Has uncertainty over the outcome of the presidential race sent our republic hurtling toward a constitutional cataclysm?Nah. The sky isn’t falling. The soft money isn’t hardening. This is good fun, and more interesting than the Subway Series. Historians are actually getting face time on TV. Perhaps our electile dysfunction will…

The City of Phoenix began the year ominously with Celebration 2000, a misnomeric millennial party featuring everyone from the Gin Blossoms to the Association. Built to attract 200,000 revelers, Mayor Skip Rimsza’s world-class bash was a bust for the ages. Organizers sold merely 13,000 tickets, and the city eviscerated its…

Jessica Karen Jeffries is 18 years old, but has the mental capacity of someone perhaps half her age. Her bedroom is decorated with illustrations of characters from Winnie the Pooh, which she has meticulously colored.She is 5-foot-7 and weighs 437 pounds. Jessica is going on trial next week, charged with…

Valley TV viewers seldom see the Arizona Cardinals play at Sun Devil Stadium. This is because local broadcasts are blacked out unless the homeboys sell all the seats in the stadium, something they do with the frequency of the Perseid meteor shower.The Cards played in Dallas on Sunday, so, unfortunately,…

It’s after midnight when we scramble over the rock wall and onto the grounds of Tovrea Castle. Gravel crunches beneath our feet as we creep over undulating ground and through fragrant creosote toward the glittering edifice on the hill. Though we are trespassing, there is little trepidation. We mean no…

The Phoenix Civic Plaza is a tax rat hole. In 1998-99 alone, it cost nearly $30 million to operate, yet took in about a third of that. The $20 million operations deficit was made up by unsuspecting local taxpayers. They ponied up the equivalent of 30 bucks apiece for every…

The developer of the $500 million Collier Center in downtown Phoenix guaranteed a partner in the Crowne Plaza Hotel that the city would provide a $10 million subsidy if the owners of Crowne Plaza agreed to sell the facility. The offer was made by Tom Roberts, president and chief executive…

Nobody from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has given a sworn statement in response to Robert Wetherell’s bombshell affidavit. However, an attorney representing the county has. Ronald Lebowitz has been the county’s counsel about Mark Battilana’s dismissal since September 1996. Lebowitz was in private practice when he began work on…

None of this happens in Arizona. An unassuming health-food salesman from Scottsdale does not craft a law designed to separate elected officials from the campaign contributions they glean from the lobbyists who wield influence at the state Capitol. A grandmother from Sun City West certainly does not organize and nurture…

Proposition 200, the Citizens Clean Elections Act, would give candidates for statewide and legislative offices the opportunity to opt for nearly complete public financing. They’d be allowed to raise a small amount of private cash for exploratory committees. The rules would not apply to candidates for federal or local elections,…

I know that you, the reading, voting, taxpaying public, have many questions regarding the fate of our fallen governor, J. Fife Symington III. Some of these questions are profound. Others are profane. As a public service, I will employ the handy Arizona Republic-style Q and A format to address a…

When is news not news? When you don’t get it from the Arizona Republic. Last week, through the wonders of modern media, Arizona was transfixed by Juror 161, a 74-year-old woman named Mary Jane Cotey. Cotey’s 15-minute fame meter hummed into action as she was excused from service in Governor…

A recent article in the Arizona Business Gazette announced that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio would address a Chamber of Commerce breakfast and “share his secrets of self-promotion.” Arpaio apparently believes he deserves some of the credit for Phoenix’s robust economy. He told the ABG, “I equate crime, publicity and…

Biologist John Hervert, arguably the world’s foremost expert on the Sonoran pronghorn antelope, hoists an antenna in his left hand and listens to a receiver for blips indicating whether any radio-collared pronghorns are nearby. He hears nothing but static. Before him stretches the xeric wilderness of the Growler Valley, a…

A judge has thwarted the latest effort to derail construction of a major league baseball stadium in downtown Phoenix. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey S. Cates on Monday dismissed two lawsuits that tried to give county voters a voice in whether they should be taxed to build the stadium…

Ramon Alvarez is Governor J. Fife Symington III’s longtime friend. He is also the father of Symington’s rumored love interest, Annette Alvarez. So it came as no surprise that Ramon Alvarez, a Douglas attorney, was the governor’s recent choice for the Cochise County Superior Court bench. The appointment has angered…

Employees fired in the wake of an undercover sting at Phoenix Newspapers Inc. say they have learned that honesty is not the best policy. Although they say they were assured they would not be fired if they were forthcoming about drug or alcohol use, some employees who confessed were terminated…

As Jerry Colangelo’s major league baseball bandwagon rolls on, seemingly unabated, a small pack of stadium-tax foes continues to give chase, yelping like bloodthirsty poodles. Now, however, one segment of the opposition wants to wage economic warfare. A group known as Taxpayers Against Corporate Welfare has announced a sales-tax boycott…

Hi, NBA fans! I’m Chuck Barkley, and I own this town. New Times asked me to do this guide for the folks who are pouring in to Phoenix for the big All-Star show. Hope you dig it. Party hard, and don’t spit on anyone! EAST VAN BUREN STREET For those…

Hey, you Democrats, Bob Grossfeld has a message for you: Things aren’t as bad as they seem. Unless you’re a “liberal” Democrat. In that case, you’d best start calling yourself “progressive.” Grossfeld, a Tempe-based Democratic political consultant, suggests that his party’s malaise is, to some extent, a matter of semantics…

Everyone’s a Critic “I made some stupid mistakes,” Eddie Basha says matter-of-factly. Once again, “chubby grocer” is his full-time occupation. During a ten-minute phone interview Monday from Bashas’ Inc. headquarters, the vanquished Democratic gubernatorial nominee employs some brutal adjectives to summarize his performance against Fife Symington–like ignorant, unsophisticated and naive…

You’re U.S. Senator John McCain, and you’ve got a big problem. Your wife, Cindy, was addicted to prescription painkillers. She stole pills from a medical-aid charity she heads and she used the names of unsuspecting employees to get prescriptions. The public is about to find out about it. Until now,…