Lynn Shapiro 
Moratoriums on the death penalty have been the rule in Arizona for the last seven years, resulting from the torturous death of Joseph Wood in 2014. Wood took almost two hours to die when Arizona Corrections Department officials injected him with 15 doses of a lethal cocktail. One of the drugs used to kill Wood was midazolam, a … Read more
Video editing by Anne Simmons. As the June 30 termination looms for the federal eviction moratorium, Marcos Ysmael, the Pima Country Housing Program manager, is acting to rescue Arizonians from eviction. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) might extend the moratorium on COVID-related evictions beyond June 30, he told Democrats of Greater Tucson … Read more
Tossing out the last of the election challenges and sanctuary city claims, the US Supreme Court proved that Chief Justice John Roberts’ statement “that there are no Trump Justices, no Obama justices” to be true. Last week, Biden’s Justice Department and New York and San Francisco asked Scott Harris, the Court clerk, to dismiss the three … Read more
While the Supreme Court could uphold voter suppression laws in Arizona and across the nation, Justice Sotomayor leveled withering criticism at the GOP’s anti-voter lawyer. Barrett, along with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, appear to have formed a moderately conservative bloc, judging from Arizona ballot-harvesting oral arguments on March 2, as well … Read more
The Tucson power grid is vulnerable in the event of a climate disaster, according to Barbara Warren, speaking at the Democrats of Greater Tucson on February 1, 2021. At risk are Native Americans and Arizonians housed in trailer parks, as are older Americans in nursing homes who have no place to go, should the power … Read more
[fusion_youtube id=”h0kxLKrTnS8″ alignment=”center” width=”700″ height=”” autoplay=”false” api_params=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” css_id=””][/fusion_youtube] Many thanks to video producer Anne Simmons for editing this recording. Elected as Pima Country’s Chair in December, Bonnie Heidler spoke before the Democrats of Greater Tucson on January 11. At Monday’s meeting, she discussed: The indictment by the Republican attorney general of two Democratic … Read more
The House of Representatives voted by a bipartisan majority of 228-164 to pass the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement (MORE) Act, ending the Federal ban on cannabis. The MORE Act would remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act and expunge nonviolent pot-related offenses. The New York Times reports the law, “would require Federal courts to … Read more
A historic House vote to end the federal prohibition of cannabis is expected to pass this week. It would mark the “first time that the House or the Senate has ever voted as a full chamber on legislation to end the federal cannabis prohibition since it went into effect following the passage of the Controlled … Read more
The Supreme Court is arguing Obamacare for the third time on Tuesday, November 10, in Texas v. California. “The tax will come back to haunt him,” one legal observer remarked after Roberts first designated Obamacare a tax, rather than entitlement in a 5-4 decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius in 2012. Obamacare was spared … Read more
Joseph Weinberger, a climate activist and second-year UCLA medical student, says it is already too late to stop climate change. Speaking as a member of the progressive Jewish community, he says we are past the time of “Tikkun Olam” (fixing the world), using a Hebrew phrase. Meanwhile, Biden’s $1.7 trillion climate plan aims to remove … Read more
