McCain fights Giffords, steers clear of Hayworth

Desperately attempting to appear as the forceful incumbent, although never venturing far without Sen. Jon Kyl by his side, John McCain is inexplicably baring his teeth to Democrat U.S. Rep.Gabrielle Giffords.

The Republic’s Dan Nowicki includes an exchange of terse notes between the three, regarding border funding in his AZ/DC Blog.

McCain’s new co-joined posture exposes him as vulnerable and unable to function as a stand-alone candidate against the assault on his right flank from J.D. Hayworth. He has increasingly used Kyl as a prop in his attempts to exhibit vitality.  Instead, the old maverick appears weakened.

Going after CD 8 Democrat Gifford, a woman he has largely ignored since she came to congress in 2007, seems contrived to create the illusion of energy. But John McCain is tired and showing it.

And he continues to ignore invitations to debate his challenger, J.D. Hayworth.

Gabrielle Giffords is a manufactured diversion, but an ill-conceived one. Her youth and vitality serve only to emphasize his years and weariness.  McCain recently dismissed his campaign chairman and her associate for not presenting him in a more advantageous light. This war with Giffords serves no benefit, and is actually detrimental.

It looks as though McCain may need to bring in the third string.

Even THEY know the case they make is absurd

Seeing Red AZ makes a prediction:

This will become a classic in the annals of  Arizona Republic editorials.

Surprise ending to interactive survey, “my friends”

What political aficionado can resist a telephone survey during election season?

Exactly!

The word is that folks are receiving automated calls that are also interactive, allowing for responses to inquiries with a yes or no answer.

That’s right up most of our alleys, so to speak.

Questions related to the recipient’s voting propensity, whether or not they voted for the tax hiking Prop. 100, support Second Amendment rights of gun ownership, are pro-life and are likely to vote for McCain or J.D. Hayworth.  Included was that all-encompassing question of Tea Party involvement.

All in all, there were enough hot button issues over which to toast more than a few marshmallows.

And wouldn’t you know? It was produced by the worried ‘Friends of John McCain,’ who are obviously flailing around at this late date still trying to identify their fading base.

The daily’s umpteenth heartrending approach

Illegal aliens in Arizona are finding an inhospitable climate as bills that impact them are written and signed into law. Most recently it was the now renowned SB 1070.

Today we are treated to a lengthy report in the daily regarding the impact on school children whose parents are illegally in Arizona. The families move, we are told — although rarely back to Mexico. The featured family getting coverage today is heading to the more hospitable state of New Mexico, where “there is no fear and they treat you like human beings.”

Just days ago it was Colorado that was the recipient of another family deciding to move on.

Last August Seeing Red AZ exposed the growing litany of reasons for granting amnesty to those in our country illegally. The initial rationale put forth by the proponents of illegal immigration was that the United States was in need of “guest workers.” The current economic situation, with citizen unemployment numbers skyrocketing and millions of homes in foreclosure, quelled that.

Next came the “breaking up families was heartless” approach. No blame was assigned to those who arrive here in violation of the law as co-conspirators with their handsomely paid coyotes.  It is they who bear the blame for breaking up their own families. Neither is there ever a mention of the second families often started here and the ones abandoned in Mexico.

If those approaches don’t grab you, there is another choice for granting legal status to lawbreakers: Deaths in the desert. Those who chose to cross the desert in the summer heat are opting to do so, but now we are told it is the fault of American citizens “mugging” the illegals with “extremist rhetoric.”

This October 2008 post, on the same topic, is as relevant today as when it was written.

Rest assured there will be more articles. We await the latest excuse. If the editorial board is running out of ideas, they could always employ some of those used by the pre-election amnesty architect John McCain.  Before running in fear from the campaign of consistent conservative J.D. Hayworth, McCain was a reliable leftie who famously opined “We are all God’s children,” as he excused lawlessness  in his quest for open borders and votes.

Quelland in? Quelland out?

The long arm of Clean Elections appears to have cleaned another Republican clock

Arizona officials say the state House seat held by Rep. Doug Quelland (R-Dist.10) is now officially vacant due to a judge’s ruling.

Yesterday, Secretary of State Ken Bennett notified the state Republican Party of the need to begin work on appointing a replacement. Bennett acted after the Citizens Clean Election Commission officially notified him of the vacancy, according to a report in the daily.  

The Clean Elections Commission is an unelected body with the power to nullify elections of the people.

On May 17, a judge ruled against Quelland’s appeal of the commission’s May 2009 order. Quelland was accused of padding his publicly funded 2008 campaign with private spending.

Quelland’s Attorney Tim Casey says Quelland is evaluating his options and has until June 14 to appeal.

Seeing Red AZ has covered this issue previously, here and here.

Yet another sexual predator lurking in AZ schools

Carl Peak, a substitute teacher in Tucson was arrested earlier this week after police said they were contacted by officials at Rivera Elementary School in the Sunnyside Unified School District, who reported six girls said Peak had touched them inappropriately.

Peak, 66, was booked into the Pima County jail on six counts of suspicion of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, according to a Tucson police news release.

Most egregiously, Peak had previously been fired by another school district for similar allegations.

He also served as a substitute teacher in the Tucson Unified School District until he was fired in March. At that time, a student at Vail Middle School reported inappropriate touching, said Nancy Woll, TUSD’s chief human-resources officer.

