Strike Everything

Nearly five months ago, I reported that the lasting impact of SB1070 – assuming it ever goes into effect the way its drafters intended – may be to increase the number of illegal immigrants who are given temporary work visas and permanent U.S. citizenship.

A major part of that story is the severe backlog in immigration court. Several immigration attorneys I spoke with told me that the courts have been inundated with deportation proceedings, and cases were regularly being scheduled for 2013 and beyond. One attorney said he had a hearing scheduled for February 2014.

The increase in border enforcement that began two years ago is now resulting in an even bigger backlog in Arizona immigration courts, which only have five judges. Attorney David Asser told me this week that Judge John Richardson, who operates out of the Phoenix court, is scheduling cases for May 2015.

Those cases are for immigrants who hope to stay in the United States. Last year, more than 5,100 illegal immigrants who were processed through federal immigration courts in Arizona were released from custody on bond while they fought deportation. The vast majority of them were eligible for work authorization documents that are valid until their cases are resolved.

And that five-year schedule is only for the final hearing on the merits of a case, not appeals. Asser said it takes upwards of three years for an appeal to be resolved.

During that whole time, the immigrants will be living with their families and working in the state just as legally as those who crafted the nation’s toughest immigration law.

- Jim Small

Arizona’s latest First Amendment Supreme Court case is trying to determine whether a Deer Valley High School student’s foul-mouthed insults hurled at a teacher are “fighting words” and criminal.

The Arizona Supreme Court, which took its gavels and robes on the road today, is hearing oral arguments on the case at Nogales High School, but a PG version is promised for the high school audience, since the briefs filed with the court are filled with words that would have led to soap in the mouths of previous generations.

The student, Nickolas, is asking the Arizona Supreme Court to overturn two lower courts that found he broke Arizona’s teacher abuse statute, which doesn’t define abuse, when he kept calling her a name you’ll hear on many rap recordings. He didn’t touch the teacher, didn’t get in her face, didn’t throw anything at her, he just yelled at her from across the room and as he walked out of class.

All the statute says is that abusing a teacher or other school employee on school grounds is a class 3 misdemeanor.

It was also a misdemeanor to “insult” a teacher on school grounds, but the legislature struck the word from the law in 1989.

A 2000 Court of Appeals Division II decision found that a student who told his teacher four times to, well, more or less leave him alone, was protected speech and did not violate the teacher abuse statute.

Insulting words and disrespectful behavior was insufficient in determining abuse, the court found.

The Court of Appeals Division I decided this year that Nickolas’ repeated assertions to his teacher that she was a, um, mean lady, triggered the fighting words doctrine, thus, taking it out of the realm of protected speech.

“The curious trek of the teacher abuse statute takes another turn and only the Arizona Supreme Court is able to solve the confusion,” wrote Ellen Edge Katz in a brief to the court. Katz is defending Master Nickolas.

Black’s Law Dictionary says fighting words are those “which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.”

According to the Supreme Court’s summary of the case, the issue at hand is whether the Court of Appeals correctly applied the fighting words doctrine when it focused on “the theoretical reaction of the hypothetical reasonable person” rather than on the likely reaction of the teacher who was the target of Nickolas’ words.

Katz argues that if the court correctly applies the fighting words doctrine, then her client’s words are “constitutionally protected speech.”

The teacher in this case remained calm and professional, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t want to backhand the lad, the state argued in writing to the court.

- Gary Grado

The most powerful evangelical Christian advocacy group in Arizona has signed a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to bolster California’s case against gay marriage.

The Center for Arizona Policy announced that it got involved because the case jeopardizes bans on gay marriage in 31 states, including Arizona.

“This ruling could invalidate Arizonan’s vote on the 2008 Marriage Amendment, and sets precedent to overturn any ballot initiative based on the court’s inclination,” said Cathi Herrod, chief lobbyist for The Center for Arizona Policy.

The 30 or so groups that signed the brief argue the U.S. Constitution does not require marriage to exclude same-sex couples. They are appealing a lower court’s ruling in Perry v. Schwarzenegger that struck down California’s ban on gay marriage, which was established by a constitutional amendment that passed as Proposition 8 in 2008.

The brief states, in part: “The people may be wrong, as they often are. The courts, too, may be wrong, as they often are. But this we know: Twice in eight years the people of California declared they want to keep marriage as it has been for time immemorial.”

The Center for Arizona Policy and other groups that signed onto the brief say the initiative process is perhaps the most effective way to gauge the will of the people, and the judge’s decision to overturn California’s ban on gay marriage subverted a critical part of the Democratic process.

