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Despite an eleventh hour interjection from the U.S. Forest Service, the Ouray County Commissioners made history this week, unanimously voting to adopt a new county road map that brings it into the 21st century. The last time an official county road map was prepared in Ouray County was in 1961. Proposed revisions to this 1961 iteration of the map took place over the past five years, first through the work of the collaborative, multi-jurisdictional Public Access Group and later through two years of intensive work by Ouray County IT/GIS Manager Jeff Bockes, who integrated modern computerized mapping techniques (including GoogleEarth)...

I am writing to urge continued support for our Fort Huachuca base. Southern Arizona, with its particular climate and geography, is uniquely fit to house certain critical military operations. And the thousands of highly qualified, talented personnel, both civilian and military, who have made Cochise County their home, stand at the ready to drive our modern warfare capabilities. As a long-time leader in electronic warfare technology and the home of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence, and numerous other Commands, Fort Huachuca should continue to define the cutting edge of cyber-security warfare. There is no question that this segment...

What’s happening in Arizona right now is sufficient to make every conservative shudder. And I’m not talking about the border crisis. I am talking about the state’s largest regulated utility, Arizona Public Service (APS). APS is literally attempting to purchase its regulators in the state’s August 26th Republican primary (early ballots go out this week). If successful, the implications are national, especially for fledgling solar power, and crony capitalism will have a new model that will boomerang on the Republican Party. First, a little background. APS has concluded that too much energy choice via rooftop solar is bad for it....

The state of Arizona executed double murderer Joseph Wood this week. The convicted killer was injected with a combination of lethal drugs that eventually caused his death; however, it took too long according to some observers. After being administered the drugs, Wood lingered for almost two hours before dying. Witnesses included reporter Troy Hayden who said the execution was “botched” and that Wood’s last words were similar to “a fish on shore gulping for air.” While Hayden complained that the execution was “very disturbing to watch,” U.S. Senator John McCain noted that it was “terrible” and amounted to “torture.” During...

MS-13 members are infiltrating a federal facility for Central American youths illegally entering the United States -- trying to cross the border with criminal pasts and recruiting others to join the notoriously violent, California-based gang, sources tell Fox News. Shawn Moran, of the National Border Patrol Council, said the gang leaders are recruiting pre-teens, as they typically do, and following the lead of drug cartels also trying to fill their ranks from among the estimated 57,000 unaccompanied youths and others who have come to the U.S. from Central America in roughly the past nine months.  ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT He said agents...

CONSTITUTION-FREE ZONES: Lots of Americans are getting upset about being detained by armed border patrol agents not on the border but miles away from the border. Some push back, sometimes with violent results.

The clarion call has sounded from President Obama and the pundits residing in Washington D.C. that Congress should "do something." Lost in this theory of governing by crisis, is that President Obama's actions created this historic calamity on the border. This is a "man caused disaster" and the man who caused it is Barack Obama. Waiting for President Obama to enforce the law is akin to waiting for Godot. President Obama is as likely to secure the border as he is to build the Keystone XL Pipeline. We are looking at two and a half long years of watching hundreds...

As a Member of Congress from a state on our southern border, I see firsthand the realities of illegal immigration. In fact, much of the recent public outcry originated from busloads of illegal immigrants dumped in Arizona a few short months ago. The strain placed on state and local governments overwhelms security, education, and medical services, making them harder to come by for citizens and immigrants alike. We’ve all read the stories of blown budgets and rising crime, but Members of Congress who come from border states don’t need to read those stories. (SNIP) Doing nothing is not an option....

U.S. Sen. John McCain says the execution of an Arizona inmate that lasted two hours was torture. The Republican who represents the conservative state told Politico that he supports capital punishment for certain crimes but felt Wednesday’s execution of Joseph Rudolph Wood was a “bollocks-upped situation.” The execution has renewed debate about the death penalty. But Arizona lawmakers say the debate is not likely to have an impact on practices in the state. …

BATTLE MOUNTAIN — Once again ranchers who run cattle on the Argenta Allotment in Lander County were told Wednesday that due to drought a number of areas would be closed to livestock. Pete and Lynn Tomera were told by the Bureau of Land Management they had a week to remove cattle from nine segments of the allotment ... We have 7 days to ride the entire mountain and have the cattle off. We are right in the middle of haying and are forced to drop everything and begin gathering cattle,” the Tomeras wrote. “We are forced to put the cattle...

