The Colorado Independent

New study: Border fences blocking black bear migration between Arizona, Mexico

By Troy Hooper | 01.03.12 | 6:11 am

There is a new political animal in America’s age-old immigration debate: the black bear.

2011 voter-war dispatch: Arizona court rebukes Guv Brewer

By John Tomasic | 11.18.11 | 9:27 am

The latest dispatch from the frontlines of the voter wars crisscrossing the country this year comes from Phoenix. The Arizona supreme court ruled that political lightning-rod Governor Jan Brewer failed to justify ousting Colleen Mathis as chair of the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission. The court reinstated Matthis.

Tancredo slams Perry as an ‘arrogant, open border, pro-amnesty politician’

By John Tomasic | 09.27.11 | 9:37 am

Former Colorado Congressman and anti-illegal immigration crusader Tom Tancredo has no patience with Republican presidential frontrunner Rick Perry, the Texas governor with the Hollywood hair who fired up the right when he announced his candidacy but who has stumbled under the national spotlight ever since. In the wake of last week’s GOP candidate debate, Tancredo decried Perry as an arrogant “name-calling, open border, pro-amnesty politician.”

Navajo Generating Station blamed for haze over Grand Canyon, respiratory illnesses

By David O. Williams | 09.16.11 | 9:33 am

Residents of the Navajo and Hopi reservations in the Four Corners region are dismayed that a study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) on the 2,250-megawatt Navajo Generating Station near Page, Ariz., “clearly omits consideration of the coal-burning plant’s pollution impacts on public health.”

Arizona asks for donations to build a border fence

By Luke Johnson | 08.01.11 | 5:28 am

After soliciting funds for defending its SB 1070 immigration law in court, the State of Arizona is now asking for funds to build a border fence across its 378-mile border.

America’s Tomorrow map underlines folly of Colorado’s Latino-alienating GOP

By John Tomasic | 05.19.11 | 4:35 pm

During the Colorado legislative session just passed and during the midterm elections last year, state Republicans embraced Arizona-style anti-illegal immigration policy proposals and harsh rhetoric that alienated Coloradans, including non-white Republican politicians and supporters and, perhaps most dramatically, Latino Republicans. Analysts called that kind of politics a sort of longterm suicide mission given the shifting demographics of the state. An internet map of the country put out today by PolicyLink brings the point home. In the decades visualized by the map– 1990 to 2040– the population of the American southwest, including Colorado, transforms.

Arizona Guv Brewer to publish memoir on ‘battle to secure the border’

By Scot Kersgaard | 05.12.11 | 11:14 am

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is set to tell her side of the SB 1070 drama in a provocatively titled memoir due out in November. “Scorpions For Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media and Cynical Politicos to Secure America’s Border” is scheduled to be published in November by Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Federal court delivers another blow to Arizona immigration law

By John Tomasic | 04.11.11 | 1:10 pm

The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has backed the Obama Administration in its case against SB 1070, the controversial immigration legislation passed by Arizona lawmakers last year. A three-judge panel ruled Monday that Arizona District Judge Susan Bolton “did not abuse her discretion,” as the Washington Post put it, when she blocked key provisions of the bill.

Colorado Latino lobby day underlines lopsided nature of immigration debate

By John Tomasic | 03.03.11 | 1:34 pm

DENVER– When hundreds of Coloradans flocked to the capitol here Monday for the state’s fifth-annual Latino Advocacy Day, it was a rare recent instance in the state and around the country where support for policies that embrace immigration, U.S. Latino communities and the rights of undocumented residents stole the spotlight from support for policies that set deporting “illegals” and establishing border security as top priorities.