Benito Aragon

The recent seizure of Associated Press reporter’s phone records by the Justice Department has raised a modicum of virility in an agency that covered civil liberty breaches by the last two administrations with a distant gaze.  Gary Pruitt, AP president and CEO, stated in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, “I am writing to object in the strongest possible terms to a massive and unprecedented intrusion by the Department of Justice into the newsgathering activities of The Associated Press.”  Indeed that spirit of objection would have been welcomed by the millions of Americans caught up in dragnet digital surveillance by a national security state run amok for more than a decade…

UNM students got a crash course in American economics and priorities on Tuesday when regents approved a 13.2 percent increase in tuition for students taking under 15 credit hours.  The hike included a nearly $1 million increased student subsidy to athletics.  That equals $165 per student and $4 million total.  In the past two years at UNM, student fees for athletics have doubled.  If UNM is going to strong arm the student body into doling out welfare for a system where $2 million a year isn’t enough money to retain a coach, students should be demanding added security for their college athlete peers…