More than a year has passed since former Minuteman leader Chris Simcox was arrested on charges that he molested three minors, including one of his own daughters. Simcox has refused a generous plea deal from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, and so he bides his time in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s…

Update 5:13 p.m.: Director of Sycamore Canyon Academy tells me that he has “no date and time” associated with arrival of children. Says he is not aware of children coming on Tuesday. See full update below. A longtime supporter of Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu says the sheriff tipped him…

I’m supposed to be off this week, using vacation time I don’t normally use. But to quote Al Pacino in The Godfather, Part III, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” See, I happened to spot an item on Tucson Weekly’s website by writer David…

Putting the jerk in knee-jerk, Arizona State Treasurer and Republican gubernatorial hopeful Doug Ducey has rolled out a new TV ad, trying like heck to look tough on the border. That’s no small task for a guy who either has the world’s worst barber or the world’s worst toupee, I’m…

Former Mesa Mayor and GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott Smith, known as a relative moderate on immigration, is joining in the inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric of his colleagues in a bid to score campaign contributions. In an e-mail fundraising blast sent out to potential contributors on Monday, Smith bashed Barack Obama, unnamed…

While Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne recovers from a four-night hospital visit for what his spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham says was a “minor procedure,” his re-election campaign is dead in the water. According to recently-filed documents with the Arizona Secretary of State, the embattled AG, who is facing active investigations from…

President Barack Obama, whose administration has already deported more than 2 million people since he took office, wants to send back children coming to the U.S. from Central America as soon as earthly possible. Today, the White House made public a letter to Congressional leaders seeing additional funds to deal…

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne’s chief deputy and office hatchet man Eric “Rick” Bistrow has farmed out an internal investigation into allegations made by ex-AG employee Sarah Beattie to two attorneys who have contributed to Horne’s campaign in the past. In a letter dated June 18, Bistrow formally appointed Republican…

A sort of moral sickness has gripped this country in the face of the unprecedented number of minors crossing the border in Texas, one that manifests itself in panic, falsehoods, sheer stupidity, and knee-jerk nativist hatred. In Lawrenceville, Virginia (population 1,300), residents recently pitched a fit when they found out…

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, who literally may end up in handcuffs this year depending on the outcomes of various criminal probes into his scummy activities, is using a photo of migrant children detained in Texas to raise money for his re-election campaign. In a mass e-mail sent out Tuesday…

What does an aged blowhard like Sheriff Joe Arpaio know about the humanitarian crisis involving thousands of children from Central America crossing the border into the United States? Not a damn thing. Arpaio proved this categorically on the conservative site Newsmax TV in a recent interview with washed-up former Republican…

I officially take back everything bad I’ve said about this state’s Clean Elections laws. Well, almost. Because there’s no way in hell that a loser like disbarred ex-county attorney Andrew Thomas should be awarded three-quarters of a million dollars in public cash, as could happen during this election cycle. Still,…

What did Arizona’s political leaders learn from the debacle over Arizona’s ethnic-cleansing legislation, Senate Bill 1070? They learned that hysteria, misinformation, and grandstanding work, as far as garnering attention, and that saying the dumbest thing you can is often surest route to getting your mug on Fox News. But wait,…

Update: One day after this blog item was published, the Superintendent formally admitted that he is the author of the posts listed below. Arizona Schools Superintendent John Huppenthal has no problemo shilling for private schools in annoying robocalls to unsuspecting citizens, but if you call him at home to ask…

Talk about what Catholics call an “occasion of sin”. . . on Friday, the MCSO announced that it had staged yet another worksite raid, this one supposedly the 83rd since Sheriff Joe Arpaio started wasting taxpayer cash on them instead after going after murderers, child rapists, gang-bangers, and other so-called…

More than a year before his alleged suicide by hanging on May 8, Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Detective Charley Armendariz reached out to Phoenix human-rights activist Lydia Guzman, telling her he had information to share, and implicating MCSO supervisors in illegal activity. Guzman says Armendariz approached her on February 28,…

The most revealing part of Phoenix filmmaker Randy Murray’s recent documentary The Joe Show was a strategy meeting during Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s 2012 re-election campaign that included Arpaio, his top flack, Lisa Allen, Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan, and campaign manager Chad Willems. The group huddled in the back of a…

Standing in the lobby of the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, having just dropped off more than 14,500 signatures to place his name on the ballot for Attorney General, former Arizona gaming director Mark Brnovich exuded the kind of confidence you’d expect from a candidate facing a primary opponent mired…