Eideard

Pau Babeu at his coming out press conference
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

A local sheriff resigned as a co-chair of Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s campaign in Arizona on Saturday after he was accused of threatening a former male lover with deportation to Mexico if he talked about their relationship.

In an embarrassing incident for Romney’s struggling campaign, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu denied that he or his lawyer made the deportation threat but stepped down from helping the former Massachusetts governor in the border state.

Babeu acknowledged at a press conference on Saturday that he is gay and that he had a personal relationship with the man making the allegations, whom he identified only as “Jose…”

The Phoenix New Times alternative newspaper reported on Friday that Babeu’s lawyer had asked Jose to sign a legal agreement that would require him to keep quiet about his involvement with the sheriff. According to the newspaper, the lawyer also warned Jose that any talk about their relationship could imperil his immigration status.

“All of these allegations that were in one of these newspapers were absolutely false, except for the issue that referred to me as being gay, and that is the truth. I am gay,” Babeu said at the news conference.

Babeu first came to statewide prominence in 2010 when he appeared in a campaign ad for U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican presidential nominee two years earlier, calling for tough immigration measures.

The sheriff, who is a tough law-and-order advocate, was considered a rising star in state Republican politics and a strong candidate to win the Republican nomination for a congressional seat in Arizona this year.

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” — might be the first response among the religious who wander through here. It worked for Woody Guthrie as well.

So, Paul Babeu – I wish you well in your new life in the open. Please reflect on your former buddies, political supporters, allies in fighting for the sort of society you thought worthwhile. A lot of them are going to be the first to turn their backs on you.

 
U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will step down from Congress this week to continue her recovery from a gunshot wound inflicted a year ago this month.

“I have more work to do on my recovery, so to do what is best for Arizona, I will step down this week,” the congresswoman said in a video message released today to her constituents.

Giffords, a third-generation Arizonan who served five years in the state Legislature before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2006, will not seek re-election this fall. But Giffords vowed that her career in public service has not come to an end.

“I will return and we will work together for Arizona and this great country,” she said…

“A lot has happened over the past year,” she said. “We cannot change that. But I know on the issues we fought for, we can change things for the better. Jobs, border security, veterans. We can do so much more by working together.”

Giffords will submit her letter of resignation later this week to House Speaker John Boehner and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. The governor will set the date for special primary and general elections to determine who will serve the remainder of Giffords’ term.

Before she leaves office, Giffords will finish her Congress On Your Corner event that was interrupted by a gunman on Jan. 8, 2011. In a private gathering in Tucson, Giffords will meet with some of the people who were at that event.

Brave woman, brave person. Legitimate politician. A rare breed in our Congress.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords with her husband, Mark Kelly, led the pledge of allegiance
Photo: Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

The sun had fallen and a crowd had gathered on a chilly Sunday night on the mall at the University of Arizona at the start of the last event marking the first anniversary of the mass shooting here a year ago. The event started with a leading of the Pledge of Allegiance.

And the person leading it was Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

The crowd responded with cheers and gasps as Ms. Giffords, wearing a bright red scarf, walked slowly across the stage, helped at times by Ron Barber, her chief of staff who was also shot that day and who was leading the vigil on Sunday. And with no apparent difficulty, Ms. Giffords led the crowd through the pledge, holding her right arm with her left hand. She finished with a clear, broad smile to the audience and slowly walked off the stage.

It was a dramatic footnote to the end of two days of ceremony here that were remarkable for how understated they were. A year ago, after the shooting spree that left 6 dead and 13 wounded, including Ms. Giffords, residents of this city gathered in an expression of grief and shock that lasted for weeks. There were a blur of funerals, a crush of flowers, candles and well-wishers on the expanse of lawn at the hospital where victims were taken, and a visit by President Obama that drew thousands.

On this anniversary, there was the candlelight vigil, an interdenominational prayer service and a ringing of bells at 10:11 a.m., marking the moment of the attack, and the reading of the names of the victims. There was Ms. Giffords herself visiting places that have become landmarks of the attack: the Safeway supermarket at the parking lot where the shootings took place and the Internsive Care Unit at the University of Arizona Medical Center where those injured in the shootings were treated…

For Tucson, this is a turning point as it searches for a way to mark the tragedy — to give it meaning beyond the day itself — without the images from the Safeway parking lot becoming the first thing people think of at the mention of Tucson.

