Joe Arpaio likes to call himself the Country’s Toughest Sheriff. Now Rick Romley’s angling for the title “Sportiest County Attorney.” For the past few weeks, Romley’s been cruising around town in a spiffy brand-new white Ford Explorer–the deluxe Eddie Bauer edition, no less–courtesy of the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Quite…
Maricopa County Superior Court judge’s dismissal of claims that an industrial solvent can cause cancer and other health problems could have a chilling effect on toxic-liability suits across the country. Judge Steven Sheldon’s recent decision to reject contentions by 18 Scottsdale residents as lacking scientific foundation has caught the attention…
Father Ken Van De Veen is one pissed-off man of the cloth. Van De Veen is one of a number of people in Phoenix’s HIV/AIDS community who’s questioning the administration of last year’s AIDS Walk Arizona–a giant fund raiser organized by AIDS Project Arizona (APAZ). The AIDS Walk is a…
Where do racist white gangs allow black people to be members? In Arizona, according to a news release by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. At least that’s what the Reverend Oscar Tillman, president of the Arizona NAACP, was saying at the news conference he called last…
Rights Busters “Suspects of Convenience” by Paul Rubin (May 28) is an excellent example of the methods that the federal and local governments are using to subvert the Constitution in the name of “The War on Drugs.” Here you have store clerks and owners arrested because they sold legal over-the-counter…
Jeff Ofstedahl is sipping a tall glass of beer at Wink’s, and for the third time in as many minutes, someone comes up to ask him the same question. “What are you still doing here?” Each time, it’s asked with the same tone: a mixture of surprise and admiration. Everyone…
The dawn of a new campaign. It’s 7:25 a.m., Tuesday, March 3, at the foot of the steps to Old Main, the University of Arizona’s trademark edifice in Tucson. Ed Ranger has traveled to the bottom of the state to announce his candidacy for the top spot on Arizona’s political…
Spring hasn’t been kind to Jerry Colangelo. His Arizona Diamondbacks (20-43 as of June 8) are off to one of the worst starts in baseball. His Phoenix Suns exited the National Basketball Association playoffs with barely a whimper while collecting only a pittance in the playoff revenue gravy train. Looming…
The Star, David So, the Flash picks up Saturday’s Arizona Republic and riffles for the item that so regulates the ebb and flow of ideas and culture in the Valley of the Sun, the David Leibowitz column. Perhaps it’s his unadulterated self-absorption, so carefully packaged in blue-collar populism. Maybe it’s…
Only in America could an immigrant shopkeeper send a letter of desperation to a stranger in Washington, D.C., and get such a response. About a month ago, Phoenix resident Amir Alyas wrote to Dr. James Zogby about serious criminal charges he, his wife Fay and many others then faced. He…
Is Patrick Bidwill, son of Arizona Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill, a racist who fired a man for hiring blacks at his car dealership? Did he refer to Cardinal football players as “overpriced niggers”? Did he call an employee who hired an African American a “nigger lover”? That’s the charge made…
Steve Benitez was stabbed through the heart in his cell after an error by the Arizona Department of Corrections kept him out of protective custody. Now the state might have to cut a check to his family to pay for that mistake. Attorneys for the estate of Benitez, a gang…
Perhaps this is what’s meant by “cultural diversity.” There are guys with tattoos, guys with guns, guys dressed as Klingons. There are women, too, but they belong mainly to the tattoo group. It’s June 6, and there are three conventions at the Civic Plaza in downtown Phoenix, and they don’t…
A Fine Meth Paul Rubin’s article, “Suspects of Convenience,” in your May 28 edition, stated that the police warned the major retailers that selling certain over-the-counter medicines could be illegal because they could be cooked into illegal drugs. It also said the police did not warn the Americans of Arab…
Jen Scott knows that whatever she says when she stands up to speak at a zoning commission meeting will be discounted. She’s lived near Prescott for only a year and a half, so who is she to speak out? And furthermore, she’s a Californian, the most despised of all newcomers…
Four rattlesnakes and a king snake lie coiled in Dale Burton’s truck as he tools along Shea Boulevard en route to the Mayo Clinic in north Scottsdale. Two large rattlesnakes–a Western Diamondback and “Mo,” a Mohave rattlesnake, the most venomous pit viper in North America–doze in a big plastic bucket…
The head of a local campaign finance reform initiative drive has accused a tobacco company lobbyist of trying to give his campaign a “poison pill” in the form of a $5,000 contribution. The lobbyist–Phoenix-based attorney John Mangum, who represents Phillip Morris–denies ever making the offer and in return accuses Arizonans…
Club 411? Try Club 9-1-1 “Pimp ‘n’ Ho night” was the advertised theme at Club 411 in Tempe on May 17. “Bust a Cap night” was more like it. Here’s the haps, culled from Tempe PD reports and witness accounts. Shortly before closing, patron Troy Ware–presumably dressed as a pimp,…
A juror in the Jeanne Tovrea case took off work May 27 to attend the sentencing of the man convicted of killing the heiress. He said he wanted to see if the judge would order James “Butch” Harrod to death row in the storied 1988 murder of the Phoenix woman…
He didn’t get around to mentioning John McCain by name until five pages into his speech, but it was clear Steven Goldstone came to Phoenix last week to embarrass the United States senator on his home turf. The CEO of RJR Nabisco certainly didn’t come all the way from Ridgefield,…
The woman I’m talking to is white, middle-class, in her early 30s. She’s telling me about a recent vacation she took, a camping trip. During it, she met a guy, liked him, and slept with him that same night. Neither of them had any condoms, but they went ahead and…
Singer’s Voice I feel the need to fill in your readership on the rest of the “facts” on the life of Brad Singer (“End of a Record Run,” Gilbert Garcia, May 21). Contrary to your article, Zia was not on autopilot by the time Brad was 30 years old. He…
