The leader of an armed anti-government group that has occupied a federal wildlife building in Oregon once lived in Phoenix and can boast connections to local Republican politicians, such as Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Following a rally in support of two Oregon ranchers on Saturday, Ammon Bundy, son of rebellious Nevada…
Arizona’s Public Integrity Alliance, a conservative nonprofit group largely made up of East Valley Republicans, has helped topple former state Attorney General Tom Horne, targeted the slimy political maneuverings of former state Senate President Russell Pearce and his bumbling brother Lester, and put pressure on ex-Arizona Corporation Commission Chair Susan…
Don’t let the doorknob hit you on the way out. That’s the message to former Arizona Corporation Commission Chairwoman Susan Bitter Smith from both state Attorney General Mark Brnovich and Governor Doug Ducey. In a letter dated December 21, Ducey accepted Bitter Smith’s resignation, which she had made effective January…
What do you reckon many liberals and Latinos locally think about city government possibly having a master list of all the undocumented in Phoenix, with identifying photos, biometrics, and addresses, to boot? Sounds like recalled former state Senate President Russell Pearce’s wet dream, right? Particularly since law enforcement would have…
Who says all the good fights happen on Black Friday? With Christmas less than a week away, the benevolent spirit of the season failed to stop a fight from breaking out during a Saturday morning protest at a Phoenix shopping center shared by a Home Depot and a Walmart, near…
Come shop at Walmart and Home Depot, stay for the fisticuffs. That could be the pitch for the shopping center at 37nd Street and Thomas Road in Phoenix, where each chain has a store. Its parking lot has recently been the site of angry confrontations between heavily-armed nativists and a…
One day after filing a response to Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s petition seeking her removal from office, Arizona Corporation Commission Chairwoman Susan Bitter Smith resigned from the powerful regulatory body, effective January 4. In a statement issued today, Bitter Smith, a Republican, defended herself against allegations of a conflict of…
Speaking with journalist and author Asra Nomani for my recent cover story on her fellow Muslim reformer, Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser of Phoenix, I asked why Jasser draws such enormous flak from Muslim organizations in America. Nomani has garnered her share of fire for her ardent advocacy of gender equality…
Adherents of Islam have a long and varied history in the United States, despite their being a tiny minority of the total population. Here are some intriguing facts about the world’s fastest growing religion and those who practice it in this country. 10.Muslims were in America prior to the Declaration…
Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy,. has called for a “jihad against jihad,” meaning an all-out fight against the extremist ideology that has become identified with the term jihad, an Arabic word that can apply broadly to a personal spiritual struggle on one end…
Two days after the mass shooting in San Bernardino at an office Christmas party that left 14 dead and 21 wounded, about a dozen Muslims held a press conference in Washington, D.C. to announce their prescription for the radical Islamist ideology that reportedly inspired the slaughter. Authorities say Syed Rizwan…
If former Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon is the Democratic alternative to Sheriff Joe in 2016, I will vote for Arpaio. Laughable? Of course, I would never do that. But any vote for “Sheriff Phil” also would be ridiculous. Gordon for sheriff ain’t gonna happen. No way, no how, regardless…
With the Arizona Supreme Court refusing to intervene in the case, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Jose Padilla on Wednesday set a start date of April 4 for the trial of former minuteman and accused child molester Chris Simcox. “We need to get this to trial,” Padilla said during a…
Journalists are a notoriously cynical bunch. So when a politician up and does the right thing, especially in a one-party state rife with corruption, the knee-jerk reaction is: What are you doing for an encore? Thus it was with Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s post-Thanksgiving press conference, where he carved up…
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced during a press conference this morning that his office had filed a petition with the Arizona Supreme Court to remove the embattled Arizona Corporation Commission Chair Susan Bitter Smith from office for alleged conflicts of interests. In strident language, Brnovich said his fellow Republican…
How’s this for irony? One month before Governor Doug Ducey issued a statement calling for a halt to the placement of Syrian and Iraqi refugees in Arizona, the Arizona State Transportation Board voted in favor of spending about $367,000 in public funds to honor a Syrian Muslim immigrant. The mostly-federal…
Convicted child-rapist Adrian Cruz is back in Phoenix, following a six-year vacation from his lifetime sentence behind bars, a vacation he owes to the negligence of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s boys and girls in beige. Cruz, who escaped from MCSO custody in 2009, was arrested in April by Mexican police, after…
A bag containing $7,000 in cash. A self-made billionaire code-named “Cabo.” A media-hog sheriff obsessed with a wack investigation of President Obama’s birth certificate. A supposed CIA database of illegally harvested data. And a Seattle-based computer guru, code-named “Oz.” These are a few of the speakers and subjects found in…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s lead attorney John Masterson had just begun to argue why the court should pay no heed to the MCSO’ so-called Seattle investigation, when federal Judge G. Murray Snow, standing rather than sitting for most Friday’s final arguments in the sheriff’s contempt trial, interrupted him. The jurist stated…
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson recently promised Arizonans during a tele-town hall that, if elected, he could get a double-fenced, 2,000 mile wall built on the U.S.-Mexico border within a year. One of his rivals for the GOP nomination, billionaire Donald Trump, would like a wall, too, and he also…
One of the more insightful passages in former MCSO Executive Chief Brian Sands’ book about his old boss, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, deals with Joe’s long-fostered image as an avuncular Dr. Dolittle with a badge. Whether its ginning up bogus animal-cruelty cases against Maricopa County residents or taking celebrity Pam Anderson…
Did Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s infamous Seattle investigation begin with a billionaire intent on revenge against his ex-wife? And was this wealthy individual drawn to Arpaio as part of the paranoid atmosphere that swirled around Arpaio’s investigation of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate? To judge from audio files recently entered into…
