we just put a bullet in the head of everyone who get cirrhosis or alcohol poisoning?

No, but we shouldn't give them free medical care courtesy the taxpayer. If you're dumb enough to drink yourself to alcohol poisoning, you need to take responsibility for that, and pay for any treatment you get. This is the same thing with seatbelts. If you're dumb enough to drive without a seatbelt, you shouldn't get any free care when you get injured. And no, the fact that you have insurance doesn't help: many insurance policies will refuse coverage if they found you weren't wearing your seatbelt. Why should they pay for your stupidity?

As for retarded people and the like, there's a difference between being born with a condition, and causing a preventable condition through sheer negligence and stupidity. Blind people didn't choose to be born that way. People crippled in auto accidents who weren't wearing their seatbelts most certainly chose their fate, and have no right to ask for a hand-out the way that a truly unfortunate person does.

I realize my examples sound harsh, but you're the one talking about "kicking their bleeding, dying asses out the door".

I only said that because society refuses to do that, but then you come along and say that stupid people should be allowed to do stupid stuff as much as they want, and society should be forced to pay for their mistakes. If you want to pay for other peoples' stupid behavior, go right ahead. Don't try to force me to, because I'm going to demand something to curb their behavior, including seatbelt and helmet laws. I'd prefer to just let them suffer with no treatment, but as long as the rest of society is refusing to do that, then I demand the next best thing, which is laws to reduce the effects of stupidity.

Tornado touches down near Las Cruces during day of severe weather in southern NM

Thanks for playing

I can say I'm proud that they didn't let a little thing like the rules get in the way

that's the true new mexico spirit, eh?

i used to liver there, just poking fun... no offence meant

We've had great success at http://www.freenewmexican.com/ as i posted earlier> We've done reader comments for not quite two years. Over time, the reporters and editors get trained to scan the comments and often get leads or tips, either directly or indirectly. Editors assign f/u stories. Since I have to approve all the comments beforehand, I also get tipped to breaking news and I let the newsroom know asap. We've also had some great public service action. After a DWI fatality broke the public's back on that perpetual epidemic here, we shifted all the readers venting and ranting into a more productive mode by settting up a forum solely for their recommendations and propsals. Planning Council got involved, Town Hall meeting set up, a goood basis for lesisaltive language underway, and the comments went back into print version. This is the way it's supposed to work - a great partnership between community, print and web. Its all about closing the gap. Too often, we think of journalism as "reporting news". And yet a huge concern in journalism is "how to make your news *story* connect with your reader". It is the classic question, almost a cliche - but in an age of increasing media distrust, its a question that still needs some thought. It involves examining what news is, what a news story is, and who gets lost in that transformation. First, what makes an "event" different than "news"? News are events that matter, that are deemed to have some kind of relevance to our lives. So, news might be defined as an event plus some kind of social reaction or response to that event. Extramarital affairs are not news; presidential extramarital affairs are news in this country because this society deems that the private activities of public officials matter - for any myriad of reasons. How "big" a news story is is in part determined by how intense the event's impact will be on the social psyche. But "news" happens on all levels of scale. A house on fire is an event. It is "news" to its occupants, the neighborhood - its society. If the fire is in a town 10 states from you, it probably won't be "news" to you, but that doesn't diminish its relevance to the society (the homeowners, the neighborhood) that it affects. Traditional journalism filters this by taking an event plus its social response ("news"), then feeding it ("the news story") back to the individual in that society that responded, and hoping to engage a secondary response (the classic "connect with your reader"). By this time you are far removed from the actual event, it having been filtered by both the social response, then re-filtered and compressed by the gatherer/shaper (news media) that tries to win a secondary response. It is a loop unaware of itself. News doesn't operate in a vacuum, it's an integral part of the society it happens in. One of the web's greatest strengths is its ability to make social connections. Since news are events that matter (i.e.,are deemed to have some kind of social impact or response), using the socialization strengths of the web allows people to fully interact both with the events themselves (by telling the story),and with the way and manner that those events are disseminated by others (other citizen reporters, and/or a news organization). News organizations that support such public reporting and community initiatives can help restore their lost media trust by bonding the readership to a news source that actually includes and responds to the society it reports to. In my view, that's how 21st century journalism will start to answer the classic question posed at the beginning: You connect to the reader by including them, involving them, responding to them, allowing a voice and a platform to articulate the news that happens to them as well as the news that happened to them that the News Organization tells them about.

