When recalled state Senate President Russell Pearce’s Ban Amnesty Now announced a “buy-cott” of New Times’ advertisers, I quipped that it was like being boycotted by the Ku Klux Klan. An exaggeration, to be sure, but not by as much as you might think.Take for example the comments of BAN…

Score a triumph for redistricting a little more than a half-year ahead of the November elections. The Payson Roundup reports that Republican state Senator Sylvia Allen has turned yellower than an egg-sucking cur at the prospect of running in the newly formed Legislative District 6, where a recent poll showed…

Sinema’s statement on Iran starts 2:48 in, her comments on health care at around 6:03The flap over center-left talking head Hilary Rosen and her perceived insult of Mitt Romney’s wife Ann offers a perfect example of how mere verbal flubs can offer ammunition to right-wingers in the highly-charged partisan discourse…

Recalled state Senate President Russell Pearce has just taken the bait proffered by Bob Worsley, his opponent in the Legislative District 25 Republican primary for state Senate. And in doing so, Pearce may have further endangered the 501(c)4 status of the organization he currently fronts, Ban Amnesty Now. Pearce did…

Ex-Phoenix Police Sergeant Paul Penzone, the man running as a Democrat against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, recently announced a slew of new endorsements via his campaign website, the most prominent of which comes from former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Paul Charlton, a Republican and stalwart critic of Sheriff Joe.Other…

Disbarred, disgraced and unrepentant, former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas compared himself to such men of conscience as Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as he addressed reporters this morning in downtown Phoenix, one day after being stripped of his license to practice law by a three-man disciplinary…

Republican candidate for state Senate Robert Worsley, a conservative Mesa entrepreneur with a track record of success in the private sector (unlike his government-mooching opponent in Legislative District 25, ex-state Senate President Russell Pearce, natch) is speaking out in opposition to Pearce’s boycott against local businesses that advertise with New…

Anyone who knows award-winning Phoenix journalist Valeria Fernandez knows that for four years now she and her collaborator, filmmaker Dan DeVivo, have been working on a documentary about Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s reign of terror and error in Maricopa County, a film ultimately titled Two Americans.Fernandez and DeVivo’s film is finally…

Two weeks ago, I reported on a hearing before U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow in the ACLU’s big racial-profiling lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Melendres v. Arpaio. During that hearing, Snow scheduled the seven-day trial to begin on July 19.After the hearing, outside the Sandra Day O’Connor U.S…

According to a recent item in the Washington Post’s Election 2012 Blog, recalled state Senate President Russell Pearce has endorsed Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential primary, more than a month after Romney won Sand Land’s GOP contest. As a result, Romney immediately called a press conference and conceded the general election…

Know what the best part of this new poll released by Arizona Working Families is? The lowest ranked legislator of those mentioned in the survey was none other than crackpot Republican state Senator Sylvia Allen.Allen, who currently represents Legislative District 5, scored a measly 22 percent favorable rating in the…

Mike Stauffer, looking to retire Arpaio this fallRecently, Phoenix videographer Dennis Gilman and I interviewed the two men who want to put Sheriff Joe Arpaio out to pasture come November: Democratic candidate and former Phoenix Police Department Sergeant Paul Penzone, and Scottsdale Police Department Lieutenant Mike Stauffer, who’s running as…

Funny how some conservatives are always against boycotts affecting Arizona businesses, unless they’re the ones doing the boycotting. I say this as the nativist hate group Ban Amnesty Now fires up its promised boycott of New Times’ advertisers, with shrill messages on BAN’s website and Facebook page.  Weirdly, the brain surgeons…

Phoenix attorney and ex-Arizona Democratic Party Chairman Don Bivens removed himself from the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate today, leaving the way clear for former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona to snag the Dems’ nod for the post.In a statement to the press, Bivens claimed that he was taking a…

Please see update below.Scottsdale Police Lieutenant and candidate for Maricopa County sheriff Mike Stauffer’s Twitter audience recently jumped from around 600 followers to more than 2,600 followers, thanks to a number of questionable accounts.Many of the new accounts seem fake, lack photos, and/or have zero or few Tweets. In some…

It’s pretty easy for a scribbler in this town to know when you’ve drawn blood from local hypocrites: Those skewered squeal like hogs being boiled alive in Karo syrup.Recalled ex-state Senate President Russell Pearce is no exception, despite his tough-guy pose. Make that double for his mini-me enabler Sean McCaffrey,…

Penzone: Looking to put ol’ man Arpaio out to pastureI’ve been wanting to interview Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s two rivals in this year’s general election for a while now. So recently, Phoenix videographer Dennis Gilman and I met separately with former Phoenix Police Department Sergeant Paul Penzone and Scottsdale Police Lieutenant…

More than four years after it was first filed, and more than three years since the American Civil Liberties Union lodged its amended complaint in the case, the big racial profiling lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio —  Melendres v. Arpaio — will finally go to trial this summer. That is, if…

You’d think a practicing lawyer, former president of the Arizona Board of Regents, and erstwhile GOP gubernatorial candidate would possess a lick of sense. But Tucson attorney John Munger is proof positive that possession of a swell resume is no guarantee of intelligence.Munger is the fella who recently threatened legal…