A revamp of Albuquerque's animal ordinance leaves pet owners little room for negligence

City Councilor Sally Mayer is about to get tough on Albuquerque pet owners. She is drawing up a complete overhaul of the current animal ordinance that will make it illegal to keep a dog chained to anything, anywhere, for any length of time. It will also force dog owners whose dogs are not spayed or neutered to pay the city a $150 registration fee, and will require that microchips, that can be scanned by the city, be implanted in all pets.

Follow the money. From Jim Lehrer to Rush Limbaugh, media folks were all atwitter last week over a 30-second TV ad financed by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that lambasted John Kerry's military record. This group is just a front for the Bush-Cheney campaign and you've got to be a freaking moron to believe otherwise, I thought. But just to be sure, I went to www.factcheck.org and then googled some of the Swift Boat Vets listed there, for a little confirmation.

Stacey Adams

At the Aug. 16 Council meeting, one sign read "Weapons of Mass Destruction? Iraq: 0, Albuquerque: 2000." The sign supported speakers from the local peace advocacy group Stop the War Machine, who cited the world's largest caché of nuclear weapons stored about a mile from the Sunport runways.

The Albuquerque convention center continues to be a drain on the city

Letters

Community groups that make the most sense get left on the margins

Prophets have never been popular. Real prophets aren't sideshow acts; they don't tell the future, they critique the present. Prophets are people who perform the thankless task, so crucial to any society, of destroying our delusions. They speak up when everyone else in the crowd is perfectly willing to go along with whatever insanity the leadership is suggesting at that moment.

Dateline: Romania—A justifiably superstitious man, who refused to leave his house on Friday the 13^th, died after being stung by a wasp in his own kitchen. Police in Cluj, central Romania, said that Florin Carcu, 54, had gone so far as to call in to work and ask his boss for permission not to go to work that day. “It was the strangest request I've ever received, but I ended up giving him permission to stay at home because he seemed to be really scared of something bad happening to him on that day,” Carcu's boss, Gheorghe Dosma, told the press. Doctors from the emergency services in Cluj said Carcu had been making coffee when he was stung by a species of wasp nicknamed “the wolf.” The insect is quite rare in Romania and its sting is poisonous. The unlucky Carcu died instantly.