It’s always been my motto that the targets of my verbal swipes should be sharks, not minnows. But in our era, the Internet is the great leveler, and what’s passed off as factual can be as imaginary as leprechauns. A blog on the Huffington Post, or almost anywhere else, is…
In his June 22 editorial on the effort to recall state Senate President Russell Pearce, Don Sorchych, publisher and editor of the right-wing Cave Creek pub Sonoran News, erroneously referred to Mesa resident and petition-signer Benita Lantigua as “a Mexican woman,” who is “likely an illegal.”Today, Lantigua showed up to a…
The officer at the Arizona Department of Public Safety’s media line sounded pretty hangdog when I called about the latest hacker attack on DPS’s computer system, this time by a LulzSec spin-off calling itself “Hackers Without Borders.”He told me someone will get back to me later once DPS figures out…
As of Monday morning, Maricopa County Elections Director Karen Osborne said the county had validated 10,356 signatures from petitions seeking the recall of state Senate President Russell Pearce. That’s 2,600 more than the 7,756 signatures required by statute from Pearce’s Legislative District 18.But if a recall election is now inevitable, so…
They say the marshal always gets his man, but there’s no guaranteeing the condition the fugitive will be in when nabbed.Take infomercial huckster Don Lapre, who made the not-so smooth move of failing to appear for his arraignment in federal court on 41 counts of fraud-related charges. After his no-show on Wednesday,…
On Thursday, New Times filed a challenge to a recent 2-1 decision by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Lacey v. Arpaio, the lawsuit seeking damages for the wrongful 2007 arrests of Village Voice Media Executive Editor Michael Lacey and VVM CEO Jim Larkin by Maricopa County sheriff’s…
The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon – Thurs 11p / 10cAliens vs. Senatorwww.thedailyshow.comDaily Show Full EpisodesPolitical Humor & Satire BlogThe Daily Show on FacebookAs I suspected, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart couldn’t resist slapping U.S. Senator from Arizona John McCain around for his ignorant, hillbilly-esque statements blaming Sand Land’s…
Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesman Steve Harrison has just confirmed that DPS computers have been hacked by the Internet pirates and keyboard anarchists of LulzSec.(Currently, AZDPS.gov is down.)LulzSec, which stands for “Lulz Security” (Lulz being a slang version of LOL, “Laughng Out Loud,” or doing something just for kicks), posted…
Filmmakers Valeria Fernandez and Dan DeVivo talk about Two AmericansWant to help tell the world what a sadistic, bigoted power-mad nut Sheriff Joe Arpaio is? Well, here’s your chance, by ponying up the dough to help local journalists/filmmakers Valeria Fernandez and Dan DeVivo complete their documentary Two Americans.The film has…
On a recent sunny Saturday in Phoenix, a group of church and community members gathered in an alley behind a convenience store at Adams Street and 21st Avenue to pray for a homeless man whose name they did not know. “We come together at this time as witnesses,” intoned Ian…
Guess I’ve heard the last from U.S. Senator John McCain’s haughty, over-paid flack Brooke Buchanan.Yesterday, in the midst of a PR meltdown that’s turned McCain (once again) into a political laughingstock, his office issued a statement claiming that an unnamed U.S. Forest Service official had given the Senator info prompting…
When white nationalist websites and racist minutemen with erstwhile ties to child killers are championing your cause, you know you’ve made a serious error. Particularly when you’re a failed presidential candidate still desperate for the world to take you seriously.Such is the case with U.S. Senator from Arizona John McCain,…
The effort to recall state Senate President Russell Pearce has passed another milestone: This morning, Maricopa County Elections Director Karen Osborne confirmed that the county has validated 10,089 signatures of the 16,949 forwarded to her office by the Arizona Secretary of State.Of the 16,836 signatures examined so far, 6,747 have been…
In the most disgusting, reprehensible, and irresponsible comments of his political career (and that’s saying a lot), Arizona’s senior U.S. Senator John McCain is blaming illegal immigrants for Arizona’s recent plague of wildfires, saying it’s the reason the country needs a “secure border.”As reported by CNN, the former presidential candidate…
They say all politicians are by definition liars, but I’m beginning to believe state Senate President Russell Pearce could teach a college course in it.Sand Land’s Professor of Prevarication was on KAET’s Horizon Thursday to discuss the recall effort against him with host Ted Simons. Almost from jump, he began dishing falsehoods and…
I’ve just finished reading the Cambium report on Tucson Unified School District’s much-maligned Mexican American Studies Department. It’s a shocker.Know why? Because the report itself concludes that “no observable evidence was present to suggest that any classroom within Tucson Unified School District is in direct violation of the law [Arizona…
Most of Pearce’s 2010 donations were from outside LD18I plan to ride around town with a dead crow in my car, so the next time I see local hack Howie Fischer, he of the one-man “Capitol Media Services,” I can carve him off a slice for his dinner.See, Fischer, like…
Recent events necessitate a review of the bleak, chilling years not long past, when Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his political ally, ex-County Attorney Andrew Thomas, attempted to rule the Valley like a Third World junta. As my colleague Ray Stern first reported online, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court…
Even though I’m on deadline for this week’s column, I couldn’t miss today’s action by the Russell Pearce-recall group Citizens for a Better Arizona, during which organizer Randy Parraz attempted to deliver to the state Senate President his first ever (to my knowledge) unemployment “check” dated December 5, 2011. That…
The state Legislature recessed indefinitely today from its special session without making a minor change in state law that would allow some 45,000 jobless Arizonans to continue receiving unemployment checks.Around 15,000 out-of-work Sand Landers will receive a check this week, and then no more. The Arizona Department of Economic Security…
State Senate President Russell Pearce and the Republican-controlled Legislature couldn’t be bothered today to change one word in state law to extend unemployment benefits to 15,000 out-of-work Arizonans.But Pearce has had the copious free time to compose a lengthy, five page letter to Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne arguing that…
Extending unemployment benefits to around 15,000 Arizonans still looking for work should be a no-brainer, assuming the wingnuts at the state Capitol had a pound of gray matter among ’em.It’s federal money that’s pumped into the state’s struggling economy, which according to the most recent numbers still suffers a 9.3…
