Suddenly, Eddie Basha is mincing no words. The East Valley grocer lost his 1994 gubernatorial race against Governor J. Fife Symington III without saying much about the incumbent’s financial and ethical problems. Many observers believe this Nice Guy approach contributed to Basha’s nose dive in the final weeks of that…
Dr. Robin Silver, emergency room physician, wildlife photographer, environmental activist and, he insists, fiscal conservative, has filed petitions to run in the September Republican primary against Congressman John Shadegg. As a last-minute candidate, Silver faces a time crunch, name identification problems and the considerable campaign resources congressional incumbency provides. Even…
Grant of Impunity Talk-show hosts and print pundits made great, gleeful note of the story: The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a federal court order that Arizona prisons provide inmates with top-drawer law libraries! “Such gross overreaching by a federal district court simply cannot be tolerated in our federal system,”…
Fife Sentence It seems to me that what the various columnists, letter writers and Fife Symington himself all have missed is a simple point: A person in a prominent position, such as the governor of a state, should serve as a model and an example for our young (“Governor J…
Why did the rattlesnake cross the road? When a diamondback slithered across the dirt road in front of her a few summers back, Sandy Weber didn’t wait to find out. Instead, the adventuresome grandmother calmly stopped her pickup and did what anyone else in her particular business would have done…
On the morning that Todd Hall realized his life was falling apart, he was lying on the couch watching cartoons with his two younger children, Todd Cody, who was 17 months old, and John, who was 4. His two older children were off playing with friends, and Hall was about…
For years, the uninitiated have roamed the aisles of adult boutiques, wondering what possible uses anyone could find for the bevy of battery-operated rubber-and-latex pumps, prods and plungers dangling from the walls. In recent months, however, sex-shop customers have been baffled by an even stranger mystery. Namely, what’s so erotic…
Valley guzzlers of Bud, Coors and other brews won’t be crying in their beer over the scarcity of Singha, an imported malt liquor from Thailand. But for Thai-food lovers, it amounts to a gastronomic crisis. Panange curry without Singha is like cookies without milk. Singha is no longer distributed in…
Who will pay to clean Arizona’s contaminated underground drinking-water reserves? Polluters? Or taxpayers? The state Superfund law says polluters should pay. But that may change soon. A state-appointed group in which lobbyists for water-polluting industries vastly outnumber laymen may try to shift the burden onto taxpayers. The Groundwater Cleanup Task…
Is Going From C&L to S&L S&M? Coopers & Lybrand officials say a great opportunity prompted the firm’s former Phoenix managing partner, Mike Marrie, to leave the Big Six accounting outfit to take a job at Phoenix powerhouse law firm Snell & Wilmer. Others quietly say Marrie’s sudden departure last…
Fund With Dick and Jane I read with great interest Terry Greene Sterling’s article “Old School Ways” (May 30). We are grateful and acknowledge the $141,000 we received for building acquisition from the Arizona Heritage Fund administered by the Arizona State Historic Preservation Office/Arizona State Parks Board. The article, in…
Swapping. Swinging. Hookers. Johns. Group sex. Adult situations. Good God, could it be true? And all going down in a defrocked VFW lodge on Apache Boulevard in Tempe? And next to a bowling alley at that–what a slap in the face of wholesomeness! What sort of wicked whore lords would…
Chester, who says he once killed someone but can’t remember why, has requested peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. The owner and operator of the Rainbow Valley Boarding Home honors Chester’s request. Eighty-one-year-old Izora Hill, probably the state’s oldest active proprietor of a fully licensed supervisory care home for…
Joe’s Kickback Style It’s August 1989, and travel agent Joe Arpaio is sweating bullets. His contract to coordinate travel for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office is up for rebid, and Arpaio must convince a four-person panel that his company’s proposal is better than the other two finalists’. If he fails,…
School administrator Judith DeWalt joked with a friend and her attorney Monday as she arrived for a hearing before the Arizona Board of Education. When she left an hour later, she was in tears. In a stunning 6-1 vote, the board censured DeWalt for “unprofessional conduct” in failing to report…
George Leckie’s fund-raising expertise helped put J. Fife Symington III in the Governor’s Office. Leckie is once again seeking donations, but this time it’s in an attempt to stay out of prison. With his federal criminal trial scheduled to begin July 23, the former gubernatorial aide is quietly soliciting cash…
One Spirited Adversary Jerry Colangelo and his partners may want to consider voodoo economics. Remember Beatrice Villareal, the frail, elderly woman who lived in a meager home on the future site of Bank One Ballpark parking garage? Who can forget? She had lived on the site for more than 80…
Dirty Pool I’m appalled at John Dougherty’s article about Olympic swimming not being what it used to be (“Slow Strokes,” June 13). It saddens me when Americans such as Dougherty bash our nation’s best. Gary Hall Jr. is one of our nation’s most talented, and, according to Dougherty, it sounds…
The song begins almost imperceptibly, two notes of languid bass wafting in, back and forth on each other. Then, from somewhere off in the distance, comes a high tenor voice bearing a soft chant in some mysterious, romantic tongue. It’s joined–just barely–by a native chorus and a steel guitar line…
YOU ARE HEREBY INVITED TO ATTEND the celebration of the completion of our first ASU Law School semester. It will be the “Mother of all 1L Post-Exam Parties” (herein known as the “Mother”). This “Mother” will be held on Wednesday, December 14, 1994, commencing at 11:30 a.m. You, along with…
Wade Hutchins’ day of reckoning has arrived. The former teacher was to be sentenced June 19 for molesting more than two dozen boys at north Phoenix’s Cactus View Elementary School. A long prison sentence is a certainty. The incarceration of a criminal–especially in such an emotion-charged case–often marks a turning…
Hey, Anyone Can Have an Off Decade The Flash has been accused of being an uncompassionate, callous guy–probably justifiably–but even he can’t help but feel a twinge of pity for our pathetic, indicted, bankrupt Governor J. Fife Symington III. Let’s face it–the Fifester is refusing to quit his job because…
