State Senator Russell Pearce, along with his colleague state Senator Al Melvin, have added an amendment to a bill that creates an anti-immigrant vigilante force on the Arizona-Mexico border, and grants it $200,000 with which to do business.Melvin offered the hastily-drafted provision as part of a package forming an Arizona…
The men of the Phoenix Police Department’s Career Criminal Squad will be able to continue their work, investigating violent, street-level hate crimes according to City Manager David Cavazos.The squad, which also investigates murder-for-hire and other cases, was supposed to be disbanded as of this Monday, officially for budget reasons. But…
First it was WrestleMania, now Glendale will be playing host to another form of white trash entertainment, though boring and preachy by comparison.This Saturday, April 10, wingnut lip-flapper extraordinaire Glenn Beck will be in town as part of his “American Revival” tour, a grueling eight hours of Beck and assorted…
Arpaio, Wilcox and Pearce on GeraldoIn case you missed it, here’s video from Geraldo Rivera’s March 29 show on Fox, where he takes on Sheriff Joe for the umpteenth time, and features footage of Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox and state Senator Russell Pearce.The footage of Wilcox is from…
The dastardly murder of Arizona rancher Robert Krentz has sent the nativists into public paroxysms of jingoist ecstasy. Tom Tancredo, J.D. Hayworth and others of that ilk are exploiting the killing to inflame hatred toward new arrivals of a brown hue. Even mainstream pols like Senator John McCain and Democratic Congresswoman Gabby Giffords are using…
Peter Cottontail’s hoppin’ mad about photo radar… These anti-photo radar activists rock like Amadeus. Back in December, it was a passel of renegade Santas attacking photo radar cameras in Tempe with big Xmas gift boxes. This Sunday, on that great pagan celebration known as Easter, Peter Cottontail visited with the kids,…
Joe Dana’s report on the ongoing federal grand jury probe of ArpaioChannel 12’s Joe Dana reported last night on the federal grand jury investigation of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Chief Deputy David Hendershott, and the MCSO, and offered some tidbits regarding the probe from confidential sources.The most intriguing of these is…
During Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s December deposition in the ongoing racial-profiling lawsuit Melendres vs. Arpaio, the sheriff revealed that he had kept a personal file on immigration-related matters, which up until then had not been turned over to the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the case.This, even though David Bodney, chief counsel for the plaintiffs,…
MICHAEL X? Of all the ironies in the fallout from Councilman Michael Johnson’s alleged roughing-up at the hands of a rookie Phoenix cop, there’s one that’s particularly troubling: The presence of Charles Muhammad, a minister for the Nation of Islam’s Phoenix branch, at a press conference given by Johnson last…
State Senator Russell Pearce’s police state bill, SB 1070, passed the House Military Affairs and Public Safety committee again today, after a three hour session of testimony, with state Representative Kyrsten Sinema, the Assistant House Democratic Leader, taking the lead on peppering Pearce, and others speaking for and against the bill, with…
There’s been a whiff of brimstone in the air with the rumor that state Senator Russell Pearce, the most bigoted public servant in Arizona (and that’s saying a lot), has been actively lobbying Maricopa County to become its replacement sheriff, should Arpaio run for governor, keel over, or be indicted…
Gilman’s latest on Obama’s hypocrisyYou might as well put a bounty on their heads. The undocumented, I mean. Though Barack Obama came to power dismissing as ludicrous the idea that we can “deport ’em all,” ICE’s Office of Detention and Removal Operations continues to demand just that with a quota of…
Is it a mere coincidence that state Senator Russell Pearce’s chief critic on the House Military Affairs and Public Safety Committee, Representative Daniel Patterson of Tucson, has been removed from that committee, just as Pearce’s police state legislation SB 1070 is scheduled to run through MAPS on March 31?You’ll recall…
Arpaio shrugs off his arrest of an innocent American girlIf you’re Hispanic in Maricopa County, Sheriff Joe’s goons have probable cause to arrest you on suspicion of being undocumented. Hey, they can always release you later.That’s the word from the elephant’s mouth after an MCSO raid on four area McDonald’s…
Puente activist Sandra Castro’s interview with Rev. Jesse JacksonI want to turn your attention to these two videos by Sandra Castro, an activist in Sal Reza’s Puente Movement, which is based here in Phoenix. This footage of the Rev. Jesse Jackson was taken at the big pro-immigration rally in Washington,…
About 50 protesters from groups such as Puente and the newly formed LUCHA (Living United for Change in Arizona) demonstrated against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano as she spoke at ASU Thursday night at the John P. Frank Memorial Lecture. Carrying signs that read, “Janet Stop Joe Arpaio,…
Kris Kobach, the far right-wing nativist attorney Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s hired to train the MCSO in immigration matters, is receiving $300 per hour, plus expenses, including airline tickets to and from Arizona.Though Arpaio’s Chief Deputy David Hendershott surmised in his recent deposition in the civil rights lawsuit Melendres vs. Arpaio…
With demonstrators outside the Phoenix federal courthouse clamoring for Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s head, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder today characterized the Department of Justice investigation into Arpaio’s office as “serious” and “ongoing,” and said that he expected the probe to produce “results.”The attorney general was at downtown’s Sandra Day O’Connor…
CBS 5’s Peter Busch did a segment for last night’s news on the fight to save the Career Criminal Squad, a squad of four detectives and one sergeant that goes undercover to investigate street-level hate crimes and murder-for-hire cases.I decried the impending disbandment of this squad in last week’s Bird…
RUSSIAN SPRING Jana Rozenman curls up on a sofa on the patio of her Scottsdale apartment as her 4½-year-old twins watch TV and play with balloons scattered nearby. She seems at peace, relaxing in the mild spring air, as she recalls the events of the past year, one that’s just…
Video of Mary Rose Wilcox in D.C. by videographer Dennis GilmanTelling the crowd at the big immigration rally on Sunday in Washington, D.C. that Sheriff Joe runs Maricopa County like a “police state,” county Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox urged listeners to call the U.S. Department of Justice and tell Attorney…
****Please See Update Below****Will we live in state Senator Russell Pearce’s dream police state, or will we live in the United States of America?That’s the issue at hand this afternoon as Pearce’s SB 1070/HB 2632 goes to the House Committee of the Whole for debate. The bill, which would greatly expand…