- Matt Bunk

Sheriff Paul Babeu calls it an offensive billboard. The creator calls it a piece of art meant to spur debate.

Either way, the billboard-sized sign that sits on private land outside the U.S. Post Office in Oracle has ignited a firestorm for the Pinal County sheriff.

The sign depicts a handsome, dark-skinned family, which implies they are Hispanic when placed next to a quote attributed to Babeu, who has been a vocal and highly visible advocate of SB1070 and securing the U.S. border with Mexico.

The quote states: “This is our most serious public safety issue and national security threat.”

Babeu said his quote was taken out of context when placed next to the image. It was originally meant to highlight what he believes are threats of drug cartels and human smugglers who sneak across the border.

The sign, he said, tries to advance President Barack Obama’s assertion that Hispanics involved in such innocuous activity as going for ice cream will be harassed by police for their papers.

“Clearly they’re trying to depict the most innocent image of a Hispanic family,” said Babeu, calling from Longmont, Colo., where he was at a training seminar for sheriffs.

The sign was created by Oracle residents Frank Pierson and his wife, Mary Ellen Kazda and an artist friend, Michael Moore.

Kazda said Sept. 23, the sign has been up for four weeks, and a there are mostly supportive comments in a book that is placed next to the structure.

Babeu spokesman, Tim Gaffney, said the sheriff found out about the sign Sept. 17, when he was meeting with Pinal County Supervisor Pete Rios. Gaffney said the sheriff has since learned of false allegations being made in chain e-mails that Babeu paid for the sign.

Gaffney sent out a press release Sept. 23 dispelling that rumor and making it known Babeu was offended by the sign.

“We are really happy to hear he is distancing himself from the quote and we look forward to a meeting with him so he can clarify his position,” Kazda said.

Babeu said he consulted with a lawyer because the sign doesn’t represent his values or the values of the Sheriff’s Office, but acknowledged that the Oracle couple has a First Amendment right to display it.

“There’s not a lot I can do or would do,” Babeu said.
Kazda said the family on the sign came from a photo in the public domain and she doesn’t know them or their nationality or ethnicity.

“They’re certainly not Anglo and not Asian, they’re brown-skinned,” Kazda said.

She and her husband own the triangle-shaped parcel that is less than an acre, and they have built a ramada on it and opened it up to the public. They bought it in 1979 with a bunch of other investors to protect it from development.

They built a metal structure that includes a roof to cover the giant placard from the weather.

The first sign went up in July and read “Happy Birthday U.S.A.”

A second sign had a photo of the Statue of Liberty and “Nation of Immigrants” posted on it and a third sign read “Viva Grijalva” in reference to Congressman Raul Grijalva, a Tucson Democrat who called for a boycott of the state over SB1070.

- Gary Grado

U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke has beefed up his Civil Rights Unit. (Photo by Gary Grado)

U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke recently said that the potential for an increase in excessive force cases naturally follows an increase in federal agents at the border.

Maybe, maybe not when it comes to Arizona.

The Obama administration’s Department of Justice has put a premium on civil rights.

So it’s no surprise that Burke has enhanced his office’s Civil Rights Unit by adding a lead prosecutor to coordinate civil rights efforts, a community outreach coordinator, and he’s made it a priority to train cops and federal agents.

The unit is also assisting in the investigations of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

So far, there have been no civil rights indictments, but he says there are an unspecified number of investigations pertaining to excessive force involving federal agents.

Since 2007, an additional 705 Border Patrol agents have been hired in Arizona, according to statistics provided by the state’s two patrol sectors. No statistics were immediately available on the trends of excessive force cases in the state.

Burke did get a guilty plea June 3 out of a former Border Patrol agent in a case he inherited from his predecessor, Diane Humetewa.

The former agent, Edward Moreno, admitted to the court that without any legitimate law enforcement reason he struck an illegal immigrant in custody in the stomach, kicked him in the leg and threw him down before punching him in the back of the head, causing a cut to the back of his head.

The incident in that case occurred in 2006 and he wasn’t charged until March 2009, so it could be months or even years before the current cases under investigation are indicted, said Brandon Judd, president of the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector union.

Judd said he knows of a “couple” cases that are under investigation for civil rights violations involving agents with the Tucson sector, but they are progressing slowly and haven’t reached a stage yet where the agent is placed on administrative leave, a sign that the case is near an indictment.

