What am I to make of a recent segment of MTV’s Vice Guide To Everything, which featured a gushing portrait of Arizona’s best known neo-Nazi J.T. Ready, as he hunts “narco-terrorists” in the Sonoran desert?(You can watch the J.T. segment, here, beginning around seven minutes in.) Aside from a few…
Note: The Democratic Party’s legal opinion regarding issues raised by a Cherny candidacy is linked in the update below.I’m on deadline at the moment, but I want to bring you this much anticipated news: erstwhile state Treasurer candidate Andrei Cherny just called me to tell me he formally putting two…
Pearce vs. Ready: The Dennis Gilman videoNote: Please see update below with response from Senator Pearce.Who’s more credible: Arizona’s best-known neo-Nazi J.T. Ready, or state Senate President-elect Russell Pearce? Watch Dennis Gilman’s latest, and you be the judge. In it is some never-before-seen footage of Pearce endorsing Ready for Ready’s…
One of the brightest stars in the local Democratic firmament (such as it is) has opted out of the run for state Democratic Party Chair. While another is still considering a run, and will make a decision this week.Once and future Arizona Attorney General hopeful Felecia Rotellini, who despite her…
Well that didn’t take long. As anticipated, state Senate President-elect Russell Pearce and his so-far compliant wingman state House Speaker Kirk Adams, are taking to court their bid to rig Arizona’s Independent Redistricting Commission.After being shot down yesterday by the Commission on Appellate Court Appointments, which showed some backbone and…
I wish that when CNN news anchors have on a practiced prevaricator like state Senate President-elect Russell Pearce to discuss something as specific as the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship, they would at least read up on the subject. Or failing that, have a Constitutional expert or historian on…
State Senate President-elect Russell Pearce and state House Speaker Kirk Adams were handed a defeat this morning in their efforts to interfere with the nominees to the Independent Redistricting Commission, the powerful committee of five that will be responsible for re-carving legislative and congressional districts before the 2012 elections.The Commission…
Arizona’s Independent Redistricting Commission won’t be independent if state Senate President-elect Russell Pearce has anything to do with it.Already, Pearce, with the assistance of state House Speaker Kirk Adams, has effectively bulldozed two of the Republican nominees for the IRC off the list created by the Commission on Appellate Court…
Having recently returned from spending Christmas in my native North Carolina, an obviously older state than the almost-but-not-yet-100-year-old state of Arizona, I was struck by a sense of history that seems woefully absent here. In the Old North State, as in many other states of the former Confederacy, there are…
WINGNUT WATCH If you follow Phoenix politics, then you are familiar with the activities of a Washington, D.C.-based group called Judicial Watch, which seems to be suing half the city at any given moment — notably, the half that doesn’t agree with it. But more on that in a sec…
State Senate President-elect Russell Pearce’s son Joshua Trent Pearce recently was under investigation by the Mesa Police Department for allegations of possible child abuse. Mesa PD spokesman, Sergeant Ed Wessing, confirmed that police responded to a call December 10 from Banner Desert Medical Center regarding a nine day-old baby girl, the daughter…
I’ve always wondered who the Republicans hate more: Latinos or gays?Now that the DREAM Act has failed a cloture vote in the U.S. Senate, while the effort to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell succeeded, I guess we know.Naturally, I’m more surprised by the latter than the former, but maybe I…
To cop a line from the Notorious B.I.G., “Gimme the loot! Gimme the loot!”That’s what Republican state Senate President-elect Russell Pearce might as well be saying with a recent e-mail announcing a fundraiser on January 7, 2011, just three days before Arizona’s legislative session begins. Suggested donation: $250 a pop.It’s…
THE COMPANY HE KEPT It begins with denials, repeated over time, by state Arizona Senate President-elect Russell Pearce concerning his association with the Valley’s best-known neo-Nazi, J.T. Ready. Approached by an activist at a 2008 candidate forum during the Republican primary for the hotly contested state Senate seat in Legislative…
As I promised in this week’s Bird column concerning state Senate President-elect Russell Pearce’s involvement with neo-Nazi J.T. Ready’s spiritual life as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, here’s the e-mail exchange between Pearce and me.To be honest, I’m surprised he replied, as he always…
Someone contacted me recently, wondering whether or not I support the death penalty. I told them I do not, but not because I think it’s such a bad idea to give the needle to those who are dead-to-rights guilty of a capital crime.Rather, I have two problems with it. First,…
For those who have kvetched about the boycott of Arizona over SB 1070, here’s an interesting riposte: Zack de la Rocha’s musicians-boycott, Soundstrike, along with other groups such as Puente, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, and Presente.org, will be giving away thousands of toys and bags of groceries to…
Judge G. Murray Snow, the federal judge in the three-year-long racial profiling lawsuit against the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, has rejected a motion by Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s lawyers to seal videotaped depositions of Arpaio, former Chief Deputy David Hendershott and other MCSO staff. (Read the Judge’s ruling, here.) The motion…
Pearce tells a bigot-boy joke at a Judicial Watch panel on immigration Chalk up another racist remark from Sand Land’s neo-Nazi-hugging state Senate President-elect Russell Pearce. In D.C. to attend the oral arguments on Arizona’s employer sanctions law before the U.S. Supreme Court, he stopped by to visit his far-right wingnut…
Dream a little DREAM with me…See an update on the status of the DREAM below.The haters were defeated in the U.S. House yesterday, and the DREAM Act passed 216-198.Today, the fight goes to the U.S. Senate, where the Republicans threaten a filibuster, and the Dems lack the 60 votes to…
Time’s a wastin’, people. Hit those phones. Hit ’em hard. The DREAM Act, proposed legislation that would legalize the status of undocumented students brought here when they were young, is being discussed on the floor of the U.S. House even as I type this. A vote in both houses of…
Has tobacco titan Dimitri Rozenman, convicted earlier this year of plotting to kill his wife and her family, scored a new trial? That might be the result of Judge Kristin Hoffman’s decision to vacate judgment in the Rozenman case. Rozenman, the owner of a lucrative web of online and retail cigar outlets, was…
