Though it feels like a decade or more, it’s only been three years since Senate Bill 1070, Arizona’s ethnic cleansing legislation, went into effect, stoking the fires of ethnic discord, clobbering an already weak state economy, and putting Sand Land in the running for the most racist state west of…
As promised in a previous blog post, here’s videographer Dennis Gilman’s take on Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s anti-immigration worksite raids on two locations of the local Uncle Sam’s restaurant chain. The video includes interviews we did with two of the workers arrested by the MCSO. These were two of five men,…
About twice a month, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery holds a press conference at his office. I didn’t make it to the one this past week, but the MCAO has a YouTube account, where it posts videos of these events from start to finish. During the presser, Montgomery opened by…
Welcome to the latest horror-show vignette of Oz-like violence from our friends at the Arizona Department of Corrections, this time with a female corrections officer as the victim of a brutal beat-down. Wednesday night, CBS 5 reported on the recent attack of ADC Corrections Officer Benavidez (first name not given)…
Is there a crack in the anti-immigrant alliance between Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery and Sheriff Joe Arpaio? To say so, at this point, seems premature. There are rumors afoot that all 10 of those reportedly arrested in Arpaio’s recent raids on the family restaurant chain Uncle Sam’s have been…
Debra Milke should be granted bail in her pending re-trial for murder because the main evidence against her is the word of a lying scoundrel of an ex-cop with zero credibility. That’s pretty much the argument offered by Milke’s attorneys Michael Kimerer and Lori Voepel in a motion filed Monday…
I confess, it’s damn entertaining watching a highly-paid lawyer completely flummoxed in court, sputtering like a percolator, particularly when you disagree with him. Which is what happened Friday afternoon in Maricopa County Superior Court before Judge Dean Fink, as Fink gently grilled legal beagle Stephen Tully, the gent representing County…
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano — deporter of 2 million, coddler of serial racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and advocate of police-state programs such as 287(g) and Secure Communities — was confirmed by the University of California Regents on Thursday to head the UC system. I was happy to…
Remember when Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s lawyer Tim Casey told federal Judge G. Murray Snow that, “The MCSO is out of the federal immigration enforcement business”? That was during a hearing in June following Snow’s ruling in Melendres v. Arpaio that the MCSO is guilty of racial profiling. Snow has ordered…
Here’s your “Moment of Zen” for the day: Elderly Sheriff Joe Arpaio wonders if President Obama will call him for the Department of Homeland Security post being vacated by Janet Napolitano.It seems a bit strange that Arpaio has a desire to collude with a president he claims has a fake…
The recent acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin is of particular relevance to Arizona. In many ways, Florida is as racist and as gun crazy as Arizona, though here in Sand Land, the divide is Latino/Anglo more than anything else. Like a lot of folks, I’ve…
I can understand why Republicans despise our next president, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She’s tough, smart, seasoned, and a skilled communicator, with a tongue like a bullwhip. And she’s a Clinton. Being a Clinton reminds folks of six words that drive the Rs ape: Eight years of peace…
At his Wednesday press conference where he doubled-down on his support of deceitful ex-Phoenix detective Armando Saldate, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery insisted that Debra Milke, the person Saldate put on death row, would remain nonbondable pending trial. “I want to underscore, she’s not entitled to bail under the Arizona…
The definition of “death threat” continues to grow for Sheriff Joe Arpaio.The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office arrested a Peoria man for making a “death threat” against Arpaio, by making a comment online about taking a $2 million bounty from Mexican drug cartels for Arpaio’s head. The main problem, of course,…
Please see updates below re: Milke’s being denied bail. Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery should consider chucking the prosecutor gig, and starting a new career as a defense attorney. Already, he makes a fine mouthpiece for Armando Saldate, the ethically-challenged former Phoenix cop, whose questionable testimony put Debra Milke on…
Can’t say I’m surprised that Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery wants to retry Debra Milke, whose 1990 murder conviction was recently thrown out by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. After all, the Milke case stirs passions like only the killing of a child can. The state alleged Milke…
When the deputies of serial racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio raided Phoenix’s Lindstrom Family Auto Wash in 2009, on the hunt for undocumented car-cleaners, they did so with the full authority of the federal government. It was June of that year, and Arpaio still had his force of 160 officers trained…
Chris Simcox, the erstwhile face of the minuteman movement, was not playing to the cameras Wednesday morning in Maricopa County Superior Court, as he stood before Judge Casey Newcomb and pleaded not guilty to six felony counts related to child molestation. Rather, the one-time leader of Minuteman Civil Defense Corps…
Allegations of campaign-finance violations involving Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne and his outreach director, Kathleen Winn, are now in the hands of Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk after being referred to Polk’s office by state Solicitor General Robert Ellman. Last week, Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett sent a letter…
The last time this blog bothered with MCSO Lieutenant Rich Burden, it was 2011, and I had stumbled across a video of Burden on YouTube taking great delight in imbibing “Colorado Kool-Aid in California,” and making an un-PC crack about drunk driving. “I am not drinking and driving, at all,”…
Arizona Republicans remind me of the little Dutch boy sticking his finger in the dike, in this case, trying to keep the flood of Latino voters at bay. Thankfully, the electorate is going to get a chance in 2014 to chop that finger clean off. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Monday,…
No doubt Attorney General Tom Horne and anyone who wants to see him re-elected in 2014 (read: his staff) is elated by the news that Horne’s alleged squeeze, Assistant Attorney General Carmen Chenal, has put in her notice and will be leaving her position come July 5. Where to? Apparently,…