“There’s a very good chance there’s going to be a couple of indictments,” Judd said.

A representative with the Border Patrol’s Yuma Sector did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Judd said the percentage of excessive force cases hasn’t risen even though the vast majority of the Border Patrol’s workforce has less than three year’s experience and the training academy has been shortened as well.

“Anytime you don’t have the journeyman agents to train these young agents, things are going to happen,” Judd said. “It was one of the downfalls of this mass hiring.”

The Border Patrol isn’t the only federal law-enforcement agency, and it’s a veritable alphabet soup of investigative agencies that conduct the excessive force investigations. For instance, the DHS-OIG (Department of Homeland Security-Office of Inspector General) handles Border Patrol cases, while the DOJ-OIG investigates allegations arising out of the BOP and CCA (Bureau of Prisons and Corrections Corporation of America, the latter being the private prison company).

The FBI can investigate cases of excessive force by local cops and a recent civil rights forum held in July at South Mountain High School generated tips of incidents that are under review by the agency, said Wyn Hornbuckle, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney for Arizona.

“But I cannot comment on any specific or pending investigation,” Hornbuckle said.

The civil rights forum was one in a series planned as outreach, Burke said.

The idea is to provide information to the public on reporting police misconduct and new hate-crime laws and how to report them. FBI agents who investigate civil rights violations and prosecutors also attend to get tips on cases, Hornbuckle said.

The next forum is Oct. 26 in Tucson, although the exact location is still to be decided.

- Gary Grado

The figures paint a grim picture: Arizona’s jobless rate stands at 9.7 percent, revenues have come in below forecast, the state’s budget deficit could reach $700 million in the current fiscal year.

And now the U.S. Census puts the number of Arizonans in households earning below the federal poverty level at 1.4 million. That means we’re second worst in the nation – next to Mississippi.

I have been staring at some of these numbers for days, but somehow they never sank in.

Not until recently.

A few events that all happened in one day delivered the most sobering of realizations – to me, at least – about how dire the situation is.

True, I know people who have lost their homes to foreclosure. A friend is in the process of short-selling his home. Another couple I know is moving out of their house in a few days.

But foreclosure is so rampant it has become the norm. No one is surprised to learn that the house with the overgrown weeds around the bend has finally put up a “for sale” sign.

So when our neighbor, a chemist, told me a few days ago that he finally found a job after 19 months, well then, the news really cheered me up. In fact, he’s holding a “back-to-work” party on Sept. 18.

Our neighbor had been out of work ever since we moved into the area last year, and I had been printing out any job notices I’d get and inserting them in a crack in his door.

That afternoon, I was withdrawing money when I noticed two balance inquiry slips at the ATM. I thought of minding my own business, but of course I couldn’t help it. So I looked: One showed a savings account with an available balance of $105.62.

The other showed exactly $3.76 in the checking account.

There are a thousand plausible reasons why I shouldn’t be affected. Maybe the slips’ owners were just waiting for their paycheck to go through. It was obvious I couldn’t draw anything except the most cursory and probably skewed assumptions from a piece of paper.

But then maybe, just maybe, one of them really just had $3.76 in the bank. I couldn’t shake the thought from my head, particularly since we bought groceries later that day. I couldn’t remember how much we spent, but I can assure you I wouldn’t have been able to afford it if I had only $3.76 in the bank.

I’m sure you know the feeling when everything comes into focus. Well, it was clear to me that while most of the rhetoric on the campaign trail is about immigration and a myriad other important issues, such as the quality of Ben Quayle’s supposed blog posts, some people are just barely making it.

Later that day a friend of mine told my wife that her work hours have been cut. She said the only thing they’re pretty much buying nowadays is food for their two babies.

The political rhetoric will likely heighten in the general election, when candidates will try to more sharply contrast their positions against their opponents. I hope they focus on how to revive the economy, too.

But maybe that’s putting too much faith in the electoral process. Do elections really change the state’s – the country’s – direction?

Here’s what I know: I want our neighbor to keep his job. I want my wife’s friend to get more work hours. I want the owners of those balance inquiry slips to have more money in the bank, or at least enough money to afford the groceries we bought that day.

- Luige del Puerto

Steve May has been unapologetic over his recruitment of four Mill Avenue “street people” to run as Green Party candidates, and his defiance was on full display when he took the witness stand.

Attorney Paul Eckstein, part of the legal team that sued in an attempt to keep a slate of alleged “sham” Green write-in candidates off the ballot, called May to the stand Sept. 13 for a hearing on the lawsuit. The questioning, and May’s responses, took an acrimonious turn early on and held that tone until May left the stand.

