With a deep inhale and wide smile, Jordan Beck let out the worst-kept secret in Arizona high school softball, and came as close as anyone wearing black and red to acknowledging the history that’s been made on the east end of Brown Road.

When executives of corporations are caught aiding and abetting criminal behavior of their employees, the executives are prosecuted and the businesses are destroyed.

President Obama’s new “religious tolerance” consultant to the Pentagon, Mikey Weinstein, wants Christian military service members who openly talk about their faith in uniform to be charged with treason, which is a crime punishable by death according to military law.

It all started in 1961 in Jean Nidetch's living room in New York City. A few overweight friends met each week to talk and troubleshoot their way through a sensible but strict diet from the health department's obesity clinic.

“Attention drivers in Gilbert and Chandler: there is a useful accessory included on your car and truck. (It’s) that thing sticking out of the left side of your steering column ... the TURN SIGNAL. Please try it.”

Repeatedly rebuffed in court, the state and multiple Indian tribes are now banking on last-minute federal legislation to block the Tohono O'odham Nation from building a casino on the edge of Glendale.

Jillian Leslie was none too happy, and she wasn’t alone.

When I first came to the Valley I remember Eddie Basha’s famous commercial motto, “From our family to yours.”

By the time you read this, I hope to have been part of the preservation of a piece of Arizona history. As I write, I’m filled with pride, because whenever you get involved with history, you hope that someday, people yet unborn can learn from it.

SIERRA VISTA — A former mining community in rural southern Arizona that has shifted over the years into an artists' haven and tourist destination is poised to become the first city in this conservative state to legalize civil unions for same-sex couples.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis is the first ever from the Americas, an austere Jesuit intellectual who modernized Argentina's conservative Catholic church.

Gifted students will have another education option next year after the Gilbert Unified School District governing board approved creation of a self-contained classroom program.

Siblings and grandchildren would gain new admission preferences under a charter schools measure backed by Arizona lawmakers.

Supporters of Gov. Jan Brewer’s performance-based education funding model for school districts and charter holders say concerns about the formula’s effects on schools in low-income areas don’t take into account the bigger picture.

Twenty years ago, accountant Sharon Lechter decided to devote her career to financial education and literacy after her oldest son graduated from high school and soon fell into credit card debt.

House Speaker Andy Tobin is sidelining two anti-union measures rather than bringing them to the floor for a divisive -- and potentially losing -- vote.

“There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity!”

WASHINGTON — Side by side, leading Democratic and Republican senators pledged Monday to propel far-reaching immigration legislation through the Senate by summer providing a possible path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people now in the U.S. illegally.

WASHINGTON – Phoenix resident Armando Robles didn’t have tickets to any of Monday’s inaugural events and didn’t have a hotel reservation, but he was not about to let that keep him from showing up at the inauguration.

Stacy L. Leeds, Dean of the University of Arkansas School of Law, will deliver the Sixth Annual William C. Canby Jr. Lecture on Thursday, Jan. 24, at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. The title of Leeds’ talk is “Whose Sovereignty? Tribal Citizenship, Federal Indian Law, and Globalization.”

In today’s business world, catering to a specialized audience has allowed one East valley company to blossom into its CEO’s ultimate dream.

East Valley chambers of commerce will be watching for bills related to unemployment benefits burden of proof, initiative reform, sales tax reform, the budget, and the federal health care system during the 2013 legislative session, according to the Dorn Policy Group.

Now that the Cardinals have done the right thing when it comes to their coaching situation, will they do the right thing when it comes to their coaching situation?

With “The Hurt Locker,” which won six Academy Awards including Best Picture in 2010, Kathryn Bigelow created a riveting, small-scale war film focusing on a first-rate bomb squad unit in Iraq. The key to the film’s effectiveness was its emphasis on less being more – rather than drumming up suspense with constant explosions and shootouts, it was the quiet before the storm and what made the soldiers tick that really seized our attention.