“We refuse to let this tragic day define us,” Patricia Maisch, one of the women who wrested the gun from the shooter, said at a service memorializing the victims at a hall at the University of Arizona.

There will be no aid from the Governor of Arizona, her Republican counterparts in the state legislature or those Republicans elected to represent the people of Arizona in Congress. They will blithely trot out their “understanding” of the murders in terms hackneyed enough to be two centuries away from reality.

The survivors of the murders will carry on alone – except for the millions of Americans of good will and courage who care about freedom for those who defend Free Speech without needing concealed weapons.

The Serengeti is associated with safaris. The Maasai Mara, too. But southern Arizona?

A series of recent sightings of rare wild cats in the southern part of the state has prompted considerable excitement among wildlife experts and camera-toting naturalists alike. Twice this year, the Arizona Game and Fish Department has announced sightings in the southeast of endangered ocelots, small spotted cats with jaguarlike markings.

A third ocelot sighting reported on Friday by a homeowner who snapped some blurry photos of an odd-looking cat was probably a serval, an African cat popular in the pet trade, state officials said Saturday. The animal had long ears, long legs and appeared to have only solid spots instead of the solid spots and haloed spots on an ocelot.

On Nov. 19, it was a rare jaguar that was seen in the same part of the state — the first confirmed appearance of that elusive and endangered cat in Arizona since 2009. The jaguar is the third-largest feline after the tiger and the lion, and the only one found in the wild in the Western Hemisphere.

Donnie Fenn, a professional guide based in Benson, Ariz., who specializes in mountain lion hunts — which are fairly common in Arizona — was taking his 10-year-old daughter out on her first lion hunt that morning when his pack of eight hounds took off in a frenzy. Before he knew it, he said, the dogs had a creature cornered in a tree, which he saw from afar with a telephoto lens was not the mountain lion he was looking for but instead an endangered jaguar…

“What’s so appealing to the general public is that jaguars are so exotic,” said Mark Hart, a spokesman for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. “They are jungle cats from Central and South America, and the fact that they might be in our state really gets people’s attention. It’s a romantic notion.”

Mr. Fenn, whose Chasin’ Tail Guide Service offers five-day mountain lion hunts for $3,500, said his Web site has been barraged with hits since the jaguar sighting. And his daughter Alyson, initially disappointed that she did not get her first mountain lion kill that day, now realizes that seeing a jaguar was memorable, too.

“It was quite an experience, even if she didn’t get to kill anything,” Mr. Fenn said.

Yup. Every 10-year-old should have a chance to kill some creature or other. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a critical portion of nature’s balanced food chain, a predator like a mountain lion – some folks think hunting is all about killing whatever is legal to kill this week.

And next week? Well, someone in Arizona is as likely as not to kill themselves a jaguar.

Voters turned a skeptical eye toward conservative-backed measures across the country Tuesday, rejecting an anti-labor law in Ohio, an anti-abortion measure in Mississippi and a tightening of voting rights in Maine.

Even in Arizona, voters turned out of office the chief architect of that state’s controversial anti-immigration law. State Senator Russell Pearce, a Republican power broker and a former sheriff’s deputy known for his uncompromising style, conceded the race Tuesday with a look of shock on his face.

…Taken together, Tuesday’s results could breathe new life into President Obama’s hopes for his re-election a year from now. But the day was not a wholesale victory for Democrats. Even as voters in Ohio delivered a blow to Gov. John R. Kasich, a Republican, and rejected his attempt to weaken collective bargaining for public employees, they approved a symbolic measure to exempt Ohio residents from the individual mandate required in Mr. Obama’s health care law.

And while voters in Mississippi, one of the most conservative states, turned away a measure that would have outlawed all abortions and many forms of contraception, they tightened their voting laws to require some form of government-approved identification. Democrats had opposed the requirement, saying it was a thinly disguised attempt to intimidate voters of color.

Which is why I consider yesterday’s polling a victory for grassroots, working class, middle-class Americans. These victories didn’t come from Democrat leadership – they came from groups ranging from local unions to Planned Parenthood to the American Civil Liberties Union.

