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…
A would-be cop-killer roaming the streets seems like the kind of thing about which authorities might have wanted to alert the public. But they didn’t — for, at the very least, four days. Even worse, it seems authorities from at least two different Arizona cop shops have known Perez was…
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…
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…
About 1,000 victims who lost money back in the 1980s to Sherman Unkefer, the former head of a major precious metals firm in Phoenix, will be sought for possible restitution of $7.5 million. The case was remanded back to trial court on September 21 by the state Court of Appeals,…
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio will play the role of former American Idol judge Simon Cowell this afternoon as the token prick on a panel of judges rating the talent of up-and-coming singers.The contestants in this case are criminals, and the winner is more likely to go to prison than…
We figured it might be a matter of time before we’d hear more about fired Chandler police officer Dan Lovelace after he was hired by Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu to be one of the PCSO’s finest. Sources tell New Times Officer Lovelace is now under investigation for prisoner abuse stemming…
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…
Well that didn’t take long…Less than 24 hours after Johnny “Irish” McNeel tried to shoot a Maricopa County sheriff’s deputy, he was captured in Mesa, MCSO Sergeant Jesse Spurgin confirms to New Times.We figured it was only a matter of time before McNeel got nabbed, as you can see in…
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…
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…
The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office announced today that Kevin Gerster, the former Maricopa County detention officer seen on security video punching two restrained inmates, has been charged with several crimes for his alleged misdoings while a member of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.In total, Gerster faces five counts of aggravated…
A woman who was fired by the city of Surprise after arguing against budget cuts in a public hearing is suing in federal court over the alleged violation of her free-speech rights. Megan Griego had been working as an economic development coordinator for about three years when she decided to attend a weekend budget…
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…
A former deputy with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s hired to shore up operations for Surprise police attended a meeting last year in which bogus charges against a judge were cooked up, an investigative report states. After the meeting, the Superior Court judge, Gary Donahoe, was charged with bribery and hindering a prosecution…
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…
