Back in September, shortly after MCSO’s South Phoenix anti-immigrant sweep, I blogged about a 2006 letter signed by Sheriff Joe to the head of Phoenix Copwatch acknowledging the constitutional right of citizens to videotape his deputies in public.Galindo’s first video of his run in with the MCSO at Gran MercadoDespite…
Call it the cost of clapping. Five anti-Arpaio activists were awarded legal fees Monday by Justice of the Peace C. Steven McMurry in a case that involved four of them being arrested for applauding at a Maricopa County Board of Supervisors’ meeting in December 2008.The five activists — from the groups…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s circus came to ASU’s Cronkite School of Journalism Monday night, only to be cut short by the sounds of a pro-immigrant ditty, sung to the tune of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.The evening was filled with protest signs, serious journalism, civil disobedience, and Arpaio wearing funny hats. It was…
If CBS 5’s follow-up to its October Joe Arpaio special didn’t pack the combination punch of the first episode, it did bring home the notion that anyone can get caught up in Arpaio’s web of cynical, trumped-up investigations. Indeed, ordinary clerks, secretaries, and functionaries have become the targets of Joe’s…
Like you needed further evidence of Joe Arpaio’s involvement with far right extremists, Arpaio recently stated on his Twitter account that his contributions to wing-nuttery will be acknowledged this December 3 in D.C. by the ultra-conservative Let Freedom Ring think-tank, one of the orgs behind the tax day tea party…
On this day after Thanksgiving, I want to show my appreciation to the nativist knuckleheads who’ve helped me fill endless blog items with reports on their stupidities and racist deeds. Without you white pride doofuses to kick around, all I’d have left would be neo-Nazis, bigoted politicos, corruption, and Sheriff Joe. Of…
Sand Landers want former guv and now-DHS czar Janet Napolitano to keep polishing her chair in D.C. And not as a U.S. Senator. That’s what a new Cronkite-Eight poll reveals. In a hypothetical 2010 head-to-head between Nappy and Senator John McCain, McCain’d top Napolitano 50 to 41 percent. No surprise there, really. Nappy’s…
The one thing you can always count on with minutemen, nativists and neo-Nazis is more backstabbing than backstage at a Miss America Pageant. This video from VronRN2 of a conversation between anti-racist YouTuber Naui Ocelotl Huitzilopochtli (try saying that three times fast) and minuteman Jim Gilchrist is a perfect example. It took place…
I just spoke with CBS 5/KPHO news producer Gilbert Zermeno, part of the award-winning team that put together the recent, blistering report on Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s abuse of power that ran at the end of October. That’s the one that featured reporter Morgan Loew’s interview with former U.S. Attorney and straight-shooter…
As mind-numbingly impossible as it is to imagine, Sheriff Joe, avowed enemy of a free press and brown people everywhere, will be the guest speaker at the ASU Cronkite School of Journalism’s “First Amendment Forum” this Monday, November 30.Talk about eating turkey after Thanksgiving. Arpaio lecturing at a First Amendment…
The FBI today released its hate crime report for 2008, showing the number of documented hate crimes by participating agencies to be up nationally by about 2.1 percent. Locally, hate crimes were up in Arizona by nearly 15 percent, in Phoenix by 11.25 percent (see note below), and in Maricopa County…
Arizona voters apparently love racial profiling and corruption. That’s the conclusion I’m drawing from newly released Rasmussen poll numbers showing that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio does the best of possible GOP gubernatorial candidates against Arizona Attorney Terry Goddard. In a survey of 1,200 likely voters, Arpaio, a Republican, would top…
In a stunning revelation recently made public as part of the ongoing federal civil rights lawsuit against the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an MCSO sergeant has admitted that the department has been destroying documents and e-mails directly related to the MCSO’s anti-immigrant sweeps. This, despite numerous requests…
A new Rasmussen Reports poll just out shows KFYI lip-flapper and former congressman J.D. Hayworth in a dead heat with U.S. Senator John McCain for the 2010 GOP primary nod. Hayworth is within the 4 percent margin of error, trailing McCain 43 to 45 percent with likely Republican primary voters…
Dennis Gilman’s outdone himself yet again in his latest video, this time focusing on the November neo-Nazi march to the state Capitol, and the links between the Nazis and the nativists. It’s a creepy, almost apocalyptic vision of Arizona dominated by racist politicians such as state Senator Russell Pearce, done…
Thanks to New Times Web Editor Jonathan McNamara, you can now watch Phoenix muralist Francisco Garcia creating the Blue Boy image that so freaked out the little town of Pine-Strawberry, Arizona, that he was ordered to take it down and replace it with the image of a cabin. McNamara squeezed…
I haven’t given much thought to Holocaust-denier David Irving since July, when I covered his appearance at the Phoenix diner Jerry’s. There he spoke to a group including local neo-Nazis such as Harry Hughes, J.T. Ready, and Jesse Curnow, as well as Mexican-flag-burning lesbian nativist Laine Lawless. Though the event…
SS IGNORANT Supposedly intelligent, respectable people do some really dumb stuff sometimes. Case in point: Former GOP gubernatorial hopeful Mike Harris, who ran third behind Don Goldwater and Len Munsil in the 2006 Republican primary for governor. Munsil won that battle and went on to get his lunch handed to…
The lead item in my Bird column this week, titled “SS IGNORANT,” is about 2006 Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Harris and his flirtation with white supremacy. Read the article for all the gritty details. I didn’t have room in the column for the photos of Harris, screenshots of his NewSaxon…
Joe claims ABC just happened to be in town when the sweep started in this Channel 3 piece Following up on my blog post of yesterday, wherein I quoted sources telling me that Arpaio’s latest anti-immigration sweep was done with an out-of-town film crew in mind, specifically one from ABC national…
Sounds like Joe Arpaio’s been fibbing on Twitter, at least according to the White House. Vice President Joe Biden was in town for a meeting with local Dems in downtown Phoenix, and according to Biden’s deputy press secretary Annie Tomasini, Joe just showed up, desperate for publicity as always. “Sheriff…
Sheriff Joe’s PR flacks are working overtime. They just sent out a press advisory on a new countywide anti-immigration dragnet beginning today. What they don’t tell you in the statement is that Arpaio and Co. have set up the sweep for an out-of-town camera crew from a major broadcast network,…
