A group of diverse individuals including Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Barry Hess, former Republican state Senator Karen Johnson, and voting activist John Brakey are suing Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell, alleging that Maricopa County Elections is involved in various voting shenanigans. Their claim, which you can read in its entirety, here,…

What the U.S. Department of Justice needs to grok about Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his upper echelon is that they are consummate prevaricators. Period. They’re sleazy weasels of the worst type. Essentially, the MCSO, as run by Arpaio and minions such as Chief Deputy David Hendershott, is akin to a mafia enterprise. With…

Undoubtedly many of you have seen the latest action by anti-SB 1070 demonstrators urging Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to nix the 2011 All-Star Game scheduled for Phoenix’s Chase Field and hold it at another location. About three dozen protesters demonstrated against the Arizona Diamondbacks during their Sunday game versus the Washington…

Sheriff Joe just keeps racking up the victims. The latest report comes courtesy of reporter Aura Bogado in Mother Jones magazine. In her article Hazing Arizona, Bogado details the death by pneumonia of David de la Fuente, an illegal immigrant held in Joe’s gulags for three weeks before being turned…

Although the United We Stand for Americans Web site announcing its Tea Party rally on the U.S.-Mexico Border this Sunday August 15 includes the address of the event and maps leading there, it carefully omits one piece of interesting information: The rally is being held on a ranch owned by…

So President Barack Obama, who still talks a good game about “comprehensive immigration reform,” has now signed a supplemental border security package worth $600 million to add 1,000 Border Patrol agents, as well as hundreds of new officers for U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border…

I recently interviewed an associate of neo-Nazi J.T. Ready’s, someone privy to details about Ready’s group U.S. Border Guard, who claimed Ready was using donations to his outfit to pay his rent and buy personal items. This source, who asked not to be identified, told me that Ready had received substantial contributions,…

In somewhat of a concession to humanitarians leaving water out in the desert for thirsty migrants, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that it will allow more water stations on the 118,000-acre Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in southern Arizona.Although Fish and Wildlife has permitted the group Humane…

Romley fights back against Arpaio and Montgomery in this new attack videoAlthough a Maricopa County judge today refused to halt Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s attack ads aimed at County Attorney Rick Romley, Romley has an answer for the guy Arpaio’s fronting in those ads: Romley’s GOP primary rival Bill Montgomery.In the…

Sheriff Joe is a little like the alien life force in the classic Star Trek original series episode “Day of the Dove,” wherein the alien feeds off hate and can only be defeated with laughter.Witness Arpaio’s recent excursion to speak at a country club in San Diego. Protesters, of course,…

Despite the fact that District Court Judge Susan R. Bolton ripped out most of SB 1070’s spine on July 28, Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s still doing his anti-Hispanic dragnets. And if other law enforcement agencies in Sand Land don’t have the carte blanche they would have had under an un-enjoined 1070, this recent…

You shouldn’t expect subtlety from agitprop, and subtlety is definitely in rare supply at the anti-SB 1070 “FootPrints” show at Bragg’s Pie Factory, which continues through September.But seeing that Arizona’s debate over immigration is about as subtle as a cinder block to the cranium, such explicitness seems justified. Moreover, protest art is…

For anyone interested in immigration, sci-fi or both, director Alex Rivera’s debut feature Sleep Dealer is a must see, a futuristic and at times Blade Runner-ish trek through a world where America’s borders are sealed and all labor is imported electronically from “workers” hooked up via wire in Mexico. I…

This disturbing video comes to us from Pan Left Productions, and purports to show a woman being turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol after a traffic stop by the Tucson Police Department. I’ve put in a call to the TPD, but have yet to receive a call back. On…

The events of the last week have been so consuming that I missed this little ditty dated July 31 by reporter Alia Beard Rau in the Arizona Republic, entitled, “Civil-rights activist, Pearce plan summit on migrant issues.” The headline alone is enough to make your pupils pop. The day that neo-Nazi…

The film Sleep Dealer, showing Saturday at Madcap Theaters in a benefit for Puente/TonatierraThe future might look something like director Alex Rivera’s dystopian sci-fi flick Sleep Dealer if the nativists get their way. In it, an impenetrable wall guards the southern border, and workers on the Mexican side slave away…

As Jack Nicholson’s character writes over and over again in The Shining, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”Which is why I decided to take a break last night from immigration, Sheriff Joe, and all the drama here in Mari-Kafka County and pay a visit to the…

Though the false collar of Phoenix’s best known civil rights leader by a goon squad of sheriff’s deputies has rated only begrudging coverage in the Arizona Republic, the New York Times evidently thinks the incident significant enough to condemn.In a commentary on District Court Judge Susan R. Bolton’s 1070 ruling,…

Sheriff Joe’s bully boys in beige targeted him for a political arrest on Friday, July 30, but now Phoenix civil rights leader Salvador Reza is sitting pretty, with even Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley agreeing that there was no probable cause for his arrest by the MCSO. Reza has Arpaio on…