Closets and Other Places to Hide

Amy Goodman was in town yesterday, the village of Mesilla, to be exact. Galoop galay. For the Border Book Festival. Ms. Goodman's appearance was in no way connected to the 15th anniversary of the Festival and the 15th anniversary of her Democracy Now! Ms. Goodman is on a nation-wide book tour. She admitted her staff had looked for book festivals to schedule her 'whistle-stops.'

Ms. Goodman made some interesting anecdotal points about democracy and some known and lesser-known historical events that have had an effect on our lives. She didn't know it, but once there were two sailors in uniform riding a Greyhound bus through Virginia and North Carolina at night. One sat in the front of the bus while his brother-in-arms had to sit in the back. The driver was obviously Klan-sympathetic for at one point he made a black woman move further back or he wouldn't move the bus. It was lamp-black dark on those old two-lane highways back then. I was scared of the night-riding Klan and did not speak.

I won't use the 'L' word, since the Republicans have twisted it and perverted it, to describe the crowd of about 200 people packed into the small room at the Community Center. I will use 'Closet Bugs.' It was an obvious older crowd whom I suspect would mistakenly considered themselves as 'more open and intellectual' than the average Wal-Mart shopper.

They came out of their usual cloister and closets to cheer and hoot with glee at Ms. Goodman's appearance and words. An obvious welcomed interruption to their flaccid lives of Christian privilege on a sunny Sunday morning. The Closet Bugs are the usual gray-haired older white crowd who never publicly speak up about things they know are wrong. Their life in the Status Quo is just too comfortable. There was the usual 'intellectual crowd' from the local NM State University who usually remain silent. The minorities of color were pathetically underrepresented in the audience. As was the under-21 age group from the university or high schools.

Before the show a Closet Bug made it a point to harange me about my separation of religion and government shirt, but did say she liked my wife's shirt: "Well-behaved women seldom make history." The Closet Bug's point escaped us.

Christian Symbolism in Las Cruces

The study of Christian symbolism in Las Cruces is entertaining. Not that in the churches which have a Constitutional right to do so, but that in the public forum supported by government offices and officials using tax funds to promote their religion. Then lie about it when the subject comes up.

Like the proverbial thieves in the night the symbols magically appear on public property. God is no help when trying to track down exactly who did it and/or who approved it. City Hall replaced the admirable code of silence of the hobo jungle with its own morally corrupt code of silence to protect the wrongdoers they support. It can only mean they see your questions as an attack on their church. You can only be an evil non-believer if you dare question.

Controlling News in New Mexico

One of the inherited peculiarities of the electronic world is the lack of a television station in the second-largest city in New Mexico. The local news comes from El Paso, Texas, and it is mostly about El Paso and Texas. That reception is an extra charge on the satellite billing. We get the 4-5 Mexican stations for free. I do not understand it and I will not try to explain it. The city of Las Cruces is a peculiar bastion of controlling factions that revolve around the making of money and the saving of souls.

Here you have the usual city limits that people usually understand. Then there is the more recent, from the 1980's, five-miles or so, extension of the city limits that is a no-man's land of thousands of citizens who have a Las Cruces address and pay taxes to the county. This was approved by the NM State Legislature on closing day after a visit by a committee of developers and realtors the night before. That must have been expensive, but, oh, the rewards!

Cable television is only in the city limits and the deal was made with Comcast. The City has its own channel which it broadcasts City Council meetings repeatedly from the historical Inquisitional room with its crosses of the Trinity as part of the ongoing proselytizing by the city government. If a citizen has something to say to the City Council they have to stand before the large Latin crosses to address the Council while they look at the crosses on the podium. These Christian crosses are the same ones that federal Judge Robert Brack ruled were not religious and this was parroted by the trois singes federal panel in Denver. That must have been really expensive.

The major newspapers, Santa Fe New Mexican, Albuquerque Journal, and the Las Cruces Sun-News reflect the 'intellect' of New Mexico of the number of letters they publish. The New Mexican and the Journal publish many daily Letters to the Editor. The Sun-News restricts the letters to two per day and then on Sunday there may be a whole page of letters - maybe ten. With the Sun-News you are allowed one letter submission every two weeks. Your letter may be a response to something the City is about, but you never know if or when your letter will be published. If your letter is published and someone makes a reply, and in all fairness you wish to or need to respond to that letter it may be weeks in between. By then all is forgotten except by those fair-minded citizens who make threatening phone calls.

