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PHOENIX - By the time the U.S. Senate Republican candidates completed the first question in a live televised debate Friday night, J.D. Hayworth had already blasted incumbent Sen. John McCain for supporting "amnesty" and McCain had mocked Hayworth for his role in a late-night infomercial. The fast and furious debate in Phoenix also featured tea-party activist Jim Deakin, who said both of his opponents had failed to adhere to a strict reading of the Constitution and both failed to secure the U.S. borders. The primary election is Aug. 24. With Hayworth lagging in polls and peppered seemingly nightly by ads...

Stalin and comrades on sign Tucson Tea Party group FReeper Mountain Woman and our friend Randy Graf Patriot with Mountain Woman's sign FReeper OldFlatToad

The following is an edited transcript of an Aug. 10 Arizona Daily Star interview with U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The transcript has been edited for clarity. STAR: It's very different to be kind of on the outskirts of what's happening and watching this whole health care debate just implode on itself. And then when I read Daniel Scarpinato's story Sunday about the gun, I mean, what's happening. Why is this happening with health care. Why is this such a volatile issue? GIFFORDS: I don't know the answer to that. I could talk to you about my perspective. I was first...

January shooting death of entrant nets 4 charges - A preliminary hearing to determine whether a Border Patrol agent should be charged with murder for fatally shooting a Mexican man just north of the border is set for Monday in Bisbee. Nicholas Corbett, 39, was charged April 23 with four counts of homicide in connection with the Jan. 12 shooting death of Francisco Javier Domínguez Rivera, 22, of Puebla, Mexico, about 150 yards north of the border, between Bisbee and Douglas. The shooting occurred as Corbett was trying to detain Domínguez Rivera and his brothers and sister-in-law who had entered...

PHOENIX — Gov. Janet Napolitano wants federal officials to halt the withdrawal of National Guard troops from along the U.S.-Mexican border. "The drawdown of Operation Jump Start's strength level is ill-timed and should be halted and reexamined," the governor said in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. The program, started last year, was designed to put 6,000 Guard soldiers along the border — 2,400 of them in Arizona — to make up for a shortage of Border Patrol officers. Napolitano said Operation Jump Start "has made real progress" in cutting the number of...

Support mission to end entirely by Sept. 2008 --- The number of National Guard troops along the Arizona-Mexico border will be trimmed in half by the end of next month. As the presidentially mandated Operation Jumpstart mission begins its second year in support of the U.S. Border Patrol, the number of troops is being reduced as planned. It will be trimmed from 6,000 to 3,000 nationally and from 2,400 to 1,200 in Arizona, said National Guard Capt. Kristine Munn. The pullout began July 1 and is scheduled to be completed by Sept. 1. Since arriving in June 2006, National Guard...

PHOENIX — The online program Arizona businesses will use to verify job applicants' legal status can now serve millions of additional companies, a federal representative said Monday. Businesses in the state will be required to use the program starting Jan. 1 under the employer-sanctions law passed by the Legislature this year. The Basic Pilot Program, an online program that reports legal status within seconds, was overhauled this year to prepare for federal legislation that was never enacted, said Michael Mayhew, a representative with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Verification Division. As a result, Mayhew said the system, criticized by...

WASHINGTON — Nowhere in the country is immigration likely to play a bigger role in politics than in Arizona's U.S. Senate race, in which incumbent Republican Jon Kyl is seeking a third term. Seven months from Election Day, Democrats and immigrant- rights activists are hoping to take advantage of anger about the issue and mobilize Latino voters behind Kyl's Democratic challenger, Jim Pederson. Meanwhile, experts say Arizona Republicans are using immigration to keep conservative voters engaged, hoping their support for more restrictions makes conservatives eager to go to the polls for Kyl despite dissatisfaction with the national GOP and President...

A stolen truck crammed with suspected illegal border crossers rolled over late Wednesday near Sonoita, [AZ] killing four people and injuring 21, authorities said. A man driving another vehicle and suspected of involvement in the smuggling attempt was detained for questioning in the 11:45 p.m. crash about two miles north of the border, said Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada. "We haven't seen anything of this magnitude since I've been around," said Estrada, who has worked in area law enforcement for nearly 40 years. "We are still trying to sort out what happened and who was responsible so they can...

Labor activist's speech gets attention of 'O'Reilly Factor' - A politically focused speech at a local high school in which the speaker said "Republicans hate Latinos" is gaining national attention as Tucson Unified School District officials struggle to defend the event. A day after Superintendent Roger Pfeuffer issued a formal response to questions from a state lawmaker who has been critical of the speech, he and others appeared on cable news to discuss the controversy. On the Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor," Pfeuffer, Republican state Rep. Jonathan Paton and a Tucson High Magnet School student also debated lingering questions...

