During a hearing today in Commissioner Michael Hintze’s courtroom, the public guardian for Marcia Powell — the inmate who died May 20 after prolonged exposure to 107 degree temperatures in an outside cage at Goodyear’s Perryville Prison — informed the court that Powell’s adoptive mother had been located.However, the woman,…
Don’t hold your breath waiting for the Obama administration to do anything in the near future about immigration reform, or yanking Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s 287(g) authority. That’s the message some local Latino leaders took away from a series of meetings held recently at Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox’s El…
Peace activist and anti-war den mom Cindy Sheehan will be a busy one while she’s in town over the next couple of days with a fundraiser at a local home, an appearance at Changing Hands bookstore in Tempe, and most interestingly, a protest announced by the End the War Coalition,…
Would you take financial advice from a homeless man? Lessons in humility from Simon Cowell? Follow Kirstie Alley’s diet regimen? Look for WMD’s with a map drawn by Dick Cheney? Or take an anger management class taught by Russell Crowe? Then why in tarnation would you read a book about…
Here’s something guaranteed to tick off the faithful, or at least give them something to pray about: a group of atheists, agnostics and humanists are set to convene in Tempe this week, and they’re bringing their godless message to a highway near you. You know, in a spot where hopefully…
About 200 people packed the pews at Encanto Community Church today at noon for a memorial service for Marcia Powell, the 48-year-old inmate at Goodyear’s Perryville Prison who died early the morning of May 20. This was following her confinement the day before in an outdoor cage where she endured…
For those who haven’t seen this, the AP is reporting that the Arizona Department of Corrections “has suspended the use of all outdoor holding cells while crews retrofit them to provide shade and water” following the heat-related demise of 48-year-old Marcia Powell. Of course, this comes too late for Powell,…
You know it’s taken a turn for the surreal when an obnoxious lout like William Gheen is calling you a racist. Gheen is a nasty piece of work, the founder of the extremist nativist Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, which is headquartered in Raleigh, NC, burial place of Senator Jesse Helms…
The remains of 48-year-old Marcia Powell, who died May 20 after being confined to a human cage at Perryville Prison for at least four hours in the punishing Arizona sun, are being held by the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office on the request of the county Fiduciary Office, MCME spokeswoman Gayle Milette…
Gilman’s latest, revealing Arpaio’s nefarious domino effect… Just curious, but where are the white knights of the Obama administration as Sheriff Joe ignores crimes, intimidates his political opponents, and zip-ties American citizens and those here legally without probable cause? About every six months one news outlet or another reports that…
As I mentioned in this week’s Bird column, a group of Phoenix advocates and activists have banded together to hold a memorial service for Marcia Powell, the 48-year-old woman who died last week at Perryville Prison after being left in a human cage for at least four hours in the blazing Arizona sun…
As Elvis Costello was wont to sing (and perhaps still does), “I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused.” Actually, living in this big Tent City we call Maricopa County, it’s way too difficult to be amused. So I’m resigned to being disgusted. Or I was until…
Sheriff Joe has just declared the jail lockdowns caused by massive hunger strikes ongoing in his vast incarceration complex to be over. The MCSO issued a press release on the matter, stating that, “Effective today, May 22, 2009, the Maricopa County jails that have been on indefinite lockdown [sic] will…
I was up too late the other night watching a documentary on the National Geographic Channel about Hoover and his many, many sins. And aside from Hoover’s reported penchant for getting himself up in drag, the similarities between the iconic FBI chief and our own Sheriff Arpaio are unavoidable. One in particular struck me as a…
Today the Arizona ACLU blasted Sheriff Joe Arpaio for locking down his jail facilities in response to a massive hunger strike inspired by the liquefied slop the MCSO feeds inmates on a daily basis. The civil rights organization denounced Arpaio’s confining inmates to their cells, denying them Television, telephone usage and visitations,…
It all played out like political kabuki today at the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. At issue was the $1.6 million the legislature, at the behest of neo-Nazi-hugger extraordinaire and state Senator Russell Pearce, granted Sheriff Joe Arpaio to hunt Hispanics as a part of the MCSO’s spendthrift racial profiling…
Just how far can you go with a record of political mediocrity, an absence of conscience and a boatload of ambition? As ex-Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano continues to prove, very far indeed. The Homeland Security czar is reportedly one of those being considered as a replacement for retiring U.S. Supreme Court…
True to form, Sheriff Joe Arpaio is milking a hunger strike ongoing in his jails, locking down three of his uncertified, Amnesty International-condemned gulags today over the so-called threat of “inmate-on-inmate-violence.” Alas, the danger of “inmate-on-inmate violence” wasn’t a concern for Arpaio following the murder of inmate Robert Cotton on May 1, 2008 by a…
I’ve been so busy chasing Sand Land neo-Nazis that I haven’t had a chance to blog about this April 30 piece on the border fence by Channel 3 reporter Carey Pena. The segment would’ve been a rather pedestrian report on the 700 miles of border fencing being built because of the…
The Arizona Republic’s JJ Hensley has just reported that the hunger strike in the MCSO’s oppressive gulags, which I blogged about on May 5, and later on May 6, is continuing and involves upwards of 1,500 inmates in four of Joe’s jails. Hensley’s piece states that, “The sporadic hunger strikes began…
Employees of Phoenix New Times were greeted about 9:20 this morning by one of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s infamous female chain gangs working on the paper’s property. Specifically, the nine-inmate crew was hoeing a vacant lot on the southeast corner of 1201 E. Jefferson Street, where New Times’ offices are located. The visit comes a day after…
Gilman’s most recent effort documents the arrests and ultimate triumph of ACORN activists… Here’s a cool new video by activist Dennis Gilman regarding news I recently blogged concerning a legal victory obtained by two ACORN members last Friday in Phoenix. That’s when bogus charges of trespassing against ACORN organizers Monica Sandschafer…
