Crossposted at New Mexico FBIHOP

I know this is a hyper-local diary and so will get little attention -- but for those who read it, you should question whether this is happening in your area and what you can do to prevent it from happening.

State Attorney General Gary King first sent a letter to Secretary of State Mary Herrera telling her to change the status of a non-profit.  Then he said never mind.  Then he flopped back again, and said he was standing by the letter from his office.

The two non-profits -- the Center for Civic Policy and New Mexico Youth Organized -- issued a statement rebutting King's letter and subsequent statements.

The United States Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that election officials are only permitted to regulate public statements that explicitly address elections.  They are not permitted to regulate public statements that relate to officeholders' conduct, even though those officeholders may be running for re-election.  This is fundamental to the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech.  The Attorney General's statement that he recognizes what can be regulated on the basis of whether it 'walks like a duck' is an indication that he doesn't understand the law in this area, and he is inviting entirely unnecessary litigation against the State of New Mexico.

Also at New Mexico FBIHOP

Update: Also see the protest photoblog. Obviously I was not able to attend; and my camera broke anyway. I bought the camera less than 24 hours ago.

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John McCain came to Albuquerque today for a town hall meeting with five hundred supporters.  The crowd began filtering in at 8:45 am for the 10:15 am scheduled start; the event actually started on time.

The schedule handed out to the press said McCain's state finance chair Ken Zangara was slated to start the event, but it turned out that former state Speaker of the House Manuel Lujan gave the introduction instead.

McCain spoke for about fifteen minutes about... well, you know his talking points by now.  He hit many throughout the opening remarks and by the end of the town hall with the slow-pitch softball questions, he probably hit just about every talking point from his campaign. From more drilling to nuclear power to "Barack Obama is going to raise taxes", it was a John McCain greatest hits collection.

Do you think the media will run with this story even though it doesn't meet with their preconceived notions.

In another nail in the coffin of the "Hispanics won't vote for Obama" line of thought, Gallup found that Hispanics not only are behind Obama -- but at a pretty high rate.

Also see my write-up at the New Mexico Independent and crossposted at New Mexico FBIHOP.

Barack Obama visited the Flying Star on Broadway in Albuquerque today to speak to working women.  I was lucky enough to get a press credential be allowed to cover the event.

And I got some really good pictures of the event.  Click on any of the pictures to get a larger-sized image.

Obama is a powerful speaker, and he clearly cares about women's issues.  He has two daughters and told the group of about 30 women that some of the biggest influences in his life were working women.

Note: Daily Kos diarist Environmentalist had a great guest post at Democracy for New Mexico on this subject.  Also a recced diary at Kos.

This is crossposted at New Mexico FBIHOP.

You may wonder what New Mexico, as landlocked as any state, has to do with off-shore drilling.  Let's just say isn't much threat of oil platforms dotting the landscape of Tingley Beach.

But with Pete Domenici as the ranking member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and Jeff Bingaman as the chairman of that same committee, New Mexico holds some significant sway in any energy policy discussion.  Add in the fact that our governor, Bill Richardson, is a former Secretary of Energy under Bill Clinton and we have even more clout in energy policy discussions.  

Read more about it below.

We've all seen horrible reporting on the facts on polling.  We've all seen people misinterpret polls, exaggerate, even blatantly lie.  I give many people the benefit of the doubt; they probably just don't know better.

A great resource which was forwarded to me from an AP writer is this link from the National Council on Public Polling.  It is "20 Questions a Journalist Should Ask About Poll Results."  It is an invaluable resource any journalist or blogger who mentions or writes about polling.

Over at the New Mexico Independent, the online news organization for which I write, Gwenyth Doland writes about the politics of beer.

John McCain's wife, as you all know by now, is beer heiress Cindy Hensley McCain. What you may not know (or remember) is that Cindy McCain's father and uncle -- former bootleggers -- owned the Ruidoso Downs racetrack in the 1950s. Back then the Hensleys caused quite a stir with their connections to a reputed mob boss named Kemper Marley, who later was implicated in the 1976 bombing death of Arizona investigative journalist Don Bolles.

A version of this appears at New Mexico FBIHOP and Daily Kos

New Mexico had our primaries on Tuesday.  Everything but the Democratic Presidential primaries were on the ballot.  Three open house seats, an open senate seat and the Republican Presidential race.  

Not to mention every single state House and Senate race.  It was a pretty good day, warm, no wind, and a lot of people heading out to their local school or library to vote.

Oddly enough, for New Mexico, we know the winners of every single race already.  We're used to having our elections then waiting for a couple of days before readying ourselves to announce tot he world just who won.  There were some extremely close races, and some blowouts.

The great news?  Progressives in the house and senate races ousted DINOs in three seats.

While the only numbers that officially matter are who received how many votes in each race, there were some other interesting numbers that came out of the Tuesday election.  Let's do this in a "By the numbers" style.