With ethics and corruption charges felling leaders in Congress, it might be informative to take a look at the less-than-respectable sources of campaign financing in Arizona’s crop of Congressional races. The bottom of a dirty money barrel has got to be the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Surely, no one in Arizona took money from Abramoff’s … Read more

Jim Pederson (D), who is running for US Senate against incumbent Jon Kyl (R), recently released his latest ad. It doesn’t even mention Kyl, but it does criticize Congress in vague terms for subsidizing big oil, implying by silence and association that Kyl voted for those subsidies in the latest Energy Bill. He didn’t. As … Read more

John W. Dean has done that hardest of things: speak the truth, even when it hurts. Dean weaves together social science research, including the much derided findings of Bob Altemeyer’s study that Conservative personalities tend to be fear-based, recent studies by political science scholars of changes to the rules and institutional culture of the Executive … Read more

Link: Crop Cul-de-Sac | Metropolis Magazine. Cool! For once, someone has done something artistic with crops who isn’t a space alien. The 30 acre field is a one third scale replica of a new nearby Planned Unit Development. The artist’s family sold part of their farm to developers to build the real development. I guess … Read more

Steve Huffman, Republican cadidate for Congress in AZ CD 8, finally got his FEC report in on July 20th. As off this writing, the FEC still hasn’t finished processing, so the report page images I prefer to use are still not available, though all the information is present on the site. Huffman raised very well … Read more