In this electronic age the Albuquerque Journal daily paper edition is almost impossible to have delivered to the hinterland and their electronic edition is too expensive. Plus the news is like Ivory soap - 99.99% northern New Mexico. The New Mexican and the Sun-News have limited editions you can access for free. You can even make comments using your real name or an anonymous name to letters and news reports - sometimes. The rules of posting a comment are arbitrary and your comment will be excised if too controversial like - the truth.

While the above is about the daily newspapers, we have a weekly, The Las Cruces Bulletin, that the Sun-News is allowing to produce and control the majority of local news. You can read the Bulletin on its web page, but you can't make comments. The letters are restricted to two-three a week. Religious activities rceive a wide coverage which includes a lot of ads from the City with its crosses symbol on each ad and the dripping cross in the County ads are in color mostly.

The more recent decision by the City was to stop the bookmobile service in the county. A serious breach of citizens' rights to stop the flow of information and knowledge. They don't want people reading books that aren't on the approved list.

You can see how all this interacts to control the news in southern New Mexico that is more historically attuned to letting religious agencies decide what one needs to know about the world.

Las Cruces Public School District

One of the contradictions in the city of Las Cruces is the public school district. The district promotes Christianity, pure and simple. The school district denies it. The long time school board member, Charles (Chuck) Davis, representing the school district in a deposition, explained away the school district using the crosses of the Trinity as a logo thusly: "We do it because the city (Las Cruces) does it."

A blatant contradiction of the school district at that time was the dual logo symbols used by the school district. One was the crosses of the Trinity used on the maintenance vehicles that could be seen on the grounds of every public school, at businesses, and driving about the city. The other is a peculiar sight, not only on the front of the Administration Building, it constructed in tile allegedly from a drawing in a 'contest' won by a 'student.' The year and the student's name disappeared over time. The artwork is very similar to that produced by an elementary school's art teacher.

The crosses of the Trinity vehicles' logo disappeared soon after the local federal Judge Robert ("I am a Christian.") Brack ruled that the crosses were not religious and this idea was parroted by the trois singes federal court in Denver. If the crosses are not religious, what's the point of keeping them on the vehicles for proselytizing? With these actions the school district totally adopted the modified State of New Mexico symbol, the appropriated Zia Pueblo symbol, now representing the Trinity and possibly the twelve disciples - three times four is twelve - on all school district property, including name tags and shirt patches of hourly employees. Total immersion. Especially when the City police go on campuses and into the schools wearing their bright Resurrection patches.

In early times of the new millennium the school district was questioned by several First Amendment-minded citizens about the lack of equal religious rights in the district, about using the public schools to proselytize. The school district refused to talk to the citizens as they scrambled to get a policy and procedures printed up. At the time all they had was a policy, but no procedures. The policy was a one-sentence which in part said: "....we reserve the right to teach about religion." The school district has adamantly refused to add an 's' to the word 'religion.' All witnesses from the school district, including the two judges previously mentioned, said they could not see a difference by adding an 's.' Anyway, by 2003, a Policy and Procedures 424, Religion in the Schools, was published by the school district and back-dated!!! As of this date the school district has not held any classes for teachers, administrators, and school board members on the importance of keeping the public schools religion/non-religion neutral.

The belligerence of the school district toward minorities is readily viewed on the annual school district calendar. All the Christian holidays are there. But what about the Others? The school district is so culturally ignorant that a letter had to go out to the schools to not penalize Jewish children for missing school on Yom Kippur last year.

A citizen wrote the superintendent and asked a simple question: What policy and procedure protects the students from proselytizing by organizations when they go on school district-sanctioned field trips or visits off campus? Too complicated for the school district administration for sure! Their problem was forwarded to the district law firm in Santa Fe for them to respond to the curious citizen. The contradiction is that the lawyer was equally, or more so, culturally deficient as the staff at the district office as he fumbled in his attempt to scare the citizen.

Federal Court Corruption

I would venture that most people are incensed when they understand that the two Pennsylvania State Judges were selling thousands of children, juveniles, to a private prison for minor infractions and the judges received kick-back payments.

