There's a saying: "As California goes, so goes the nation."

The Washington Post asks if Arizona's neighbor is fomenting a revolution in drug policy that will sweep the country. Shops with neon-green marijuana leaves in their windows are popping up all over California, and now graduates of Oaksterdam University can get degrees "certifying passage of 'credible examinations in politics, legal issues, horticulture, cooking and budtending.'"

The Skinny talked about Sen. Jon Kyl’s effort to kill the estate tax this week. More on the fight to give yet another big break to America’s richest from The New York Times.

The NYT also investigates, with a Phoenix dateline, state cuts to social services this weekend:

Perhaps nowhere have the cuts been more disruptive than in Arizona, where more than 1,000 frail elderly people are struggling without home-care aides to help with bathing, housekeeping and trips to the doctor. Officials acknowledge that some are apt to become sicker or fall, ending up in nursing homes at a far higher cost.

As long as we’re posting clips from Arizona Illustrated: You can watch the Roundtable segment after the jump. We discuss City Manager Mike Hein’s firing, the budget mess at the Capitol and more bad headlines for TUSD.

We reported a few days ago that Bennett Bernal was challenging City Councilwoman Karin Uhlich in the Ward 3 Democratic primary this year.

Now Republican Ben Buehler-Garcia has filed to run against her as a Republican.

Before Tedski tells me I'm making too much of this, let me say that Uhlich certainly remains the favorite in both races. But that doesn't mean that having a lot of money spent against you—especially if it's in the form of hit pieces—doesn't do some damage to your political brand. Of course, since Uhlich says she has no plans to seek the mayor's office in two years, maybe that doesn't matter. (And we'll concede that having tough races can also help you improve on the campaign trail, so it's not all negative.)

Ward 3 City Councilwoman Karin Uhlich stopped by KUAT-TV's Arizona Illustrated studio last night to talk about Mike Hein’s firing. There’s a lot of speculation that Uhlich made the move as part of a larger effort to consolidate her power base as she look to run for mayor.

When I asked her about her mayoral ambitions, she said she had no plans to seek the office in two years. But she also declined to pledge to serve the full four years if elected to Ward 3 this November.

Uhlich also said she hadn’t yet decided whether to do a national search or look for local candidates to replace Hein. She said that contrary to rumors, Albert Elias is not at the top of any list to become the next city manager. Albert Elias has worked in the city’s transportation and planning department and is now making a transition to community reinvestment. He is also the brother of Pima County Supervisor Richard Elias.

Watch the interview after the jump.

Don't forget: Al Perry has that CD release party Saturday night at Plush.

Black Velvet is the late-night cult classic over at The Loft.

And Princess Bride continues over at Valley of the Moon.

As promised in the print edition, here’s an expanded interview with Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman, author of Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency. Gellman talks about Cheney’s impact on the administration, his environmental record and more. Gellman also tells us whether he ever feared that someone would put polonium-210 into his lunch.

Gellman will speak in Tucson on Monday, April 13; details here.

Have you heard from the former vice president since Angler came out?

No, not directly. I know he read it, because I got a photo of him reading it on Air Force 2, which is a great souvenir. He talked about it in a closed-door speech to a group of young corporate leaders. He recommended it. It suggests he doesn’t really mind criticism and he has a voracious appetite for intelligence and information. If there’s a book about you, you’re bound to learn something because you don’t know what’s happening other places that lead up to where you get into the picture. He would have learned stuff from it and he enjoyed that.

How did Dick Cheney change the vice-presidency?

He fundamentally transformed it. There had been a gradual trend from about the second term of FDR and certainly beginning with Carter and Mondale, in which vice-presidencies became more important in executive roles, or at least they have more access. Mondale was the first one to have a West Wing office.

But Cheney made it into basically the job of deputy president and super chief of staff. That had never happened before. I think you can’t understand the last eight years without understanding what he did. I would say he was the most powerful person who has ever served in government who was not himself the president.

City Councilwoman Karin Uhlich will be our guest on the Friday Roundtable on Arizona Illustrated http://tv.azpm.org/kuat/tonight. Lots to discuss! The show airs at 6:30 p.m. on Channel 6.1 on your digital receiver and Channel 27 on your analog set.

Today on Arizona Illustrated, Legendary Land Speculator Don Diamond stopped by to tell Bill Buckmaster that he's "alarmed" by the decision to fire Hein. (Don says he's "too old to be outraged.") He also throws his support behind non-partisan elections in the city.

Watch the whole clip after the jump:

City Councilwoman Nina Trasoff, who was on the losing end of a 4-3 vote to fire Mike Hein, was somber in her weekly bulletin, which normally carries short notices of the good and happy news from Ward 6:

Friends ~

I will be brief today.

This is has been a rough week for our community. By a 4-3 vote, my colleagues decided to fire our City Manager. I absolutely disagree with the action the majority took. I strongly supported Mr. Hein, but that was not the main issue for me. It was timing. Unless there are legal reasons to do so, you simply do not fire a City Manager when your budget for the coming year is far from complete; when your community is in the midst of a recession; when you have

Looking for work? The Tucson Citizen reports that a possible buyer of the afternoon paper has placed an ad looking for salespeople:

The publisher of the Culver City (Calif.) Observer has placed an ad online with craigslist looking for "highly motivated" newspaper advertising salespeople to work in Tucson.