Our county sheriff is excellent with the misdirection play. All this mess with the grand jury investigation of the New Times, jailing the New Times big cheese, etc., has really done the job of getting away from the original issue why the New Times published Joe's home address in their magazine in the first place.

The New Times' logic, for better or worse:

- Nickel Bag Joe has gone 14 years without a major internal audit while creating a virtual industry for his department....

There are about 6.5 million people in Arizona, and approximately 4 million of them live in Maricopa County, which encompasses the Phoenix Metro area.

If Phoenix is like the rest of America, about 25 percent or 1 million people are serious sports fans who regularly spend money on sporting events.

Half of those residents moved here after 1990, so if numbers remain static, only half of those 1 million fans or 500,000 people have a significant relationship to the Valley or...

Shawn Marion is talking -- in his own special Marion-ese language -- and NBA beat reporters are listening. The Republic's Paul Coro [story] and TSN's Sean Deveney [story] each had stories quoting Marion extensively about his unhappiness with the Suns constantly trying to trade him and just treating him badly all around by inflating his numbers by putting him on the floor with Steve Nash and paying him $4 million more a year than 1st team All NBA center Amare Stoudemire. Man, the Suns are so mean...

It's late September, which means Arizona has a full plate of sports to dissect:

The appetizers

- One of the good guys in Arizona journalism, Paul Coro, made a point to mention Marion's waiting till the last second to report ... again. story. Suns staffers have been checking their Marion Mood Rings and upgraded the Marion Alert to Orange for Surliness. The...

I only have four blogs running right now, but I'm putting this up as a placeholder until I can find something appropriate to talk about here.