Your story about possible litigation against Gov. Susana Martínez by members of the Legislature indicated that the state Supreme Court had ruled against her administration twice: once concerning ouster of Public Employee Labor Relations Board members and once concerning publication of a greenhouse-gas regulation. In fact, the ruling requiring publication of the regulation was announced at a January hearing on the lawsuit filed by the New Mexico Environmental Law Center for New Energy Economy. Those are not the only Supreme Court rulings against the administration.

In January, the court ruled in another case filed by our office that the administration had to publish a regulation governing groundwater pollution caused by dairies. Later, the administration agreed, in response to a similar lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club, to publish the green building codes adopted by the Construction Industries Commission. The Supreme Court has ruled against the Martínez administration three times.


Still cavemen

Regarding your May 19 article, "Conservation groups call for trapping ban on N.M. public lands": I, too, am in full support of such a ban. Trapping is a biologically unsound practice. The thought that for $20 I can buy my license and then set as many traps as I want and kill or maim as many animals as I want just makes me cringe. The fact that our governor has her "Small Business Task Force" working on this issue makes my head spin.

Our state's wildlife is a treasure for all of us to enjoy and should in no way be exploited for the sake of small businesses! This is the 21st century. Let's begin to act like we've learned something along the way.


Enter drug biz

The U.S. could buy the entire poppy crop in Afghanistan for more than the Taliban pays, put the Afghan warlords on our side and break the economy of the Taliban. A U.S. pharmaceutical company could be the world's supplier of legal medicinal narcotics, making an incidental profit and giving Afghanistan a legitimate industry. We could then hire the Taliban as our agricultural agents. This would cost less than 1 percent of the cost of the war in Afghanistan, with many fewer casualties.

Leaving Afghanistan with no local industry guarantees the success of the Taliban, which offers to reinstate the drug trade as its middlemen and fund terrorism. No government in Afghanistan can stop this by force because the people of Afghanistan are not interested in destroying their greatest natural resource.


Don't touch uranium

In a state where there is so much sun and wind, we should devote our money and expertise to the development of solar and wind power, and to electromagnetic energy use -- period! We shouldn't allow our state's uranium to be mined! With the knowledge of what uranium mining can do to the land, and eventually to all the life around it, and what can happen in the event of earthquakes and fires to nuclear facilities, we should be deeply ashamed to even entertain the thought of continuing to use nuclear energy.

Those who want to mine uranium at all costs are just like those who want to drill for oil at all costs. Companies like Uranium Resources Inc. are only interested in making huge profits; they don't care if the entire planet goes up in a mushroom cloud, as long as they have enough money to own mansions, vacation on private islands, fly in private jets and wear $20,000 watches.