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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

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords hosted a solar summit last Wednesday which discussed solar power policy goals for Arizona. Two fascinating points emerged from the discussions. First, many thought the early projections for distributed solar in Arizona were overly ambitious and could never be met. The opposite has occurred. Such plans are hugely popular. Second - and this is something proponents of renewable energy should keep in mind - the emphasis for Arizona renewable power wasn't that it would be cle

Demonstrators gathered in downtown Manhattan on Saturday to protest the influence of Wall St. and corporate interests in our nation's politics.  The assembly, which has occupied a park in the financial district for the last two days, has yet to disperse, and protesters say they're in it for the long haul. Protests are, of course, not an unusual occurrence in lower Manhattan.  This year, there have already been a number of demonstrations in which people gathered by the tens of thousands in oppos

Tomorrow will mark the close of dove season in the greater Phoenix Metropolitan area. The past two weeks have been a trial run for a new state law that has opened over one million acres of city-owned land to small game hunters. The relaxed regulations have allowed hunters to avoid congestion and potential accidents by spreading out, wildlife professionals say. With the passage of Senate Bill 1334 in July, the Arizona Game and Fish Commission was granted the authority to regulate hunting within

The ATF and/or the US Attorney's office in Phoenix allowed at least 1,400 guns to be smuggled from the US to drug cartels in Mexico, ostensibly so they could track the guns up the food chain and then make big arrests. Instead, and tragically, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. One of the weapons nearby was indeed one that US law enforcement had allowed to pass through to Mexico. Other weapons have apparently been linked to other crimes. The acting head of ATF, Kenneth Melson, was abr

It’s hard to tell whether Chandler, Arizona’s popular technology-driven classroom program is the wave-of-the-future, an expensive failure or something in between.  According to the New York Times: “The class, and the Kanye School District as a whole, offer what some see as a utopian vision of education’s future. Classrooms are decked out with laptops, big interactive screens and software that drills students on every basic subject.” Thus far, standardized tests show Chandler’s schools performi

Operation Fast and Furious almost seems like something out of the Keystone Cops, a massive bumbling government operation that even one of those involved described as "delusional." But instead of being comedy, it ended in horrible tragedy when two weapons the ATF allowed to be smuggled to drug cartels were recovered at the scene where Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed by a Mexican national on Arizona land. The plan seems almost incomprehensible now. Over 2,000 weapons, including AK-47s

Two factors are converging to create a farming crisis in Arizona: one has its origins in domestic policy – hard-line immigration laws which have been harped on endlessly by the press – while the other factor has its roots planted in foreign soil, growing in step with an economy that is outpacing our own. It's odd to hear the phrase “labor shortage” tossed around during a time of double-digit jobless rates, but a lack of a reliable work force is exactly what farmers across the Southwest are expe

Arizona possesses enough water in Pima, Pinal, and Maricopa counties to support 4.3 million people, says a report from the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at ASU. But to do so, all commercial farming would have to vanish. This could presage yet another chapter in the eternal water wars between city and rural interests. The Institute is not taking sides, but rather is suggesting that while the Sun Corridor won't run out of water, it does face serious challenges. Among them is the variabilit

For most of the last decade, California was first or second in new business creation. In 2009, it ranked first. In 2010, new business creation imploded. Actually, that's an understatement. California was almost dead last in 2010 with only Michigan behind them.  That's right, it went from #1 to #50 in just one year for business creation (The list includes the District of Columbia, so there are 51 entries.) In 2008, California created 32,829 businesses, in 2009, it created 12,529, but in 2010 it