I just spoke with CBS 5/KPHO news producer Gilbert Zermeno, part of the award-winning team that put together the recent, blistering report on Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s abuse of power that ran at the end of October. That’s the one that featured reporter Morgan Loew’s interview with former U.S. Attorney and straight-shooter…
As mind-numbingly impossible as it is to imagine, Sheriff Joe, avowed enemy of a free press and brown people everywhere, will be the guest speaker at the ASU Cronkite School of Journalism’s “First Amendment Forum” this Monday, November 30.Talk about eating turkey after Thanksgiving. Arpaio lecturing at a First Amendment…
The FBI today released its hate crime report for 2008, showing the number of documented hate crimes by participating agencies to be up nationally by about 2.1 percent. Locally, hate crimes were up in Arizona by nearly 15 percent, in Phoenix by 11.25 percent (see note below), and in Maricopa County…
Arizona voters apparently love racial profiling and corruption. That’s the conclusion I’m drawing from newly released Rasmussen poll numbers showing that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio does the best of possible GOP gubernatorial candidates against Arizona Attorney Terry Goddard. In a survey of 1,200 likely voters, Arpaio, a Republican, would top…
In a stunning revelation recently made public as part of the ongoing federal civil rights lawsuit against the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an MCSO sergeant has admitted that the department has been destroying documents and e-mails directly related to the MCSO’s anti-immigrant sweeps. This, despite numerous requests…
A new Rasmussen Reports poll just out shows KFYI lip-flapper and former congressman J.D. Hayworth in a dead heat with U.S. Senator John McCain for the 2010 GOP primary nod. Hayworth is within the 4 percent margin of error, trailing McCain 43 to 45 percent with likely Republican primary voters…
Dennis Gilman’s outdone himself yet again in his latest video, this time focusing on the November neo-Nazi march to the state Capitol, and the links between the Nazis and the nativists. It’s a creepy, almost apocalyptic vision of Arizona dominated by racist politicians such as state Senator Russell Pearce, done…
Thanks to New Times Web Editor Jonathan McNamara, you can now watch Phoenix muralist Francisco Garcia creating the Blue Boy image that so freaked out the little town of Pine-Strawberry, Arizona, that he was ordered to take it down and replace it with the image of a cabin. McNamara squeezed…
I haven’t given much thought to Holocaust-denier David Irving since July, when I covered his appearance at the Phoenix diner Jerry’s. There he spoke to a group including local neo-Nazis such as Harry Hughes, J.T. Ready, and Jesse Curnow, as well as Mexican-flag-burning lesbian nativist Laine Lawless. Though the event…
The lead item in my Bird column this week, titled “SS IGNORANT,” is about 2006 Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Harris and his flirtation with white supremacy. Read the article for all the gritty details. I didn’t have room in the column for the photos of Harris, screenshots of his NewSaxon…
Since our last post about the Maricopa County detention officer found in contempt of court for taking the papers of a defense attorney in Maricopa County Superior Court, the County Attorney’s Office called us back.We asked Deputy County Attorney Tom Liddy, who is representing Officer Adam Stoddard in his contempt…
According to the sheriff, nobody tells his guys what to do except Sheriff Joe himself — not even Maricopa County Superior Court judges.This morning, a Maricopa County detention officer was found in contempt of court for taking documents out of defense attorney Joanne Cuccia’s files as she was addressing the…
Joe claims ABC just happened to be in town when the sweep started in this Channel 3 piece Following up on my blog post of yesterday, wherein I quoted sources telling me that Arpaio’s latest anti-immigration sweep was done with an out-of-town film crew in mind, specifically one from ABC national…
Sounds like Joe Arpaio’s been fibbing on Twitter, at least according to the White House. Vice President Joe Biden was in town for a meeting with local Dems in downtown Phoenix, and according to Biden’s deputy press secretary Annie Tomasini, Joe just showed up, desperate for publicity as always. “Sheriff…
Sheriff Joe’s PR flacks are working overtime. They just sent out a press advisory on a new countywide anti-immigration dragnet beginning today. What they don’t tell you in the statement is that Arpaio and Co. have set up the sweep for an out-of-town camera crew from a major broadcast network,…
Who’re worse, behavior-wise, the nativists or the neo-Nazis? Sure, neo-Nazis are nefarious and nuts. But the nativists make the neo-Nazis look urbane by comparison. And in some ways the nativists are more violent, despite the fact crazy old crones with canes and old dudes in mobility scooters are overrepresented in…
In a speech today before the Center for American Progress, the think-tank that essentially acts as the Obama administration’s gray matter, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano spoke about comprehensive immigration reform, mostly from a law-enforcement perspective. Afterwards, Napolitano fielded questions about her old Arizona political ally Sheriff Joe…
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Susan Brnovich has set a “firm trial” date of December 14 in the case of alleged “Salon Bandit” and former New Times scribe Joe Watson. Brnovich ordered all subpoenaed witnesses to appear in court on that date. Watson, who has been incarcerated in county jails…
I’m not going to weep any tears for CNN’s erstwhile token nativist Lou Dobbs, who resigned on air Tuesday, handing a victory to Latino groups who’ve sought his ouster through the Basta Dobbs campaign, led by activist/writer Roberto Lovato’s Presente.org.Dobbs has been a despicable opportunist, cynically dousing the anti-immigration bonfire with gasoline,…
California videographer and activist Naui Ocelotl Huitzilopochtli captured some cool footage of Saturday’s Nazi march and demo at the Arizona state Capitol, including a little confrontation with a swastika-licker from Missouri that I had. Didn’t amount to much. Plus, there was a DOJ guy right beside us, and cops all…
Lynne Stevens has always been one of the odder figures in the local anti-immigrant movement, mainly because she doesn’t fit the profile of angry old coot, as personified by her peer, convicted public urinator Buffalo Rick Galeener. A persistent protester of Salvador Reza’s Macehualli Day Labor Center, and of the ongoing…
Some 150 anarchists and other counter-demonstrators showed their mettle yesterday afternoon against a troop of around 60 neo-Nazis, mostly from out-of-state, who marched from 12th Avenue and Adams down to the Arizona state Capitol, flipping sieg heils and crying, “White power” all the way. The anarchists, who made up the majority…
