Michael Bryan By Michael Bryan I sometimes indulge in a little prognostication. Last week I told some friends that I believed Kelly would win the nomination for the CD8 special. Check. Now, I will reveal the rest of my prediction: Kelly will lose the CD8 special by an embarrassing margin. And then he will lose the CD2 … Read more
By Michael Bryan The Kelly campaign today leaked a poll by National Research which headlines him "beating" Ron Barber 49% to 45%. The poll also indicates that he is the only GOP candidate who can do that. Imagine that. Barber beats Sitton and Antenori by a few points (43% to 39% and 46% to 40%) … Read more
By Michael Bryan
Shame. That's what disbarment amounts to. It is the ultimate sanction of an attorney for acts that are inconsistent with the professional ethical standards for practicing law: frankly, that's sometimes not a terribly high bar to clear. But Andy Thomas missed it by a mile. Thomas was disbarred today by a three member disciplinary panel of the Arizona Supreme Court. (coverage in the NYT, Arizona Republic, and AP Wire)
Thomas joins such notable disbarred attorneys as Alger Hiss, Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon, Mike Nifong (of the Duke lacross case), and local ne'er-do-wells such as Lourdes Lopez (of the Bradley Schwartz murder) and Ken Peasley (knowingly eliciting false testimony in a capital murder case).
Of the 31 ethical violations alleged against Thomas, clear and convincing evidence was found that he actually committed 27 of them. These included the very serious allegations that he used his office to file charges solely to burden or embarrass his political enemies, engaged in fraud and deceit, and even committed perjury in pursuit of his political vendettas.
I can only imagine the impact Thomas' corruption would be having on the already sullied image of Arizona should he actually have been nominated and become Arizona's Attorney General. Given the margin between Horne and Thomas was about 1/5th of one percent, it was quite a narrow miss. That would have been a historic disbarment, indeed.
Of course, now Tom Horne is facing his own problems with the FBI… The AZGOP, folks, the gift that keeps on giving.
Republican Maricopa County Supervisor Don Stapley, one victim of Thomas' witch-hunts, had this to say:
"I listened to Judge O'Neil's public statement from the bench this morning. I was flooded with feelings. The strongest among them came when Judge O'Neil found, ". . . by clear and convincing evidence, that Mr. Thomas and Ms. Aubuchon acted with no substantial purpose other than to embarrass and burden Don Stapley."
"Three years ago, I was indicted for all the wrong reasons. The burden imposed on me, on my sweet wife Kathy and on our children is almost impossible to describe. I listened with mixed feelings when O'Neil said "Andrew Thomas is hereby disbarred for his conduct."
"Part of our burden is lifted with the disbarment order. Sadly, the burden will never be fully assuaged."
"I have had personally confirmed that "a prosecutor's power is a dangerous power." The new County Court Tower has a significant phrase engraved on its face. It says "The First Order of Society is Justice." The court today has served justice."
Thomas made the following statement upon learning of the Panel's findings:
"Today corruption has won and justice has lost. I brought corruption cases in good faith involving powerful people, and the political and legal establishment blatantly covered up and retaliated by targeting my law license. Arizona has some of the worst corruption in America, according to a recent national survey. The political witch hunt that's just ended makes things worse by sending a chilling message to prosecutors: Those who take on the powerful will lose their livelihood."
"I will be holding a news conference tomorrow, not today, and have no further statement to make today on the travesty we have just witnessed. I will have further details on the time and location later today or tomorrow morning."
I certainly agree with Thomas that Arizona has some of the worst corruption in America; we just disagree where the corruption lies. Today's findings make it clear and convincing exactly who is corrupt: Andy Thomas, his supporters and conspirators in the AZGOP machine.
Thomas resorts here to the all-too-common GOP tactic of calling the kettle black: allege that your political opponents are doing the exact thing you are accused of in the hopes that it makes your opponent's very well-founded and reasonable claim seem implausible by your baseless and misleading use of the same terms. Accused – and found responsible for – political witch-hunting and corruption? Claim your accusers are engaging in a "political witch-hunt" and "corruption", so that people will tune out the newly meaningless "he said, he said" noise that ensues.
It should be very interesting to see what Thomas will say at his planned press conference. I suspect that it will involve an elaboration on how his oppenents are conspiring against him, and I expect to hear the words "political witch-hunt" and "corruption" ad nauseum.