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Guns, marijuana and cocaine seized during Operation Pipeline Express
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

At least 70 suspected drug smugglers with alleged ties to the powerful Sinaloa cartel have been arrested in Arizona, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

The massive take-down of the drug trafficking network in Arizona included arrests of Mexican and U.S. suspects who allegedly smuggled more than 330 tons of illegal narcotics a year through Arizona.

More than 20 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies were involved in the 17-month multiagency investigation called Operation Pipeline Express. Speaking at a news conference Monday in Phoenix, law enforcement officials said the organization was responsible for smuggling more than $33 million worth of drugs a month…

Officials say the ring, organized around cells based in the Arizona communities of Chandler, Stanfield and Maricopa, used backpackers and vehicles to move loads of marijuana and other drugs from the Arizona-Mexico border to a network of “stash” houses in the Phoenix area. After arriving in Phoenix, the contraband was sold to distributors from multiple states nationwide.

Law enforcement officials seized thousands of pounds of marijuana, cocaine and heroin in a series of raids. They also seized more than 100 weapons, including multiple assault rifles and ammunition.

Authorities say the organization has been around for at least five years. According to a news release, officials say they “conservatively estimate the ring has smuggled more than 3.3 million pounds of marijuana, 20,000 pounds of cocaine and 10,000 pounds of heroin into to the United States, generating almost $2 billion in illicit proceeds.”

Most folks who feel – as I do – that drug use should be decriminalized, managed through price-fixed clinics still have nothing but contempt for the slimy gangsters who run the import business for American habits and addiction.

Throw away the key.

A ski area in the US state of Arizona hopes to become the latest in a small number of resorts using “recycled” sewer water to make snow. But the Hopi Indian tribe aims to stop what they describe as the desecration of their sacred mountain.

The San Francisco Peaks tower over the baking Arizona desert. Stands of white barked aspens, spruce and ponderosa pines dot the high tundra landscape, and the mountain is the highest in the state.

The writer must never have been there. This is near Flagstaff and one of the greenest parts of the state.

The US Forest Service, which manages the land, recommends it for hikers seeking solitude in the wilderness. The mountain is a holy entity for the Hopi and other Indian tribes who lived in the area centuries before Europeans arrived.

On the mountain’s western face lies the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort, a narrow 777-acre block of land poking 10,000ft (3,048m) into the wilderness area, which surrounds it on three sides.

People have been skiing there since 1938. But Arizona is one of the driest states in the US, and a recent run of dry winters has left the operators scrambling to find water to make artificial snow to keep skiers – and their dollars – on the slopes.

The resort’s owners, who manage the resort under an agreement with the US government, are embroiled in a row with the Hopi Indian tribe, which has filed a lawsuit to stop Snowbowl’s plan to pump highly treated wastewater from the nearby city of Flagstaff up the ski runs to make artificial snow.

The Hopi say spraying treated wastewater on the mountain – even just within the boundaries of the ski resort – would irreparably sully it and threaten their ability to carry out their religious rites among the peaks. And they say it would defile the pristine wilderness for all those who want to enjoy it without skis on.

I’m not going to waste space on the myths of religious beliefs which wholly ignore science and scientific testing. Recycling wastewater is a successful process worldwide. It’s such a standard in the world of recycling that the topic is boring.

Solve the Hopi worries the same way they have always been solved. Give them a percentage of the business. That may be cold; but, it’s pretty much acceptable to all the Native American nations in the region. Usually the only question is which tribe gets the fees.

Arizona wanted her to stop teaching English because she has an accent

Ms. Aguayo is a veteran teacher in the Creighton Elementary School District in central Phoenix as well an immigrant from northern Mexico who learned English as an adult and taught it as a second language. Confronted about her accent by her school principal several years ago, Ms. Aguayo took a college acting class, saw a speech pathologist and consulted with an accent reduction specialist, none of which transformed her speech.

As Ms. Aguayo has struggled, though, something else has changed. Arizona, after almost a decade of sending monitors to classrooms across the state to check on teachers’ articulation, recently made a sharp about-face on the issue. A federal investigation of possible civil rights violations prompted the state to call off its accent police.

“To my knowledge, we have not seen policies like this in other states,” Russlynn H. Ali, the assistant federal secretary of education for civil rights, said in an interview. She called it “good news” that Arizona had altered its policy.

