Arpaio, back when both arms still worked . . .

With 22 days remaining, the effort to boot Sheriff Joe Arpaio from office has re-started the paid petition-gathering campaign it discontinued back on March 18.

See also:
-Joe Arpaio Fans Look a Little Desperate With Billboards Urging People Not to Sign Recall
-Joe Arpaio Recall: Give Joe the Pink Slip and Help Retire Him from Office
-Joe Arpaio Recall Claims 200,359 Valid Signatures with 38 Days and Counting

Lilia Alvarez, the campaign manager for the recall-Joe group Respect Arizona, confirmed this evening that a "joint paid and volunteer" campaign is now in effect, in part due to additional funds having been received by the group.

Join the fight to end Arpaio's tyranny once and for all.

"We're very grateful for the donors that have stepped forward," she told me. "People know, with 22 days left, it's now or never."

She said the decision to end the paid campaign in March was a tough one, but some of contributions pledged to the group had not materialized.

Donate to the Arpaio Recall group Respect Arizona.

"To hold those pledging money and our own volunteers accountable, we had to scale down the paid effort and hammer away at our fundraising," she said.

Monty's head nearly explodes as he's challenged by Carlos Garcia of Puente

Kudos to Carlos Garcia and his fellow activists at Puente for again confronting Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery on his policy of overcharging undocumented workers so as to make them ineligible for bail, coercing a guilty plea that will likely make them deportable.

See also:
-Bill Montgomery's Victims Break: 14 Captured in Sportex Raid Plead Out Under Coercion
-DPS Officer's Pursuit of DREAMer Lands Woman in Stir for Six Months (w/Update)
-Bill Montgomery's Victims Plead Not Guilty En Masse as Their Children Weep
-Bill Montgomery's Smoking Gun: ICE PowerPoint Shows Monty's Minions How to Deport More Immigrants

Garcia tells me that Monty was in Maryvale on Thursday night, along with Phoenix Police Chief Daniel Garcia and Phoenix City Councilman Danny Valenzuela, for a community forum. Essentially, Puente took over, and put Monty on blast for his apartheid-like practices.

In his address to Montgomery seen in the video above, Garcia asks him about the 23 mothers, fathers, grandfathers, aunts and uncles arrested February 8, in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's raid on Sportex Apparel in Tempe.

These ordinary workers were charged with class four felonies for forgery and identity theft, and held without bail. Their undocumented status and the type of felonies they were charged with made them ineligible for bond under Arizona law.

After three months of enduring regular strip-searches, violent conditions, abusive detention officers, and inedible rations, fourteen of the accused signed agreements with the MCAO this week, pleading guilty to class six felony impersonation, a plea that will likely make them removable by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Horne wins, Monty loses, and Sand Land politics slithers on...

I'm beginning to think Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery should enroll in some remedial law classes.

That's because now a superior court judge has agreed with an administrative law judge that Montgomery's office messed up the campaign finance case against Attorney General Tom Horne and his outreach director Kathleen Winn.

See also:
-Arizona AG Tom Horne's Sex Scandal Scuttles Gubernatorial Bid
-Bill Montgomery Screws Up Tom Horne Complaint, Judge Recommends Dismissal
-Bill Montgomery Believes Law He's Enforcing Against Tom Horne Is Unconstitutional
-Tom Horne's Snakepit, Bill Montgomery's Dirty Money, and the Problem with Carmen Chenal

See, in March, Administrative Law Judge Tammy Eigenheer ruled that Montgomery lacked authority in the case. Due process was not followed, the judge said. And the matter should be dismissed.

On Thursday, Superior Court Judge John Rea agreed with the ALJ, finding that the law backed the argument proffered by lawyers for Horne and Winn that Montgomery lacked jurisdiction in the case.

Essentially, Montgomery should not have been involved, Rea found, and should not have ordered Horne and Winn to pay back some $500,000 contributed to an independent expenditure committee that Winn ran in the 2010 general election.

The allegation is that there was coordination between Winn's IE and Horne, which is a no-no under state law -- a law, which, ironically, Montgomery believes to be unconstitutional.

Bill Montgomery's victims speak...

