Maricopa County Superintendent of Schools Sandra Dowling used county staff to help research and write papers for her master’s degree and to work on her reelection campaign on county time, according to depositions taken earlier this year in a criminal case in which Dowling’s involved. The sworn interviews, which are…
Dem View Amy Silverman’s article about the Democratic party in Arizona (“Hee-Haw Politics,” December 4) was right on the nail, with one exception, in my opinion. She surmised that, as Governor Jane Hull had usurped what were traditional Democratic promises, no Democrat had any platform to gain undecided vote. A…
On November 30, a 53-year-old American woman died a cruel death in a Tijuana, Mexico, hospital. Her death has gone largely unremarked upon by the mainstream media, yet she was one of the most influential novelists of the second half of the 20th century. Kathy Acker was a brilliantly original…
Eight simple white crosses, made of PVC pipe, rattle slightly in the wind along a stretch of road north of Flagstaff, just past milepost 440 on Highway 89. They mark the eight who died here, killed in the same spot in two separate accidents last year. The first accident killed…
On Friday, July 12, 1996, the Southwest regional headquarters for the United States Forest Service sent out a press release to announce that it was about to break the law. Charles “Chip” Cartwright, the regional forester, was giving the go-ahead to start cutting trees, even though a federal injunction had…
A breakneck building schedule has resulted in huge cost overruns, design and construction errors and infighting among key players in the Bank One Ballpark project. These problems, spelled out in Maricopa County stadium-construction records, raise questions about whether the taxpayer-financed stadium will perform as promised. Officials are optimistic that everything…
Federal labor officials have charged managers at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center with attempting to illegally prevent employees from organizing a union. National Labor Relations Board investigators allege that the hospital’s management has threatened to fire pro-union employees and drafted overly broad rules designed to prevent employees from promoting…
Howdy, Donors As mayor of Phoenix, he successfully pushed an ordinance designed to keep guns out of kids’ hands. He also advocated having confiscated guns melted down and turned into a memorial. Now, as a candidate for governor, Paul Johnson is putting guns in the hands of kids–his own kids…
America was once a country that had something called the Bill of Rights. Now it’s a country where you have to piss in a cup to get a menial job, where you can be locked up for months on end without having been convicted of any crime, and where freedom…
She Mail The review of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (“Curious Georgia,” Michael Sragow, November 27) contains an error that is becoming increasingly common in written and spoken language: the use of female pronouns when referring to a drag queen. What writers and speakers need to remember…
High noon on a spring day in 1994. The stranger steps through the gates of the Pioneer Arizona Living History Museum, takes one look around and shakes his head. Everywhere, he sees things that don’t belong, from buckskinners clutching cans of Pepsi and eating foodstuffs wrapped in Ziploc baggies to…
The old Democrat answers the phone at state party headquarters. He takes a message for party chairman Mark Fleischer. Ask Fleischer, says the caller, what is the future of the Arizona Democratic party? The old man chuckles. “Sorry, I just had to laugh at the question,” he says, adding an…
For some reason, the gifted actress Kasi Lemmons–she played Jodie Foster’s roommate in The Silence of the Lambs and the interviewer in Fear of a Black Hat–hasn’t become a star. So she’s become a filmmaker instead. Her first feature as writer/director is the coming-of-age story Eve’s Bayou. Set among the…
Passport Scotched? J. Fife Symington III’s globetrotting days will soon be over if U.S. District Judge Roger B. Strand requires the fallen governor to surrender his passport. The Fifester has been sighted on several trips to foreign destinations since his September conviction on seven bank and wire-fraud charges. Prosecutors first…
Challengers in Tempe’s upcoming city council race have been rebuffed in attempts to gain access to the city’s popular Web site (www.Tempe.gov) to promote their campaigns. Tempe’s mayor and six council members all have photographs and brief biographies posted on the city’s Web page, which receives more than 200,000 hits…
Doubling Down Regarding the Bruce Babbitt/Paul Eckstein “Indian gambling” accusations (“Babbitt’s Department of Ulterior,” Michael Lacey, November 20), supposing the Department of the Interior decision had gone the other way? Then Eckstein could be portrayed as “the high-paid mouthpiece for gambling interests exploiting impoverished Indians to justify locating a casino…
Why are public records called public records? Because they belong to the public. And if you think that’s an obvious answer, you haven’t had to deal with the Scottsdale Police Department. My last two columns have reported cases of intimidation and brutality by the SPD. The first story told how…
James Cornell “Butch” Harrod is on trial, possibly for his life. He’s on the witness stand, trying to convince a jury that he didn’t commit one of Arizona’s most sensational murders. He’s accused of the April 1, 1988, execution of wealthy Phoenix heiress Jeanne Tovrea, who was shot to death…
To some foodies, this idiosyncratic chef is the populist Wolfgang Puck–a charming kitchen magician who, whether stuffing fans or providing annual Thanksgiving dinners to the needy, is a candidate for culinary sainthood. To others, however, he’s the surly Pizza Nazi–a single-minded megalomaniac whose bullheaded brand of “my way or the…
Getting Mad and Even Insiders at Sheriff Joke Arpaio’s office tell the Flash that recent revelations about the Jokester have sent the Crime Avenger into orbit with rage. Those reports were bolstered by a French reporter who was interviewing Arpaio in his office when a call came in from a…
Two weeks ago in this space, I reported a display of brutality by two Scottsdale police officers who entered a home and assaulted two residents. It would be reassuring to think this was an isolated incident, but the opposite seems to be true. Since the story appeared, several people have…
Joe’s Boys After reading more than 40 column inches of Barry Graham’s raging against Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s political machine (“Joe, Jane & John,” October 30), I am offering my services to New Times as an editor. Clearly, the entire content of Graham’s column could be boiled down as follows: I…