Thomas' disbarment brings a new, and surely unwelcome, focus on his partnership with Sheriff Arpaio. Arpaio's involvement in the very investigations and cases for which Thomas has been disbarred was so uncomfortably deep and compromising that Arpaio had to sacrifice his own chief deputy, Dave Henderschott, in order to claim his hands were clean. Perhaps the DOJ may finally come to realize that expecting Arpaio to cooperate with their years-long investigation of discrimination and civil rights abuses under Arpaio's leadership of MSCO is a fool's errand.
BTW, You can sign Steve Muratore's (of the excellent blog Arizona Eagletarian) petition to encourage the DOJ to stop negotiations and just take Arpaio to court already.
I just hope that the come-uppance of Thomas, and the coming lawsuit against Arpaio, will teach the people of Arizona a lasting lesson about the damage that hyper-partisan, vindictive, self-agrandizing, scapegoating, race-baiting, and ideologically-motivated politicians like Arpaio and Thomas can do when placed in law enforcement roles with nearly unfettered discretionary powers. I guy can hope, can't he?
See video of the Panel's findings and and local coverage of the findings after the click…
By Michael Bryan
About time one of the CD8 Republican candidates pointed out what an ill-informed, truth-twisting dolt Jesse Kelly is when he talks about energy policy.
Martha McSally outright contradicted Kelly's claim that the U.S. has "significantly more oil than Saudi Arabia" during a recent debate. Of course, right-wingers jumped on her, claiming she "appeared unsure and reluctant about using American oil and gas resources for our own domestic energy needs — apparently content to remain dependent on costly foreign imports." Apparently, working with the actual facts is now defeatism among GOPers.
What McSally said was:
"We need a strategy that uses all the resources we have to get on the path to energy independence. And, Jesse, we don't have more oil than Saudi Arabia. The oil your talking about is cost prohibitive in order to actually get to it, because we don't have those technologies, yet. So we need those to be developed. And maybe you should use your G.I. Bill to go back and get a geology degree, and you can help with that. But the reality is that that is not available."
Oh, smack! The crowd starting oohing and laughing when McSally recommended Kelly get himself some actual education on the topic. It has to sting a little for college drop-out Kelly to get told by the candidate with two Masters degrees, and a stint as a professor of National Security Studies at the George C. Marshall Center in Germany, to get back to school and learn some shit.
It's nice to see a little reality-based discussion on the Right. Let's see if McSally keeps up the criticism of Kelly's less-than-real energy policy talking points.
See the video after the click…
By Michael Bryan
Today President Obama announced that pursuant to a secret executive order, six Republican-dominated states that have veto-proof majorities and the Governorship, including Arizona, Florida, Vermont, Texas, Alabama, and South Carolina, will be immediately placed in federal receivership. It is expected that a further twenty states with GOP controlled state governments will be placed in receivership by the end of next week.
The effect of Obama's secret executive order, which was apparently issued shortly after Obama taking office in 2009, will be to dissolve all state governmental authority within the targeted states. The Governors and state legislatures will be banned from meeting or conducting governmental business, and briefly held in federal detention pending final debriefing and liquidation. The President will then unilaterally appoint a Special Master to administer each state covered by the order.
The Special Master for Arizona will be Janet Napolitano, who will also retain her position as Homeland Security director. Said Napolitano at the press conference announcing the receivership, "I look forward to cleaning house in Arizona and putting right all the harm done in the three years since I left office in Arizona. Republicans had better go get their guns, because we are coming for them. We'll pry them from your cold dead fingers, if necessary."
Already, the DHS has begun distribution of the new rules under which Arizonans will live during the receivership. The pamphlet is entitled "Sharia Law and You". Napolitano announced that Muslim legal scholars from Iran would be flown in to act as ad visors to the new Special Master's administration.
On a personal note, I have to admit, it seems the Republicans were right. It seems that Obama was angling at dictatorship, domination, and the destruction of the American way of life, all along. What I ignorantly called their paranoid rantings were actually well-informed and accurate desciptions of the designs the President had on taking all power for himself and his cronies. I deeply apologize to my Republican brethren for my ignorance and lack of foresight.
Learn more about these surprising developments after the flip…