Hellfire and damnation came to a Mesa Kingdom Hall last month in the form of an arsonist who lit up the place. The fire caused $500,000 in damage to the building, a church for Jehovah’s Witnesses. As it turns out, this wasn’t retribution by a jealous god, nor the devious…
Following the Phoenix Suns’ figurative demise in their do-or-die game versus the Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday night, the dudes in orange have about as much chance of making the playoffs as did Don Quixote of slaying a windmill. But that doesn’t mean the end of championship-caliber NBA hoops at US…
The National Alliance on Mental Illness gave Arizona’s mental health care system a grade of “C,”which, sadly, is higher than the national average of “D.” Governor Jan Brewer has formed a special panel to address the subject at a hearing in May…A massive house fire near 47th avenue and Glendale…
Not sure if this has been asked before, but how do you feel about Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio? I think the guy’s a fucking racist who’s just out to get Mexicans to fulfill his racist agenda. Fuck Nickel-Bag Joe I love Sheriff Joe! Yeah, he might be waging a scorched-earth…
STEPPIN’ OUT Joe’s on Barack’s “radar screen,” big-time: Can anybody now deny that there are thousands of people willing to take to the streets who detest what Joe Arpaio has been doing in this county (“Defying Arpaio,” The Bird, March 5; also see “A Neo-Nazi Protests Zack de la Rosa…
Sue Burris was fast asleep when the phone rang just before midnight that Saturday. Rousted from her bed, at first she didn’t understand what Paula Walker was saying. They’d won? The lawsuit was over? “It took me a few minutes to understand,” Burris says. “But then I got it —…
Just 5 feet tall, with a baby strapped to her chest and a soft, faltering voice, Kim Rivera is anything but soldierly. Yet two years ago, she was a Texas private in the War on Terror, guarding a gate with an M4 rifle and frisking Iraqi civilians at a base…
Elaine Sanchez understands Guadalupe, Arizona, as well as she understands her six children. She was born and raised in the village of 5,500 souls hard by the freeway and the conventional suburbs of Tempe and Phoenix. Sheriff Joe Arpaio put Guadalupe on the nation’s map during his anti-immigrant sweep last…
We understand that in the 24-hour news cycle it can be difficult to keep up. Worry not! We have the solution. Check back on Valley Fever every evening for highlights from each of New Times’ blogs. Today’s entries: Valley Fever: US Airways Ships Corpse to Pet Store Instead of Fish…
One clip from today’s media event denouncing Joe Arpaio, and heralding the investigation into him by the U.S. Department of Justice. The big news out of D.C. for us here in Sand Land, of course, is that the Justice Department is investigating Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his office for civil…
Maricopa County Manager David Smith lit into Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s top aide at a meeting last Friday, comparing him to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and calling him “just plain childish.” Amazingly, Chief Deputy David Hendershott then memorialized the conversation in a six-page memo to his boss, Arpaio. The memo,…
Republican state Senator Jack Harper of Surprise really let it rip in a recent commentary for the Arizona Capitol Times, and some of his comments are under fire from the blogosphere.The commentary, published on the Cap Times’ “Capitol Voices” page on March 6, 2009, is about 1,500 words long, and starts…
Time was that the Arizona Wildcats hated the Pac-10 postseason basketball tournament with a passion. That was when the `Cats routinely dominated league play, finishing first or second seemingly every year after now-retired Lute Olson revved up the program in the mid-1980s. Olson and his minions considered the tourney an…
Yesterday, we reported on a series of dog poisonings at Carriage Lane Park in Mesa. At the time that story was published, we’d been unable to reach a spokesman at the city. Today, we learned that Mesa Animal Control is indeed investigating the poisonings — which have been linked to…
On January 2, a Valley man named Mark Irby disappeared near his family’s vacation home in Forest Lakes, Arizona, after leaving for what was supposed to have been a short ATV ride. Turns out, Irby is the vice chairman of Chandler’s Planning and Zoning Commission. A large-scale search for Irby…
Tempe-based US Airways has already come under criticism for requiring flight attendants who complained about safety issues to handle their own defense in a lawsuit filed by a pilot. Now, they’ve pulled an even stranger stunt, flying a corpse to a pet store in lieu of the fish the business…
Shaquille O’Neal scored 21 points against the Dallas Mavericks to go ahead of Elvin Hayes for sixth on the NBA career scoring list (he needs 88 points to best the next guy on the list, Moses Malone). Matt Barnes also had 21 points, and Steve Nash had 23 and 13 assists. All the Suns’…
The Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department is investigating Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the MSCO, looking for evidence of discrimination based on race. Arpaio says “We’ll open our books. We have nothing to hide.” If that’s true, then why has he repeatedly refused to release public…
We understand that in the 24-hour news cycle it can be difficult to keep up. Worry not! We have the solution. Check back on Valley Fever every evening for highlights from each of New Times’ blogs. Today’s entries: Valley Fever: Mesa Dog Owners Frustrated by Lack of Answers in Park…
So much of the time, Joe Arpaio, with his speech punctuated with dese, dats, and dose, and his defiance of federal authority, sounds more like he’s imitating Robert DeNiro’s Al Capone in The Untouchables, than acting like a local sheriff. Now the feds are after Joe for real. If you haven’t heard…
Two weeks ago, Mexican Consul General Carlos Flores Vizcarra fired off a letter to Maricopa County, complaining about Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s televised forced march of illegal immigrant inmates — and their subsequent segregation in Tent City. Today, Arpaio returned fire, sending a letter to Vizcarra saying that he has stripped Mexican…
So Andrew Thomas fought the Bar, and Andrew Thomas won. But it looks the real losers here aren’t only those good government types who’d hoped to hold the erstwhile county attorney accountable for his overzealous prosecutions. No, the real losers include us, the taxpayers. According to a recent story in…
