The People in Your Neighborhood

I realize there are nuts everywhere. But it sure doesn't help me sleep at night to know that my young niece and nephew are growing up just a stone's throw away from someone like JT Ready, the Neo-Nazi, anti-immigrant vigilante who just murdered four people -- including a toddler and a girlfriend whose name sounds suspiciously Mexican -- before turning the gun on himself in Gilbert, Arizona. More disturbing than the heinous crime itself, however, is that Ready was long considered part of mainstream Arizona politics -- he's a white supremacist!!! -- and was closely associated with the state's most powerful politician, Russell Pearce. (Pearce, who is now denying he knew Ready, reportedly baptized Ready via the Mormon church, and ordained him an LDS elder.)

Pearce, you may recall, is best known for ramming through the Arizona's notorious "papers, please" law when he was president of the State Senate. Pearce's own constituents, in my former hometown of Mesa, were so outraged by his extremist views, they had him ousted, making him the first state legislator in Arizona history to be removed from office via a recall election. So what did the Republican Party do? They named him the No. 2 man of the state Republican Party(!!!!), completely disregarding the more rational views of the state's residents. Mark my words: if there isn't a civil war in this country in the next 15 years, then my name wasn't once Kenneth in the (602).