It’s state Senator Russell Pearce’s Arizona, and the Democrats just live in it. The Republicans? They do as they’re told.Such is the state of affairs after the passage of Pearce’s police state/anti-immigrant legislation SB 1070 in the Arizona House today. The handful of disgruntled Republicans who’d been promising quietly (and…
Attorney David Selden on Russell Pearce’s SB 1070As I previously blogged, state Senator Russell Pearce’s police state bill SB 1070 is going to the floor of the House today for COW and a possible third read. Pearce’s arguments for it are filled with half-truths and racist shibboleths, as he demonstrated…
The state House has just posted the agendas for its Committee of the Whole and Third Reads for Tuesday: Russell Pearce’s police state legislation SB 1070 is the first order of business. Pearce was pushing the legislation hard on this week’s Sunday Square-Off on Channel 12, claiming he has the…
Yuma County Sheriff Ralph Ogden is urging legislators to hold off on passing state Senator Russell Pearce’s immigration bill SB 1070, saying that his county would have to pick up the tab for training costs related to the legislation, and the cost of holding more inmates on state charges in…
Watching state Senator Russell Pearce defend his police state bill SB 1070 on Channel 12’s Sunday Square-Off with Brahm Resnik, I was reminded of what state Representative Daniel Patterson (D-Tucson) had to say about Pearce recently, after challenging the Mesa bigot-boy on some of his dubious factoids. Patterson complained to Pearce…
Look out Latinos, whether or not you’re a citizen, or otherwise here legally. Sheriff Joe’s announced that his next anti-immigrant dragnet will occur within the next three weeks, according to a just-posted AP report. As everyone was reminded after Arpaio’s recent raids on four area McDonald’s, it’s round up the brown folk first,…
Arizona is a state of cowardly little white men with handguns. They need their guns to prove their manhood. Without them, they have nothing but fear.This is one reason why Sand Land remains so benighted. Any illusions you may have had that we live in a civilized state should be…
State Senator Russell Pearce, along with his colleague state Senator Al Melvin, have added an amendment to a bill that creates an anti-immigrant vigilante force on the Arizona-Mexico border, and grants it $200,000 with which to do business.Melvin offered the hastily-drafted provision as part of a package forming an Arizona…
The men of the Phoenix Police Department’s Career Criminal Squad will be able to continue their work, investigating violent, street-level hate crimes according to City Manager David Cavazos.The squad, which also investigates murder-for-hire and other cases, was supposed to be disbanded as of this Monday, officially for budget reasons. But…
First it was WrestleMania, now Glendale will be playing host to another form of white trash entertainment, though boring and preachy by comparison.This Saturday, April 10, wingnut lip-flapper extraordinaire Glenn Beck will be in town as part of his “American Revival” tour, a grueling eight hours of Beck and assorted…
Arpaio, Wilcox and Pearce on GeraldoIn case you missed it, here’s video from Geraldo Rivera’s March 29 show on Fox, where he takes on Sheriff Joe for the umpteenth time, and features footage of Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox and state Senator Russell Pearce.The footage of Wilcox is from…
The dastardly murder of Arizona rancher Robert Krentz has sent the nativists into public paroxysms of jingoist ecstasy. Tom Tancredo, J.D. Hayworth and others of that ilk are exploiting the killing to inflame hatred toward new arrivals of a brown hue. Even mainstream pols like Senator John McCain and Democratic Congresswoman Gabby Giffords are using…
Peter Cottontail’s hoppin’ mad about photo radar… These anti-photo radar activists rock like Amadeus. Back in December, it was a passel of renegade Santas attacking photo radar cameras in Tempe with big Xmas gift boxes. This Sunday, on that great pagan celebration known as Easter, Peter Cottontail visited with the kids,…
Joe Dana’s report on the ongoing federal grand jury probe of ArpaioChannel 12’s Joe Dana reported last night on the federal grand jury investigation of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Chief Deputy David Hendershott, and the MCSO, and offered some tidbits regarding the probe from confidential sources.The most intriguing of these is…
During Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s December deposition in the ongoing racial-profiling lawsuit Melendres vs. Arpaio, the sheriff revealed that he had kept a personal file on immigration-related matters, which up until then had not been turned over to the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the case.This, even though David Bodney, chief counsel for the plaintiffs,…
MICHAEL X? Of all the ironies in the fallout from Councilman Michael Johnson’s alleged roughing-up at the hands of a rookie Phoenix cop, there’s one that’s particularly troubling: The presence of Charles Muhammad, a minister for the Nation of Islam’s Phoenix branch, at a press conference given by Johnson last…
State Senator Russell Pearce’s police state bill, SB 1070, passed the House Military Affairs and Public Safety committee again today, after a three hour session of testimony, with state Representative Kyrsten Sinema, the Assistant House Democratic Leader, taking the lead on peppering Pearce, and others speaking for and against the bill, with…
There’s been a whiff of brimstone in the air with the rumor that state Senator Russell Pearce, the most bigoted public servant in Arizona (and that’s saying a lot), has been actively lobbying Maricopa County to become its replacement sheriff, should Arpaio run for governor, keel over, or be indicted…
Gilman’s latest on Obama’s hypocrisyYou might as well put a bounty on their heads. The undocumented, I mean. Though Barack Obama came to power dismissing as ludicrous the idea that we can “deport ’em all,” ICE’s Office of Detention and Removal Operations continues to demand just that with a quota of…
Is it a mere coincidence that state Senator Russell Pearce’s chief critic on the House Military Affairs and Public Safety Committee, Representative Daniel Patterson of Tucson, has been removed from that committee, just as Pearce’s police state legislation SB 1070 is scheduled to run through MAPS on March 31?You’ll recall…
Arpaio shrugs off his arrest of an innocent American girlIf you’re Hispanic in Maricopa County, Sheriff Joe’s goons have probable cause to arrest you on suspicion of being undocumented. Hey, they can always release you later.That’s the word from the elephant’s mouth after an MCSO raid on four area McDonald’s…
Puente activist Sandra Castro’s interview with Rev. Jesse JacksonI want to turn your attention to these two videos by Sandra Castro, an activist in Sal Reza’s Puente Movement, which is based here in Phoenix. This footage of the Rev. Jesse Jackson was taken at the big pro-immigration rally in Washington,…
