Free Republic

Jakki Pettitt’s letter (“Waveyard would give Mesa identity”, Sept. 27), aptly recognizes the importance of a city to develop an identity and personality with time. As a Mountain View High School graduate and Mesa resident, I can wholeheartedly relate to the frustration of Mesa’s lacking flair. It also brings to light however, the underlying debate: is it the place of Mesa’s city government to give away $20 million of taxpayer-owned assets to create said identity? The answer is no. A drive by deserted Riverview, a project that consumed $80 million in city funds, quickly dispels any notion that taxpayer money...

Nearly 30 people swarmed a Mesa convenience store at Alma School and 8th Street late Friday, stealing about 15 beer cases, chips, sports drinks, gum and candy. The Mesa Police Department said this is the second time in less than two weeks that this type of group shoplifting crime has occurred.

Bomb Scare At Tucson Grocery Store Jenny Rose KGUN9 News An explosive situation tied up the intersection of Prince and Campbell for hours after someone found a bomb at a grocery story. Jenny Rose has the latest. http://www.kgun9.com/NewsArticle/tabid/111...38/Default.aspx

Efrain Martinez wanted a better life so badly he couldn’t even feel the cactus needles lodged in his swollen, bloody feet as he crossed the desert — and the U.S. border with Mexico — for at least the third time. But this journey was different because of the way it started: Martinez had just spent 42 days in an Arizona jail for lying to police and for his possible involvement in a shooting incident with a former City Council candidate in downtown Mesa. It took him less than a week in late April to be convicted, deported and then return...

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version February 14, 2006, 8:08 a.m. Language@War The Middle East-studies front. Which president do you trust to stock our defense and intelligence agencies with Arabic-speaking experts who can prosecute the war on terror: the president of the United States, George W. Bush, or the president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), Juan Cole? YouÂ’re going to have to decide, because presidents Bush and Cole are even now involved in a tug-of-war over the administrationÂ’s newly announced National Security Language Initiative. In a sense, National Review Online and its readers are...

FEDS CHARGE 13 PROPRIETORS OF ARIZONA MOTELS WITH USING BUSINESSES TO HARBOR SMUGGLED ALIENS United States Attorney Seeks to Forfeit Five Motels PHOENIX - Indictments charging 13 owners and former owners of six motels on Main Street in Mesa, Arizona were unsealed late yesterday. The indictments charge the defendants with harboring illegal aliens and allege that the businesses facilitated organized human smuggling. The government is seeking forfeiture of five of those properties following a nine-month undercover probe by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The initial results of the investigation were announced here this morning by U.S. Attorney Paul K....

Bolivian President Carlos Mesa gives up his station La Paz - the President of Bolivia, Carlos Mesa, gave up his station because of the social agitation centered on the nationalization of the gas which shakes the country since mid-May, announced the interested party Monday evening in a radio-televised message. "It goes from there from my responsibility for saying that I also arrived far I could it", said the Head of the Bolivian State. "For this reason, I decided to present my resignation of the my post of President of the Republic", it added. Mr. Mesa had occupied this station...

Mesa police want to add monkey to SWAT team Associated Press Apr. 16, 2005 03:10 PM MESA, Ariz. - The Mesa Police Department is looking to add some primal instinct to its SWAT team. And to do that, it's looking to a monkey. "Everybody laughs about it until they really start thinking about it," said Mesa Officer Sean Truelove, who builds and operates tactical robots for the suburban Phoenix SWAT team. "It would change the way we do business." Truelove is spearheading the department's request to purchase and train a capuchin monkey, considered the second smartest primate to the chimpanzee....

SANTA BARBARA — Plans to build luxury homes on a mesa overlooking the Bolsa Chica wetlands in Huntington Beach won approval Thursday from the California Coastal Commission, ending a 30-year battle that saved the salt marsh from development. Hearthside Homes will build 349 houses and a park on 105 acres overlooking the 1,100-acre Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve, which is undergoing a $65-million restoration — the largest such undertaking in Southern California. The project — which has been reduced in size and scope over the years — represents what is expected to be the final skirmish over the wetlands after the...

