On Saturday, January 25, both the Republican and Democratic state parties have their mandatory meetings, where state committee members sometimes get to vote on meaningless and often downright wacky resolutions Sand Land Republicans, of course, can out-wack their Democratic colleagues any day of the week, and they have the scary…
Long gone are the days of Prada socialism, hearting Ralph Nader, and pagan spiraling for Democratic Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema. As noted in a recent Washington Post report, Sinema’s attempt to reinvent herself as a centrist, which began before she left the state Legislature, is now complete, as she has been…
I can hear you now: “John Kavanagh, for a second week in a row?” Admittedly, in the post-Russell Pearce era, villains ain’t what they used to be, but Kavanagh, a Republican and chair of the state House Appropriations Committee, took exception to some of what I had to say about…
Burning driver’s licenses, defying DPS, and the arrest of Elmo and his radical stuffed animal buddies were the high points of the only game in town at the state Legislature’s opening day on January 13. That game belonged, pigskin and all, to Citizens for a Better Arizona, the group that…
U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow today appointed veteran cop-watcher Robert Warshaw of the North Carolina-based Warshaw and Associates to serve as independent monitor in the ACLU’s big racial-profiling case Melendres v. Arpaio. Warshaw, a former chief of the Rochester (New York) Police Department and onetime associate director of…
A North Carolina fat-boy like me has no business talking about what other people look like, but let’s just say I remember when veteran Valley journo Dennis Welch, formerly of the East Valley Tribune and the Arizona Guardian, stalked the state Capitol with long hair and Howard Hughes-esque fingernails, looking…
Insults, condescension, personal attacks. Hey, it’s all in a days work for Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, particularly when it comes to the issue of legalized pot-smokin’, which he recently debated on Channel 3’s Sunday Politics Unplugged show with state Representative Ruben Gallego. Gallego, a Democrat, whose wife, Kate, recently…
State Representative John Kavanagh revels in his self-appointed role as the rightwinger Arizona lefties love most to hate. Since recalled, disgraced former state Senate President Russell Pearce (Kavanagh’s pal) was pounded into mainstream political irrelevance in 2011, Kavanagh’s eclipsed his erstwhile mentor to become Sand Land’s Lord Voldemort for liberals,…
State Representative John Kavanagh revels in his self-appointed role as the rightwinger Arizona lefties love most to hate. Since recalled, disgraced former state Senate President Russell Pearce (Kavanagh’s pal) was pounded into mainstream political irrelevance in 2011, Kavanagh’s eclipsed his erstwhile mentor to become Sand Land’s Lord Voldemort for liberals,…
Our ethics-challenged Attorney General, Tom Horne, received an unwanted gift over the holidays from his bete noir, the Arizona Public Integrity Alliance, the conservative nonprofit that he hit with a short-lived defamation suit last year. The folks at AZPIA tell me that around 60,000 mailers critical of Horne went out…
Maricopa County has a monkey on its back: Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The local media act as the delivery method, funneling the dope to Arpaio junkies. At least twice a week — sometimes more — the eyes of this town’s TV hacks glow like coke fiends’ as they regale their audiences…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s newly appointed “community liaison” officer Hector Martinez received e-mails during his time with the MCSO’s notorious Human Smuggling Unit from other MCSO employees that contained offensive photos and videos demeaning Mexicans and other Latinos. The e-mails, one of which Martinez forwarded to his home address, speak to…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office has announced the hiring of a new “community liaison” oficer, one of many reforms required by federal Judge G. Murray Snow’s permanent injunction, issued October 2 in the ACLU’s big racial-profiling lawsuit, Melendres v. Arpaio. Deputy Hector Martinez is bilingual and a 10-year veteran of the…
Here’s one for the irony-bin, none other than Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s stone-faced ex-Deputy Chief Brian Sands is acting as if he’s acquired a sense of ethics since saying sayonara last year to a nearly 30 year career with the Sheriff’s Office. Nah, he’s not objecting to the policy of prejudiced…
Florence is exploring the purchase of Johnson Utilities, one of the largest private water and sewer companies in Arizona, which services the San Tan Valley and parts of the town. Some of the players involved are talking about the potential sale as a done deal. But there remain numerous unanswered…
As regional director of the Arizona office of the Anti-Defamation League, Bill Straus has been a rock, a stalwart opponent of hate in a river of acquiescers, squirmers, and equivocators. During the ongoing immigration debate in this state, many in public life caught a serious case of rubber spine or…
Immigration? Yeah, that’s the big issue everyone’s forgotten about, considering that the U.S. Senate bill on immigration is swimming about as fast as as a flounder in the mud toward realization. The hope is that the U.S. House will take another stab at offering up its version, or versions, next…
What fun we’ll have next year watching Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, one of Arizona’s sleaziest politicians, crash and burn. Indeed, Horne’s recent failure to silence the Arizona Public Integrity Alliance, which has been running TV ads critical of him, offers a preview of the vicarious pleasures to come in…
Like most rich folks, deep-pockets Scottsdale developer George Johnson is good at getting his way. Maybe not all the time, but often enough. Earlier this year, when Johnson wanted the right to convey water to an as-yet-undeveloped area of Florence, he got it from the Florence Town Council, saying he…
Monday was a deadline set by federal Judge G. Murray Snow in the ACLU’s big racial-profiling case Melendres v. Arpaio for plaintiffs and defendants to submit lists of prospective candidates for the position of court-appointed monitor over the MCSO. This, assuming the two sides could not agree on a monitor…
SPECIAL REPORT: FLORENCE EXPOSED | Third of three parts Seated in a conference room near his Florence Town Hall office and dressed in his standard collared shirt, silver belt buckle, cowboy hat, jeans, and roughed-up cowboy boots, Mayor Tom Rankin looks as if he has stepped out of Florence’s frontier…
Please see the update at the end of this post. Yep, Chandler attorney Tom Ryan was rarin’ to start writing up subpoenas in his new role as legal counsel for the Arizona Public Integrity Alliance, the group being SLAPP-sued by Attorney General Tom Horne in the world’s dumbest “defamation” case…
