This is incredibly important, and I want everyone possible to know about this. Pass the word and grow the outrage. Please.
The two owners of the local alternative progressive newspaper, the Phoenix New Times, have been arrested by the local Sheriff and County Attorney.
The charges stem from a story published under their byline in the Thursday edition of New Times, in which they describe a subpoena the paper reportedly received from a grand jury convened by the Maricopa County Attorney's Office.I know many of the folks at The New Times, several are friends. These are good people who do the only hard hitting investigative journalism done in Arizona anymore. Remember how Congressman Rick Renzi was recently taken out of commission over corruption? Well, it was the New Times that started the process back in 2003 with this article.
The alternative weekly newspaper, in its cover story, said the subpoena was part of an investigation orchestrated to get back at its reporters and the critical stories they wrote of County Attorney Andrew Thomas' political ally Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
The scope of the subpoena is unusually broad: It not only demands information from the reporters but also information about all the online readers of the publication since Jan. 1, 2004, including their Internet domain names and browsers and what other Web sites they visited before reading New Times.
Our local Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, is a publicity seeking buffoon and the County Attorney, Andrew Thomas, is a young, extreme right wing, Dick Cheney loving (seriously), right to life, militant conservative, politically manipulative and ladder climbing jackbooted jerk. Their abuse of the grand jury and criminal process is shameful, unethical and outrageous to the extreme. This same County Attorney, Andrew Thomas, has also egregiously tried to silence and chill criminal judges here in Maricopa County by similarly outrageous attacks on the Assistant Presiding Criminal Judge.
Folks, everything we talk about here in terms of the national situation has just hit home in a big analogous way right here on the state and county level. When I and other progressive commenters and opinion makers talk about the need to have accountability, to have an impeachment investigation display what has gone on, and to once and for all put a stop to the totalitarian creep we have been witnessing; this is exactly why. By the way, did you all get that portion I bolded for you? If that isn't chilling, I don't know what is. This is the ethos of activity that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are currently ratifying and condoning through their coddling of the Bush Administration and refusal to permit legitimate investigation and prosecution.
