An interviewer once asked Vladimir Nabokov: “What are the literary sins for which you could be answerable someday?” And Nabokov replied: “Of having spared in my books too many political fools and intellectual frauds.” I am, each morning, astonished by the Salman Rushdie story. Rushdie has written a virtually unreadable…

One of the following charlatans will be the next governor of Arizona: David Hinchcliffe: He’s the double-domed thinker who introduced the resolution at the state Republican convention declaring this a Christian nation. He’d be perfect for a state packed to the borders with right-wing crazies. Jim Brock: The ASU baseball…

I’m not a Lute Olson fan. To me, any Sunday his University of Arizona team loses a basketball game on national TV is a fine one. I’ve nothing against the Wildcat players. Actually, they appear quite likable. They play very well, too. It’s Olson who gives me difficulty. He coaches…

Some thoughts about the Peter MacDonald hearings: I pick up my Arizona Republic each morning in the dark. I walk with it to the porch light. It is then that I’m able to see that Pat Murphy’s Republic staff has placed still another story about the Navajo tribal chairman on…

I arrived half an hour early. I wanted to watch Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in warm-up. It was to be one of Kareem’s final appearances as a player in Veterans’ Memorial Coliseum. The press box was nearly empty. As I have been doing for the past nine years, I spotted an empty…

I received a letter from a man who doesn’t trust the people who are running the campaign to push the approval of rapid transit in Maricopa County. He wondered why the financial war chest, which now approaches $500,000, comes from land owners and contractors who stand to gain most from…

I felt sorry for Steve Patterson the other day when they ordered him to announce his resignation. The Arizona State basketball coach was just one more victim of J. Russell Nelson, that total incompetent who still sits as president of the university. It was predicted even before Nelson came down…

It’s just like the old days. There’s a full house here in Veterans’ Memorial Coliseum and the crowd’s roaring. Surely you remember how it used to be on nights like this, don’t you? Al Bianchi would be the one doing the shouting on the Phoenix Suns bench next to John…

Things keep happening to remind us why both Arizona State University and the Arizona Republic are so decidedly second-rate. This time it’s the death of Dr. Morris J. Starsky, a former ASU philosophy professor who was fired by the Arizona Board of Regents in June 1970 for asserting his First…

The Jack Durant legend lives on. When he died little more than a year ago, Durant had lived more than eighty years and had run the successful bar and restaurant bearing his name on Central Avenue since 1950. He died without heirs. Reportedly, there was $500,000 in certificates of deposit…