I have long had real concerns about how Andy Thomas has conducted himself as County Attorney. The full-on war over the last few years between he and the Board of Supervisors has been nothing short of a spectacle.

And now I’ve reached the final straw. The trumped-up investigation against Supervisor Andy Kunasek amounting to character assassination by Thomas, Sheriff Arpaio and their henchmen is only the latest in the most egregious abuse of investigative and prosecutorial power I have ever witnessed. To make baseless accusations about the likes of Andy Kunasek is completely out of line. Kunasek is not only one of the most humble public servants you’ll ever meet (and a really nice guy), he is above reproach, and has a record to prove it. (A letter from Kunasek about this issue is here, courtesy of espressopundit.com)

For the longest time I had assumed that Thomas was really fighting the righteous cause. Not anymore. He is completely out of control. From the constant state of investigations of people who get crosswise with him in the slightest fashion, to the constant whining about how he is mistreated, it’s completely galling. I truly do not know how someone who abuses the power of government as he has can call himself a conservative. He’s worse than a liberal… he is a dictator.

A few weeks ago Greg Patterson over at espressopundit.com wrote a stellar post about Thomas being unfit to serve. It is worth your time to read it.

For a pretty good snapshot of some of what galls me, check out this story and all the assorted links there.

The bottom line is that Andy Thomas has so destroyed his own credibility, he does not deserve to be in any elective office. It’s time for Andy Thomas to go away.

The process of making the decision of whether to run or not was one that I probably wouldn’t want to go through again. But I don’t, for one second, regret not running.

Part of why I don’t regret it is that we have an opportunity to elect someone who brings much needed real world experience and an outsider perspective to Washington at a time that we desperately need proven leadership.

Steve Moak stands apart from every other candidate in the race for CD 3 as the right person for the job. (Important point: I have not been and will not be a paid consultant, or paid in any capacity by Steve Moak, his campaign, or anyone associated with him or his campaign.)

Steve has a solid record of business success, started a successful charity to keep kids off drugs, and is a solid fiscal conservative who knows first-hand what being a fiscal conservative actually means because he has made the hard budget decisions that come with running a business.  He is a family man, pro-life, pro-2^nd Amendment, and embodies exactly what Reagan meant when he talked about the laborers in the vineyard of free-enterprise that sets the United States of America apart from the rest of the world.

Most of all, Steve is exactly what our founding fathers had in mind when they envisioned the “citizen legislator.”  He has the experience to go to Washington and push for common sense policies without getting sucked into the trappings of it all.  There isn’t anything that Washington or the so-called power brokers can offer him that would mean anything.  He will be an independent player focused on putting our country back on track.

And he has even pledged that if he doesn’t balance the budget in six years, he’ll come home.  That’s what we need more of in Washington: people who want to get the job done, not want a job.

Unfortunately, nearly every other candidate in the race against Steve is running because it’s the “next step.”  We need fewer legislators in Congress, because in most cases the first thing they do is start playing the inside game.  Trust me, I have watched it first-hand.  When a state legislator, a county commissioner, a mayor or about anyone who has held elective office gets elected to Congress, they immediately revert back to “government think.”  The modern-day small-government conservative heroes- Sen. Tom Coburn, Sen. Jim DeMint, Congressman John Shadegg, Congressman Paul Ryan, Congressman Jeff Flake, among others- had never held elected office prior to running for Congress.

And, Steve Moak is not a fraud like another candidate in the race that is trying to trade on the family name to get elected to a position that he would squander.

CD 3 deserves to be represented by the adult in the race. Vote Steve Moak for Congress.

It’s obvious from my lack of posts I’ve been pretty busy. I wrote earlier that I would announce NobleThinking.com endorsements for the Arizona Republican primary. Given that I have been pretty lame about getting those out, I figured I’d roll out a few in one post and keep the commentary to a minimum. If there is race I miss, it’s likely because I’m going to do a separate post on it.

So here goes.

Governor

By default, it’s Jan Brewer. I hope she whips Sam Goddard’s son in the general.

Secretary of State

Ken Bennett

Treasurer

As I have posted, Doug Ducey.

Superintendent of Public Instruction

John Huppenthal

Corporation Commission

Brenda Burns and Gary Pierce.

