PHOENIX, AZ -- During a joint speech to Congress in September, President Obama made a passionate call for Congress to fix the nation's ailing health care system in the same spirit that created Social Security and Medicare during similar difficult times. During that speech, he sternly warned, "If you...

PHOENIX, AZ - How ironic is it that the attorney responsible for successfully introducing the concept of Miranda rights to the U.S. Supreme Court would become a retired Arizona Supreme Court Justice who has now handed down a draconian ruling that homeless and poor individuals can't eat pancakes before...

PHOENIX, AZ -- Senator Jon Kyl recently quipped to NBC's David Gregory on Meet the Press, "I'm not sure that it's a fact that more and more people die because they don't have health insurance."

Constituent Shirley McAllister took exception to Sen. Kyl's narrow view and decided...

PHOENIX, AZ -- During the 2008 election, Senator John McCain famously admitted he didn't know how to use a computer and was only then learning to use a Blackberry. Preferring to stay out of the 21st century when it came to computers, Senator McCain was clearly no Senator McGeek.

Oh,...

Homelessness is an alarming social condition that affects up to 100 million people worldwide. Visions of wretched living conditions and brutalized homeless children made last season's Academy Award winning Slumdog Millionaire a compelling movie. But a happy Bollywood ending isn't the case for most of America's chronically homeless.

As well...

Recently, the Arizona Republic newspaper reported that the state's Legislators planned to walk away from half a billion dollars in annual federal aid to the working poor, making Arizona the first state in the nation to lose its federal welfare program and assistance it currently provides to tens of...

Arizonans are sad. We've lost our hero, our maverick, our straight shooter. There was a time at the beginning of John McCain's presidential bid when he promised to run a respectful campaign befitting his stature and honoring the people he asked to serve. He promised!

Arizonans were thrilled. From...

For those of us who are mostly home-bound and forced to watch this historic election from the vantage point of our various disabilities, there is one irrefutable truth: Screaming at the television is a form of volunteerism.

Sarah Palin complains often and loudly about not being heard through what...

The child is beautiful; seven years old, long blonde hair spilling over her little shoulders, eyes blue and wide as the sky. I was having a long-overdue lunch with her equally-lovely mother. As most conversations go in Arizona, our talk drifted toward the upcoming election. That's when the child -...

You wouldn't expect to hear a police officer in his bullet-proof vest, gun-in-holster, badge-wearing full uniform quoting the lyrics of a Rogers and Hammerstein's South Pacific song. "You've got to be taught to be afraid of people whose eyes are oddly made and people whose skin is a...

Edgar Allen Poe wrote, "Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so." For Arizona Democrats, that couldn't be a more prescient statement. Last week, one of the state's leading Republican strategists warned that the GOP is in "acute jeopardy" of losing...

This past year, over three million Americans found themselves huddling in doorways or sitting on park benches, while nights were spent in terrifying shelters or under bridges or in taped-together cardboard boxes. Add to this mix hundreds of thousands of foreclosed-upon homeowners, hurricane-ravaged families and vets returning from Iraq and...

Five million home loans are either delinquent or in foreclosure. Five million! Add to those five million displaced homeowners still more thousands who've just lost their homes and jobs to yet one more hurricane (this one named Ike), and we've got a problem not yet even mentioned -...