Arizona Capitol Times Your Inside Source for Arizona Government, Politics and Business

Built by Charles O. Brown (the taller man at left in the photo), a gambler said to have been a crack shot who carried several notches on his gun, the Congress Hall Saloon was the unlikely spot where the first Territorial Legislature in Tucson convened. The Capitol building, a series of adobe rooms with dirt floors and mud roofs, was spurned by lawmakers, who preferred to caucus at San Agustin Cathedral and hold informal meetings in the back room of Brown’s establishment.

Despite the uproar surrounding them, most of the goals contained in Arizona’s College and Career Ready Standards seem anything but controversial. Use abstract nouns. Form and use regular and irregular verbs. Tell and write time. Work with addition and subtraction equations. On and on, page after page.

To many Arizonans, volunteerism has become a force to be reckoned with, improving economic opportunities for thousands, providing essential help for children and encouraging the humane treatment of animals.

These questions will determine how closely you’ve been following the early stages of Arizona’s 2014 election campaign. Answer them all correctly and you are automatically qualified to run for the office of your choice.

These 14 questions will determine how closely you have been following the first 2 months of the 2013 legislative session. Answer 10 correctly and you’re guaranteed a front-row seat for the next 5-hour House Appropriations hearing. Answer 12 right, and you qualify to chair your own House or Senate committee.

It is Arizona’s freeway of the future, and seemingly everyone wants to see it built. Gov. Jan Brewer has advocated the construction of Interstate 11 between Phoenix and Las Vegas, calling it essential to commerce, tourism and trade throughout the West.

Every day, about 100 volunteers span out from the Promise Arizona office in central Phoenix to register Latino voters, hoping to change the dynamics of politics in Arizona.

At one Phoenix medical center, health care reform means creating an electronic records system to reduce the distressingly high number of patients who die from hospital-acquired infections.