A power struggle over who has the authority to set the state’s energy policies has erupted with a bill that would make the Arizona Corporation Commission answerable to the Legislature and governor.

A legal challenge to a state program that allows disabled students to attend private schools isn’t stopping school-choice advocates from trying to expand it.

If a silver lining exists to the explosive growth of national power over the past several years, it is that Americans are turning to their federal and state constitutions, reading them, understanding them, and invoking them to protect their rights.

A pending ballot referendum that would allow voters to decide the fate of publicly funded political campaigns in Arizona could be deemed illegal by a county judge, but a former lawmaker who has set his sights on Arizona’s Clean Elections system promises voters will have the last word.

The Goldwater Institute is among the most powerful public-policy groups in Arizona.

The organization’s employees draft legislation, regularly meet with lawmakers and testify before committee hearings at the state Capitol. The group even advocated for the call of a 2010 special session in which lawmakers sought to give workers the right to a secret ballot in union elections.

But the institute’s officials bristle at the suggestion that the organization has more than one lobbyist on its staff.

The Rose Law Group employes 43 people and is involved in several big political cases, including a federal SB1070 suit, the proposed Indian casino near Glendale, medical marijuana cases and the Republican redistricting group FAIR Trust.

For Jordan Rose, it's a far cry from the desk in storage closet she first worked from coming out of law school.

This week’s most outstanding utterances, gibes and quips.

Backers of an anti-union ballot measure were incensed last year when the unions successfully got it removed from the ballot, more than a year after lawmakers agreed to send it to voters and after the Legislature had adjourned for the year.

The effort to put a Clean Elections repeal on the ballot overshadowed two other legislative referendums this year, and it promises to be the most contentiously fought of the measures in the upcoming 2012 election.

Voters will decide this November whether to change the way Arizona selects appellate judges and how Maricopa and Pima counties select Superior Court judges by giving the governor more control over the process while diminishing the State Bar of Arizona’s role.