Let's be careful what we ask for, especially regarding nuclear power. It's not free, and it's certainly not clean.

Extensive environmental damage occurs in the mining and refining of uranium. Expensive power plants are showing signs of age and leaking carcinogens, and huge amounts of radioactive waste are piling up because nobody wants to bury them in their backyard (surprise!).

There are alternatives though! Besides investing in truly clean power from geothermal, hydroelectric, wind and sun, we should be investing in converting to thorium-based reactors.

This type of reactor is physically smaller, cannot melt-down and does not generate weapons-grade waste, fitting in with the global goal of non-proliferation. Learn more at sites like

http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/19758/. Let's ask our legislators to shift U.S. efforts to thorium-based reactors.




The Obama administration made two huge mistakes in the past week regarding nuclear weapons. The first is to propose funding increases for the plutonium research facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the second is to appoint Pete Domenici to the Energy Department's new Commission on America's Nuclear Future.

If President Obama is sincere about reducing nuclear weapons, he is on the wrong track. The weapons lobby at the lab is bent on a new generation of useless nuclear weapons and is rejoicing that their guardian angel Domenici is back in the action. At a time of huge deficits, why waste our taxpayer money on useless weapons we will never use? Why ask the all-time champion of nuclear weapons how we should go about getting rid of them? Cut our budget deficit by cutting all support for new nuclear weapons now!


Justice denied

I am appalled that two of the main architects of Bush's torture programs — Jay Bybee and John Yoo — got off with a light slap on the wrist from the Justice Department. Bybee and Yoo wrote memos condoning "enhanced interrogation techniques." Thanks to them, countless prisoners (in Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and secret rendition centers around the world) had their bodies and their lives destroyed.

We're talking about waterboarding, severe repeated beatings, cutting with knives, sexual assault, mock executions and restraint in excruciating positions. Some of these prisoners were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever happened to justice and human rights? Bybee and Yoo, as well as other members of the gang like Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, et al., shouldn't be allowed off the hook so easily. That's letting them get away with murder.


Space business

I enjoyed listening to Steve Landeene of Spaceport America at the Roundhouse rotunda on Sunday. Indeed, as he said, "the industrialization of space is upon us," and I concur wholeheartedly that this is a best-of-all-worlds investment for New Mexico.

However, I wonder how the new space billionaires — Richard Branson, Paul Allen, Jeff Bezos et al. — would feel if they knew how utterly archaic the technology of rocket propulsion is. And that top-secret ultra-advanced antigravity technology (much of it derived from reverse-engineering of crashed UFOs) is a reality kept under wraps by our interior government and black-op military, who have for decades funneled more money from the covert drug trade than all these billionaires have combined to do the research and development.


Poorly paid police

I guess I have known, but had not put into perspective, the shameful pay our city police officers receive. We are trusting these officers with our lives and property for a mere $27,000 to $54,000 a year. This is really pitiful. I hope the new mayor, whoever it is, will look at the budget to find ways to increase these salaries, even if it means cutting the salaries of city councilors or other departments. They should be earning the national average, at least!

I don't condone, but do understand, how some can become corrupt. How can you raise a family on $15 per hour, especially doing what they do? It's not right.


Good guys, or bad?

Amid reports of a serious increase in local burglaries and property crime is the recent news item about a Santa Fe police detective —a former head of the Santa Fe Police Officers Association — being accused of aiding a drug dealer. While the outcome of this case is pending, it recalls the situation several years ago when home burglaries soared during a time that two Santa Fe police detectives charged with drug enforcement were investigated for illegal activities.

I don't recall whether either man was ever charged with a crime; both men ultimately left the police force. City officials, mayoral candidates, the police chief, and the police union need to take this situation seriously and assure citizens that our law-enforcement officers are not part of the problem.


Police were there

A neighbor's alarm went off this morning and being on their notification list, I received a phone call from Central Security after they had notified the police. I arrived at the house less than 10 minutes after receiving the call, and the police had already arrived at the house and had checked the front of the property. I am very impressed, so kudos to our police department.


PMs to the rescue

In the Jan. 31 My View, "Health care should be lifelong collaboration," Peter Baston writes that he can't find a conventionally trained physician who will partner with him in preventive medicine to help him maintain good health.

Though primary-care specialties (internal and family medicine, obstetrics/gynecology and pediatrics) emphasize prevention, only one of the 24 recognized medical specialties, general preventive medicine, trains its physicians in both public health and preventive medicine. The University of New Mexico is embarking on such a residency, which is the only one not typically funded by the federal government. We can thank four of New Mexico's five federal lawmakers — Sen. Jeff Bingaman, Sen. Tom Udall, Rep. Ben Ray Luján, and Rep. Martin Heinrich — for sponsoring legislation that would help provide reliable, consistent funding for such residencies.