Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry stopped by the Friday Roundtable last night. He says Prop 200 is going to cost county taxpayers a bundle and suggests the City Council shouldn't be trying to hire 2.4 officers per 1,000 Tucson residents. Watch it after the jump.

Glenn Beck, in one of his many rambling lunatic statements earlier this year, said the President Barack Obama had a "deep-seated hatred of white people or the white culture." Unfortunately, he doesn't know what he means by that—or at least he doesn't want to explain it to anyone outside of Fox News.

Public Policy Polling has been dropping Arizona survey numbers all week. Yesterday’s installment, on Sen. John McCain’s numbers, had an interesting twist: He was set up against two Southern Arizona Democrats.

PPP tested McCain against Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and City Councilman Rodney Glassman because those are the Democrats whose names are dropped as potential challengers. (They also tested him against Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, with the caveat that she “obviously is not going to run for Senate next year.”) That tells you something about the Democratic bench in Maricopa County.

McCain crushed both Giffords and Glassman in the poll, which isn’t all that surprising, given that the election is still a year in the future and neither Giffords nor Glassman has done too much to raise their statewide profile.

McCain gets 57 percent of the vote against Giffords, who gets 30 percent. Hardly surprising, given that 60 percent of the voters don’t know enough about her to give her a favorable or unfavorable ranking. (She’s at 19 percent favorable and 21 percent unfavorable.)

Glassman is even more unknown. McCain gets 55 percent of the vote against the Tucson City Councilman, who was supported by 25 percent of those surveyed. More than four out of five voters—82 percent—didn’t know enough about Glassman to have an opinion about him. His favorables were at 6 percent and his unfavorables were at 12 percent.

We hear that Giffords is more likely to wait until 2012 to make a run for the Senate, especially if Sen. Jon Kyl decides to retire, as many seem to think he will. That makes sense to us, especially since redistricting could change the character of Giffords’ District 8. That gives her more time to build a statewide profile.

But we hear Glassman is seriously considering going after McCain. He’s being encouraged to do it by party elders such as Attorney General Terry Goddard and former state party chair Jim Pederson, who undoubtedly hope that some of Glassman’s family fortune would be dumped into a get-out-the-vote effort.

Public Policy Polling has released numbers for a potential GOP primary in next year's gubernatorial race. The news is not good for Gov. Jan Brewer, but a crowded primary could work out well for J. Fife Symington III, our former governor:

In a head to head contest with Treasurer Dean Martin, Brewer trails 37-26. She does edge Martin 28-26 among moderates, but Martin leads 39-26 with conservatives. Given that 76% of Arizona Republicans identify themselves as conservatives governing from the center is not a very good strategy for winning the primary. It doesn't look like she would benefit any from her gender either as she is down by 13 points with women, even greater than her 7 point deficit with men.

Brewer leads a head to head contest with Fife Symington 39-31. Given that Martin leads Brewer and Brewer leads Symington you would expect that in a three way contest Martin would lead followed by Brewer and then Symington.

But weird things happen in three way primaries and that's not the case. Symington actually leads with 34% to 26% for Martin and 22% for Brewer. The reason is that even though more people dislike Symington than the other two candidates, he is the most popular with the people who do like him. 61% of Republicans with a favorable opinion of him say they'll vote for him in a three way primary. Only 50% of Martin and 46% of Brewer's supporters say the same. So the intensity of support is stronger for Symington.

Of course these numbers are of limited use when the field is so unsettled and the primary is so far away. The important takeaway is that there is a very good chance Brewer won't win the nomination if she has strong competition.

If you're going to protest at the UA, you better not be messy about it! Tim McDonnell and Hank Dean Stephenson (who labored as an intern for us earlier this year) bring us the news that UA cops arrested a student for writing on buildings in chalk to highlight a protest about university funding issues:

A UA graduate student was arrested on campus after yesterday’s Arizona for Education Rally and cited on charges of criminal damage and disturbing an educational institution.

His crime: drawing with chalk.

Way to bear down on free speech, UA!

He punk'd us! But he's still a nutbag. Best line: "Look how eager people are to smear!"

Oh please, please bring the Pee Wee's Playhouse stage show to Tucson, along with Miss Yvonne, Cowboy Curtis, Reba the mail lady, the King of Cartoons, Tito the lifeguard, Ricardo the soccer player, Pteri the Pterodactyl, Conky the Robot, Globey the Globe, Chairy the Chair and, oh yes, Pee Wee. Amen.

• NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

• NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

More beautiful photos of Mars from the UA's HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The latest news: HIRISE has helped scientists spot ice below the surface of Mars halfway between the north pole and the equator, thanks to photos of craters that had been recently created by meteor collisions.

Lori Stiles of UA News tells us:

Scientists are seeing sub-surface water ice that may be 99 percent pure
halfway between the north pole and the equator on Mars, thanks to
quick-turnaround observations from orbit of fresh meteorite impact
craters on the planet.

"We knew there was ice below the surface at high latitudes of Mars, but
we find that it extends far closer to the equator than you would think,
based on Mars' climate today," said Shane Byrne of the University of
Arizona, a member of the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or
HiRISE, which runs the high-resolution camera on NASA's Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter.

"The other surprising discovery is that ice exposed at the bottom of
these meteorite impact craters is so pure," Byrne said. "The thinking
before was that ice

When I talked to Representative Matt Heinz last week for my story on Planned Parenthood of Arizona's lawsuit against the state, as a side note, I asked him about the health insurance you get when you happen to be a state representative. Well, the good doctor was kind enough to let me know he pays $44 a month for a very good plan.

"I get a fairly rich benefit package," Heinz told me.

While his contribution is $44 a month, taxpayers pay $496 a month for him to get what he also described as a Cadillac plan.

Getting back to the Legislature: Heinz says: "So you have a much largely wealthy older retired group of lawmakers that have pretty much not wanted for much in their life, making decisions for others in the state who are the most vulnerable in our community. They are making these decisions in a total vacuum."

So, if we take this insurance option away from them, would that help? Well, probably not.

In "Police Action" this week, I took a look at TPD stats. I only included a few graphs about crime trends; you can check them all out yourself at TPD's Web site.