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery must feel really proud of himself. After more than three months in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's dirty, dangerous and sometimes deadly jails, 14 of the 23 undocumented workers being prosecuted in the MCSO's February 8 raid of Sportex Apparel cut plea deals with the prosecutor.

See also:
-DPS Officer's Pursuit of DREAMer Lands Woman in Stir for Six Months (w/Update)
-Bill Montgomery: Victimizer of Undocumented Workers, Turns "Victims' Rights" Advocate in DC
-Bill Montgomery's Smoking Gun: ICE PowerPoint Shows Monty's Minions How to Deport More Immigrants
-Bill Montgomery's Victims Rot in Jail, While Arizona Republic Praises His Hypocrisy on Immigration Reform

Charged with class four felonies involving identity theft and forgery, these parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles pleaded to class six criminal impersonation on April 30. The judge gave them all time served and six months of unsupervised probation.

But this does not guarantee their freedom, as they will now be transferred to the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And under the guidelines taught to Montgomery's prosecutors in early January of 2012, deportation is "no problem," for ICE if the subsection of the law is specified.

And in the case of all 14 plea deals, the subsection is specified.

Watch A clip from The Undocumented on PBS. See more from Independent Lens.

Please see update below.

I have very little to go on with the press release below from U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement concerning the "apparent suicide" at the Eloy Detention Center by a 24 year-old Guatemalan woman named Elsa Guadalupe-Gonzales.

Getting info out of the feds is like pulling wisdom teeth with a pair of pliers. Sometimes that's because of confidentiality rules. Sometimes it's because, hey, it's the federal government, which can pretty much do whatever the hell it wants.

I received the info from ICE late in the day. Hopefully, I can get more information tomorrow.

Many of you will not be sympathetic. She broke the law, she deserved her fate. That is what many will think, albeit in the abstract.

A lack of empathy is a failure of imagination, a failure to see that there but for the grace of God or just dumb luck goes you or someone you care about.

The Family of Zach Pithan

Zachariah Pithan, killed April 20 in a confrontation with four Phoenix cops

During the uproar over the 2010 shooting death of South Phoenix resident Danny Rodriguez by former Phoenix Police Officer Richard Chrisman, I often wondered why two Phoenix cops could not subdue one unarmed man without resorting to lethal force.

See also:
-Richard Chrisman Report Released by Phoenix Police Department: Read It Here
-A Teen's Shooting Death Was Avoidable, Even If the Cops Call It "Justified"

You may recall that the other Phoenix cop on the scene, Officer Sergio Virgillo, indicated that neither Rodriguez nor his dog, which Chrisman also killed, had done anything to justify the use of deadly force.

Chrisman was later fired by the PPD, and still faces charges of second degree murder, aggravated assault, and cruelty to animals. Trial dates in the case keep getting delayed.

Before shooting Rodriguez, Chrisman deployed both his pepper spray and his Taser. Still, Virgillo told investigators that Rodriguez had his hands up and had stepped back before Chrisman plugged him.

The Latino community was incensed by the shooting. The fact Rodriguez was Hispanic and Chrisman an Anglo lent fuel to the fire.

But there is no ethnic conflict when it comes to the shooting death of 22 year-old Zachariah Pithin on April 20, as he and the four officers who confronted him at his apartment that Saturday night are all white.

Perhaps that's why there's been little outcry over Pithin's death. And yet, Pithin's shooting seems just as questionable, if not more so, than the Rodriguez killing, even if we take the PPD's account of the incident as the Gospel truth.

Joe playing with pink undies when he was still fat and sassy. These days he looks like death warmed over...

I've been thinking about sending Sheriff Joe Arpaio a note expressing my deep concern for his health, and suggesting that he resign before the MCSO ends up being Phoenix's version of Weekend at Bernie's, with Joe in the starring role.

See also:
-Joe Arpaio Recall Claims 200,359 Valid Signatures with 38 Days and Counting
-Joe Arpaio Recall Moves to Dismiss Larry Klayman's Bogus Lawsuit
-Joe Arpaio's Chad Willems Talks to the Shadow Army about the "Blocking Campaign"

In order to drive home the point, I was considering inscribing my message on a banana peel and sending it through the post, but the folks at Respect Arizona have an even better idea:

Let's all send Joe a pink slip.

