"New Yorkers are just so busy. We’re embedding that seed of 'Hey, maybe I’ve never considered Scottsdale before.'"

There's this weird introduction to an essay that turns out to be the entire essay (I'm guessing this is a front-of-book Newsweek piece that's put on the Daily Beast?) by Rick Moody about Tucson. The commenters have gone, predictably, quite wild. But I'm still so stuck on how it's five paragraphs and then you think "oh that's such an interesting introduction, now you're going to shatter all these ideas with something explicit and specific" and then there's just… SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK and comments from angry Tusconians. Oh you'll never win when writing about someone's town. And the short-form essay is a real tricky beast; this isn't [...]

"According to Corrections Corporation of America reports reviewed by NPR, executives believe immigrant detention is their next big market. Last year, they wrote that they expect to bring in 'a significant portion of our revenues' from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that detains illegal immigrants." —The sheer nakedness of how corporations helped to create laws like Arizona's anti-immigration scheme is amazing.

In a luxury suburb of Guadalajara last Thursday afternoon, one of the key leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, Ignacio 'Nacho' Coronel, was shot dead during a brief gunfight with Mexican Army special forces. Drawing on intelligence gathered over the past few weeks, the Army staged a raid on a home they believed was linked to drug trafficking; Coronel was inside. Witnesses reported hearing loud explosions and plenty of gunfire as helicopters and more than 150 men closed in on the drug baron. According to reports, Nacho got off enough shots with an assault rifle to kill one soldier before being killed.

In immediate terms, the raid was [...]

I hate suspense. Long, drawn-out installments drive me nuts. I'm impatient. If something's going to happen I want it all and I want it now. So would it be too much to ask of John McCain to completely destroy whatever minuscule amount of integrity he has left in one shot, rather than doing it in dribs and drabs with crap like this campaign ad? Maybe in a big bonfire or something, people get really excited about stuff like that. I guess I'm just tired of waiting to see the rest of it play out.

You know what they hate in Arizona? Mexicans.

Barack Obama said more about climate change in his inauguration speech—and expressed it more forcefully—than he did at any point in the 2012 election campaign and during much of his first term [...] He made a carefully calibrated appeal to Republicans, situating a transition from fossil fuels to clean energy in a religious and conservative framework of God and constitution.

The Earth and its many forms of life were thrilled to hear the American president mark his second inauguration with a long overdue promise to save the planet from human ruination. Since the Frankenstorm made it okay for centrist Democrats (and a handful of moderate Republicans) to acknowledge that [...]

Camp Verde—well north of Phoenix, closer to Flagstaff—would like to make some money. So good news: according to the Camp Verde Journal, "Town Manager Russ Martin said he thinks he’s found a way that could help improve the town’s return on its investments." Whoo hoo!

Right now, they do a thing called the Local Government Investment Pool; there's a ton of these, state to state, and they do cautious, over-night, low-return investing for counties and towns. But really these GIPs are actually kind of hectic sometimes! Florida's GIP had a weird March: It opened the month with $7.3 billion, it had deposits of $690 million, withdrawals of $1.3 billion… [...]

"Lieutenant Burgett recalled another drop house where a 12-year-old boy was taking a piano lesson in the living room, while immigrants were held for ransom in a bedroom." -You know that whole untruth that politicians like John McCain and John Kyl were pushing, about violent crime exploding in Phoenix, due to border immigration? (Not true! Crime down!) Well it's also instructive to look at what the violent crime menace in Arizona includes-like the mass kidnapping and torture and ransoming of Mexicans, perpetrated by American citizens.

"I would also ask you, as overseas operations in Iraq and Afghanistan permit, to consider wider deployment of UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles] along our nation's southern border. I am aware of how effective these assets have become in Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom, and it seems UAVs operations would be ideal for border security and counter-drug missions." -Arizona Governor Jan Brewer wants to open a third front in our ongoing wars.

"However intended, the result of passing the law is that our basic principles of equal rights and protection under the law are being called into question, and Arizona's already struggling economy will suffer even further setbacks at a time when the state can ill-afford them." -Phoenix Suns owner and Tucson native Robert Sarver discusses his team's decision to wear jerseys proclaiming themselves "Los Suns" in last night's home playoff game against the San Antonio Spurs. The Suns beat the Spurs 110-102 to go up 2-0 in the series.

I have a friend I'll call Patrick who lives in Tucson, the small southern Arizona town where I spent 14 years of my childhood. A six-four wall of a man, softened in parts by pints and whiskey, Patrick and I have been close since high school, when his family–a big, pasty, Irish affair–moved to town from Phoenix. Once, on a trip to a low-budget Mexican beach community named Rocky Point, Patrick and I conspired to eat our vegan friend's entire supply of peanut butter and jelly while he was in the shower, leaving only his toothbrush in an empty jar of Skippy. While he screamed, "Do you know how hard [...]

Is this carnivorous scorpion-eating mouse the only American rodent who howls at the moon? Sure, why the hell not.

The Arizona legislature has finally passed some laws so crazy that even Republican governor Jan Brewer has refused to sign off on them; unfortunately, they weren't this one or this one.

David Weigel calls this ad for Arizona congressional candidate Ben Quayle-yes, spawn of Dan-"all the best parts of Alabama viral videos boiled down and utilized by the handsome son of a vice president." Ben, 33, is also an important object lesson for the kids in these Internet-crazy days: Anything you put on the web-even if you were posting "under the pseudonym 'Brock Landers,' a reference to a porn star in the movie 'Boogie Nights,'"- will eventually come back to bite you in the ass.

A felonious feline-sorry, it's early-in Chandler, AZ, stole a neighbor's green card on a recent nocturnal foray. Presumably the neighbor was immediately deported. Arizona! Good lord.

Last week an Awl contributor opined that a boycott was not the answer for Arizona's recent immigration law. The essay posited that the best thing for Arizona's backwardness was for you, the enlightened, liberal person, to visit there, spend your money to boost the economy and engender in its people "new ways of thinking." It added, in conclusion, "if you really want to change Arizona, move there." I will preface my criticism of this idea by saying that, in the larger picture, we're on the same team. But I wholeheartedly disagree with the logic, or lack thereof, behind some of this argument. And I find the tone of [...]

"An employer shall not intentionally employ an unauthorized alien," nor shall anyone ever let one in his car, or it's curtains for you in the great state of Arizona. This is GREAT NEWS for job creation, as the hundreds of thousands of jobs performed by "aliens" shall now be performed by AMERICAN CITIZENS. Hooray! This will happen because the non-citizens can't go anywhere now: it's trespassing for a non-citizen to be on any "public or private" lands. (Trespassing to paint REFRIED BEAN SWASTIKAS on government offices!) This really puts a lot of fine Fox News-watching people in a tricky place when [...]