For the last decade, Archbishop Michael Sheehan has been a leader in a little known clique of American Catholic prelates known as the “fixer bishops.” They are the Pope’s relief pitchers in America. When a diocese or archdiocese is shelled by scandal, it’s the job of a proven “fixer bishop”…

I was ecstatic when the press release arrived on my desk two weeks ago. It meant I didn’t have to run for sheriff of Maricopa County. Instead, the release said, W. Steven Martin would be doing this desperately needed civic duty for me. Martin, the longtime king of country music…

Newspapers are notoriously short of institutional knowledge. Writers, typically wandering iconoclasts inclined toward the negative, usually grow weary of a city after a few years and soon go searching for newer pastures. I had been at New Times only two years when executive editor Mike Lacey, who started this paper…

Evelyn Garcia stood behind her half-open door holding her two-month-old daughter Yanel as she answered my questions. She said she hasn’t let her baby out of her sight since the tragedy across the street. Her father would be returning soon from a trip to Home Depot. He was off buying…

Ray Krone is nervous about spending much time in Arizona. He admits he might be a bit paranoid, but he’s concerned that when he comes back for visits, cops and prosecutors might follow him and try to pin some sort of trumped-up charges on him. But if anyone has a…

There was a public service advertisement on TV as I walked out the door at noon to do some lawn work. Something about the summer heat beginning in the Valley, about the importance of wearing hats, drinking lots of water, wearing sun screen, taking lots of breaks. A couple hours…

Leon Woodward was expecting an apology when he picked up the letter from city zoning officials in late March. After all, city officials had admitted their inspectors were wrong for harassing Woodward about the height of signs in his U.S. Parking Systems parking lots, which dot the landscape of downtown…

Like cockroaches and Tom Arnold, the only good thing that can be said about Jim Irvin is that he’s a survivor. Who else could remain in office after a jury leveled a $60.4 million judgment against them for official misconduct? Who else could remain in office after costing the state…

Although “Oft Penetrated Native American Vagina Peak” has a nice ring to it, it would not be an appropriate new name for Squaw Peak. That’s because “squaw,” as the subscholarly sociolinguists in the American Indian Movement have long argued, is not in fact synonymous with “Indian whore,” nor is it…

Only one thing has become absolutely clear as the pedo-priest scandal reaches its first anniversary in Phoenix: Bishop Thomas O’Brien cares about nothing other than keeping his pointy hat. Last April, as stories of pedophile priests erupted around the country, I wrote a column about O’Brien’s own immoral 20-year history…

Arizona is a tough-on-crime state. Between 1977 and 2003, the number of Arizona prison inmates increased nearly 1,000 percent, from 3,229 to 30,083. But as legislators and policy leaders toughened sentencing requirements, they failed to provide enough money for housing these prisoners. As of February 2003, the Arizona Department of…

I feel naughty about my respect for Evan Mecham, so I’m badly conflicted when I see him walking toward me through the Capitol Mall between the Arizona House and Senate buildings. Should I scold him for the Bircher-right idiocy he helped galvanize in Arizona over the last half a century,…

The Spike is no judge. The Spike is only an arbiter, an ambassador, a weapons inspector. But you readers decided to write like a pack of damn dirty apes. A quiet little contest offering small bits of South African gold turned into a major pain in the butt because you…

My favorite nickname for breasts is “begonias.” My least favorite is “pimples.” Rounding out my top 10 are “umlauts,” “sweater puffs,” “kettle drums,” “ottomans,” “waldos,” “earmuffs,” “eggplants,” “angelfood,” “Mrs. Doubtfires,” “thingamajigs,” “squirt guns,” “milk shakes,” “mushmelons,” “schooners,” “jiggly bits,” “floats” and, although it has lost some luster with overuse, “hooters.”…

In a legal maneuver apparently designed to honor yours truly while offering up a barrel of fish for shooting, stunningly shameless attorneys for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio filed a motion in U.S. District Court to prohibit anyone involved in a pending civil case against the sheriff’s office from speaking…

I’m looking through the Arizona Capitol Times for some reason, and I see a listing for a legislative House bill that reads: HB 2161 Sports Officials: Assault. Hmm. Sounds like a protected-class issue. Reading on: “HB2161: Assault on a referee, umpire or other sports official engaged in official duties is…

A woman in her 60s answers the knock at the door. I ask for Paul Marcinkus. She says he can’t talk. She says he is recovering from hip surgery. I give her my card. Please have him give me a call, I say. She says it is unlikely that he…

I turned on the TV sometime after 11 a.m. Saturday. From the disjointed blurbs of the videotape, I first thought Wolf Blitzer and Lou Dobbs had been killed. There’d been a crash. In Texas. A video image of what looked like a meteorite didn’t help. The somber tone of the…

They didn’t put Fife Symington in a Plexiglas box, but the scene still reminded me of the Adolf Eichmann trial. There the fidgeting former governor sat, front-row of the Arizona House of Representatives, face-to-face with his accuser, new governor Janet Napolitano, as she delicately alluded in her State of the…

If new information in an inmate-beating case is any indication – and if there’s any justice in this world – Sheriff Joe Arpaio should someday get sized for a pair of pink underwear of his own. A little background: In late December, I wrote about the strange case of a…

Father Patrick Colleary has done his time. And we can only hope that the county attorney finds enough evidence to eventually force Bishop Thomas O’Brien to do his. Colleary was freed from the Madison Street Jail last week after charges of sexual abuse against him were dropped by County Attorney…

Jefferson Davis McGee was not the man who raped and killed 8-year-old Elizabeth Byrd. But on May 28, 2001, McGee was beaten to the brink of death by fellow maximum-security jail inmates who believed he had killed the girl. The inmates of Madison Street Jail believed McGee was what cons…