You know things are heating up in Arizona when a) the mercury edges toward 120 degrees, or b) politicians start squawking about chemtrails. Try c) both of the above. Last month, Senator John McCain’s campaign released a series of attack ads linking his main GOP primary rival, physician and former…
Stacey Theis spent untold hours in recent months tooling across Arizona in her bright-green CannaBus, talking to voters and collecting signatures for a grassroots marijuana-legalization campaign. After Wednesday’s announcement by the group, Arizonans for Mindful Regulation, that it was halting its 2016 petition drive a month before the state’s July…
A judge has ruled that the Arizona Department of Health Services wrongly denied a hearing to petitioners who want people with Parkinson’s disease to qualify for medical marijuana. “In a desire for professionalism, the department has utilized a standard of proof that is higher than the rules call for,” Administrative Law…
Taking the stand Thursday, during day 12 of his trial in Phoenix for child molestation, former Minuteman and onetime Fox News regular Chris Simcox attempted to undermine the credibility of his accusers, calling one child “extremely precocious” with a penchant for foul language, and another, his grown daughter Linsey Randich,…
It was probably only a matter of time before someone popped Brother Dean Saxton, Arizona’s infamous “slut-shaming preacher,” upside the head. For 19-year-old Tabitha Brubaker, that time appears to have come on the afternoon of Tuesday, April 26, when she allegedly cracked a baseball bat into the side of Saxton’s…
A grassroots Arizona cannabis-legalization campaign halted its drive for a 2016 ballot measure on Wednesday after failing to reach its signature-collection goals. Campaign manager Jason Medar confirmed in an April 12 blog post that Arizonans for Mindful Regulation wasn’t gathering petitions fast enough to make the July 7 deadline to…
Outside Phoenix’s Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse on Tuesday, opponents of Sheriff Joe Arpaio serenaded passersby with live mariachi music, chanted “Arrest Arpaio, not the people,” and unveiled a giant balloon depicting their nemesis in handcuffs and stripes. But inside the courthouse, by the the end of a five-hour session,…
Faster than a spinning lobbyist, more powerful than a strike-all amendment — it’s AZ Powergirl, celebrity cosplay model, swooping in to save the Arizona Legislature! Or so voters of Tempe’s Legislative District 26 can imagine, now that Cara Nicole Trujillo is officially in the race for the Arizona House of Representatives…
Just north of the Arizona border in San Juan County, Utah, copies of phony documents have been turning up at gas stations and post offices, aimed at local Native American tribes. The bogus handouts are filled with false information related to an actual pending proposal to establish a 1.9-million-acre national monument around…
Swell Farmacy’s plan to build a marijuana dispensary near Arizona State University hit a roadblock with Tempe zoning officials and may end up in court because of allegations of a conflict of interest on the zoning board. Swell Farmacy, also known as Healing Healthcare 3 Inc., wants to build its…
From the tons sold in legal medical-marijuana dispensaries to the tons imported each year from Mexico, Arizona is a place that knows its cannabis. Here’s a roundup of last week’s biggest pot news stories that affect the Grand Canyon State… Pro-Cannabis, Left-Wing Candidates File to Run for Office in Arizona…
A 12-year-old from Phoenix has been selected to compete on La Voz Kids, the Spanish-language version of NBC’s reality singing series, The Voice. Dulce Perez wowed the coaches during the blind auditions, when singers are chosen for teams based solely on vocal talent. Having made it through a pre-audition in…
Today, in a preview of a high-stakes hearing on Tuesday, May 31, in the contempt case of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and three of his subordinates, the ACLU filed a memorandum asking U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow to make a referral to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, asking for an investigation…
A coalition of Arizona-based environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit this week against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for issuing a permit for a massive development project near the city of Benson that the groups say will devastate the San Pedro River…
Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport might get rid of the Transportation Security Administration and bring in a private company to screen passengers and bags, according to an internal city memo released on Thursday, May 26. Under a “Screening Partnership Program” model now in place at 22 airports nationwide, security personnel from…
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirms that there are four cases of chickenpox among the detainee population at the Eloy Detention Center, but immigrant rights advocates say there could be more. “We personally don’t believe that it’s only four,” Francisca Porchas, organizing director of the immigrant-rights group Puente Arizona,…
A Louisiana man’s life ended Wednesday after a swarm of bees attacked him and a companion in Usery Mountain Regional Park, just northwest of Apache Junction. Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies say 23-year-old Alex Bestler and a friend were hiking Merkle Trail when the swarm attacked unprovoked. The friend made it…
Seven Arizona lawmakers are asking the attorneys general of Arizona and Nevada to file a civil-rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice over the handling of the shooting death of 54-year-old Arizona resident Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, one of the men who occupied a wildlife refuge in Oregon earlier this…
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich waded into the nation’s tumultuous transgender-bathroom fray, announcing Wednesday that Arizona is one of 11 states with public officials suing the Obama administration regarding recent guidelines on how public schools should treat transgender students. The lawsuit, brought in U.S. District Court in Texas, claims the…
Some readers of the Arizona Capitol Times are calling a recent article about the Democratic primary race (subscription required) in Tempe’s Legislative District 26 sexist, if not outright misogynistic, for the way it repeatedly refers to the one of the candidates as the girlfriend of one of the other candidates. The story,…
Clad in a blue cap and gown, Mariam Cheshire stood before the residents of her Phoenix senior living facility to talk about earning her college degree at the age of 88. “This took me 71 years,” she says, addressing the crowd of seniors gathered in the cafeteria for a celebration. “It…
Paradise Valley kept its photo-enforcement cameras on after Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich issued his legal opinion in March — and now the town’s so backed up with tickets, it can’t process them all. The upscale Phoenix suburb is mailing violation notices to some of those offenders before statutory deadlines…
