Bring in the feds

The Santa Fe Plaza was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. This means the federal government should have some say on what happens on our Plaza. In all the brouhaha over the Soldiers’ Monument, has anyone thought to ask the Department of the Interior or the National Park Service what the feds think about the destruction and possible rebuilding of the obelisk? Will the rioters who destroyed it ever face federal charges?

Stephen Dubinsky

Santa Fe

Back in the day

In 1775 and 1776, Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet called Common Sense supporting the American Revolution. It included these reflections: “It is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, than to trust to time and chance. If we admit it now, some Massanello [a Naples agitator] may hereafter arise, who laying hold of popular disquietudes, may collect together the desperate and discontented, and by assuming to themselves the powers of government, may sweep away the liberties of the continent like a deluge.”

Sounds much too close to now, doesn’t it?

Gerald Hotchkiss

Tesuque

Too many guns

My hat’s off to The New Mexican with your Opinions page on March 6 with the My Views discussing the need for gun control, a controversial issue in New Mexico. The basic problem in our country is the insane number of guns in private hands. We have over 13 more guns per capita than the world average; we have more guns in private hands than people (U.S. population is roughly 330 million). The Supreme Court has incorrectly interpreted the Second Amendment of the Constitution to permit unlimited gun ownership.

When any law contradicts common sense and reason, it must be ignored. My dad often told me, “Doug, remember, rules are made to be broken!” There are roughly 100 daily deaths in our country from gun shootings; the majority are suicides and less than 2% are mass shootings.

This idiocy must be stopped.

T. Douglas Reilly

Los Alamos

Failure to protect

Los Alamos National Laboratory is preparing to make plutonium pits that contain highly dangerous pollutants. The cost of this project has been given in monetary terms but no mention is made of how it will affect the surrounding earth, air and water. Now we are told that for nearly 20 years, the Department of Energy is still struggling with cleaning up a chromium plume moving toward San Ildefonso Pueblo.

If the Department of Energy and LANL can’t clean up a 20-year-old mess, how can they clean up pollution resulting from plutonium pit production?

LANL is surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people who have no say in what LANL chooses to do, and yet we are the people most affected by its pollution. Why are we not consulted when we bear the cost? Why is LANL allowed to produce products that harm the planet and make the world less safe with no environmental studies or studies showing the effects of the pollution on local populations? On what basis are our senators supporting harmful plutonium pit production? How are they protecting us?

Nancy King

Santa Fe

Book backers

Kudos to the La Farge Library in Santa Fe.

The March Madness display, Literary Classics Edition, is delightful. Our neighborhood library keeps finding ways to bring attention to books worth reading. We are lucky to have such devoted librarians in Santa Fe.

Dina Jansen

Santa Fe