Diana Regazzi's home is sloping. Clyde Preston's is sinking. The floor in Pat and Bob Talaga's house is buckled. Now told that their one- and two-year-old homes were built on unstable ground, the three and almost 30 of their neighbors in an Apache Junction manufactured home community are appealing to city and state officials for help. .

Entries for February 2008

In a letter to its customers this week, the U.S. Postal Service warned about identity theft conducted via the mail. While the mail is related to only a small fraction—2 percent—of identity theft cases, John Potter, the postmaster general, says he wants to reduce that number to zero.

The Federal Trade Commission says that identity thefts sometimes occur when thieves fill out "change of address" forms for unsuspecting victims and then collect information from bills that arrive at the new address. If bills or credit card statements don't arrive on time, be sure to contact the companies sending them.

Hillary's school for scandal

The disclosure that the documents had surfaced came less than a week after the statute of limitations expired for civil lawsuits against professionals who had fraudulently advised corrupt S&Ls.

- The discovery of the Rose Law Firm records came the same week as a disclosure of a 2-year-old memo written by a presidential aide relating to the so-called Travelgate scandal. The memo suggested that Hillary Clinton had played a much more extensive role than the administration had claimed in the firing of employees of the White House travel office. The ostensible reason: to give travel business to associates of the Clintons.

- In June 1996, the Republican majority and Democratic minority of the special Senate Whitewater Committee reached entirely different conclusions about Hillary Clinton's behavior.

Normally Obscure Panel Pushed Into the Limelight

Attorney Michele Rosenfeld had just finished arguing the value of a back yard that lies in the path of the future intercounty connector when the 83-year-old man asked her to speak up.

Willy Northpole and the Phoenix hip-hop scene explode

The fact is, unlike trials for embezzlement or murder or even rape, CPS dependency hearings, which determine custody and whether parents continue to have the right to raise their children, are closed to the public. The agency's paperwork is also sealed.

And that means the entire system operates without scrutiny from outsiders, be they reporters or advocates. (There's a state ombudsman, but he is legally barred from releasing specifics about cases.) We never get to see the evidence that would determine whether kids are wrongly being taken from their parents, as so many callers insist on my voice mail, or whether CPS is instead erring on the side of leaving kids in unsafe homes.

We can write about the big picture because CPS has to release some statistical information every six months.

Redemption of an Artist

The end result was a very realistic depiction thanks to the help I received from Gamiet Qariet El-Amal (Hope Village Society, or HVS). An NGO that supports street children and orphans, it has 15 branches across Egypt. Some of these kids have become actors in my new feature film Shayateen El-Qahira [Devils of Cairo], the feature-length version of this [project].