Free Republic

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...

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, made a surprising suggestion Thursday night: If he had been elected in 2000, there might not have been a war in Iraq. The Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war, who lost his race for the GOP nomination that year but went on to become his party’s nominee in 2008, made his comments in a far-reaching interview in CNN and National Journal’s “Politics On Tap” event, after this reporter asked him what would be different if he had won either in 2000 or 2008. On 2008, McCain said “national security” would be different, and he delineated...

Human smugglers in Mexico routinely give young illegal immigrant girls birth control for their trip through Mexico. The odds are they will be raped.

Former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, now a GOP candidate for governor, used his first television ad of the election cycle to take on immigration, the “gay lobby” and liberal judges. The 30-second ad, which began airing today on broadcast television statewide, mostly touts Thomas’ attempts at enforcing immigration during his tenure as Maricopa County Attorney. Alongside Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Thomas made a name for himself by taking a hard line against immigration along the Arizona-Mexico border.

Go to http://AdamKwasman.com for more information about Adam's campaign for Congressional District 1 in Arizona. Sheriff Joe Arpaio has officially endorsed Adam Kwasman for Congress.

An Arizona Republican congressional candidate on Tuesday called out what he thought was a school bus full of newly arrived migrant children…with one problem: The bus was actually carrying YMCA kids on their way to camp. State Rep. Adam Kwasman tweeted his outrage with a photo of a bus and the words: “Bus coming in. This is not compassion. This is the abrogation of the rule of law.”

On Tuesday, migrant children from Central America were expected to be bussed into Oracle, and taken to a local shelter. According to this report, Kwasman tweeted from the scene: “Bus coming in. This is not compassion. This is the abrogation of the rule of law." He posted the tweet along with an image of a yellow school bus. He later told a reporter that he saw “fear” on the faces of the migrant children on the bus. “This is not compassion,” Kwasman said during the interview. There was only one problem. The children on the school bus were not migrants,...

TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - Less than a day after a source confirms to 9OYS, 160 unaccompanied migrant children are now living inside a former Tucson student housing complex, a moving van was parked outside the shelter. Last month, Tucson city leaders gave Southwest Key, the federally contracted Texas-based non-profit running the shelter, the O.K. to house 160 migrant children under the guidance of the Department of Health and Human services. Late last month, the non-profit hired hundreds of employees in Tucson. The shelter is located on Oracle and Drachman. A sign reading, "College Place," is still on display outside the student...

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu made national headlines on Tuesday after a group of about 80 people gathered in Oracle, Ariz., to protest the arrival of a bus carrying immigrant children from Central America. Another group of about 50 people showed up to support the children. Protesters were tipped off by a post to the Pinal County Sheriff Department’s Facebook page which said about 40 to 50 children were being transported to the "Sycamore Canyon Boys Ranch" in Oracle, Ariz. "We already have our hands full fighting the Drug Cartels and Human Smugglers,” Babeu wrote in the Facebook post. “We...

A Democratic congressman accused Republicans of trying to “reinstitute the whole issue of fear” and “drag that bloody flag of amnesty” in the border crisis. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) told MSNBC that today President Obama will sit down with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus for the first time since the influx of illegal immigrants coming over the border reached crisis proportions and overwhelmed authorities. “I really believe there is — the purpose of the meeting is now much more than original. Originally, it was to talk about our recommendations to the president that we had forward to him regarding what he...

Mesa County Commissioners approved a resolution on Monday to oppose the nationwide Clean Water Act, commonly referred to as Waters of the U.S. ... The proposed nationwide rule would expand the jurisdiction of what waters would be regulated by the federal government. This expansion would include dry washes, roadside ditches, and drainage ditches throughout Mesa County. ... the board of commissioners also expressed their concern since they see no apparent public benefit from the proposed rule

Two Oracle facilities may be sheltering unaccompanied migrant children soon– one in midtown Tucson at Oracle and Drachman and one tucked into the Catalina Mountains in Oracle, Arizona. While liberals in Tucson are welcoming the children and touting the 250 jobs the migrant shelter and processing center will bring to a struggling part of the city, rednecks north of town are planning a Murrieta-style ugly American protest to greet 40 children who could be housed at the Sycamore Canyon Academy on the back side of Mountain Lemmon. (KVOA story here.) You’ll remember that several days ago Murrieta, California made headlines...

by Brian Hayes | Top Right NewsRight now in Oracle, AZ there are more than 200 protesters demanding the borders be secured and the buses of illegal aliens stopped from entering their community -- as did the citizens of Murrieta, California, who successfully stopped Obama's illegal alien express 3 times.Combating the protesters are 50 members of La Raza. We are told the crowd of people is increasing. There is a live video feed from the site, which goes on and off the air as the situation warrants:

According to AZ Central which can't be posted here per copyright complaint, things are about to get ugly, Murrieta-style, in Arizona. A group of citizens in Oracle is planning to try to block the federal government from delivering 40 or more Central American children to a boy's ranch that houses at-risk kids...

