Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio wants a federal judge to appoint him a criminal defense lawyer in case he’s charged with contempt. Citing a threat of contempt charges at a November 20 court hearing, two of Arpaio’s lawyers write in a motion filed today that neither they, nor County Attorney…
White boys battle anarchists in the streets of Old Town Note: Please see update(s) at the end of this post. On Saturday, about 50 assorted anarchists and others took their anti-cop message right to the heart of conspicuous consumption in the Valley: Old Town Scottsdale. Organized online by the group…
During an online chat, Pastor Anderson proudly describes how he got four rabbis to participate in his upcoming, anti-Semitic documentary Remember Steven Anderson? You know, the lunatic pastor of Tempe’s Faithful Word Baptist Church, infamous for praying for President Barack Obama’s death, as well as for calling for the execution…
President Barack Obama’s pre-Thanksgiving executive action granting a temporary reprieve from deportation for up to 5 million undocumented individuals was a brilliant example of asymmetric warfare. Just two weeks after a major Republican midterm victory, with GOPers gaining control of the U.S. Senate, increasing their numbers in the U.S. House, and…
If you do the math, you will understand why the mood at the Arizona Capitol in downtown Phoenix last night, where activists gathered to watch President Barack Obama’s historic immigration speech, was one of resignation, and for some, sadness. The White House estimates that Obama’s much-anticipated executive action will cover…
If the White House was betting that Republicans would overreact to President Obama’s impending announcement tonight on immigration, where he’s expected to outline a plan that will extend deferred removal to some 5 million undocumented immigrants, boy, were they right. For instance, Arizona Congressman Matt Salmon, proud representative of Sand…
I rarely look to politicians for common sense, but I thought Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery had stumbled onto some at a press conference in September, when he addressed the situation at the Green Acre Dog Boarding facility in Gilbert. Montgomery explained that he’d just received the voluminous results of…
During a November 4 settlement conference before Judge Joseph Welty, presiding criminal judge of the Maricopa County Superior Court, Welty described in stark terms the situation faced by former minuteman leader Chris Simcox. Charged with multiple counts of child molestation involving two little girls, one his own daughter, he can…
Talk about a small world: In this 2006 C-SPAN clip, Kyl heralds the indictment of Doug Ducey’s money-laundering uncle, William “Billy” Scott Governor-elect Doug Ducey’s recent announcement that former U.S. Senator Jon Kyl will chair his transition committee offers a delicious mix of irony and hypocrisy. See, while he was…
PACH and videographer Dennis Gilman join forces to help save Maria’s arm. With Republicans in command of both houses of U.S. Congress determined to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and with the U.S. Supreme Court’s recently taking a case that could send “participating insurers into an actuarial death-spiral,” according to…
So why did Maricopa County Republicans need six reserve sheriff’s deputies/posse members, a patrol car, and two plainclothes officers in an unmarked vehicle to guard a recent Thursday night meeting of mostly alter kocker conservatives? According to the attendees I chatted with that evening, Maricopa County GOP Chair A.J. LaFaro…
“What happened: I blame myself. I fell.” That’s what Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said from his hospital bed last year in an official video he posted about breaking his arm. As usual, the six-term politician (who vowed back in the 1990s to only serve one term) wasn’t exactly telling…
Tim Casey, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s longtime lawyer, wants out of the hot-potato Melendres racial-profiling case now that it’s in a “compliance phase.” Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona don’t want him to leave so fast, though — not with questions and things left to discover…
Just in time for Halloween: The Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry has announced that it’s changing its name to the Arizona Chamber of Economic Incompetence. Okay, not really, but it might as well. With its endorsement of Republican Doug Ducey for governor, the chamber is siding with the failed…
Like a visual version of an earworm — you know, those songs that get caught in your head and you can’t get out — I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a famous 18th-century etching by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya called The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. It features…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio is making a detention officer stay home for the next three weeks because the officer visited Sierra Leone. Arpaio issued a press release announcing that the unnamed officer has been placed on administrative leave over MCSO’s fear of Ebola…
Maricopa County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Pearce is still under investigation by city prosecutors in connection with his speed-related crash that killed a man in December, New Times has learned. The job of the City Prosecutor’s Office is to prosecute people for misdemeanor crimes, meaning that Pearce, the son of disgraced…
Keeping Kav on his toes: Pennypacker’s cable TV spot… In spite of a more than two-to-one registration advantage for tuskers in Legislative District 23, Republican-turned-Democrat Paula Pennypacker’s been all over GOPer John Kavanagh like white on rice in the general election contest for the district’s open state Senate seat. Pennypacker…
Are Muslims the new Mexicans? Turn on the TV, check out Twitter or make the mistake of listening to AM radio, and you’re almost guaranteed to get a red hot blast of Islamophobia. Even folks as enlightened as HBO’s Bill Maher are suggesting that there is something intrinsically wrong with…
Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Ducey’s spokeswoman, Melissa DeLaney, declined to comment Tuesday when I contacted her regarding this week’s cover story on Ducey’s hailing from an infamous Toledo organized crime family. But Wednesday, she gave a statement to the Arizona Republic’s Laurie Roberts, and I’m glad she did, because she…
Roughly simultaneous to his feud with the county, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio had been fighting one of the biggest scandals of his time in office – the so-called SCA campaign-finance debacle. The scandal involved a secret organization, sometimes known as the Sheriff’s Command Association, and corresponding slush fund. Retired…
Four years ago, when actor Steven Seagal found himself in need of a publicity-hungry, big-city law enforcement agency to help him shoot a reality TV series, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio rolled out the welcome mat. The controversial six-term sheriff hooked up the wannabe cop with Executive Chief Brian Sands,…
