Free Republic

Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson said Monday he thinks President Barack Obama will defeat Mitt Romney to win a second term. “I think Obama’s going to win, that’s what I think,” Johnson told POLITICO in an interview. “[My vote is] really spread out, meaning I don’t think there’s any state that I’m going to do better than another.” Johnson, who’s on the ballot in 48 states and the District of Columbia, hovers in single digits in the polls. The former two-term New Mexico governor declined to single out any state where he expected to do particularly well but said...

A Nevada-based startup that plans on selling medical and recreational marijuana products named former New Mexico governor and U.S. Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson as its CEO and president, the company announced Tuesday. The announcement came as Cannabis Sativa Inc. said it had acquired marijuana research business Kush while company officials work to navigate changing state laws on marijuana and potential challenges from the federal government, which still views marijuana as a controlled substance. Johnson said he hoped to expand Cannabis Sativa into a major marijuana business and intends to work out of New Mexico to help develop products that...

An impostor illegally used a New Mexico's man vote three days before the actual person came in to vote. The incident occurred in Rio Arriba County. When the real person came to cast his ballot, he was at first turned away, being told that he had already voted. Only when the real person contested, saying he had not in fact voted, did election officials review their files and compare the signatures they had on record with the one signed by whoever voted three days earlier. The signatures did not match. Why the officials did not check this in the first...

While Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., is on the ropes in his bid for re-election, his cousin, Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., is now trying to fend off the momentum of retired U.S. Marine Corps Col. Allen Weh, who is near or within the margin of error in the latest polls. Just a week ago, Udall led Weh by 16 points. Since then, an Albuquerque Journal survey shows a seven-point race (50-43) while a Vox Populi poll released Monday suggests a 47-43 Udall lead. Weh said another poll has the margin down to two percentage points, and there are good reasons for...

WASHINGTON – New Mexico's Senate race suddenly is on the radar screen, as new polls show the Republican candidate within single digits of incumbent Democratic Sen. Tom Udall. Most political observers had written off the contest as a slam dunk for Democrats. But a pair of new polls shows the race tightening in the final days. ADVERTISEMENT A new Vox Populi poll shows Udall up only 4 points over Republican Allen Weh. The poll puts Udall at 47 percent and Weh at 43 percent, with 11 percent of voters undecided. “The deteriorating national political environment for Democrats and President Obama...

Las Cruces police were called to the lobby of the Hotel Encanto around 12:30 a.m. Monday, said spokesman Dan Trujillo, where they found Deputy Jeremy Martin, 29, who had been shot "multiple times." Martin, who was found bleeding profusely just outside the elevator, was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said. The other deputy, who is being identified only as a 27-year-old man, is in custody, police said. He is being interviewed by detectives and charges are pending, police said.

The U.S. Senate race in New Mexico has flown under the radar for months as political handicappers have almost universally predicted an easy re-election for Democrat Tom Udall. But a new survey from the Albuquerque Journal suggests that the race may be tightening in its closing days. Fifty percent of state voters support Udall (pictured), and 43 percent favor his Republican challenger, Allen Weh. About 8 percent remain undecided. Udall holds key advantages over Weh with Hispanic voters (62 percent to 27 percent) and women (53 percent to 37 percent). Weh leads among men (49 percent to 46 percent) and...

Republicans are outnumbered by Democrats in New Mexico voter registration 47 percent to 31 percent, while independents, or voters who decline to state (DTS) a party affiliation, represent 19 percent.

The owners of the website Ebola.Com have scored a big payday with the outbreak of the epidemic, selling the domain for more than USD 200,000 in cash and stock. The deal highlights the rewards and risk of industry trading and speculating in domain names that see high interest following news events. According to a securities filing, the buyer was a Russian-registered firm called Weed Growth Fund, previously known as Ovation Research. The October 20 filing said the price was USD 50,000 cash and 19,192 shares of Cannabis Sativa worth close to USD 170,000, which promotes medical uses for marijuana. The...

Question: How does a grassroots Republican rancher fight an establishment Leftist incumbent swimming in limousine liberal money? Answer: With a grassroots campaign and by leveraging new mobile app technology. Jeff Byrd, a Republican running for New Mexico's 3rd congressional district (U.S. House) against one of the most liberal Democratic incumbents in the House, Rep. Ben Ray Luján, got a bit of help from a small tech firm located in Albuquerque.The Albuquerque-based tech firm microIT Infrastructure, LLC, released of a free mobile app for the iPhone, iPad, iPod, and iTouch platforms in support of Jeff. The app can be download in...

Wednesday on Newsmax TV's "America's Forum," Mayor Phillip Burch Mayor of Artesia, NM, a isolated town that houses a federal immigration detention center, said there has been a sudden large increase in the number of illegal immigrants being released from the center into the United States. Burch said, "We have seen some changes in how the cases of these immigrants are being handled. There can be gowing concern about how this is being handled by the government."

The America's Challenge Gas Balloon Race was founded by the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta in 1995 due to the vision and efforts of Mark Sullivan, former Balloon Fiesta President and recipient of the Montgolfier Diplome (one of ballooning's highest honors), who saw the need for America to be identified with the world's most prestigious ballooning sport. The America’s Challenge Gas Balloon Race is modeled after the Coupe Aeronautique Gordon Bennett, but it differs from the older event in allowing balloons from all countries, without limits on the number of entries from each. The team that travels the longest distance wins.

Chronic lapses in safety procedures at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico may have led to a radiation leak that has forced a prolonged shutdown across the state of the only permanent U.S. nuclear waste repository, federal inspectors said on Wednesday. The inspectors, in a sharply critical report, sought to explain how a barrel of plutonium-tainted debris from the nuclear weapons lab near Santa Fe ended up improperly packaged before it was shipped off for burial 300 miles away at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The leak of radiation, a small amount of which escaped to the surface...

Scientists say it’s almost certain that massive injections of waste water caused recent quakes in the Raton Basin, including a 5.3 tremor in 2011 FRISCO — A surge in earthquakes in southern Colorado and New Mexico has almost certainly been caused by the injection of fracking wastewater deep into the ground, U.S. Geological Survey scientists reported last week. The study details several lines of evidence directly linking the injection wells to the seismicity. The timing and location of the quakes is clearly linked with the the documented pattern of injected wastewater. Detailed investigations of two seismic sequences (2001 and 2011)...

On Saturday Officer Karl Romero was keeping an eye on surveillance cameras around the station when he spotted something in the sally port. A sally port is a controlled gate or passage in a fortified place. Romero said what he saw looked like a ghost walking across the lot, right through cages and a gate. He reported it to his supervisors. Detectives said there is no way in or out of the secured area without the gates opening and an alarm sounding. Police said they hear strange noises and see unexplained images in the lobby of the building, too.

We're just praying there's no more rain, that our house is going to stay the same. But whatever happens, God has his plan," said Jennica Granger. OILFIELD ROADS FLOODED OUT. People living in Carlsbad caught a break from the rain Monday, but it's little consolation to people who've been hit in the pocketbook by all the flooding. The Pecos River is swollen, bridges are washed over and roads are closed. The San Jose Bridge was overrun by water early Monday morning, and the sidewalk near the bridge was washed out. The water level has gone down along the Pecos River,...

A small but vocal group of protesters from the militant pro-abortion group Stop Patriarchy invaded the vestibule of an Albuquerque hotel where Project Defending Life was holding its annual banquet and attempted to disrupt the event. The particular objects of scorn for this leftist, anti-male group? None other than Operation Rescue’s Troy Newman, who was the featured speaker for the event, and honored guest New Mexico Archbishop Michael Sheehan. The rowdy group of feminists broke into the hotel vestibule wielding signs and a bullhorn and chanting “Abortion on demand” and “Operation Rescue is a fascist organization!” as banquet-goers looked on...

Federal officials are due to open a huge family detention centre in southern Texas that will house immigrant adults with children while they await deportation. The Texas Observer reports that federal officials are preparing to open the nation’s largest family detention centre, a 2,400-bed facility that will nearly double the current capacity to house immigrant families awaiting deportation. The centre will be developed on a sprawling 50-acre property near the town of Dilley, 70 miles south-west of San Antonio, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials told the monthly magazine. :snip: Earlier this year, federal officials opened family detention centres in...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Oriana Farrell was terrified. The single mother of five recalled an October 2013 traffic stop, when officers wrestled her out of her minivan along a New Mexico highway, and then shot at the vehicle as she tried to flee with her children inside. Video from a police dashboard camera captured the seemingly-routine traffic stop devolving into a tense incident. “I started thinking about children who have been shot, families who have been shot,” she said in her first television interview that appeared today on “Good Morning America.” “I started thinking about Trayvon Martin.” The ordeal began when a police officer...

From the start, little has been typical about Tesla Motors' plan for a $5 billion factory to make batteries for a new generation of electric cars. It's not just the project's massive scale, the cutting-edge technology, or even the bonanza of 6,500 good-paying jobs. It's how Tesla is deciding where to build. Through a series of unusual plays, Tesla has five states bidding up subsidy packages to land the coveted plant. The winner is expected to offer the luxury car-maker publicly financed incentives exceeding a half-billion dollars.