Here in New Mexico, we have state government corruption from Governor Richardson and his loyal appointees, on down to the lowest state employee; if there is a county government void of corruption they are silent about it; if there is a city, town, village, or settlement not rife with corruption they are silent about it.

When most people hear about corruption they think of events concerning government money(our tax money), businesses, and employees and their families stealing taxpayer money. But the corruption I bring to your attention is corruption of the government and federal and state courts by evangelism and proselytizing of religion.

When Governor Richardson lies, and he has a history of lying, it trickles down to the bottom of the employee list, even to those leaning on their shovels. Governor Richardson has lied about his involvement with the evangelizing groups in New Mexico that have a grip on the government. Richardson has appointed individuals as department heads that cannot separate their duties to the people from their duties to their church, synagogue, temple, or mosque. Names on request.

Here in the Federal District Court of Las Cruces, New Mexico, we have at least two federal judges, Judge Robert Brack and Magistrate Lourdes Martinez, who have knowingly and actively engaged in using their religion to corrupt the justice they dispense in the federal court. Judge Brack waved away his courtroom religious corruption activities with his comment, "I am a Christian." That is scary. Both judges repeatedly lied before this author in their courtrooms. Its all recorded in the court records belonging to the people.

The questions unanswered are: Where are the complaints about the corruption these two individuals have sprung on the federal justice system in New Mexico? Why has not the FBI investigated these two judges? Why have these two judges not resigned for corrupting the court? Is New Mexico so pathetic that it is business-as-usual for evangelicals to decide what justice is according to their own religious beliefs?

Truth and Honesty Reign Supreme

How is it possible for a pro se non-lawyer, retired Army Infantry Captain (O-3) defeat a retired Navy JAG Corp Captain (O-6) who is still in private practice and two federal judges over the Constitutional issue of Right and Wrong? Impossible, one may conclude before reading the facts.

If one limits themselves to read only what the bought federal judges wrote to reach a stilted conclusion, then join the crowd of the ill-informed. One must read what was submitted to the court by the plaintiff in the form of motions, rebuttals, evidence, and memorandums-of-record that recorded the collusive misdeeds of the defense and the judges.

The selection and appointments of federal Judges Robert Brack and Lourdes Martinez is a prime example of the corruptness of the Bush Administration's appointing of federal judges to Federal District Courts. As the lawyers say, let their courtroom records speak for them.

One question that needs an answer is, why would a federal judge with all the authority of the bench, write a personal, camouflaged threatening letter to the plaintiff in a case before his court, about the judge's continued relationship with a former law clerk who had quit his job? Did the judge's "weekly calls" to the former law clerk reveal that the plaintiff had written the now-lawyer an informative letter, or was it the possibility of the plaintiff's mail being read?

Hex Signs in the Desert

In New Mexico a rampant fear has spread across the state. The fear of late was generated by the challenge in federal court of several citizens to the use of the Latin crosses of the Trinity by the City of Las Cruces to represent all citizens. The latest use of the hex sign to protect Las Cruces is the now approved license plate. So.......

Congratulations, Las Cruces. You have sat back and allowed a secretive group of evangelicals lie to you so long that you believe whatever they say. Federal judges have used their courtrooms to promote their religious beliefs, contrary to laws of the United States, and New Mexico, that they have sworn to uphold. When judges lie and abuse their positions they should resign. These two judges’ actions apparently belie a belief that their religion puts them above the law.

The result now is that the proud Las Cruces has a license plate that promotes Christianity over all other religions and non-religions. Totally in-your-face prejudice that seems to escape the evangelicals on the city council. No other city in the United States promotes one group or one religion above the other citizens and their beliefs, or lack of, like Las Cruces. Total pride in prejudice.

To the glee of the evangelicals this prejudice has permeated the public schools. Representatives of the Las Cruces Public School District have lied, repeatedly, and in federal court, about the religious intent of the actions of the District. One just has to look at the secret purchase of the stadium crosses on Tashiro Drive, in violation of several New Mexico laws, to understand what is going on. The Court accepted the District lies about the crosses on the wall in Booker T. Washington Elementary School.

And now Las Cruces you have a license plate that we all know what it represents. It’s good, actually, for now we will all know who supports the City Council’s standard for prejudice. And as I have said many times before, Las Cruces and the Chamber of Commerce use evangelical Christianity as a commodity and export; more so now as these ‘believers’ drive around the country showing their pride in religious prejudice.