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

You’ve probably heard lawmakers exclaiming that their priorities are “jobs, jobs and jobs.” No matter what the issue of the day happens to be, leaders on both sides of the aisle will say the focus must be on jobs and the economy.

After Labor Day 2012 (Sept. 3) two big seasons kick off, i.e., the National Football League season and the 2012 election season.

On Aug. 15, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services began accepting requests for consideration of deferred deportation action for some people who came to the United States as children.

When was the last time anything truly major happened at a Republican or Democratic national convention?

Historians like to take the long view. When our forefathers (and they were all men) met in Phoenix slightly more than 100 years ago to adopt a Constitution for the state of Arizona, they drafted a document based on their understanding of the past and expressing their progressive hopes for the future.

I am tired of the political cat and mouse game that Tea Party Republicans are playing with the Arizona Attorney General’s Mortgage Settlement Fund. It was wrong to sweep money from the fund to benefit the private prison industry at the expense of Arizona homeowners.

Arizona is a dream for comedians and political writers.

Unfortunately, the Arizona Capitol Times July 23 story “Tea party leader says all Muslims a ‘threat’ to U.S.; seeks recall of McCain” on Tea Party organizer Wes Harris wanting to ban all Muslims from working for the federal government and attempting to recall Sen. John McCain crowds out news on “normal” people (like myself) trying to run for office and offering ideas on how to improve the state.

Starting next week, women across the state will face a choice between their privacy, their health care coverage and their jobs.

Undeterred from his humiliating defeat in the recall election last November, former Senate President Russell Pearce is asking the voters of Mesa’s new Legislative District 25 to redeem him politically by returning him to the Arizona Senate.

“Congress” and by definition states, “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” These beginning clauses to the First Amendment of our Bill of Rights are rooted in the Flushing Remonstrance of 1657. This religious declaration of independence was drawn up by 30 residents of the New Netherland colony, willing to forfeit freedom, property and their very presence in the New World, to protest Dutch Gov. Peter Stuyvesant’s ban on Quaker worship.