Watching the fires burn in Egypt makes you wonder how bad it has to get until people act. What does it take for people to force their government to listen? We did it once, over two hundred years ago and we haven’t done it since. Why not? Because things haven’t gotten bad enough or because [...]

To his critics, John Loehr is a pain in the class. To his supporters, he is a voice crying in the wilderness. The former regent at New Mexico Highlands University and current member of the state Board of Finance is a harsh critic of the way higher education is run in the state. And if [...]

Okay, we all know that New Mexico governance has a, well … checkered reputation. There’s the Santa Fe Ring and then there was New Mexico’s Albert Fall and his involvement in the Teapot Dome scandal. More recently, two former state treasurers were sent to prison and the former state Senate leader, Manny Aragon, is sitting [...]

Corruption.  It’s everywhere you look.  From the Governor’s office to a couple of guys in charge of buying batteries for Albuquerque’s city car fleet.  The State Treasurer–two of them in a row were on the take.  The President Pro Tempore of the State Senate stole millions.  So many members of the Public Regulation Commission have [...]

Racist jokes are inexcusable.  But racist actions by people in power are unforgivable.  In light of the furor over a racist joke e-mailed by Bernalillo County Commisisoner Michael Wiener, I thought back to the pass Manny Aragon got from the New Mexico Democratic Party, the NAACP and Hispanic advocacy organizations when he was using his [...]

The speech given on Wednesday by U.S. Attorney Gregory Fouratt to the Economic Forum of Albuquerque has drawn attention for a brief answer he gave to a question on how much longer he would stay in office. He predicted he would be replaced by February or March 2010. Of more gravity was what he said [...]

In an often electrifying speech to the Albuquerque Economic Forum, Greg Fouratt, the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, ranged from discussing national security, narco-terrorism in Mexico, and the Department of Justice’s “campaign against public corruption” in New Mexico. In response to our question, he disclosed that the state can expect to see his replacement “by [...]

What exactly is in the proposed ethics commission that has passed unanimously out of the Legislature’s interim committee on Courts, Corrections and Justice? It’s a complicated piece of legislation and has a lot of merit. For the first time, it would create an agency with jurisdiction over the unethical conduct of elected officials, public employees, [...]

An exclusive by New Mexico Watchdog: a tour inside Manny Aragon’s castle in Albuquerque’s South Valley. Our new video correspondent Steve McAllister was granted admission to the building by its caretaker and builder. His 8 1/2 minute video shows what Manny Aragon has been building for 21 years. See the video by clicking here. In [...]

Inside Marry Aragon’s bizarre castle in the South Valley.