"Mr. Bush, build this wall now," gubernatorial candidate Don Goldwater intoned Saturday, putting an Arizona border spin on Ronald Reagan's famous Berlin Wall speech. Goldwater was one of four Republican candidates for governor who debated America's hottest issue — immigration — Saturday in Tucson. He called on President Bush and Congress to build a wall along Arizona's entire Mexican border, and said he would put soon-to-be deported illegal immigrants in a tent city near the border and use their labor to help build the wall. Candidates Jan Smith-Florez and Mike Harris also took a tough line against illegal immigration in...

Plans made for teacher absences during big immigration protests - An entire school will relocate for a day and classes at other campuses may be combined Monday to cope with teachers calling in sick, school officials said Friday as they prepared for large-scale protests against immigration reform. And as the immigration debate showed no signs of leaving their doorstep, officials in the city's largest school district addressed concerns about a speech given Monday at Tucson High Magnet School in which a speaker said, "Republicans hate Latinos." Tucson Unified School District officials are taking their hardest stance against the walkouts to...

NOGALES, Sonora — Along Boulevard El Greco, construction crews and bulldozers cross the busy street while just beyond the dust clouds, a pair of large retail centers are quickly taking shape. The new 250,000-square-foot Nogales Mall and the 130,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter are under construction at the city's southern edge. At the same site, a new Peter Piper Pizza and a Carl's Jr. are getting ready to open their doors, alongside a new Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar. Touted as the largest mall to be built in Sonora, with the city's first pair of escalators, the Nogales Mall will have 114...

As U.S. senators scrambled to reach an accord this week on how best to handle illegal immigration, the call for action boomed over the radio airwaves day and night, stirring Spanish-speakers to further the cause of immigrants. While the volatile debate continues at the nation's Capitol, hundreds of thousands of people living in the country illegally, and their supporters, plan to march and hold rallies Monday across the nation calling for changes in immigration laws. Buoyed by radio, which has proved pivotal in mobilizing immigrants coast-to-coast, as many as 10,000 people are expected to gather on the South Side and...

PHOENIX — Fearing traffic jams and concerned about their personal safety, legislative leaders have decided to shut down their Monday session early to let legislators and staff flee the Capitol before 100,000 marchers show up. The decision to adjourn by noon came as lawmakers engaged in a war of words over the merits of the march, one of several around the nation pushing for Congress to enact immigration legislation that provides people here illegally a path to citizenship — and whether the event is a slap at this country. Sen. Barbara Leff, R-Paradise Valley, said the march amounts to 100,000...

Wearing camouflage pants and sporting a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver on his hip, William Heathorn transformed himself Saturday from a rocket engineer to a Minuteman Civil Defense Corps volunteer. It's the second straight year that Heathorn has taken vacation from his day job in Chandler to come to Southern Arizona for patrol. On Saturday afternoon at a private ranch on Arizona 286 south of Three Points, Heathorn stood beside his friend, Wayne Ralph from Nevada, and about 125 others at a kickoff rally for a month-long patrol in the Altar Valley. "I think it's important that Americans get up...

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., says he's not going to be deterred by the wave of demonstrations protesting his bill to crack down on illegal immigration. Responding to a pro-illegal immigration demonstration in Milwaukee on Thursday, Sensenbrenner called the protest "impressive," but added: "Many have tried to confuse the difference between legal and illegal immigration." (Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...

PHOENIX — State lawmakers are slowly moving to put a series of controversial — and potentially ethnically divisive — measures on the November ballot. The latest effort got a boost this week when the House of Representatives voted 34-22 to ask voters to once again declare English the state's official language. That vote came despite protests from foes who said the proposed constitutional amendment reflected everything from an anti-immigrant attitude to the fear of the currently Anglo majority of the demographic changes occurring in Arizona. And Rep. David Bradley, D-Tucson, even compared this move to promote what he described as...

Senator's bill gives illegal entrants five years to leave the country - Oscar Soto took the day off from his warehouse job Friday to come with his wife, two children, nephew, niece and mother-in-law to an immigrant-rights rally on Tucson's Northwest Side to stand up for himself and his family. Oscar Cruz managed to get time off from his apartment maintenance job to stand on the front line of the protest at Sen. Jon Kyl's Tucson office, 7315 N. Oracle Road, and hold a cardboard sign with white spray paint that read: "Senator Kyl: No more walls." It rested on...

ORGAN PIPE CACTUS NATIONAL MONUMENT — While politicians in Phoenix and Congress talk about building a tall fence along Arizona's border with Mexico, workers here are completing a shorter and more modest obstacle. This low-slung vehicle barrier will do nothing to stop people from walking into Southern Arizona illegally. But on public lands where the obstacles are popping up, officials say the devices have succeeded in stopping the so-called drive-throughs that can imperil law enforcement and scar the thin-skinned desert for decades. Homeland Security and other officials have disclosed plans to build similar barriers along most of the border between...