Two to three times a week, business owner Kristie Romano finds herself feeding quarters into Downtown parking meters outside her Vitality Juice smoothie bar. With the clock ticking, she and her husband load up the car with plastic, aluminum, glass and corrugated boxes to take to one of the city's recycling centers.

Republican or Democrat for Domenici's Senate seat? How many more will lose their PNM jobs? Is New Mexico healthy? Why are we better than Tucson?

If someone asked you to be responsible for 30,000 animals, what would you do? What if you knew that if no one took responsibility for them, they’d all likely get run over, be snatched and thrust into underground fighting rings, become ill or aggressive, or simply multiply their numbers exponentially so their offspring would perpetuate the same patterns? What if you knew that, in taking responsibility for this teeming mob of animals, in choosing to save them from the above alternative, you would also be responsible for killing more than half of them?

Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein said in a recent speech "idiot culture" is at fault for the bungling state of politics in the U.S., and vapid celebrity gossip is lowering our collective IQ. That's right, Britney Spears is dragging your smarts through the dungheap.

Dateline: Malaysia--Fearing he had too much to drink, a driver tried to play it safe by bribing a policeman to avoid a breath analyzer test. As it turned out, he passed the breathalyzer but was promptly arrested for corruption. Aw Cheng Fat offered a police officer 50 ringgit ($15) after his car was stopped at a police checkpoint for drunk driving three years ago, Kuala Lumpur’s The Star reported last Wednesday. On Tuesday, Aw was fined 1,000 ringgit ($300) by a local court for the ultimately pointless bribery attempt.

I just wanted to commend your paper for its excellent article by Benjamin Radford on the alleged Santa Fe courthouse ghost [Feature, “Catching the Courthouse Spirit,” Oct. 25-31].