Speaking with journalist and author Asra Nomani for my recent cover story on her fellow Muslim reformer, Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser of Phoenix, I asked why Jasser draws such enormous flak from Muslim organizations in America. Nomani has garnered her share of fire for her ardent advocacy of gender equality…
Journalists are a notoriously cynical bunch. So when a politician up and does the right thing, especially in a one-party state rife with corruption, the knee-jerk reaction is: What are you doing for an encore? Thus it was with Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s post-Thanksgiving press conference, where he carved up…
One of the more insightful passages in former MCSO Executive Chief Brian Sands’ book about his old boss, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, deals with Joe’s long-fostered image as an avuncular Dr. Dolittle with a badge. Whether its ginning up bogus animal-cruelty cases against Maricopa County residents or taking celebrity Pam Anderson…
Imagine the liberal hell to pay if the musical The Book of Mormon had been canceled from its run at Arizona State University’s Gammage Auditorium because it offended members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Lefties would roar their disapproval, and rightly so. Sure, the Tony Award-winning…
Never doubt for one moment — notwithstanding his staged Reagan-esque gaps in memory under oath and his on-the-stand avowals of delegating authority — Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s total control over the MCSO. Take the following example, borrowed from the transcript of MCSO Lieutenant Kim Seagraves’ recent deposition in the ongoing federal…
Coming less than a month after Governor Doug Ducey’s solicitation of ideas for the “rebranding”of Arizona, federal Judge Susan R. Bolton’s recent ruling on Arizona’s 2010 immigrant-bashing law, Senate Bill 1070, reminds denizens of the Grand Canyon State why such a rebranding might be necessary. The law itself was a…
During an August 28 status conference in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s never-ending contempt proceedings before federal Judge G. Murray Snow, one of Arpaio’s many lawyers, the sly, irrepressible John Masterson let drop two tidbits, each suggestive of revelations to come. Both involved new documents Masterson said he’d just been informed of,…
Despite a recent Gallup poll that shows 87 percent of Americans favor allowing illegal immigrants to become U.S. citizens under certain restrictions, the public dialogue on immigration continues to be driven by a billionaire blowhard and a vicious hate-monger. I mean Republicans Donald Trump and Ann Coulter, whose know-nothing rhetoric…
Detective Brian Mackiewicz was in a cranky mood when I called to speak with him about the events of July 24, when federal Judge G. Murray Snow ordered the U.S. Marshals Service to seize evidence from the MCSO’s property lockers. At issue were 1,500 IDs confiscated from Latinos by the…
How far was Sheriff Joe Arpaio willing to go in ginning up a false conspiracy theory he hoped would disqualify federal Judge G. Murray Snow from the ACLU’s big civil rights case, Melendres v. Arpaio? As far west as Seattle and as far east as Washington, D.C. I’ll get to…
If there is anything more idiotic than rallying round the Confederate battle flag in a Walmart parking lot in Phoenix, it may be assembling for a counter-protest in the same parking lot. As reported by my colleague Miriam Wasser, it was the rednecks versus the radicals at the Walmart Supercenter…
Let’s talk about old white people, specifically the majority of old white people who live in Maricopa County. They are patriotic. They revere the flag. They vote. And they love — I mean love — Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Arpaio, who just turned 83, is like them, supposedly. He has grandkids…
Joe Arpaio’s lawyers recently bought the sheriff and his chief deputy, Jerry Sheridan, a little time by asking for federal Judge G. Murray Snow’s recusal in contempt proceedings against the pair and three of their current and former MCSO colleagues in the racial-profiling case Melendres v. Arpaio. Further contempt hearings…
One of the difficulties in holding Sheriff Joe accountable for the costs of his misdeeds in office has been that whenever someone dies in the MCSO’s jails because of brutality or indifference to medical issues, the tab usually is covered by a form of self-insurance called the risk-management trust fund…
As if on cue, after my column last week detailing how Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s confidential informant Dennis Montgomery was given a “free talk” in late 2013 by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office under Tom Horne, attorney Larry Klayman entered stage right, seeking to have federal Judge G. Murray Snow recuse…
Ever wonder why Sheriff Joe Arpaio endorsed ethically-challenged former Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne during the 2014 GOP primary? Four years earlier, Arpaio had backed now-disbarred former County Attorney Andy Thomas over Horne in the 2010 Republican primary for AG, with the sheriff’s spending some of own campaign kitty to…
An upper echelon that willfully defies the orders of a federal judge and may have committed perjury on the witness stand. A county sheriff and chief deputy with enough chutzpah to “investigate” the U.S. Department of Justice, the CIA, and federal judges, all on the word of a Seattle scammer…