And no, not the one Ava used to wear on their anniversary. Loooong ago.

Ustream

Monty, ever the hypocrite...

It's a requirement in Arizona, more than in any other state in the Union, that politicians be shameless hypocrites. And Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery is no piker in this regard.

See also:
-DPS Officer's Pursuit of DREAMer Lands Woman in Stir for Six Months
-Bill Montgomery's Deaf Victim Diana Blanco Honored by Las Cafeteras
-Bill Montgomery's Victims Rot in Jail, While Arizona Republic Praises His Hypocrisy on Immigration Reform
-Bill Montgomery's Victims Plead Not Guilty En Masse as Their Children Weep

Thursday, Monty appeared before a U.S. House Judiciary subcommittee chaired by Representative Trent Franks to offer his opinion on the proposed Victims Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Watch a clip of Monty at Thursday's hearing.

The amendment would offer crime victims many of the same rights the Arizona Constitution provides, including the right to attend all court hearings, the right to restitution, and so on.

The merits of such an amendment are debatable, as you'll see if you want to sit through all two hours of the hearing.

In Montgomery's highly ironic testimony, Maricopa County's top prosecutor presented himself as a "victims rights" advocate, who has worked as a "victims rights attorney," in addition to his duties as county attorney.

Yep, Monty's all for helping the victims of crime.

Unless they're undocumented.

Carmen Cornejo (in turquoise dress, center) and the DREAMers, demonstrating for Sol Zenil Wednesday at Phoenix's ICE office

If you need an illustration of Arizona's diseased "attrition through enforcement" mentality, look no further than the case of Solaguahire Zenil, a local DREAMer, who is currently in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

See also:
-The MCAO Follows ICE's Blueprint for Separating Immigrant Families

According to her immigration attorney Jose Penalosa, Zenil, 23, pleaded guilty this Monday to one misdemeanor count of possession of a forgery device. This, after spending six months in jail, nonbondable, because she was accused of felony forgery charges and presumed to be undocumented.

Normally, ICE would release someone like Zenil after taking custody of her. She's a DREAMer, who has been in the United States since she was five, and she's DACA-eligible, meaning she would benefit from President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

Most importantly, her conviction is for a misdemeanor, not a felony.

Why she has not been released yet has so troubled her fellow DREAMers that they demonstrated today outside Phoenix's ICE office, demanding her freedom. She may have been taken to ICE's Eloy Detention Center, but so far, Penalosa has not been able to make contact with his client.

"If they take her to Eloy, then I'll have access to her," he told me, as protesters chanted, "Free Sol Now," nearby. "Once I have her case number, I can file a petition for a bond hearing."

Lilia Alvarez (center) of Respect Arizona, announcing the latest signature totals for the recall Arpaio effort.

Respect Arizona, the group attempting to recall Sheriff Joe Arpaio from office, may yet prove the naysayers wrong.

At a press conference Monday in downtown Phoenix, about 20 members of the group gathered to announce that, so far, they have collected 200,359 valid signatures to recall Sheriff Joe.

See also:
-Joe Arpaio Recall Boasts 169,283 Valid Signatures, 166,034 More Needed by May 30
-Joe Arpaio Recall Has "Less Than 200,000" Signatures to Gather, with 56 Days Left
-Joe Arpaio Recall: A Chance to Prove the Pundits Wrong
-Joe Arpaio's Chad Willems Talks to the Shadow Army about the "Blocking Campaign" and the End of GOP Rule in Maricopa County

That total is up from Respect Arizona's last announcement on April 4, when RA's campaign manager, Lilia Alvarez, informed supporters that RA had 169,283 verified signatures from qualified county electors, more than half of the 335,317 signatures needed to force a recall election.

Join the fight to remove Sheriff Joe Arpaio from office.

Respect Arizona's deadline to turn in its petitions to Maricopa County Elections is May 30, leaving 38 days to garner the 134,958 valid signatures, or around 3,551 signatures per day, needed to meet its goal.

That's not including a necessary cushion of additional signatures to cover those that inevitably will be tossed by elections officials for one reason or another.