Arizona’s Independent Redistricting Commission won’t be independent if state Senate President-elect Russell Pearce has anything to do with it.Already, Pearce, with the assistance of state House Speaker Kirk Adams, has effectively bulldozed two of the Republican nominees for the IRC off the list created by the Commission on Appellate Court…

Having recently returned from spending Christmas in my native North Carolina, an obviously older state than the almost-but-not-yet-100-year-old state of Arizona, I was struck by a sense of history that seems woefully absent here. In the Old North State, as in many other states of the former Confederacy, there are…

State Senate President-elect Russell Pearce’s son Joshua Trent Pearce recently was under investigation by the Mesa Police Department for allegations of possible child abuse. Mesa PD spokesman, Sergeant Ed Wessing, confirmed that police responded to a call December 10 from Banner Desert Medical Center regarding a nine day-old baby girl, the daughter…

I’ve always wondered who the Republicans hate more: Latinos or gays?Now that the DREAM Act has failed a cloture vote in the U.S. Senate, while the effort to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell succeeded, I guess we know.Naturally, I’m more surprised by the latter than the former, but maybe I…

To cop a line from the Notorious B.I.G., “Gimme the loot! Gimme the loot!”That’s what Republican state Senate President-elect Russell Pearce might as well be saying with a recent e-mail announcing a fundraiser on January 7, 2011, just three days before Arizona’s legislative session begins. Suggested donation: $250 a pop.It’s…

As I promised in this week’s Bird column concerning state Senate President-elect Russell Pearce’s involvement with neo-Nazi J.T. Ready’s spiritual life as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, here’s the e-mail exchange between Pearce and me.To be honest, I’m surprised he replied, as he always…

Someone contacted me recently, wondering whether or not I support the death penalty. I told them I do not, but not because I think it’s such a bad idea to give the needle to those who are dead-to-rights guilty of a capital crime.Rather, I have two problems with it. First,…

For those who have kvetched about the boycott of Arizona over SB 1070, here’s an interesting riposte: Zack de la Rocha’s musicians-boycott, Soundstrike, along with other groups such as Puente, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, and Presente.org, will be giving away thousands of toys and bags of groceries to…

Judge G. Murray Snow, the federal judge in the three-year-long racial profiling lawsuit against the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, has rejected a motion by Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s lawyers to seal videotaped depositions of Arpaio, former Chief Deputy David Hendershott and other MCSO staff. (Read the Judge’s ruling, here.) The motion…

Pearce tells a bigot-boy joke at a Judicial Watch panel on immigration Chalk up another racist remark from Sand Land’s neo-Nazi-hugging state Senate President-elect Russell Pearce. In D.C. to attend the oral arguments on Arizona’s employer sanctions law before the U.S. Supreme Court, he stopped by to visit his far-right wingnut…

Dream a little DREAM with me…See an update on the status of the DREAM below.The haters were defeated in the U.S. House yesterday, and the DREAM Act passed 216-198.Today, the fight goes to the U.S. Senate, where the Republicans threaten a filibuster, and the Dems lack the 60 votes to…

Time’s a wastin’, people. Hit those phones. Hit ’em hard. The DREAM Act, proposed legislation that would legalize the status of undocumented students brought here when they were young, is being discussed on the floor of the U.S. House even as I type this. A vote in both houses of…

Has tobacco titan Dimitri Rozenman, convicted earlier this year of plotting to kill his wife and her family, scored a new trial? That might be the result of Judge Kristin Hoffman’s decision to vacate judgment in the Rozenman case. Rozenman, the owner of a lucrative web of online and retail cigar outlets, was…

A “reckless, four-year campaign of corruption and power abuse.” That’s how retired Judge Charles E. Jones categorized the evidence against ex-County Attorney Andrew Thomas and his one-time hatchet-woman, former Deputy County Attorney Lisa Aubuchon, in probable-cause statements filed today that could lead to disbarment for both lawyers. Jones also slammed the pair’s…

Three days into her pro-DREAM Act fast outside the Phoenix office of Republican U.S. Senator John McCain, 23-year-old Dulce Juarez has a message for the ex-maverick.”You supported the DREAM Act once,” said Juarez when asked what she would tell the senator if she could. “Open your heart and support it…

How the not-so-mighty have fallen. According to a recent filing in his pending divorce, former minuteman leader and one-time dark horse U.S. Senate candidate Chris Simcox claims he’s eking by on $1,000 a month, and he wants his estranged wife Alena Simcox to pay him “spousal maintenance” in the amount…

The fun comes about 53 seconds in The lefty blog Political Correction is pimping this video of Arizona Congressman Trent “Hoof-in-Gob” Franks on the House floor warning the American public of the “ideological commitment of this administration to weaken America.” Thing is, as dumb as that statement may be, it’s…

Pearce regurgitates a nativist whopper on the “original intent” of the 14th Amendment during an October presser Of all the grotesque lies spewed by the nativist right in its effort to undo birthright citizenship as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the most odious is the canard that…