Saudi Arabia has funneled tens of thousands of dollars into the "outreach" programs of Columbia University's Middle East Institute, which until last week was training some of the city's public-school teachers in how to teach students about Middle East politics. Since 2002, the government-owned Saudi Aramco has given the institute annual grants of $15,000 for unspecified outreach activities. The institute's outreach activities have included a 15-week teacher-training course on Middle East politics led by Columbia faculty members and graduate students. In a letter dated April 27, 2004, a scholar of Arab nationalism who took over the Middle East Institute in...

When Rashid Khalidi took over the newly established Edward Said Chair of Middle East Studies at Columbia University last fall, the appointment was generally viewed as an academic coup for the school, which had succeeded in wooing away a prominent Middle East expert from the University of Chicago, a longtime rival. But Khalidi soon became the target of an Internet campaign that questioned his patriotism. Conservative critics zeroed in on his outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq and his public expressions of sympathy for the Palestinian cause. "Columbia vs. America," declared a story on Campus Watch, a Web site...

“A symbolic gesture of joy" What follows is the defense, the apology, by Edward Said, who went to Lebanon and threw a rock at an Israeli guard building over the boarder. He was roundly condemned for this act. This is the leading intellectual of MESA, advisers to the Clintons Administration, policy makers for 8 years?! MESA is still extorting funds from the government. CASTING A STONE: University Professor Edward Said aroused controversy in July when, during a visit to Lebanon, he was portrayed in a photograph hurling a stone toward the Israeli border. The photograph was distributed by the French...

The software is blocking the posting of material from the callous, cynical, hate-filled, hypocrite lefties at CounterPunch. I'm going to go ahead and provide a link under this vanity for the following reasons: 1) To further publicize the Middle East Forum's important new website, Campus Watch, which is devoted to monitoring and countering the extreme political radicalism and anti-Westernism dominant in academic Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies. 2) So y'all can have a good laugh at how the lefties HOWL when the merest shadow of their tactics of academic insurgency are applied to them. (Somebody call the WHAAAAAAAAAAAMBULANCE!) CounterPunch article...

An important new organization that promises to focus public concern on "blame America first" bias in the academy is in danger of being discredited. The Middle East Forum, under the direction of Daniel Pipes, has established a project and website called, "Campus Watch." Campus Watch is designed to monitor Middle East Studies in the United States, analyzing and criticizing errors and biases, and drawing public attention to controversies over funding, academic appointments, etc. Campus Watch maintains that Middle East Studies in the United States is dominated by professors who are actively hostile to America's interests in the world. The organization's...

Here is their "About Us" page: About Campus Watch The Problem American scholars of the Middle East, to varying degrees, reject the views of most Americans and the enduring policies of the U.S. government about the Middle East.Examples: There may be a war on terrorism underway, but the scholars downplay the dangers posed by militant Islam, seeing it as a benign and even democratizing force.With only one exception, every American president since 1948 has spoken forcefully about the benefits to the United States from strong and deep relations with Israel. In contrast, American scholars often propagate a view of Middle...

Valley's top monsignor avoided sexual-harassment suit Richard Nilsen/The Arizona Republic Monsignor Dale Fushek says that he did nothing wrong and that the payment was done simply to avoid the greater costs of fighting a lawsuit. By Nena Baker, Kelly Ettenborough and Joseph A. ReavesThe Arizona RepublicMay 31, 2002 12:00:00 The Diocese of Phoenix quietly paid $45,000 to settle a sexual-harassment claim in 1995 against one of its most prominent priests, who has since been promoted to second-in-command in the diocese to Bishop Thomas O'Brien. Monsignor Dale Fushek, pastor of St. Timothy Catholic Community in Mesa and the founder of Life...