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Arizona received its fourth unmanned aircraft system (UAS) Tuesday in the form of a Predator-B drone. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officials say that the new military aircraft will assist three others based at the National Air Security Operations Center (NASOC) in Sierra Vista with counter-drug trafficking operations and other Homeland Security missions along the Southwest border. According to CBP spokeswoman Gina Gray: "Basing a fourth UAS in Sierra Vista will best posture CBP for rap

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to support a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment that would abolish “corporate personhood” and assert that spending money on a political campaign is not a form of free speech. The largely symbolic measure comes in response to a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court Decision, Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, which struck down key provisions of the McCain–Feingold Act including one that prohibited all corporations and un

The Bureau of Reclamation has requested input from the public to resolve water supply and demand imbalances for the seven states, including California, using Colorado River water. The problem can be easily stated, the solutions not so easily. Using ten year running averages, the bureau shows that demand for Colorado River water has already outstripped supply and that this trend will continue and worsen. They emphasize multiple approaches and solutions will be needed to solve the problem of too

The Republican Party's presidential primary race may prove to be a breeding ground for third party and Independent presidential candidates in the 2012 election.  There are no less than four current contenders for the GOP's presidential nomination who may run for president as a third party or Independent candidate:  Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, Jon Huntsman and Buddy Roemer.  And, given the success of Americans Elect in its ongoing effort to obtain ballot access in all fifty states, we may see any num

For over seven weeks the world has watched the Occupy movement with varying degrees of interest. The movement has appeared on every continent and one of its most visible protests is happening in Oakland, CA. In order to predict what will be happening here and to understand the global implications of the movement we need to take a look at other hot spots around the globe. Of particular importance is the recent union between Occupy and Anonymous, a hacking group promoting internet freedom.  The t

Zócalo Public Square, a project of the Center for Social Cohesion from Arizona State University, in partnership with the New America Foundation, recently hosted a discussion about Arizona politics. Chief among the topics was: is Arizona politics unique to the state or an early indicator of what's coming for the country in general? Only 35% of Arizona voters are registered Republicans, even as the Right controls the legislature.  SB 1070, the stringent anti-illegal immigration law, got nationwid

The Arizona Meth Project is trying hard, and succeeding at, reducing first-time meth usage by young people "through public service messaging, public policy, and community outreach."  It does so primarily by using modern advertising techniques to create extremely hard-hitting 30 second TV ads with a core message of "Not Even Once." In an ad titled Just Once, three teenage girls are giggling, snorting meth for the first time in a bedroom. The voiceover from one girl says "I'll going to try meth j

Sylvia Longmire's new book Cartel: The Coming Invasion of Mexico's Drug Wars has just been released and is available in bookstores today. She is a retired Air Force captain and Special Agent with extensive experience investigating Mexico Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTO). She now consults and writes about southwest border violence issues and blogs at Mexico's Drug War. I interviewed her last month. Your book implies the violence and corruption of the drug wars will be spilling across the bor

Gary Johnson, the two-term Republican governor of New Mexico, will be included in Thursday night's Fox News presidential debate in Orlando, Florida.  This is the first time he will share the stage with the entire field of contenders for the Republican nomination after being excluded from every debate since after the first one in South Carolina. Howard Kurtz reported Tuesday at The Daily Beast: "The former New Mexico governor won the right to participate, according  to Fox sources, by cracking

A new FBI report released Monday is brimming with startling figures about the four-decades-old War on Drugs. Shockingly, in the United States, there is a drug arrest every 19 seconds, making for a total of 1.6 million drug arrests in 2010 alone. The FBI report also includes data which show that 81.9% of all drug-related arrests in 2010 were for simple possession, not drug dealing, and 45.8% of all drug-related arrests were for possession of marijuana. This indicates that the vast majority of po