Take Tree To the Dumpster
As part of the latest round of budget cutting, the city this year is likely to stop picking up discarded Christmas trees. The demise of this service is no big deal compared with the impact lean times are having on public services generally. But we'll miss the sight of all those dried-up trees, stripped of their ornaments in an early portent of Lent, waiting forlornly on the curb post-Epiphany.   (Wednesday, November 18, 2009)

Outdoorsman Attitudes Must Change, One at a Time
By God, it was my right. No one could tell me I couldn't chop new roads through national forest land with my off-road vehicle and my chain saw.   (Wednesday, November 18, 2009)

Letters
Good Journalism Exposes N.M. Ills I wish to commend the Journal North and Albuquerque Journal in general for the outstanding journalism of late. Your exposes on malfeasance within Santa Fe city and New Mexico state government serve the readership well! Now it is up to us to apply the pressure to get answers where the Journal has been stonewalled. Please keep up the good work.   (Wednesday, November 18, 2009)

Letters To the Editor
Don't Abolish The Preserve's Act Yet   (Sunday, November 15, 2009)

County Firefighters Worth GRT Increase
Tuesday, Santa Fe County voters will go to the polls to decide whether to impose a small gross receipts tax increase to buy equipment for the county's volunteer firefighters.   (Sunday, November 15, 2009)

Coverage We Need in Health Reforms
Pundits and politicians across the country have declared health insurance reform dead over and over again. It was dead in August. It was dead in September. And yet today we find ourselves closer than ever to meaningful reform.   (Sunday, November 15, 2009)

Fierro Sentencing Delivers Justice
Friday's sentencing of Carlos Fierro, the politically connected lawyer convicted in the drunken-driving killing of William Tenorio in front of a Santa Fe bar last year, is justice done.   (Sunday, November 15, 2009)

Health Care Reform: A Look at Numbers
On Nov. 6, the Journal published an editorial mentioning some big-dollar numbers and stated that our country cannot afford the costs of health care reform, despite some worthy benefits. Newspapers like to cite big numbers without putting them into perspective, which in this case would show that our country can afford health care reform.   (Sunday, November 15, 2009)

N.M. Needs Health Care, Not Insurance
A very complex, mandatory private insurance scheme recently passed the U.S. House. The public is being overwhelmed by sound bites on one hand about how great it is, on the other, how terrible. We are hearing few of the details that are actually in the bill. Having read the bill, it is clear now that what started as health reform has emerged from the political process as health "deform," building on the worst, not the best of the current system.   (Sunday, November 15, 2009)

U.S. Should Lead on Climate Change
In summer 2003, one of the most legendary and fearsome mountaineering routes in the world — the North Face of the Eiger — fell victim to climate change. An unusually warm summer melted much of the ice that makes this route in Switzerland passable. As temperatures continue to warm, this iconic passage may only exist in winter.   (Wednesday, November 11, 2009)