When Eckstein asked May what assistance and considerations he had given the four Mill Avenue “street people” he recruited to run as Greens, a defiant May said he gave them a lot of help to cope with a lawsuit he thought was a sham as well.

“A lot of heartache and pain because of your behavior,” May said. “The value of my consulting to them is priceless.”

May, who withdrew his candidacy for a District 17 House seat earlier in the day, repeatedly voiced his thoughts on Eckstein’s case and argued with the attorney, at one point prompting Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Dean Fink to remind them not to talk over each other so the court stenographer could get everyone’s words.

May refuted Eckstein’s suggestion that the money he paid for his candidates’ legal defense – he paid former U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton to represent in a federal lawsuit filed by the Arizona Green Party – qualified as an-kind contribution to their campaigns.

“That’s not what the statute reads and you should know better,” May said.

Even at the start of Eckstein’s questioning, when the attorney from Perkins Coie Brown & Bain queried May about his education and background as a “student of politics,” May didn’t make things easy.

“You read my bio,” May said matter-of-factly.

If May’s hostility on the stand bothered Eckstein, he didn’t let it show. But some of May’s comments event prompted Fink to remind him who was the witness and who was the attorney.

“He gets to ask you questions. You don’t get to ask him questions,” Fink said near the end of May’s testimony.

May denied Democrats’ allegations that he recruited Theodore Gomez, Anthony “Grandpa” Goshorn, Thomas Meadows and Benjamin Pearcy to siphon votes from Democratic candidates. But he’s loudly and proudly acknowledged that he recruited them into their races.

“I inspired them,” May said when asked if he recruited the candidates.

May’s candidates were only four of the 11 originally named in the lawsuit, but the former lawmaker and his coterie of eccentric Mill Avenue regulars have taken center stage since the drama first unfolded. Goshorn, a pedicab driver who had to phone in his testimony because he didn’t have a ride to the courthouse, vowed that 2010 would be only the first of his runs for office.
Goshorn made it clear that he didn’t think any more of the lawsuit than his patron May.

“I apologize that you had to spend your time with this fiasco,” Goshorn told Fink when he was dismissed from the stand.
Goshorn said he agrees with most of the Green Party’s principles, which he learned of when decided to run for office, and has reached out to the party since becoming a candidate. He indicated that he’ll be back if he doesn’t win his District 17 Senate race, meaning we may be seeing more of him, May and the rest of the Mill Avenue ticket in 2012.

“This is going to be a continued relationship one way or another,” he said when asked if he’d ever contacted the Green Party’s leadership. “I intend to continue to seek office.”

Eckstein kept his cool while questioning May. Eckstein said his job was to diminish May’s credibility, and by taking such an aggressive posture, May did Eckstein’s job for him.

“I learned in the Mecham trial to not take the bait and to let witnesses destroy themselves,” said Eckstein, who prosecuted former Gov. Evan Mecham in his 1988 impeachment trial. “I thought (May) did. Read the judge’s opinion. He didn’t have a lot of credibility with the judge.”

Fink didn’t reference May’s attitude on the bench, but wrote in his ruling that he didn’t buy the former lawmaker’s explaination that he recruited his four candidates because he was simply trying to help out his friends.

“Mr. May’s testimony regarding the reason he encouraged the four individuals to run for office lacked credibility,” Fink said.

-Jeremy Duda

After weeks of being hammered on his position on Social Security, Republican challenger Jesse Kelly countered the criticism in a television ad to be aired this week in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District.

In the ad, Kelly said U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the incumbent Democrat, is “distorting” his Social Security plan in order to distract voters from her record of supporting the federal bail-outs and the federal health care law, and of opposing SB1070, Arizona’s most recent immigration law.

Kelly’s position on Social Security and Medicare has been a central narrative of the Giffords’ campaign.

The Giffords campaign is seeking to portray Kelly as an extremist with “dangerous ideas.” A recent ad produced by the campaign called Kelly a “risk we can’t afford.”

“What kind of guy says that Medicare is a scam, or a Ponzi scheme? His ideas are dangerous,” Giffords’ campaign manager Rodd McLeod, stated in a news release.

Kelly’s new ad counters that his Social Security plan calls for “(honoring) our commitments” to seniors while giving younger workers a choice.

Kelly said he would keep the benefits at their current level for those who already receiving Social Security and for those who already are paying into it. For those who are just entering the work force, Kelly said he wants to provide an option to put a portion of their contributions into a personal savings account.

