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AUGUST SABBATICAL: Barring major war or an outbreak of good sense in Arizona, I must leave you to focus on the new David Mapstone Mystery. I'm pretty good at multi-tasking,…

A bad cold and the prep work to be the interlocutor of former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for a Seattle Arts & Lectures event Friday night make it impossible for…

Rogue has been down much of the time in recent days. The cause was a hacker attack on the hosting service, Typepad. I apologize to readers who were inconvenienced. This…

I will be traveling Friday in advance of my event Monday with Scott Turow at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at ASU. The blog will be updated as…

• The best piece I have seen on the extremism driving the government shutdown — and worse to come — is from Andrew Sullivan. "I regard this development as one…

• The most interesting thing I learned on this Phoenix trip is how Gannett has removed Eugene C. Pulliam's name from the masthead of the Arizona Republic. (I typically read…

• I keep eclectic company. Arizona's piano-playing, car-clipping-to-hide-canoodling, legal-troubled but ambitious Attorney General Tom Horne has put me on his list. So I get the "Cracking down on polygamist abuses…

Conversation starters for the open thread: • If we're so eager to bomb Syria to enforce "international norms" (such as things, you know, like torture), let's learn a few things…

• So the first round of Phoenix City Council elections attracted 21 percent of registered voters compared with less than 16 percent four years ago. Turnout was lowest in central…

First, some business: I am going to take an actual vacation until August 26th. Rogue will not be updated, but feel free to browse the archives and special topic pages.…

Emil is buying a round of drinks, so stick around. Comment on anything you wish. As for me, I am surprised at the vacuousness of questions (we offered some good ones) and debate facing prospective Phoenix City Council candidates. I am surprised that the city is moving forward with the short, ugly, hot Sprawl Needle. I am the eternal optimist-naif. And speaking of architecture, news arrives that the John Roll Federal Courthouse has been completed in Yuma. Take a look. With all due respect to the builder: That's it? Let us hope the finished building at least has screening from the merciless Yuma sun. Judge Roll was universally respected. He was among those murdered during the — tho' we dare not call it thus — political assassination attempt on Rep. Giffords. It's too bad we couldn't honor him and grace Yuma with a structure more inspiring than a suburban super Wal-Mart.

On the national front, here's an interesting piece from John Cassidy about why the GOP needs to lose the presidency for a third straight election. But embedded in it is anything but triumphalism for the other side:

Thirty states—including seven of the ten most populous—have Republican
governors, and twenty-nine have G.O.P.-controlled legislatures. With
this firm grip on local power, the party is able to gerrymander
Congressional districts to assure itself of continued success in the
House of Representatives. Despite opinion polls showing the last
Congress to be one of the least popular on record, there was never any
real prospect of the Democrats overturning the G.O.P. majority. And in
next year’s midterms, the Republicans may well gain more seats.

More conversation starters may be found on Arizona's Continuing Crisis. Now, I turn the saloon over to Emil, who has a Kook Watch update:

Local Rogue readers may recall Linda Turley, the iceberg who served as a news anchor on KPHO (Channel 5) a couple of decades ago. She retired to the "East Valley" but has kept busy in local Republican circles agitating against moderation. Back in 2011, in a column supporting then Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce for reelection during his recall campaign, Turley grossly exaggerated Arizona's job growth and credited Pearce for taking Arizona from 49th to 2nd in job growth.

Perhaps the Zimmerman verdict makes all that follows from me less relevant, and if so, get on the thread and weigh in. Otherwise: The crowd still hasn't finished their martinis…

Plenty to talk about this week, from the Yarnell and other wildfires to the prolonging of the Coyotes hustle in Glendale. I guess they'll change the name to the "Arizona…