Thin Line

\ Apr 21, 2005

3 min read

Quote of the week. Santa Fe City Council member David Pfeffer, angered by an April 5 Albuquerque Journal article titled “Pfeffer Wants to Patrol Border,” responded to the story in a letter published in the Journal on April 6 claiming the reporter, John T. Huddy, was guilty of ye olde “complete fabrication.”

The Journal story claimed Pfeffer supported a New Mexico Minuteman Project, similar to what exists in Arizona. (It's like Deliverance in the desert, where xenophobic hillbillies track down illegal immigrants). Pfeffer's letter insisted any claim that he supported such a project was “completely false.”

From that day forward, Huddy's byline was conspicuously absent from the paper. When the Santa Fe Reporter contacted Journal North's editor, Mark Oswald, to inquire about the situation, Oswald explained that Huddy no longer worked at the Journal as of April 7, adding: “I can tell you it had nothing to do with that story. As far as we're concerned, the story was accurate.”

Thin Line

Impeach the moron, for real. Several weeks ago, President George W. Bush, jackass that he is, stood next to a filing cabinet in Parkersburg, W. Va., that was filled with $1.7 trillion in U.S. Treasury bills belonging to the Social Security trust fund. The staged event went off flawlessly with no tough questions asked, and Bush, following the script, described the cabinet's contents as “a worthless stack of IOUs.”

With our president making these kinds of boneheaded statements, is it any wonder the U.S. dollar continues to collapse overseas? And if that isn't bad enough, a lawyer friend e-mailed me suggesting Bush's photo-op might actually be an impeachable offense. According to U.S. Constitution amendment XIV(4): “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” The amendment intended to punish any elected official who disparaged the credit of the United States. And the president swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, didn't he?

Thin Line

Going outside. Considering the intimidation, corruption and incompetence that continues to surface from the APD evidence room story, you might think that the mayor would have hired a replacement for ex-Chief Gil Gallegos (who gave one the impression that pajamas, instead of cop gear, would have been more appropriate office attire) from “outside” the department. You know, bring in a veteran chief with a track record of cleaning house who saves the vast majority of good cops, and our community in general, from further embarrassment. After all, it's always a few bad apples that ruin the whole bunch, right? Instead, Marty went all the way to Arizona and found … a former APD officer! Is that really the best way to deal with the problem?