The Tucson Police Department was notified, but Woll wasn’t sure how police resolved that incident. TPD spokesman Sgt. Fabian Pacheco said Tuesday he was unable to find any reports filed against Peak by TUSD, according to a report in the Tucson Daily Star.

Amazing.

Peak was also counseled last November by TUSD’s human-resources department because it was reported that he was “too touchy” with students at Maxwell Middle School, Woll said.

“The November incident didn’t raise too many flags because sometimes we do have to counsel people about the importance of not treating students like their grandchildren or their own children – that a different technique is required,” Woll said. “He was basically warned that if other complaints were made, he would be terminated.”

Carl Peak began substituting for both TUSD and Sunnyside in 2007. Sunnyside spokeswoman Monique Soria said substitutes are required to have a valid fingerprint clearance card, which Peak possessed at the time of hire. Fingerprint cards are valid for six years.

These are just a few previous posts on the topic here, here, here, here, and here.

AZ Republic concedes Mexico’s own despicable immigration policies

As Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon harangued the United States and has been sharply critical of Arizona’s enforcement law, as opening the door to “intolerance, hate and discrimination” the reality is that Mexico actually brutalizes its own immigrants.

 The vast majority of those detained by Mexican authorities are from four impoverished Central American countries: Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador.

Read this report in the daily detailing merciless brutality of immigrants into Mexico who are kidnapped and held for ransom, robbed and raped — often by the Mexican police. Imprisonment and exorbitant fines have long been an integral part of dealing with their own illegal aliens, most of whom have no intention of staying in Mexico but are using it as their portal to gain illegal entry into the United States. 

There’s been no public clamor for “comprehensive immigration reform” in Mexico, however, because pro-illegal-alien speech by non-citizens is prohibited.

Yet open-border protesters marched freely at the Capitol building in Arizona, comparing Republican governor Jan Brewer to Hitler, waving Mexican flags, advocating that demonstrators “smash the state,” and holding signs that proclaimed “No human is illegal” and “We have rights.”

Mr. Calderon needs to reassess his vitriolic rhetoric, and match it with facts.  It is in Mexico where oppression and terror reign.

Boots on the border? Mexico responds with a lecture

Mark Krikorian, writing for National Review’s The Corner does great work with Sending the National Guard: The Last Refuge of Scoundrels.

A reader asks:

Does anyone believe that Obama’s Guard deployment, so proximate to his scolding from Calderon, was not pre-approved — if not outright directed by — the Mexican president himself (as a sop to the stupid Anglos)?

I think “pre-cleared” is probably more accurate. But get this, from the Mexican embassy’s statement on the Guard deployment:

Additionally, the Government of Mexico expects that National Guard personnel will strengthen US operations in the fight against transnational organized crime that operates on both sides of our common border and that it will not, in accordance to its legal obligations, conduct activities directly linked to the enforcement of immigration laws.

So now they’re lecturing us about the “legal obligations” of the National Guard?

Unbelievable.

Phoenix police officer killed, suspect in custody

A Phoenix Police officer was shot and killed while conducting a search in the area of  Indian School Road and 19th Avenue early this morning.

Officer Travis P. Murphy, 29,  leaves a wife and children ages 2 years old and 2 weeks old.

Danny Ledesma Martinez, 30, has been taken into custody. He served almost three years in prison for felony charges of misconduct involving weapons in the Tucson area, according to the Arizona Department of Corrections.

Martinez was released in April 2009. He pleaded guilty in Tucson City Court to DUI in October 2009. Pleaded guilty to theft in Tucson City Court in 2003.

Police Spokesman Trent Crump said Martinez appeared to be  a legal resident of the United States.

PLEA’s report of this senseless tragedy can be seen here.

UPDATE: Read more as reported in the daily here.

Councilman DiCiccio: Making Phoenix one big HOA

The latest trend among those seeking public office is trying to convince the electorate that they are not really politicians. We hear it from every corner as wanna-be politicians proclaim they are not what they actually are. We here at Seeing Red AZ believe politics is a noble pursuit, engaged in by people of integrity from George Washington and John Adams to Ronald Reagan. Once a candidate files documents to run, they become politicians. When they chose to hide that simple fact, it isn’t much of a leap to wonder what else they might be inclined to conceal.

Now we have a career politician, Phoenix City Councilman Sal DiCiccio, who has a novel plan for us. He wants to regulate door-to-door sales, calling the purveyors “aggressive peddlers.” They are cast as suspicious persons who could be casing the neighborhood. DiCiccio is so concerned about this perceived intrusion into our lives that he has formed a committee (what else?) to look into regulating the practice. There are a series of meetings on this weighty subject underway.

Count this overt nannyism as another ploy to separate folks from their money. DiCiccio wants to impose licensing fees on the door-to-door salespeople the city will regulate. What a surprise!

He plans on exempting religious groups and fundraisers for non-profits. But what about politicians and others who canvas neighborhoods in search of petition signers and recruiting new precinct committeemen for their political party? Are politicians and their supporters salesmen?

Is DiCiccio for real? He says he is “all about transparency.”  How about letting the adult, taxpaying citizens of the city decide whom they choose to do business with — or not.

Including politicians.