Hangin’ County Attorney Rick Romley has a message to any citizen who gets behind the wheel of a vehicle: If you accidentally injure someone, you’ll do hard time. If you accidentally injure a cop, you’ll do double hard time. If you recklessly injure someone and you are a cop, chill…

As most bishops nationwide begin digging themselves out from the avalanche of priest sex scandals, Bishop Thomas O’Brien seems intent on digging himself deeper. O’Brien’s latest outrage of many stems from a column I wrote three weeks ago about two women’s accusations of sexual misconduct by Father Patrick Colleary, an…

I just slapped my 5-year-old on the head. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. He stumbled a bit from the blow. He squared up again like some tough guy, so I thumped him in the gut. Call Child Protective Services. Call the principal and superintendent. Quit the team, call a parents’…

The toddler in the photograph beams as he rests his arm on the cantaloupe-size growth on his side. The doll-faced boy in the old print seems unaware that his body shouldn’t look this way, that the growth isn’t an armrest, that humans shouldn’t have cauliflower feet. Doctors in Denver chopped…

© 2002 Bishop Thomas O’Brien continues to harbor priests who molest children. In doing so, O’Brien continues to heap anguish and injustice on the children and parents in the Phoenix Diocese who were betrayed, and forever damaged, by their parish priests. One such parent is Doris Kennedy, who contacted me…

Five children lost their mother when APS serviceman John Noack, drunk and stoned, plowed into Pauline Jeffery’s Ford Escort with his 13-ton APS utility truck. The impact catapulted the economy car and its passengers into a pine tree along Highway 260, east of Payson. It took Jeffery 10 minutes to…

From guest editorials in the Sunday paper to letters read to congregations across the Valley, Bishop Thomas O’Brien has been on an aggressive campaign to sell himself as a longtime progressive leader in the fight against pedophile priests. In reality, O’Brien should instead be confessing to nearly 20 years of…

Phyllis Hansen-Day, the chief clerk of the Maryvale Justice Court, had strong ties to one of the Valley’s most lethal street gangs. The questions now facing investigators: How much did she help that gang as chief clerk? And how much did she really know about the murder in her home?…

Eric Vogel was terrified to walk from his house. He imagined getting lost and confused. He imagined police arresting him and hauling him off to jail, a place where hulking guards would humiliate him, strip him naked and torture him. Vogel, 36, was paranoid and delusional. He was mentally ill…

Joe Arpaio is a psychopath. Arpaio is considering running for governor of Arizona. He’ll announce his decision March 27. If he runs, he’s the front-runner. Recent polls show voters view him more favorably than any other candidate. His name recognition is at 94 percent, 10 percent higher than the leading…

I’ve asked the promotions staff to hurry up with my tee shirt idea. The shirt will show a convict getting barbecued in the electric chair. The convict’s sassy brunette hair will be aflame as gobs of milky eyeball juice squirt through the leather shroud. A banner above the human fireworks…

My head looks like an anvil covered with blackheads and receding hair. Back in junior high, a friend’s grandmother said to me: “Bob, I don’t remember your head being so long.” That comment caused self-esteem problems that make me stutter in crowds. Ugly and mute, I realized radio and television…

I hope Mexico’s statesmen are enjoying the sweet irony of it. They’ve spent their whole political lives being called whores for America’s bottom-feeding industries. But here was this odd little shill named Jane Hull, down from the American state of Arizona, offering up her state for the filthy job of…

TUCSON — First there was a Harvard, then came a “Harvard of the South,” a “Harvard of the Midwest” and a “Harvard of the Plains.” Indeed, great statesmanship in expansionist America was often defined by how quickly the local hayseed college could, without widespread snickering, be deemed the “Harvard of…

The phone message instructed me to call a different number if I was a member of the “Jew media.”Considering his worldview, Matt Hale probably intended the message to encompass all media calls. As a New Times writer, though, I was actually a pawn of the Irish-Catholic media conspiracy, not the…

My 9-year-old son, Andrew, covered his eyes as the bottom of the ninth inning began Sunday night. I sunk into the couch and looked toward the kitchen. My wife leaned toward the television.”It isn’t over,” she said. “Mariano Rivera,” I mumbled. “That means it’s over.” My son peeked at me…

Yankees are angels, Diamondbacks are terrorists, Giuliani says NEW YORK — Faced with flagging national support for his “Yankees Are the Official Team of America’s War on Terrorism” campaign, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani held a pep rally Wednesday at which he announced evidence linking the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team to Osama…

Mad dog publicist and unsavory martyr David Hans Schmidt is free at last, free at last. Schmidt was released from county jail just before Labor Day weekend after the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office dropped charges of aggravated domestic violence against him. His release came a week after a New Times…

Welcome to metro Phoenix, or as we like to call it, Amsterzona, the desert dope oasis where vacationers can enjoy super-sized Quad Ganja Lattes at any neighborhood Starbucks Hashhouse. Visit the Tempe Town Bong, the power center of the Dutch West Tempes district. Enjoy heat stroke, ozone O.D.s, Cardinals football…

In late June, David Hans Schmidt placed a birthday card on the grave of his infant son Ben, who died eight years ago at birth. A month later, New Times wrote about Schmidt’s rollicking campaign to milk $6.5 million in damages from the county for Jefferson Davis McGee, who had…

In 1989, CIGNA Healthcare of Arizona informed policyholders it would no longer cover long-term speech and physical therapy. Three-year-old Ryan Ewers, who weighed 17 pounds and couldn’t talk, eat or stand to have his skin touched because of complications at birth, needed those therapies for any hope of one day…

David Hans Schmidt cackles gleefully every time he sees the 13-inch surgical scar down the belly of Jefferson Davis McGee. It’s just such a great visual: Here’s this 21st-century American with what looks like a Civil War triage scar. Combine that with McGee’s perpetually bewildered “what just happened to me?”…