Talking to Tom Horne about test scores is like questioning a suspect in a murder. He gets nervous, defensive, and passes blame to anyone who controls his budget. As if the AIMS test is the ultimate barometer for his success. What boosts test scores? Money, obviously. So when President Obama suggested…
University of Arizona authorities are in the process of dropping charges against two students ticketed for drawing on the campus with chalk earlier this week. As part of a student rally, 24-year old Jacob Miller and 10 others drew pictures and messages to protest budget cuts on Thursday. Among their…
In a court appearance yesterday, a 10-year-old Liberian boy accused in the gang rape of an 8-year-old girl cried as his teacher testified that he was a bad student. During the court appearance, Toya Abrams, the boy’s second-grade teacher at Camelview Elementary School in Phoenix, told a judge that the…
Phoenix Mercury guard Diana Taurasi will be named WNBA MVP today. Taurasi, who leads the Mercury into the WNBA finals series against the Indiana Fever at US Airways Center tonight, has averaged more than 20 points per game this season…Mesa police arrested ASU student Karla Jauregui on Sunday. Jauregui is…
From Dave Weigel of The Washington Independent: Watch Franks touch his tonsils with his big toe for the camera while kinda-sorta disavowing birtherism… Allow me to be the first to call on Congressman Trent Franks of Arizona to prove his U.S. citizenship — and citizenship in the human race — by presenting…
In the 24-hour news cycle it can be difficult to keep up. We have the solution. Check back on Valley Fever every evening for highlights from each of New Times’ blogs. Today’s entries: Feathered Bastard: Riverside’s Neo-Nazi (National Socialist Movement) Demo: A Preview of Phoenix, November 7? Up on the…
Phoenix is home to the highest-scoring basketball team, on a per-minute basis, in North America — and it’s not the Suns. If it were, maybe Valley sports fans would give a crap. As it is, most are probably unaware that, without a doubt, the Phoenix Mercury women’s basketball team is the…
Naui’s footage from Saturday’s neo-Nazi demo in Riverside, CA shows that even 12 NSM members can mean trouble, if the cops aren’t on their game. About a dozen neo-Nazis from the National Socialist Movement got run out of Riverside,CA on the proverbial hot rail on Saturday. The swastika-lickers were protesting illegal…
Four operators of the Valley’s fledgling light-rail system and at least one supervisor will see their positions eliminated by next Friday, documents show.Two other supervisor positions, which are currently unfilled, will also be eliminated.The layoffs were ordered by Valley Metro Rail and announced in a letter to ACI, the Boston-based…
Image: Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Don Stapley, in the mug shot taken last week from jail Talk of handcuffing and charges “filed” can be heard on an audio recording made during last week’s arrest of Don Stapley, one of five members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. Scroll down for a…
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office found two dead bodies in the desert Southwest of Gila Bend that they believe are the remains of Mexican nationals trying to enter the country illegally.The bodies were said to be “heavily decomposed.”Deputies say the bodies were found by “Angels in the Desert,” a church group that patrols…
The Glendale man who took a bus all the way to Virginia to meet and possibly have sex with a 13-year-old girl last July, pleaded guilty in federal court this morning.Jesse Lee Wise, a 25-year-old door-to-door salesman, admitted to trying to entice a minor for sex and is looking at…
Norman Davis, the presiding juvenile judge for the Maricopa County Superior Court, tells New Times that he has asked county officials to investigate serious allegations published in this paper’s current edition about Dr. Joseph Franzetti. The allegations about the local psychiatrist (he’s the guy in the photo) were published…
When rookie Paradise Valley Mayor Vernon Parker announced his interest in running for governor last week, he probably didn’t count on the founder of the organization in front of which he made the announcement to be linked to a high-priced hooker scandal.Not the ideal way to begin a campaign, but welcome to…
When the Goldwater Institute gave Arizona high school students a citizenship test similar to the one given to immigrants, it didn’t expect much from the students — but the results shocked even G.I.The survey found that only an embarrassing 3.5 percent of students who took the exam would qualify to…
After the “Great One” was run out of the Valley in disgrace last week, our neighbors to the north seem to be pulling out the big guns to make sure Canada’s favorite son heads home. Hockey Canada, the group responsible for organizing Canada’s Olympic hockey team, hopes that Gretzky will…
The Arizona Cardinals (1-2) came out of halftime on Sunday with the dominating enthusiasm of a team that nearly won the Super Bowl last year. In eight plays, the Cards marched 73 yards down the field in about four minutes, culminating in a 10-yard Anquan Boldin touchdown. As for the rest of…
The Arizona Diamondbacks defeated the San Diego Padres 7-4 Sunday afternoon, in their final home game of the season. Chad Tracy homered and Augie Ojeda drove in three runs for the victory. The D-Backs’ next game puts them on Giants turf Tuesday…The demolition of the old Mountain Bell/Phoenix Qwest building…
These days, ACORN is what Commies were to Joe McCarthy and that bunch back in the dark old ’50s: a useful tool for painting one’s opponents as un-American. No matter how disheveled, no matter how scoundrel-like, McCarthy-ites (and “Tail Gunner Joe” himself) could always call someone a pinko, a Communist…
In the 24-hour news cycle it can be difficult to keep up. We have the solution. Check back on Valley Fever every evening for highlights from each of New Times’ blogs. Today’s entries: Feathered Bastard: NSM (National Socialist Movement) Neo-Nazis to Rally at Arizona State Capitol November 7 Up on…
Phoenix police officer Brian Lilly did not break any department rules in the shooting of homeowner Tony Arambula, the Phoenix Use of Force board decided today. Any other decision might have cost the city a lot of money, right away. Arambula, who heroically saved his family from an armed intruder,…
The Arizona Court of Appeals has overturned the conviction of a Tucson woman for burying her newborn son in the backyard of her home in 2005. Regina Lockwood was convicted of conspiracy to abandon or conceal a dead human body back in 2008 after she and her friend, then 22-year-old Nicholi…
