Every year for the past five years, Tucson Democrat Herschella Horton has introduced legislation that would require insurance companies to cover mental-health care at the level they cover treatment of physical maladies. Every year that the legislation has gotten a hearing, Sue Davis has appeared at the Legislature to testify…
Myra Goldstein’s house is falling down, falling down, falling down. The windows leak. Electrical outlets don’t work. Outside, stucco is cracking. Inside, drywall is flaking. Upstairs, the balcony is rotting and sagging. Downstairs, a crack in the foundation runs the length of the house, moving the house and, among other…
In the classic film It’s a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart’s character is given the opportunity to see what would have happened to his community if he had never been born. Without him, the quiet tree-lined downtown of family-oriented Bedford Falls becomes the garish, loud and decadent main street of Pottersville,…
It’s time once again for the Flash to peer into his crystal ball and share deep prophecies for the new year ahead. Actually, the crystal ball is the plastic bubble top from an old popcorn popper, but there’s no doubting its veracity. To wit: January 1–During the encore at Black…
Ben Wallis manned the wheel of the old Camero, a car in need of repair but still a loud, monstrous, muscular machine that can go at a great clip if need be. We rounded the corner onto Adams Street, and Wallis gave her some gas, offering a glimpse of what…
On the morning of July 1, Al and Letha Lindsey settled into what they thought would be an uneventful, routine day at their small house in Youngtown. Al, 79, a retired insurance claims adjuster who suffers from emphysema and congestive heart failure, took a hit of oxygen from the machine…
Mark Fleisher is an eternal optimist, which is amazing since the guy is also the chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party. He’ll look you in the eye and with all sincerity tell you that 1998 was a good year for Democrats. Uh-huh. The Democrats’ only statewide victory went to attorney…
You Can’t Fight the INS Thanks for publishing the column on Oscar Fuchslocher (“Red Hot Chile Paperwork,” Amy Silverman, December 17), which was no doubt an eye-opener for many of your readers. Few native-born Americans have any idea of the monster lurking at the heart of the federal government–an unaccountable…
Glenn Boyer put a photo on the cover of I Married Wyatt Earp that he said was Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp, the famed lawman’s third wife. But is it really her? Boyer admits that the origin of the photo isn’t clear. But, he says in a recent pamphlet, “If it…
Researchers suspect that Glenn Boyer made up much of what appears in Josephine Earp’s memoir I Married Wyatt Earp. Boyer contends he lost a controversial manuscript he says he drew from to recount Josephine’s years in Tombstone. For Josephine’s life after she left Tombstone, Boyer relied on a manuscript he…
About 3 o’clock on the afternoon of October 26, 1881, the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday faced off against four members of Tombstone’s cowboy contingent in the most famous gun battle of the Old West, which occurred not in the OK Corral but in an empty lot nearby. Witnesses say…
Greene Giant Congratulations on the investigation of the Baptist Foundation of Arizona (“Poring a Foundation,” Terry Greene Sterling, December 10). It’s detailed, thorough, helpful and timely. New Times was added to my “must see every week” list as the result of your “first with the story” reporting of the Fife…
I’ve been through legislation creating a dozen national parks, and there’s always the same pattern. When you first propose a park, and you visit the area and present the case to the local people, they threaten to hang you. You go back in five years and they think it’s the…
Friday night downtown, between the decades-old warehouses and America West Arena, where old trolley tracks remain visible under streets paved over years ago, the dust and car exhaust blended with pithy scents of perfume and floated on a warm December breeze. Like carnival barkers, the lanky parking-space hawkers with chutzpah…
The Arizona Board of Medical Examiners (BOMEX) plans to ask legislators for more power and more secrecy, despite harsh criticism at a joint legislative hearing last week. BOMEX’s proposed legislation would enable the director, at the board’s discretion, to dismiss complaints, resolve cases in mediation and deny licenses. BOMEX also…
Glenn G. Boyer–scholar, novelist, rancher, entrepreneur, horseman, humorist and icon–hefts Wyatt Earp’s rifle to pose with it for a photograph. This morning, he says, he’s accepted an offer of $200,000 for the rifle from a collector. “You better not put that in the paper or the guys who I owe…
Teacher, teacher, I declare–I see Monica Lewinsky’s underwear! Actually, the panties in question don’t belong to Lewinsky; they’re owned by drag queen Celia Putty, a performer at Wink’s, a Valley gay bar. But that doesn’t stop 30 Glendale Community College students and their instructor from roaring as the “semen”-caked intern…
What follows are excerpts from a May phone conversation between wolf advocate Pat Wolff and a man she says is Jody Lee “Chance” Cooper, who at the time was serving a sentence for firearms violations at a federal prison in Tucson. Cooper denies talking to Wolff, but comments the man…
Paul Morey had been waiting, hoping, to see something like this. “As we’re driving down a dirt road, we saw this elk calf bedded down,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife technician says. “It suddenly jumped up when it saw two wolves coming.” The calf got up and ran across a…
For more than two years, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has kept secret a toxicologist’s report concluding inmate Scott Norberg–who died when detention officers stuffed him into a restraint chair on June 1, 1996–was not high on methamphetamines at the time of his death, and that the drug had no…
Pennant Fever You say you’re a baseball fan anticipating an intriguing 1999? Forget about it! There’s no need to play the games. The Arizona Diamondbanks have won the National League West. Might as well go ahead and hoist the banner. And fret not, diamond junkies can always speculate about who…
Former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet stands charged of murder, torture and kidnapping, but even he has access to the British court system as he fights his extradition to Spain. That’s better treatment than another Chilean, Oscar Fuchslocher, is getting in the United States. Fuchslocher, who has been ordered deported by…