Submitted by Second District Congressman Ron Barber For 137 years — for 3½ decades before Arizona was a state and 80 years before Sierra Vista was a city — Fort Huachuca has secured our nation’s Southwestern flank. But now the fort faces a new type of threat — a threat from within our own nation. The harmful requirements of sequestration, the irresponsible across-the-board budget cuts passed by Congress in 2011, are forcing the U.S. Army to consider slashing the size of its active-duty force to levels not seen since before Pearl Harbor was attacked. This makes no sense and I...

Local activists are planning to protest Tuesday when federal officials bus undocumented immigrant children to an Arizona boys ranch, organizers said Monday, in a scenario reminiscent of demonstrations earlier this month in Murrieta, California. While stressing that Sycamore Canyon Academy in Oracle, Arizona, near Tucson, took no position on the immigration debate, Ike Shipman, the academy's executive director, confirmed late Monday that "a small number of unaccompanied youth from Central and South America" would be arriving Tuesday for temporary housing pending placements with sponsoring families or deportation. While Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu promised to make sure the protest was...

Protesters in a small town near Tucson want to send a message about the immigration debate Tuesday, when they plan to block a bus they believe will be transporting about 40 immigrant children to an academy for troubled youths in Oracle. The protests are expected to mirror those in Murrieta, California, where the mayor and residents blocked buses carrying immigrant children who were set to be processed there. ... The fallout began in late May when reports surfaced that immigration officials were dropping off hundreds of women and children at Phoenix and Tucson Greyhound bus stations after they had been...

Arizona ranchers invite Pelosi to tour border Will House minority leader respond to challenge?

The federal government is planning to relocate 40 unaccompanied alien children into an already-packed facility in the Sycamore Canyon Academy that houses wards of the state, according to Robert Skiba of Oracle, Arizona. Emboldened by citizens in Murrieta, California who successfully rebuffed the government’s efforts to dump illegal aliens into their town, Skiba's town has organized a protest for Tuesday morning. “We’re going to mobilize and we're going to do the best we can to stop this from happening,” Skiba said. “We're prepared for whatever happens. If they want to send in the SWAT team, armored cars, helicopters, let them...

SIERRA VISTA — More thunderstorm activity which could release heavy amounts of rain is predicted to continue, according to a federal meteorologist.. Friday’s storm created the need to call out additional Sierra Vista Police officers, because of the need to establish traffic control at intersections where traffic lights went out, said Officer Jock Russell. Additionally, there was a criminal incident being investigated which involved the transportation of marijuana during the storm, he said Saturday. “We were slammed, we had to call in extra officers,” Russell said. On Saturday, calls were still coming in of damage to include trees down, power...

"Political language,” warned George Orwell, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Politicians understand that words matter and can be used to trick people. Which is why they can hardly be trusted to express themselves candidly in their own campaigns — or, heaven forbid, write ballot titles for important measures upon which citizens will vote. Earlier this year, citizens in Phoenix, Arizona, gathered more than 50,000 voter signatures to put an initiative on the ballot to reform their public employee pension system. The initiative moves new...

SIERRA VISTA — Friday night’s rain prompted a flash flood warning for Sierra Vista from the National Weather Service until 9:15 p.m., while police reported several flooded roads and intersections throughout the city’s west end. Sierra Vista Cpl. Bobby Essary was out among the storm when he reported that Wilcox Drive was “like a river,” and that both that road and 7th Street were nearly impassable to traffic. There were also reports of flooding along the Highway 90 Bypass up to Buffalo Soldier Trail, though beyond the flooding there had been no reports of people in danger, except for one...

Wouldn’t $3.7 Billion better be used to build a concrete wall across the border of the United States? The fence that the American people were promised when President George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act of 2006 saying “This bill will help protect the American people. This bill will make our borders more secure. It is an important step toward immigration reform." The Fence Act passed the Senate 80-19 and approved $1.2 billion to be used to build a physical barrier more then 700 miles along the Mexico-United States border. Therefore, with 3x the budget being spent to...

