When I first heard that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service were raiding 15 Chuy’s restaurants in Arizona and California, my first thought was that this operation sounded suspiciously like a Sheriff Joe Arpaio-style raid against Pei Wei, Sizzler, McDonalds, et al. In fact, I’m stone-cold certain…
[jump] According to Armstrong, Hendershott withdrew about $10,000 — from three different banks — that he used to sponsor his and Armstrong’s sons’ baseball team to play in a tournament in California.However, Armstrong claims, Hendershott had arranged for the donation of a free van service from Courtesy Chevrolet to take…
We’ve given it the old college try, but State Representative Jim Weiers (R-Phoenix) apparently doesn’t want to talk about his reported role in the SCA criminal investigation. As our article on the campaign-finance scandal this week and previous blog posts mention, Weiers’ name came up in the 802-page report…
There’s a video applauded in the Conservative blogosphere of a man showing Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio a copy of the Constitution as the sheriff rants, raves, and pats himself on the back for his crusade to rid stock rooms at retail stores of illegal immigrants.Despite doing nothing to warrant such behavior…
When I read the recent Salon.com article “How a boycott meant to save Arizona is hurting it,” I wondered to myself how its author, a woman by the name of Drew Grant, ended up writing such an insipid, one-sided piece about the Sound Strike, a piece that’s essentially a Q…
Chalk up another embarrassing defeat for state Senate President Russell Pearce and his fellow Republinuts on three bills they desperately wanted: the birther bill, the guns on campus wackiness, and a bill allowing for an anti-health care reform compact among the states.Governor Jan Brewer has just vetoed all three measures…
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office’s website got a bit of a facelift over the weekend, and the new format seems geared toward one thing: poking fun at inmates in Joe Arpaio’s gulags.The redesigned website features on its front page a way for the general public to vote for the “mugshot…
Saint Joseph is traditionally the patron saint of workers and immigrants. The latter is because the father of Jesus was forced to flee to Egypt to save the Christ child from Herod the Great’s wrath. Once King Herod was dead, Joseph moved his family back to Israel, settling in Nazareth.There…
VotoLatino is sponsoring a talk with Javier Gonzalez of Sound Strike on Twitter today at 4 p.m. Pacific TimeThere continues to be a lot of kvetching from the local music “scene” here in Sand Land about Sound Strike, the ongoing boycott of Arizona by numerous acts over Senate Bill 1070.But…
They say that the cover-up can often be worse than the crime, and this appears true in the case of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and the SCA scandal. In yet another sign that someone working for Sheriff Joe Arpaio, or maybe the big guy himself, wants to erase fingerprints…
Gilman’s latest: Beyond 1070: The Tea Party’s War on ChildrenI’m sure glad I’m on local, lefty videographer Dennis Gilman’s good side. Otherwise, he might skewer me in a video like the one above, where Attorney General Tom Horne, state Senator Lori Klein, state Senate President Russell Pearce, Governor Jan Brewer and…
Larry Black, one of Sheriff Arpaio’s most trusted aides, is one of three people who almost certainly will be be fired based on the Munnell Memo findings, Channel 5 (KPHO-TV) reported today. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio doesn’t want the public to read an investigative report into the alleged crimes…
The long-awaited report on the so-called Munnell Memo investigation is complete, but public release of the findings will have to wait, the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office says. The PCSO feels that releasing the report immediately may be prohibited by law, said Sheriff Paul Babeu’s spokesman, Tim Gaffney, who’s…
Renowned commercial trial attorney Daryl M. Williams has no problem telling you exactly where he stands on the subject of illegal immigration and how it intersects with his faith in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. During the summation of his recent hour-long lecture on the topic before a…
As Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio crows this morning about how his agency busted a total of six illegal immigrants for using fake IDs so they could work at a Mesa dry cleaner, county budget officials unveiled the results of a six-month investigation into how his office is misspending your…
Imagine getting crushed by a giant Clif bar — now you’ve got an idea how a small, Tempe fitness firm must feel. Luna Fitness, on the corner of Elliot and Rural roads, has been sued in federal court by the national energy-bar powerhouse over alleged trademark infringement. The Tempe company’s name, crescent-moon design in its logo, and…
Governor Jan Brewer and Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne have issued a joint press release denouncing the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2-1 decision today upholding District Court Judge Susan R. Bolton’s injunction of four key parts of Arizona’s “breathing-while-brown-law,” Senate Bill 1070.You can read the entire release, here. However,…
State Senate President Russell Pearce, Governor Jan Brewer, and the forces of nativism here in Arizona and nationwide have suffered a crushing blow. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has today upheld District Court Judge Susan R. Bolton’s injunction of the most egregious parts of Senate Bill 1070.You’ll recall that…
To read recent accounts of state Senate President Russell Pearce’s lawbreaking son Joshua Pearce, you’d think he’d only caught six days in stir for violating terms of his probation on a 2007 aggravated DUI conviction.In reality, Pearce the Younger had already spent close to two months in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s…
Cops and other attendees had to run the gauntlet today at a BBQ/fundraiser for fired, killer-cop Richard Chrisman, held in an underground enclosure at the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, the powerful police union that reps rank and file Phoenix police officers.About a dozen or so protesters, led by local radio…
For a hot-shot legal beagle, Craig Mehrens sure seems to have plenty of time to write op-eds for the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association.His latest ditty for the Phoenix police union’s Web site defends PLEA’s all-day BBQ/fundraiser today on behalf of his client, fired killer-cop Richard Chrisman. The former Phoenix police…
I have to wonder if the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association would be so supportive of fired killer-cop Richard Chrisman if his victim had been white instead of Latino.PLEA has gone all out to back Chrisman, who has kept his lips zipped about the October 5 shooting of unarmed south Phoenix…
