Twenty years ago, Superior Court Judge Philip Marquardt got busted while attempting to sneak a smidgen of dope past customs officials after a Mexican vacation. That netted him a misdemeanor conviction, a $500 fine, a year’s suspension from his job — and quite the scandal. But Marquardt managed to hang…
RESIDENT EVIL Guess from whom Sheriff Joe Arpaio recently received his marching orders? Hmmm, Satan, maybe? Close, but no cancer stick, chickadees. It’s the Valley’s meanest anti-immigrant hate group, United for a Sovereign America, which has allowed such far-right wing-nuts as Mesa neo-Nazi J.T. Ready, skinhead Damon Ashenfelter, and Mexican-flag…
On a cool winter day, late afternoon casts a creepy, lonely light across a little girl’s bedroom. Madeline sits waiting for a tea party. A row of Disney princesses lines a bed that’s never been slept in. Carol Dunlavy spends a lot of time alone in here, one of two…
The late Carol Gotbaum with her children. Just under the wire today, Phoenix attorney Mike Manning served a Notice of Claim to the City of Phoenix in the still-mysterious death of Carol Anne Gotbaum, asking for $8 million on behalf of the Gotbaum family. As you may recall, Gotbaum died…
No doubt about who’s the top, and who’s the bottom in Danny Hellman’s brilliant Bird illo. That Shaq is a shrewd fella. In a March 13 Bird item, I speculated that the Big Aristotle, now also known as the Big Cactus, might be tempted to do biz with Sheriff Joe,…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio (right) conversing with prejudiced pal Rusty Childress (left), ex-Kia peddler and leader of the most vicious anti-immigrant hate group in the Valley, United for a Sovereign America. It was a Good Friday for racists last week as our own Pontius Pilate, a.k.a., Sheriff Joe, defiled the day…
Tonight Sheriff Joe Arpaio joined the nativists and unrepentant bigots of Rusty Childress’ United for a Sovereign America, speaking before a group that accepts racists like Buffalo Rick Galeener into its fold, as well as neo-Nazis like J.T. Ready. It’s also an organization that praises old guard neo-Nazis such as…
Since moving to Aztlán from Boston, I’ve spent so much time with my next-door neighbor from Mexico City that I’ve taken to using the word manito as a term of endearment with my buddies, regardless of who and where they are. It’s been my observation that most Anglos think mano…
SNOOPING DOGS No sense of Yuma: This goes to show what a stupid, bullshit operation the Border Patrol is (“Doggy Style,” Ray Stern, March 13). So the Border Patrol sector in question increases agents by 300 and has very few illegal aliens to process. That in itself is an outrage,…
On May 2, 2005, a prosecutor and an investigator at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office asked senior staffers to review a potentially landmark criminal case against a local journalist. Phil MacDonnell, second-in-command to County Attorney Andrew Thomas (who had assumed office five months earlier), gave the okay for the agency’s…
The businessman was meeting with clients for lunch at Mimi’s Café when he noticed the woman. Sitting a few tables over with her 4-year-old boy, she seemed groggy — yet she was drinking a mimosa. It got worse. The woman ordered a glass of white wine, then another. She was…
JABBA-GATE The bill for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office’s Honduran scam is at least $157K. This avian accountant tallied up that much after the Sheriff’s Office released hourly rates for the 10 MCSO deputies involved, including the operation’s author, Chief Deputy David Hendershott. What’s galling is, that figure has got…
A pic you’ll never see in the Capitol Times: Russell Pearce (right) and Mesa neo-Nazi J.T. Ready (left), at an anti-immigrant clambake in June of ’07. Does it ever strike you as odd that AZ politicians can pull the most outrageous, reactionary bullcrap? Stuff that in any civilized state in…
See, Buffalo, you’re famous…for allegedly urinating in public. A group of about six “aliens” invaded the nativist demonstration up at the Macehualli Work Center on Saturday — actually a troupe of arty open borders activists dressed as aliens and waving signs like “Save Our White Trash Heritage,” “Buffalo Rick’s Pissed…
In case you missed it, Channel 12’s Joe Dana rolled over a new stone in the Honduran scam last night, revealing that the MCSO had plans to install a high-tech facial recognition system in Honduras, which Arlie Thompson, Governor of the Bay Islands, said included, “…security systems and programs…at the…
Yesterday, Sheriff’s office flack Paul Chagolla coughed up the hourly rates on the ten MCSO employees who were part of the Honduran enterprise, and after crunching the numbers, and adding equipment purchases and RICO-funded reimbursements for travel expenses, the bill for this Central American hayride comes to approximately $157,000. That’s…
DRUG DOCS A history of abuse: Your story on the addicted doctors was scary as hell (“The Doctor is Out,” John Dickerson, March 6). Can you imagine? Your physician goes out of the room during your operation for coke breaks! And I don’t mean the soft drink. The Arizona Medical…
Mexicans are angry that the United States might protect its own borders, might make it harder to sneak into this country and stay indefinitely. Let me see if I correctly understand the thinking behind these Mexicans. Let’s say I break into your house. Let’s say that when you discover me…
This is just what you homeowners need. After all, home sales in parts of the Valley have slowed to a trickle. (Thought you could buy a new house and flip it in a few months? Ha! You’re locked in for years.) And, because of the sub-prime scourge, thousands of Arizona…
Lisa Pickett Steedman, a key witness in Robert Ortloff’s murder trial, had just torpedoed the defense with startling courtroom testimony that contradicted everything she’d told authorities since 1984. As she left the stand at the county courthouse in downtown Phoenix on Thursday, March 6, one of Tempe homicide victim Kathleen…
WHITE-TRASH WEENIE Like you needed more proof that immigrant-bashing nativists are low-life garbage. Noted Yosemite Sam impersonator “Buffalo” Rick Galeener was allegedly caught enjoying the pause that refreshes recently in front of some poor lady’s house nearby the Macehualli Work Center on 25th Street, just south of Bell Road. A…
The small sedan slowed as it approached the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint on a deserted section of Interstate 8 east of Yuma. The car contained three middle-age women on their way back to the Valley after a planning retreat in San Diego. The past three days had been idyllic and…