President Obama is taking a 15-day vacation in Martha’s Vineyard next month, despite the widespread criticism he’s received for not visiting the U.S.-Mexico border while it descends into chaos. The Obamas will leave Washington on Saturday, Aug. 9, and stay at a $12 million vacation home in Martha’s Vineyard until Sunday, Aug. 24, the White House confirmed late Wednesday. The president is expected to return to Chilmark and stay in a secluded house off North Road that overlooks the north shore and Vineyard Sound, the Martha’s Vineyard Times reported. Though not confirmed by the White House, the Obamas are expected...

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment laboratory yesterday [8 Jul 2014] identified pneumonic plague in a Colorado resident. Investigation revealed the family dog had recently died unexpectedly. The carcass was recovered and tested at the Colorado State University Veterinarian Diagnostic Laboratory, where tests were positive for plague. ... Even though it doesn't kill people in large numbers like it once did, it is a serious disease ... There are 3 types of plague; all can be potentially deadly, if not treated. The 1st is bubonic, which causes lymph nodes to swell. There is also septicemic, which comes about...

Whether measured by the number of criminal cases filed by U.S. attorneys or the number of guilty verdicts they ultimately secured in cases in U.S. district courts, 40 percent of the federal crimes documented by the Justice Department in fiscal 2013 took place in the five U.S. court districts (out of the total of 94 U.S. court districts) that sit on the U.S.-Mexico border. These five U.S. court districts contiguous with the Mexican border were also the five where the largest numbers of individuals were convicted of federal crimes in fiscal 2013. In the Western Texas district alone--which saw more...

Matthew Leber spokesman for the American Patriot, Three Percent, sent Breitbart News photos of what American security contractors on the ground believe is a Muslim prayer rug found near the border in Arizona last week.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Wednesday that while the majority of people in his state approve of his support for comprehensive immigration reform which includes a pathway to citizenship, those who oppose it have dubbed him “Amnesty John.” “The 30 percent view [illegal immigration] as the compelling and only and most emotional issue to them,” McCain said. “They’re the ones who come to my town hall meetings and call me Amnesty John.” McCain was one of the “Gang of Eight” in the Senate to sponsor the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Bill, or S.744. The Senate passed the...

Border Patrol agents working in Arizona, California and Texas continue to be overwhelmed as thousands of unaccompanied children from Central America flood into the United States illegally. As a result, thousands of Border Patrol agents have been pulled off of patrolling the border and into processing facilities where they are making meals, changing bed sheets and babysitting. "We have all of these juveniles so they're pulling agents out of the field to come in and babysit them basically," a source said last month. "They're cancelling some of our specialty details for our crews who go out and work the mountains,...

Reyna Montoya is one of nearly 19,000 young immigrants in Arizona who have been allowed to stay in the U.S. under the Obama administration's deferred action policy, but the benefits of the program in the state have been limited. As Montoya applies for teaching jobs, she considers herself competitively disadvantaged because Arizona hasn't allowed her to get a driver's license as the federal policy allows. She was among those cheering a decision by a federal appeals court that on Monday ruled the state cannot deny driver's licenses to immigrants in the program. The three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court...

Appeals Court Rules Immigrant ‘Dreamers’ Can Get Driver’s Licenses A federal appeals court ruled Monday that young adult illegal immigrants whom President Obama has given tentative permission to be in the country — so-called “Dreamers” — are also entitled to driver’s licenses, and... By Stephen Dinan-The Washington Times A federal appeals court ruled Monday that young adult illegal immigrants whom President Obama has given tentative permission to be in the country — so-called “dreamers” — are also entitled to driver’s licenses and ordered Arizona to issue them. The ruling comes while the government is debating policy about a new wave...

Calling the state policy motivated by animosity, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday ordered that “dreamers” who the federal government allow to work in this country also be issued Arizona driver's licenses,

Expert warns Middle East turmoil could sting U.S. WASHINGTON – A top U.S. Defense Department analyst under President Bush says ISIS, the Islamic jihadists creating a Muslim caliphate in Iraq and beyond, could use the Mexican border to infiltrate America, and it could happen “sooner rather than later.” At a time when thousands are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally each day, the risks might never be higher, said Michael Maloof, now a senior staff writer for WND and expert on the Middle East. He said there are risks to the economy and the nation’s health. And he warned the Iraq...