According to the Border Patrol, the Arizona-Mexico border is the United States' most secure border. Last year marked the first time in 22 years that more undocumented immigrants were detained at the Texas border than the Arizona border despite the influx of unaccompanied Central American children attempting to cross. "Crossing in this area has diminished quite a lot in the past 10 years," Alejandro Martinez, Border Patrol chief in Douglas, Arizona, said.

The family of two people murdered by a man sentenced to the death penalty by lethal injection showed no remorse when his execution dragged on for nearly two hours. Jeanne Brown watched from the gallery at the Arizona State Prison Complex as Joseph Rudolph Wood, who shot her sister and father dead in 1989, died on Wednesday. She angrily brushed off his attorneys' complaints that Wood suffered during the execution. "You don't know what excruciating is," Brown told the media after Wood was pronounced dead. "Excruciating is seeing your dad lying there in a pool of blood, seeing your sister...

"He has been gasping for more than an hour," lawyers said in an emergency appeal to halt the botched execution of Arizona inmate Joseph Rudolph Wood yesterday. "He is still alive." As the hour mark passed, Wood's lawyers filed an appeal to a district court and even called Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, the New York Times reports. Kennedy declined to halt the execution, while the district court didn't respond until after Wood had died, almost two hours into a process that usually takes around 10 minutes. Gov. Jan Brewer has ordered an investigation into the execution of the 55-year-old...

The unaccompanied children flooding our southern border are not refugees and do not qualify for asylum under U.S. law or international law. ... In any event, under federal regulations, in 8 CFR § 208.13 (b) (1), “An applicant shall be found to be a refugee on the basis of past persecution if the applicant can establish that he or she has suffered persecution in the past in the applicant's country of nationality or, if stateless, in his or her country of last habitual residence, on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion[.]” (Emphasis...

<p>You may have heard talk recently of Fort Huachuca potentially losing 2,700 jobs. There's a lot of confusion and some misinformation floating around on exactly what that means. I'll try to clear some of that up.</p> <p>Perhaps most importantly, this isn't just about Fort Huachuca. Rather, the potential loss of 2,700 jobs (actually, 2,739, which includes 1,726 permanent party soldiers and 1,013 Army civilians) is part of the larger Army 2020 Force Structure Realignment. The realignment considers huge force reductions at 30 installations Army-wide between 2015 and 2020.</p>

White House Reports Drop in Minors Crossing Border Associated Press and ABC News WASHINGTON — Jul 21, 2014, 9:02 PM ET The White House says the number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border is dropping significantly. White House press secretary Josh Earnest says about 150 children daily — on average — were apprehended along the Rio Grande border in the first two weeks of July. He says that's down from an average of 355 per day in June ...

This is a chilling interview with Retired Border Patrol Officer Zach Taylor about the surge of illegals coming across the U.S. border right now. If you haven't watched the interview, read this transcript: My name is Zach Taylor. I'm a retired Border Patrol officer. My main job was understanding and having intelligence capabilities about drug smuggling across the U.S. border and human smuggling across the U.S. border to bring contraband and people into the United States. That's what I did for twenty-six years. National security is a component of the immigration laws and the reason that immigration officers exist. Because...

White House reportedly dismissed border crisis as 'local problem' in 2013 Published July 20, 2014 FoxNews.com The Obama administration ignored a report to the Department of Homeland Security last year which predicted that a large number of unaccompanied children would arrive at America's southern border in the coming months, according to a published report.  The Washington Post reported Saturday that a team of experts from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) submitted the 41-page report in August of 2013 after discovering a makeshift transportation depot manned by Border Patrol agents at the Fort Brown station in Brownsville, Texas....

Here are a couple of links to talks with Zack Taylor, the Chairman National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers and former Arizona Border Patrol Officer. The second video has some graphic content, but is still very much worth seeing. He brings up a very good point that the border agents are being pulled off the border to deal with these "kids." It isn't necessarily these people that are the problem, but the ones who now have unrestricted access coming through other areas and are not being caught. Zack Interview-Security on the border between USA and MexicoTREASON! Ret Border Patrol...

One of the top 10 employers in Flagstaff, Walgreens, announced Friday that it was closing its distribution center by April and laying off all 345 employees. ... Walgreens recently announced it was seeking to relocate its corporate headquarters overseas to lower its income tax bill. One estimate put first-year tax savings for the country’s largest drugstore chain at more than $700 million. The Wall Street Journal reported July 15 that Walgreens is considering buying the rest of Alliance Boots, a drugstore chain that operates in the United Kingdom but is headquartered in Switzerland. If Walgreens does purchase the rest of...