John McCain is trying to buy his way into another six-year term in the U.S. Senate. He has raised $1.9 million, most of it from political action committees. But a large amount was contributed by individuals all over this country who have never laid eyes on him. He is running…
Steve the Bartender put up still another round. The group at the end of the bar, standing under the television set, were regulars in the joint. One had actually stood at this same spot at the bar watching the sallow-faced Richard Nixon give his Checkers speech on a black-and-white screen…
Minutes before last Sunday’s debate, Ross Perot picked precisely at a loose thread from the left sleeve of his midnight-blue suit. He stood erectly. There was a tiny, crafty smile playing around the corners of his mouth. Ross Perot was the epitome of the self-assured business tycoon backed up by…
One of the great Arizona political upsets is in the making. I’m talking about Claire Sargent’s steady march to become the first Arizona woman to win a seat in the United States Senate. There are several elements, all equally important to her charge to the top. First, she is an…
Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It isn’t just a fine short novel. It is a magical piece of writing. It is one of two books I’ve read that I always recommend. But controversy has surrounded River from the start and, apparently, it isn’t over yet. At first editors turned…
The function of law enforcement is the prevention of crime and the apprehension of criminals . . . not the manufactur[e] of crime. –Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren in Sherman v. United States The butcher is addicted. He loves the AzScam trial. Every morning he arrives early at court…
John McLaughlin, former Jesuit priest turned television pundit, was asked one day why so many people treated him with such respect. According to his assistant, Kara Swisher, McLaughlin “got down really low on his desk, almost like he was a lizard.” Then he looked up at Swisher and replied, “They’re…
Some of your constituents think you sold them out. –Alabama Senator Howell Heflin to John McCain That terrible judgment, made at the opening of the Senate Ethics Committee hearings, sticks in my mind. I will always remember the guilty grimace on John McCain’s face. He sat there uncomfortably with the…
The national media went crazy over the rape, especially since it came so quickly after the shooting. –Barry Switzer, former University of Oklahoma football coach, in Bootlegger’s Boy Let’s examine the events surrounding Arizona State University’s fleet-footed quarterback and admitted sneak thief, Garrick McGee. Charles Harris, the slippery, smooth-talking athletic…
@body:Look at the money we make off predominantly poor, black kids. We’re the whoremasters. –Dale Brown, Louisiana State basketball coach I sit there watching Arizona State University athletic director Charles Harris very carefully. Harris moves confidently into the room with his chin held high. The first thing you spot about…
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. Woody Allen in Annie Hall It took just a single week of merciless tabloid headlines to redefine Woody Allen. For years Allen had been praised as our finest contemporary filmmaker. He was a combination of Ingmar Bergman, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin…
After the game, the two coaches walked off the field together. Joe Bugel, who always seems like a particularly ambitious used-car salesman, kept grabbing at Mike Ditka, hugging him, patting him, smiling up at him. Ditka, the embodiment of the bohunk bartender in a seedy saloon, seemed embarrassed by Bugel’s…
One of the perils of turning on your car radio during midmorning is accidentally tuning in the Barry Young talk show on KFYI-AM. This happened to me the other day. Young’s guest at the time was none other than Charlie Keating’s former best pal, Senator John McCain. McCain, speaking by…
Steve Mitchell felt the tension rise. They had just brought Dan Willoughby into the courtroom for the beginning of a hearing that could put Willoughby in the gas chamber. Willoughby wore jailhouse blues. His skin had turned pale during his time in the county jail. He had shaved off his…
The Peter MacDonald story defies belief. Watch carefully as it unfolds. The federal courtroom in Prescott, where the former tribal chairman of the Navajo Nation is on trial for causing a riot, is silent. “Did I tell you to lie on that stand?” shouts Joe Lodge, the assistant United States…
I push open the heavily padded swinging doors of the aged federal courtroom in Prescott. The large, high-ceilinged room is filled with prospective jurors. They fill not only the jury box but all the pews in the courtroom, too. I sense the tension. U.S. District Court Judge Robert Broomfield, gray-haired…
I keep thinking about Charlie Keating. Right now he’s sitting alone in a jail cell near Bakersfield, California. He’s serving ten years. The other day, a federal jury in Tucson awarded $3.3 billion in damage claims against Keating for swindling thousands of investors. I wonder how Keating feels about this…
Some moments freeze themselves in your mind. I remember a day in Washington, D.C., during Sandra Day O’Connor’s 1981 hearings to determine her fitness to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
hanks, Scott I can’t go along with all the jingoism being displayed over the United States’ professional, all-star basketball team now preparing for the Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. It is a bad idea, commercially driven by the National Basketball Association to sell its product worldwide. It will backfire. It is…
We forget too soon. By now the Gulf War is but a faded memory. We’ve forgotten those days when General Norman Schwarzkopf was as popular as Johnny Carson or Michael Jordan. That was a time when President George Bush’s approval rating was at its highest and he was busily selling…
Christina the Lawyer expected there would be chilly nights. But not like this. It was, to put it bluntly, ridiculously cold. So now she is on the telephone, calling me from frigid Michigan, seeking a decent way out. Christina the Lawyer had enrolled in a class at the famous Ox-Bow…
Time has changed the newspaper business. Drastically. People with master’s degrees in journalism tell me it’s for the better. Why don’t I agree? There was a time when I was addicted to newspapers–all of them. Now I can take them or leave them. To me there is no bigger rip-off…