Legislative races

My home district is legislative district 6, so it’s the one to which I’m paying the closest attention. As such, for the State Senate seat the best bet is David Braswell. He was appointed to fill the vacancy that Pamela Gorman left when she joined the masses in running for John Shadegg’s congressional seat. David is a serious guy who takes the job seriously. He deserves election to a full term.

In LD 6 House races, my first choice is Amanda Reeve, who also was appointed when Sam Crump couldn’t resign his seat fast enough to run for Shadegg’s seat. I’m guessing that Sam is rethinking giving up he seat so quickly. In a race that will have 10 candidates, I’m going to bet that Crump comes in no better than 7^th. (More on CD 3 race to come later).

Anyway, Amanda is great. And given what a personal disaster Carl Seel is (using taxpayer funds for personal items, having judgments against him for failure to pay on debts, etc.) I strongly encourage voters to “single shot” Reeves. What that means is that even though you can vote for two candidates, you only vote for one, so as to strengthen the position of the person you support the most. That is the best way to defeat Seel – voting Reeve in a single shot.

As to other legislative races? In LD 7, Nancy Barto. In LD 11, Adam Driggs (who has to be one of the smartest people in the world to have not jumped into the CD 3 race). In LD 10, Kimberly Yee.

Stay tuned for more endorsements coming.

Arizona’s First Congressional District encompasses huge swaths of the Grand Canyon State (including portions of the Grand Canyon). My hometown of Show Low is in CD 1, so I’ve always had a high interest in what happens there.

For me it’s a call between Flagstaff dentist Paul Gosar and former legislator and artist Rusty Bowers.

Bowers has deep family roots in the district and is probably related to a bunch of voters. One challenge for him might be that many of his relatives are conservative Democrats and won’t be able to vote for him in the primary. Bowers is a fiscal conservative, a social conservative and an all-around great guy. However, he hasn’t been able to kick his campaign into gear and raise any significant money.

Gosar is also a conservative and has lived in the Flagstaff area for more than a quarter of a century. He’s a small businessman and, being a dentist, understands with acute awareness how government regulation can stifle economic growth.

Both Gosar or Bowers would make a fine Congressman, and both would mount a strong challenge to Democrat incumbent Ann Kirkpatrick, who is so out of touch with her district that she has been seen driving from Winslow events in a car with California plates.

The potential spoiler in all this is retread Sydney Hay. Her pure ambition to be a member of Congress (as evidenced by multiple runs for a seat) is enough to disqualify her from consideration.

In a very close call, Gosar gets my support for being better positioned to take on Kirkpatrick and give CD 1 the representation it has deserved for years.

Gosar for Congress in AZ-01.

Local businessman and Arizona State Treasurer candidate, Doug Ducey, is a newcomer to politics and to public life. I hope someone warned him that running for office is more of a contact sport than his last job, selling ice cream.

Just in time for early voting, I’ve heard some folks are trying to say that because Ducey is a citizen candidate, not a career politician, he’s not a true conservative.

Huh?

Let’s get the facts straight: He opposes tax increases, has the endorsement of Arizona Right to Life, and supports SB 1070. It’s hard to see merit in claims that Ducey is anything but the real deal as a conservative.

Most importantly, he’s bringing the message of fiscal conservatism to the Treasurer’s race at a time when Arizona can’t afford anything less. Ducey’s platform is about prudent investing and bringing clarity to our finances so that we as taxpayers can actually see and understand where our money is being spent. And with a background of managing budgets and being accountable to investors, Ducey has proven he can do it.

Even current Treasurer Dean Martin has stepped up to say that Doug Ducey is the only candidate with the business and finance experience needed in the Treasurer’s office.

So really, there is no question. He’s a social conservative. He’s a fiscal conservative. He’s a businessman, a family man, and he likes ice cream. As for me, I think there’s a lot more than ice cream to like about Doug Ducey.

NobleThinking heartily endorses Doug Ducey for State Treasurer.

Over the course of the next few days, NobleThinking.com will announce endorsements for a variety of primary races in Arizona.  Some will be obvious, and some might surprise you.

The most important thing is THAT YOU VOTE!

