Goodyear Police arrested CBS 5 journo Jonathan Lowe Monday afternoon while he was on assignment, reporting on a former Arizona State University football player who allegedly sacrificed the family dog by putting him in a smoker in order to appease an angry God. That doesn’t begin to explain the kind…
Asked to handicap the upcoming political throwdown between GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and the Democrats’ inevitable pick, Hillary Clinton, porn titan Larry Flynt delivers a wry one-liner in that inimitable, gravely voice of his: “Hillary could beat Trump from jail.” Flynt, who’ll turn 74 this fall, will be in…
Supporters of a Catholic high school teacher who has been lambasted for a controversial anti-abortion handout he distributed in class are speaking out in his defense and have started a petition to counter one calling for him to be removed from the classroom. Since New Times first wrote about a…
In a 162-page ruling issued, ominously, on Friday the 13th, U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow found Sheriff Joe Arpaio guilty on three counts of civil contempt and left the door open to criminal prosecution. Snow also found Arpaio’s chief deputy, Jerry Sheridan, guilty on two counts of civil contempt…
An angry Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich told reporters on Thursday that Secretary of State Michele Reagan “did indeed violate Arizona law” in not sending out hundreds of thousands of publicity pamphlets regarding Tuesday’s special election. But the AG said he won’t go into court to stop the election from…
Online petitioners are demanding that a local Catholic school teacher be removed from the classroom for what they call “racist and sexist hate speech.” The petition, which has garnered more than 2,500 signatures (and counting) over the past couple of days, alleges that an instructor at Phoenix’s Xavier College Preparatory,…
For a showcase of gross incompetence on behalf of public officialdom, it doesn’t get much better than the March 28 hearing of the Arizona House Elections Committee. In the pillory that day before a packed-to-overflowing room of angry citizens sans pitchforks was Republican Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell, a prim,…
Democrat Kyrsten Sinema raised eyebrows at a recent East Valley Partnership luncheon in Mesa, by stating that she hopes right-wing ideologue and Republican state senate president Andy Biggs wins in Arizona’s deeply red Fifth Congressional District this year. The U.S. Representative for Arizona’s Ninth Congressional District was onstage, participating in…
Talk about bad timing. In an election year rife with anti-immigrant sentiment, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol statistics show that apprehensions of unaccompanied minors from Central America have spiked to levels near those in the first six months of fiscal year 2014, when the issue became a political football and a…
Asked whether he’ll be Donald Trump’s commerce secretary, should the presumptive GOP presidential nominee KO the Dems’ best shot at the White House, Hillary Clinton, in the fall, Arizona’s Treasurer Jeff DeWit chuckles. “Nah, I like my job,” DeWit says. “I don’t think so.” That’s a somewhat odd answer. After…
As an otherwise staid Arizona Republican Convention in Mesa wrapped up Saturday, Donald Trump’s campaign chair in Arizona, State Treasurer Jeff DeWit, sputtered into what best can be described as a Trump-style meltdown. Enraged by the results of an electronic election held that afternoon for 28 at-large delegates at the…
At least one candidate for the GOP primary nod in the First Congressional District is not going to let Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu skate on his sleazy record: retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Wendy Rogers. In video obtained by New Times of a February candidates’ forum held at a…
A cornucopia of meth, heroin, ecstasy, and other drugs, along with $7,000 in cash and evidence of drug-making equipment allegedly were seized by authorities this week at a Phoenix residence shared by a high-powered GOP fundraiser, her boyfriend, and his two young children. According to probable-cause statements on file with…
Supporters of Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders will have to suck it up. There will be no do-over of Arizona’s disastrous Presidential Preference Election. Following two days of testimony this week, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge booted a lawsuit claiming fraud, illegal voting and other improprieties in the contest,…
It’s all fun and games till the U.S. Secret Service comes knocking on your door. Actually, for controversial, right-wing street artist SABO, that’s when the games began. The Los Angeles denizen, infamous for his poster of a shirtless, tatted-up, butt-smokin’ Ted Cruz, was in Phoenix for the group show “Provocative…
Standing in line for hours to cast a ballot. Cries of “voter suppression.” The finger-pointing, the recriminations, the heads hanging in shame. These all could be things of the past, at least in relation to voter angst, if a Republican effort to repeal Arizona’s Presidential Preference Election, now held up…
One of the many bouts of culture shock I endured during the years I lived in New York City was watching two grown men get into a fist fight over a dime lying on the sidewalk near the building where I worked. They both reached for it about the same…
A Mesa man, who according to police went by the online alter ego “Zel the Wolf”on the digital art-sharing site DeviantArt.com, was arrested this week for alleged online sexual contact with two 12-year-old girls and for bestiality. Mesa police say Aaron Thomas Usery, 21, engaged in virtual sexual relationships with…
Here’s a piece of advice to local newshounds: Whenever Tim Casey is kvetching about “abuse of power,” then your bullshit detector should be flashing fire-engine red. Casey, you’ll recall, has made defending various abuses of power by the satraps of Maricopa County into his personal gravy train. He’s best known…
According to a recent poll performed by Sheriff Paul Babeu’s hired hand, a plurality of likely GOP voters in Arizona’s First Congressional District apparently don’t care about the various allegations swirling about the sheriff’s use of RICO funds. Nor do these reputedly conservative voters — about 35.7 percent of the poll…
For nearly 90 minutes on stage at Phoenix’s Comerica Theater on Sunday night, comedian/commentator Bill Maher ripped into Republicans, religion, Islam, the Catholic Church and male sexual hypocrisy, but he saved special venom for presidential contender Donald Trump and his followers. Calling Trump “that douchebag from Queens,” Maher derided the…
Few Americans speak with such frankness about political correctness, radical Islam, and Donald Trump as comedian Bill Maher. Through his standup act and his long-running HBO talk show Real Time with Bill Maher, the avowed liberal and sacred-cow-killer has zero problem making his lefty pals feel uncomfortable as he challenges…