Silverio Garcia Jr., who runs a barebones organization called the Civil Rights Center out of his Phoenix-area home to challenge discrimination, was the one who pressed the accent issue. In May 2010, he filed a class-action complaint with the federal Department of Education alleging that teachers had been unfairly transferred and students denied educations with those teachers. The Justice Department joined the inquiry, but federal investigators closed Mr. Garcia’s complaint in late August after the state agreed to alter its policies.

“This was one culture telling another culture that you’re not speaking correctly,” Mr. Garcia said….

But the federal review found that the state had written up teachers for pronouncing “the” as “da,” “another” as “anuder” and “lives here” as “leeves here…”

In the Creighton Elementary School District, where about a dozen teachers attracted the attention of the state monitors, an accent reduction specialist, Andy Krieger, was brought in from Canada last year. Mr. Krieger, who has taught actors, business executives and others from around the world to speak American English, said some of the teachers had what he considered heavy accents…

It was Ms. Aguayo’s principal and not the state monitors who first questioned her accent and suggested that she join Mr. Krieger’s class, Ms. Aguayo said. Because she was told that state policy forbade her to teach students who were learning English, she has filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

“I have the same credentials as everyone else, and I don’t think it’s fair that I’m being singled out,” Ms. Aguayo said, adding that her school has teachers with a variety of regional American accents. “I know I have an accent. It’s been hard to get rid of it. I think I’ll always have it…”

Arizona is still the Mississippi of the West. The bigots-in-charge decided the best way to maintain political control of the state is to inhibit any and all opportunities for non-Anglos to advance. Indios or Hispanics, it doesn’t matter. Even if you collaborate you are suspect. Your children are suspect. Have an accent? You are suspect.

The drill is designed to keep whole generations from feeling they have a chance to change anything. So, make certain schoolkids see that if their teachers don’t fit the Anglo mold – they will be dumped. An object lesson for how to fit into Arizona society.

One of the Goddesses

A church called the Phoenix Goddess Temple has been accused of being a house of prostitution, and a six-month undercover investigation has resulted in the arrests of 20 women and men who worked there…

Authorities are still searching for 17 more people — all of whom have been indicted — in connection with the prostitution enterprise, said Sgt. Steve Martos, a Phoenix police spokesman. The 20 people arrested so far have been charged with prostitution or other offenses, police said.

During a Wednesday search of the Phoenix temple and two church-related sites in nearby Sedona, police seized evidence showing that “male and female ‘practitioners’ working at the Temple were performing sexual acts in exchange for monetary ‘donations,’ all on the pretense of providing ‘neo tantric’ healing therapies,” Phoenix police said…

“What’s unusual is that they were trying to hide behind religion or church, and under the guise of religious freedom, they were committing acts of prostitution,” Martos said…

The website says at one point: “Sex is a holy, sacred and divine healing force at the core (of) our beings. Once we embrace this force instead of deny it, we become successful, happy and powerful manifestors.”

The website also features unclothed women, listed as residing in several states, under a “Goddesses” section.

Of course, prostitution should be made legal as should any number of other “morality” crimes. Allow for sensible regulation, health checks and above all else – collect taxes.

I guess that applies to real churches, too.

Oops! A single worker caused the massive blackout across the Southwest on Thursday night, the power company admitted.

The blackout, which left about 5 million people without power, may be one of the biggest caused by human error…Officials believe the outage, which hit at 4 p.m. Thursday, happened when a power worker removed a piece of equipment at a substation. According to the power company APS, there should have been some safeguards that would have limited the outage in most cases.

“Operating and protection protocols typically would have isolated the resulting outage to the Yuma area,” APS said in a press release. “The reason that did not occur in this case will be the focal point of the investigation into the event, which already is under way.”

It took more than 12 hours for power to be restored for people affected by the outage, an area that ranged from Mexico to Southern California to Arizona.

“There appears to be two failures here – one is human failure and the other is a system failure. Both of those will be addressed,” Damon Gross, a spokesman for Pinnacle West Capital’s Arizona utility Arizona Public Service, told MSNBC.

They’re going to smack the capacitor that had to be replaced on its bottom with a battery cable. Hopefully, they won’t be as severe with the poor bugger who was just trying to replace it.

The fact remains that for systems as critical as this more than simple redundancy is required. Allotting only one person isn’t sufficient – you need someone to say “Check!” Saving chump change and leaving room for a failure the size of a small country ain’t the way to manage complex infrastructure.