As we’ve noted before, the Arizona Republic doesn’t always suck.

Today, it’s a good Sunday paper:

  • There’s a major investigative piece that shows with some conclusiveness that a rapist who preyed on young White Mountain Apache women near Whiteriver, west of Phoenix, was never caught.

The story paints a grim picture of wholesale police incompetence on the reservation.

The Republic waged a two-year legal battle to get the records of the investigations, which of course should have been public from the beginning.

And there’s also reams of copy about the “birthright citizenship” debate, with a pair of stories by Alia Beard Rau and Dan Nowicki.

(As usual, AZCentral doesn’t make it easy on readers. Nowicki’s piece is not linked to from Rau’s article … and doesn’t come up when you search for “Nowicki”!)