Flashes, 5-18 Look Who’s Not Talking Last week, U.S. Senator John McCain was yapping about Janet Reno and Waco to that bastion of Gotham liberalism, The New Yorker. Which must have reporters at the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette scratching their heads. The Snowy Haired Senator won’t talk to their…
Moe Allen was a character. He was the kind of man whose girlfriends were invariably described as “floozies” and who drank a fifth of Seagram’s every day. He flew his own airplane. He fished for–what else?–bass. He’d spent a few years in prison for bad checks. Sometimes your bad habits…
Thirty-seven years ago, state and federal agriculture officials launched a massive attack on the pink bollworm, spraying the powerful insecticide DDT on 65,000 acres of Maricopa County cotton. From May 15 to July 19, 1958, about 500,000 pounds of DDT were applied in the county. It was just the first…
The Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System has placed one employee on indefinite leave, apparently in response to revelations that the program had footed the health-care bill for people who had been dead for years. The suspended employee, Farrell Janssen, a 59-year-old computer programmer, says he was placed on administrative…
No Wonder He’s So Chipper Last Sunday, the Arizona Republic published “The Republic 100,” part of an annual special section identifying Arizona’s largest firms and blathering about the state’s fabulous business climate. Phoenix Newspapers, Inc., rated No. 40 on the list, boasting 2,486 employees. What the section didn’t tell you…
The heavy spraying of DDT and its impact on dairy herds is well-known to Arizona farmers, but not to the public. And a new law passed by the legislature may make it more difficult for the media to raise questions about the safety of the food supply. The so-called “veggie…
Some people believe that all manufacture, sale and use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) will be banned as of January 1, 1996–and that the world will instantly be without refrigeration. That’s not true. Here’s what is: Only the production of CFCs, also known by the trade name Freon and mainly used in…
Just how uptight were Americans about s-e-x in 1954? That year, squeaky clean Rosemary Clooney’s “Mambo Italiano” got blacklisted by ABC radio and television for containing “offensive lyrics.” Offensive? She was just singing in Italian, for crying out loud! Even Johnnie Ray, everybody’s favorite Hit Parade crybaby, had a record…
Scott Bundgaard used to believe that chlorofluorocarbons–most commonly known by the trade name Freon–were depleting the Earth’s ozone layer and increasing dangerous ultraviolet radiation. He’d nag his sister for using aerosol hair spray. Then he was elected to the legislature, where he and his colleagues on the House Environment Committee…
After eight months of anguish on the part of Kimberly Nilson’s family and friends, and diligent work on the part of the Tempe Police Department, her remains were found on April 12 in a clearing beneath the paloverde that was probably her last resting place. She had been missing since…
Before she became a jailhouse lawyer, Christina Jay Acker preyed on old ladies. In 1990, Acker was sentenced to 36 years in prison for kidnaping and robbing a 78-year-old Phoenix woman. That same year, a Colorado judge sentenced Acker to life in prison for beating a 72-year-old Colorado woman to…
If you’re looking for where pay-per-view proceeds are going in the National Basketball Association, look to the West. Six of the 16 teams in this year’s NBA playoffs show their games on pay-per-view–the cable-TV option that allows local fans to see selected home games throughout the season by the game…
Attention, chompers! At a handful of McDonald’s locations around the Valley, drive-through customers like yourselves can do something they can’t do at any of the other Golden Arches in town. Mainly, you’ll have the rare opportunity to get personal with a teen burger drone. Or that appears to be one…
Last week, the Arizona Press Club presented its first-ever Brick Wall Award to Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, because he tends to ignore the state’s Public Records Act. Governor Fife Symington finished a close second in the competition, which was judged by a committee of print reporters and editors. The…
The 1982 Cochise murder trial and conviction of Art Amarillas drew little attention outside of Bisbee, and with good reason: That Amarillas shot his friend Ismael “Miley” Teran to death in a drunken rage never was in doubt. At trial, Amarillas’ attorneys had attempted to show that his acute alcoholism…
And Were You Harshly Toilet Trained? Since the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, Phoenix police have responded to at least 20 false bomb threats. Institutions victimized by bomb hoaxes include the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette, NewsChannel 3 (the station received mysterious packages thought to be bombs; instead,…
When State Senate President John Greene gaveled the death of a bill extending government health benefits to at least 150,000 poor Arizonans, debate did not end. If anything, it intensified. Opponents remained convinced the bill was nothing more than an expansion of the welfare state, exactly the kind of big-government…
On-the-spot burial permits! Software that can spit out automatic death certificates, with 2,000 causes of death to choose from! This is what technology is bringing to the modern mortuary, and for the Arizona Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers, it’s not a moment too soon. The energy spent chasing down…
Flush with millions of dollars of surplus tax revenue, Tempe will soon place a $70 million bet that developers will flock to its long-sought Rio Salado project. It’s a wager Tempe taxpayers will have no say in. Most city councilmembers, led by Mayor Neil Giuliano, are so confident that taxpayers…
Dick George stuck his television set in a storage room a few years ago and started taking his own pictures. As a longtime employee of the Phoenix Zoo–he’s now its publications manager–his eye and his heart naturally are connected to Papago Park, where the zoo is located. So it makes…
Colorado River rafting guides are used to navigating through and around whirlpools and “keeper holes,” the kind of white-water hydraulic effects that can suck a boat down and hold it underwater. Right now they are finding themselves swamped in the wake of the U.S. Coast Guard’s decision to take away…
Plane Embarrassing Phoenix’s daily papers printed big color photos of America West Airlines’ new Boeing 757 last week. The garish jet has “Arizona” emblazoned on its side, along with a painting of an unfurled state flag. According to the glowing press reports, the plane is meant as a “thank you”…