I highly disagree with the idea of keeping it purely local. Sure people can go to other sources, but if you are a news site, most of your traffic is going to be from other people at their workplace; they don't have the time or want to risk being seen by their boss to sift through 5 different sites for their news. You need to provide a relevant mix, but make it unique and hand pick those stories as opposed to running a bland autonomous AP feed. Even AP runs material not found in the mainstream if you dig hard enough - and your readers will respect you for it. You dont have to inundate and it should never eclipse local coverage - but dont make the mistake of blowing it off. Your neighbor down the street may have a son or daughter serving in Iraq; dont make the mistake of thinking that world events dont matter to yur local readrship. Besides, they can't comment on news stories on those big mainstream sites, but they can and often do with us. Most of our biggest discussions are on world stories. Web content managers should well look into the work of Doug McGill and his work in tying global trends to local interests. As passionate as I am about the hyperlocal trend, I'm equally passionate on this point too.

I've documented our efforts and philosophy on participatory media on our new media blog at http://newmedianewmexico.blogspot.com/. Anyone interested in these issues is welcome to take a look at our experiences.

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/32902.html

There's an all-out war to preclude any public religious speech in this country. Don't believe that? Why is the ACLU filing suit against Las Cruces NM for having Crosses in their logo? the town is known as "THE CROSSES!" It's revisionist history at best. It's persecution of the Christian worldview at most. It's troubling either way.

Where did you hear this? Do you have a source? There is no mention of this suit on the ACLU website. There is no mention in this article: http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/32902.html.

Either I'm under-informed, you're misinformed or you're just making shit up. Which is it?

Of course when the ACLU is fighting in court to allow Muslims to wear head scarfes or Christians to wear crucifixes then it's all swept under the rug (because you don't actually care about individual religious expression as guaranteed in the 1st, you only care about getting the State to sponsor your religious expression). It's obvious though that we have different understandings of the establishment clause. Fortunately, it's not for you or I to decide (I mean largely, it may not even be worth debate, since what we think it means matters not on whit). I guess we'll just have to keep relying on the SCOTUS as the Constitution intended.

I've spoken with persecuted Christians before. I just don't see it. I've said it before: the cult of victimization only belittles though who are actually victims of religious persecution (e.g., murdered Muslims in England, Jews in Poland, etc.).

Sorry for being so hotheaded. It's nothing personal. I'm just riled up from this debate.

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/32902.html

There's an all-out war to preclude any public religious speech in this country. Don't believe that? Why is the ACLU filing suit against Las Cruces NM for having Crosses in their logo? the town is known as "THE CROSSES!" It's revisionist history at best. It's persecution of the Christian worldview at most. It's troubling either way.

Where did you hear this? Do you have a source? There is no mention of this suit on the ACLU website. There is no mention in this article: http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/32902.html.

Either I'm under-informed, you're misinformed or you're just making shit up. Which is it?

Of course when the ACLU is fighting in court to allow Muslims to wear head scarfes or Christians to wear crucifixes then it's all swept under the rug (because you don't actually care about individual religious expression as guaranteed in the 1st, you only care about getting the State to sponsor your religious expression). It's obvious though that we have different understandings of the establishment clause. Fortunately, it's not for you or I to decide (I mean largely, it may not even be worth debate, since what we think it means matters not on whit). I guess we'll just have to keep relying on the SCOTUS as the Constitution intended.

I've spoken with persecuted Christians before. I just don't see it. I've said it before: the cult of victimization only belittles though who are actually victims of religious persecution (e.g., murdered Muslims in England, Jews in Poland, etc.).

Sorry for being so hotheaded. It's nothing personal. I'm just riled up from this debate.

I beg to differ, Mink Louisiana just got phone service and at a huge loss to the local telco.

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/10009.html

Here is an article from February about a small Lousiana town that just recieved phone service. http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/10009.html

1. China waged war on India in 1962; India was caught with their pants down.
2. China backstabbed India with this war. Months before the war the then Prime Ministers of both the countries were courting each other. The relationship was so deep (at least from the Indian side) that in India the dominant slogan was "Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai" (Indian and Chinese are brothers)
3. China still controls thousands of square kilometers of Indian territory

Start with the American Library Association, here

What branch of government was buring the books?

Office of Foreign Assets Control according to this news story.

I guess Google is just too hard to use these days.

Director Nanos single-handedly dealt an enormous blow to the American and world science by shutting down the operations at Los Alamos for MONTHS - all for nothing more than dominance games. If the Cold War were still on, I would suspect him of being a Russian mole.

Let me state that the knowledge of the total absurdity of the lleged "security breach" in Los Alamos is nothing new. Larry Barker of KRQE News reported that the scandal was fake in August 2004. Read the August 11, 2004 artile from Santa Fe New Mexican.

To conclude, I am much saddened by the mindless regurgitation of the official lies in this thread.