To know Mitch Menlove was to like him. He was one of the nicest guys you’d ever meet.  He was a wunderkind in everything he did professionally, in his church and as a husband and father.

And at the tender age of 36, he has been called home to his Father.

Those of us who share his faith believe that there is a purpose for his death. But that doesn’t take away the shock and pain. And it doesn’t take away the grief we suffer as we think about his wonderful wife Elizabeth, the three boys, and the baby that is due any day now.  As Kevin DeMenna (Mitch’s former boss and tennis partner) said, Mitch must be one incredible human being to be needed “on the other side” more than here.

Our hearts go out to Mitch’s young family, his brothers, his parents and anyone else who was blessed to call him a friend.

Here is a statement from two of his close friends, Kevin DeMenna and Matt Salmon:

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

It is with immense sadness that we share with you the heartbreaking news that our friend, colleague and brother, Mitch Menlove, passed away shortly after 1:00 AM last night in the Flagstaff hospital.

[Service information below]

There is no way to express the heartbreak and the sadness that death at such a young age brings, however, Mitch’s family and friends are gathering to celebrate the life of such an extraordinary and selfless man.

We ask that your prayers and thoughts be with Mitch and his loved ones at this time.

With heartfelt feeling to all,

Kevin DeMenna

The Honorable Matt Salmon

Phoenix, Arizona Services:

• Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

• Biltmore Ward

• 1835 East Missouri Avenue

• Phoenix, Arizona 85016-3021

• Family Viewing from 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM

• Public Viewing from 9:00 AM to 10:45 AM

• Funeral Services will begin at 11:00 AM

Salt Lake City, Utah Services:

• Friday, July 23rd, 2010

• (Location yet to be determined)

• Family Viewing from 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM

• Public Viewing from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM

• Funeral Services will begin at 10:00 AM

Mitch was one of the good guys.

Jim Martin is an American hero.  Since 1992, when he founded 60 Plus Association, Jim has led the effort to advance conservatism by mobilizing seniors to action.

I was honored to be asked to pay tribute to Jim at a 60 Plus Association dinner Thursday night honoring him for his unfailing commitment to freedom.  It was a bit intimidating to share the stage with the likes of Pat Boone, Charlie Black, Morton Blackwell and Grover Norquist.

Here is what I said:

Earlier this evening I was talking to my 16 year-old daughter. When you are my age, realizing that you have a 16 year-old makes you feel really old… and then I walked into the dinner tonight – a 60 Plus dinner. I represent the -40 crowd.

Jim Martin and I share a few things in common– a deep-seated love of country, a commitment to the conservative cause, we were both journalism majors - I didn’t go as far as Jim, because I was a broadcast journalism major and they told me I had a face for radio.  But most of all, we both love to play softball.

Now, Jim is a much more accomplished softball player than I am. He led his 55+ senior softball team to two consecutive appearances in the Senior World Series

Men’s softball, which is really the place where wannabe baseball players go to re-live the glory days, is a microcosm of politics.

In politics, just like in softball, if you stick to fundamentals – your principles – and you treat every election as if the future of the nation depended on it, you can succeed in staving off the onslaught of liberalism and the creeping intrusion of government control.

Jim Martin has been a part of each of the major victories of conservatism in the last 50 years – call them the “transformational elections” - most significantly 1980 and 1994.

And now, he stands in the middle of what could be another conservative transformational election as he leads America’s seniors in the pushback against the greatest threat to freedom they have faced since WWII – a leftist President enabled by liberal majorities in the House and Senate. Jim takes William F. Buckley’s lead in “standing athwart history, yelling Stop!”

And I’m confident that he will succeed, along with many others in this room, in stopping the threat come November.

There is something that will drive the left crazy as Jim takes them on – his unwavering optimism, and his constant smile. They hate it when he smiles – well and that he looks like one of their heroes, Ted Turner.

And that is Jim Martin’s secret – it’s what makes him a “happy warrior” – he’s optimistic and smiles…. Because he knows he is right.

Jim, you are a hero, not just as a decorated Marine, but because you have toiled in the vineyard for five decades. Your fight is not quite over – so let’s play ball!

It just makes you shake your head and wonder how in the world…

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton