Free Republic

US “troubleshooter” Bill Richardson, who just returned from a trip to North Korea, is likely to be tapped to succeed Hillary Clinton to become the next U.S. Secretary of State, Yonhap News Agency said Saturday citing a report. “Numerous sources are pointing toward New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as possibly replacing Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in 2011,” Exminer.com said. The possibility is opening up, with some circumstantial signs backing up the view. For example, the current U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton, is suffering from heart conditions and she is said to want to spend...

“I postponed the trip twice at the request of the administration,” Richardson said on MSNBC. “They signed off on this last trip.” Richardson later said on CNN that when he spoke with officials before his trip, “the administration said, ‘As long as you say that it’s a private trip, go ahead.’ ” He also added, “While I was in North Korea, I did talk to the State Department.”

SANTA FE — Gov. Bill Richardson says he will establish a Santa Fe-based international peacemaking institute after leaving office at year's end. Richardson, who returned to New Mexico late Tuesday after an unofficial mission to North Korea, told the Journal in a Wednesday interview that the institute will focus on brokering peace accords and rescuing hostages. The two-term Democratic governor has secured an office in Santa Fe's downtown area and plans to call the institute the Richardson Center for Peace and Dialogue. "It's not going to be big," Richardson said. "It's not going to be affiliated with anybody. It will...

The US denied any official links to the visit of a former high ranking American diplomat to N Korea over the past week but officials on condition of anonymity told AHN that there is a constant contact with the traveling former diplomat.On the question of Richardson meeting with the Obama Administration after his return, Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman told journalists, “Governor Richardson is on a private trip and there are no plans that I’m aware of.”PJ Crowley, the State Department spokesman denied contact with Richardson saying, “I’m not aware that we’ve had any contact with him since he...

Bill Richardson’s trip to North Korea isn’t approved by the Obama administration, but he’ll give officials a “full report” when he returns, the State Department says. The New Mexico governor is on a “private visit” to North Korea and “did not ask our permission before he went,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters on Monday. “We did not approve his visit

- North Korea said New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson met Monday with a ranking official of the communist country to deliver "a present" for leader Kim Jong-il. A two-paragraph dispatch by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) suggested Richardson has failed to meet with the 68-year-old leader amid festering regional tensions.

Bill Richardson cancels flight due to thick fog English.news.cn 2010-12-20 19:46:29 PYONGYANG, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- U.S. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who is visiting the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), on Monday canceled his flight to Beijing due to thick fog. Richardson said he would made comment in Beijing, but disclosed nothing about his visit and talks with senior officials of the DPRK. Richardson arrived in Pyongyang on Thursday. The U.S. governor said in a statement before his visit that he would travel as a private citizen at the invitation of Kim Kye Gwan, DPRK's first vice foreign...

ABC News has learned that Richard Holbrooke, the US Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has died. On Friday, Holbrooke was rushed to the hospital with a torn aorta. He went through more than 20 hours of surgery. Earlier this evening, speaking at the US State Department, President Obama sang Holbrooke's praises and called him "a tough son of a gun." Holbrooke, 69, was a former ambassador to the United Nations and served as chief negotiator at the Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia. The New Yorker's George Packer wrote a nice story about Holbrooke last year,...

WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 8, 2010 4:03pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson said on Wednesday he would travel to North Korea from December 16-20, hoping to ease mounting tensions with Pyongyang over its nuclear program and belligerence toward South Korea. "I am increasingly concerned with the recent actions by the North Koreans, which have raised tensions and are contributing to instability on the Korean Peninsula," Richardson said in a statement, saying he was going as a private citizen. "I am not carrying any messages, but I want to be helpful during this volatile period," Richardson said....

With the situation in North Korea having gotten pretty dicey in recent months, Gov. Bill Richardson – a favorite of the North Korean government – may be heading back there next week. That’s according to the Washington Post: “Adm. Mike Mullen, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, is off this week to South Korea to tell officials that the United States is standing with them. And there’s talk that outgoing New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson may be off to North Korea next week for a private chat with top officials at the invitation of key people in the nuclear crowd...

... And there's talk that outgoing New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson may be off to North Korea next week for a private chat with top officials at the invitation of key people in the nuclear crowd over there. ... We're hearing Richardson has signed up with the Washington Speakers Bureau, which will probably enable him to put some fine bread on the table. In addition, he's going to set up a center in Santa Fe to focus on ways to rescue people being held hostage by bad guys and on initiating dialogue with rogue regimes.