“We need to save Social Security by transitioning to a more sustainable financial model,” he said. “My plan guarantees that will happen. Giffords has no plan and has done nothing to work toward a solution.”

Giffords’ campaign said Kelly is attempting to give himself a “makeover” after calling for the elimination of Social Security and Medicare during the primary election season.

Meanwhile, Giffords also released a television ad that seeks to show her as tough on border security. The ad shows Cochise County veterinarian and rancher Dr. Gary Thrasher saying the congresswoman is “probably the best advocate for border security that we’ve ever had down here.”

The press corps didn’t know exactly what to think when they saw Steve May drive up to the federal courthouse Thursday on a segway.

Rather than hide – as most people would do if their mode of transportation looked like a pogo stick with wheels – May made sure everyone knew it was him by plastering a bright red “May” campaign sticker on the front of his contraption.

One might expect the average politician about to fight allegations of rigging elections by enlisting fake candidates to show up a bit more discreetly. But that’s just not how May rolls.

May buzzed up to the Sandra Day O’Connor Federal Courthouse about a half-hour before the hearing to determine whether a group of 11 Green Party candidates – four of which May helped qualify for the ballot – would be kicked out of the election.

May remained on his strange chariot during various interviews, repeating a stump-speech about how everyone, even street people, should be allowed to take part in the political process. He got off the machine only when it was time to enter the courthouse.

The whole episode was too odd to ignore. I would have been remiss not to ask May, who was charged with an extreme DUI in 2009, if it’s possible to get a DUI on a segway.

“No! You can’t,” May exclaimed, then pointed a finger skyward and proclaimed, “I wrote that law!”

May explained that he helped craft a law while he was in the Legislature in the late 1990s that classified segways as wheelchairs. That way, May said, it’s impossible to receive a DUI on a segway.

May then recalled a time when he got pulled over by the Tempe police for riding his segway on the sidewalk. May said he showed the police officers his middle finger and explained that he wrote the law and that they had no legal standing to ticket him for being on the sidewalk.

I asked May if he was drunk when he got pulled over by the police that day.

“Probably,” May chuckled.

-Evan Wyloge

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio - not running for president in 2012.

Apparently, common sense isn’t required to be CNN’s senior political editor, as Mark Preston, the man who holds that title, fell hook, line and sinker for Joe Arpaio’s hype machine Sept. 8, when he unquestioningly reported on the network’s website that the sheriff “is not closing the door on a presidential run in 2012.”

Really? That passes the smell test for reporters at the country’s first 24-hour cable news network? In a post on its Political Ticker blog titled “‘America’s Toughest Sheriff’ considers presidential bid,” Preston parroted information from a press release that made reporters across the Valley laugh earlier in the day.

The press release was sent by GOP political consultant Chad Willems, who is running the sheriff’s 2012 re-election campaign. It announced that Arpaio would be serving as the keynote speaker at the Nashua Republican City Committee in New Hampshire this weekend.

Willems included this line, which he told me was intended more as a joke than anything: “Arpaio’s visit has fueled speculation among many of his supporters that his appearance at this luncheon with New Hampshire Republicans is a ‘testing of the waters’ for a run for the White House in 2012.”

Preston spoke with Willems, who tried to distance himself from the quote in the press release by saying Arpaio wasn’t actually testing the waters for a presidential run, before telling CNN that “people just don’t go to New Hampshire if they are not interested in these things.”

When I talked to Willems Sept. 10, he said he stressed to Preston and another reporter from the Los Angeles Times that Arpaio was only going to New Hampshire because he was invited to speak. “I told them, it’s not a presidential campaign. He’s just a popular guy with Republicans,” he said. “I think these reporters are more jacked about New Hampshire than I am.” Neither reporter, he said, was willing to accept that Arpaio wasn’t intent on running for president in 2012.

“Mark Preston was just talking over me when I was telling him what we were doing there,” Willems said.

The idea that a county sheriff, albeit one with the national recognition of Arpaio, was being discussed as a potential presidential candidate should have set off alarm bells for any reporter. I know it did in our newsroom.

Sure, we’re used to Arpaio’s media-whoring nature, but one would assume skepticism is a key trait for reporters at any level, whether a rural community paper or a major cable news network.

Of course, writing a skeptical piece about Arpaio’s announcement – or, even better, ignoring it because it didn’t make any sense – doesn’t generate many page views in the Internet age.

- Jim Small