Any casual observer can easily see how [NM] state government is structured to prevent things from happening. And that is why, as his eight years in office wind down, I find myself, grudgingly, tipping my hat ever so slightly in the direction of Gov. Bill Richardson. For better and for worse, and, I have little doubt, motivated largely by his desire to be president, Bill Richardson changed a state that is designed to change only rarely. ... Richardson pushed through tax law changes, got the state Constitution amended by popular vote to increase funding for schools, established a Department of...

New Mexico's budget crunch for the coming fiscal year could be $190 million worse than previously thought, and announcement of the bad news set off another fiery exchange between the outgoing administration of Gov. Bill Richardson and Gov.-elect Susana Martinez. Richardson's finance secretary Dannette Burch said Thursday that Martinez and state lawmakers will face a $450 million revenue shortfall for the fiscal year, starting next July 1, just to maintain the state's current level of services. That's a much higher number than the Legislative Finance Committee's earlier projected shortfall of $260 million. There have already been spending cuts in Santa...

Gov. Bill Richardson took his lumps during New Mexico's gubernatorial campaign and said Thursday he wished he'd had the opportunity to punch back. Two days after Republican Susana Martinez won a decisive victory to become the state's first elected female governor, the two-term Democratic officeholder voiced frustration at having his policies repeatedly -- and forcefully -- targeted by Martinez's campaign. "My only regret is that I wasn't able to defend myself and the accomplishments of my administration in so many areas," Richardson said after a news conference in Santa Fe. Richardson, who cited teacher salary increases, a decrease in DWI...

The Richardson administration, apparently tired of all those pesky questions about the governor's political appointees, recently refused to release an up-to-date list of the employees, their salaries and titles. It had provided such lists on numerous occasions over Gov. Bill Richardson's nearly eight years in office. I asked the administration last month for a list of the appointees to state jobs. Instead, the Department of Finance and Administration gave me an "organizational list" for all of the nearly 24,000 state workers, including career employees. Buried in those 1,500 pages is the information on the appointees, formally known as exempt employees....

Moise summed up the scandal this way: There was too much power in too few hands with too little oversight. That describes New Mexico government at just about every level. We could catch, arrest and fire all the bad guys responsible for the state's depressingly varied financial scandals. It probably wouldn't matter much. The way our state is organized almost invites corruption. The governor is empowered by law to appoint members to hundreds of boards and commissions, some of them centers of considerable power. All of the state-licensed professions, for example, are regulated by their own boards. Accountants, cosmetologists, dentists...

Gov. Bill Richardson has announced furloughs and layoffs will be avoided in the latest round of state budget-cutting, which takes effect today. Richardson's office just sent out a news release in which the two-term Democratic governor said he'll use $1.4 million in federal stimulus money under his control to help executive and judicial branch agencies avoid furloughs.

Gov. Bill Richardson's job approval rating has plummeted as he nears the end of his second term and nearly two out of three New Mexico voters think the state is on the wrong track. The Democratic governor's approval rating has eroded significantly in the last two years, a new Journal Poll found. The state has been hit hard by recession and budget cutting has followed. The administration has been clouded by investigations of pay-to-play politics. Just 33 percent of proven, likely voters surveyed statewide Aug. 23-27 said they approved of the job Richardson is doing. Sixty-three percent said they disapproved...

As everyone knows the only people in America who are so heartless as to report illegal immigrants to the immigration cops are evil conservative Republicans like those profiling fascists in Arizona, right? Right? Well not so fast there, Bubba. Left wing wunderkind, Bill Richardson, Democrat and waiting-for-indictment corruptocrat, lame-duck governor of New Mexico, has ordered the state department of children's and family services to begin reporting illegal immigrant children to ICS. Oh the horror of it all! Reported by the NY Times, right? Well, no. Reported by the Washington Post and the LA Times, right? Well, er, ah, no....

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington chose New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson for a dubious distinction Wednesday, naming him to a list of the nation's most unethical and incompetent governors. Richardson's office called the Washington, D.C.-based group's report on him "ridiculous" and cited the Journal as the culprit for his inclusion. "Governor Richardson has led the way for ethics reform in New Mexico," said Richardson spokeswoman Alarie Ray-Garcia. "It's also difficult to take it seriously, since it relies almost exclusively on the Albuquerque Journal as its source." The CREW group cited Richardson, a Democrat, for using state investments to...