It's a nearly full house at the 700-seat auditorium at Ironwood Hills HS for tonight's CD8 debate between Jonathan Paton, Jesse Kelly, Brian Miller and Andy Goss. Overall, the crowd's energy seems focused on beating Democrat Gabrielle Giffords

Margaret has just published The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona-Mexico Borderlands, which expands on reporting that she did for TW and other publications over the last decade.

Check out what the critics are saying:

"Most border ‘experts’ and immigration writers are mere tourists. This writer is not one of them. In Margaret Regan’s The Death of Josseline, you have a writer who lives the story, reports from the heart of the killzone, and works the territory on a regular basis. The many admirers of Enrique’s Journey will find much to admire, and fear, in this powerful report."
—Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Devil’s Highway

"The Death of Josseline is a humane, sensitive, and informative perspective on a current and controversial topic. It also testifies to the fastest growing international criminal activity today: body trafficking. We all must pay attention."
—Ana Castillo, author of The Guardians

"The Death of Josseline is a border reality check. It tells searing stories of those who’ve died crossing the Sonora/Arizona desert, of young people sent to prison in Tucson for the crime of working, and of the courageous people of conscience who stand up for the rights of migrants. Read it, and see why our deadly immigration policies need to be changed."
—David Bacon, author of Illegal People

"This book should be required reading for everyone—from President Obama and the director of Homeland Security to the Border Patrol agents, the vigilantes, and migrant rights activists. If people on both sides of the immigration issue picked up this book instead of arms, we would come to a peaceful resolution; it gave me inspiration."
—Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street

"In The Death of Josseline, Margaret Regan stands midpoint between immigration’s push and pull . . . her clear and sympathetic eyes watching the south on its treacherous slog north."
—Tom Miller, author of The Panama Hat Trail

"There may be no better way to understand the muddle that is U.S. immigration policy than by reading these portraits of people who cross the border in hopes of a better life. . . . The Death of Josseline is an excellent way to understand—on a human level—the ebb and flow of human labor across political boundaries."
—Ted Robbins, Southwest correspondent, National Public Radio

“Regan…has compiled a compelling chronicle of the flow of migrants from northern Mexico into the “Tucson Sector” of Arizona, distilling the many facets of this phenomenon into an enlightening account.”
—Booklist

“Regan puts a human face on the multiple problems created by desperate, poverty-stricken people entering the United States illegally to look for work.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Buy your copy now! Or visit one of our local bookstores. They could the use the money, and the gov't could use the tax revenue.

We'll have an excerpt in TW next week.

I've been reading Margaret's work for close to two decades now. She's blessed with a sharp eye, a good heart and spine of steel. Her border stories have captured the complexity and heartache that runs so deeply in our borderlands. Would that we had more of her in the biz.

Imagine my surprise just now when I picked up the phone and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio was on the other line! At first I thought it was Max Cannon pulling another prank, but then I realized it was really was Sheriff Joe, or at least a robot version of him, inviting me to downtown's El Presidio Park at 5 p.m. Monday, Feb. 15, to meet J.D. Hayworth, the former congressman who is chewing Sen. John McCain's ass.

Robo-Joe said something to the effect that McCain had supported amnesty and cap-and-trade legislation. Oh, that McCain! Such a lib. (BTW: Arizona's senior senator is scheduled to be our guest on Arizona Illustrated's Friday Roundtable next Friday, Feb. 19.)

Anyway, thanks the invite, Sheriff. You can bet I'll be there!

Some people call it advertising and others call it soft-core porn, either way American Apparel hasn't made best friends with feminists who've always questioned AA's owner Dov Charney's nasty, slimy approach to marketing his political feel-good T-shirts and such. Besides the ad images, Charney has been accused of sexual harassment by former employees. No shocker there.

Just to continue to prove how slimy he is, however, Charney's on a hunt for new models by asking women to put photos of their backends online to be scored and commented on - the Best Bottom in the World competition. Visit here, and remember: NOT FOR WORK. Actually, I think its fine to put up pictures of a bunch of different butts. But to be fair, the man needs to put up some men's butts, too.

Of course, there's a petition against it. If anything they should be fighting that in the end the winner only makes $300, which kind of smacks like sweatshop change.

"Nostalgia De Monte," by Juan Carlos Breceda, is among the works on display through Feb. 22 at the Tansey Gallery, 3001 E. Skyline Drive, suite 109. The gallery is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Come to an opening reception tonight from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Breceda will visit the gallery to demonstrate his techniques from 1 to 3 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 13.

Rep. Frank Antenori, in between attempting to make life miserable for poor people who want state-subsidized health insurance and trying to make life more difficult for divorcing couples, has now figured out a way to screw up the May sales tax election:

Howie explains:

A maneuver by a Tucson lawmaker to force legislative approval of more business tax cuts could scuttle an agreement to finally balance this year's state budget.

The final piece of a $1.2 billion budget fix was to delay $450 million in payments to schools and universities.

The Senate approved delaying the payments last week, and the House did likewise Wednesday. But the House added the condition that it would go along only if the Senate agreed to major tax cuts next year—a condition that has been declared unacceptable to the Senate.

The stalemate could endanger plans for a May 18 special election to see if voters are willing to raise the state sales tax by a penny per dollar, an election some Republican legislators never wanted in the first place.

Why not do something meaningful, like propose his fellow lawmakers give-up their salaries and health insurance during this economic meltdown and put it toward education? Oh yeah, that's right. They'd probably want to send it to school tuition organizations.

Maybe this is part of a full-employment plan for the police and courts, or perhaps maybe he’s just doing satire, like Jonathon Swift’s A Modest Proposal.

From Mr. Swift:

I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle or swine; and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

"If you don't have enough money to buy your own food to exist for your own sustenance, and you need some other hardworking taxpayer that's out there and working and paying taxes to subsidize your food, then you shouldn't have the luxury, at the expense of some other taxpayer, to go out and enjoy the niceties in life."

I wrote about the recall effort in this week's Skinny. I also talked about it on tonight's episode of Arizona Illustrated. You can watch the clip after the jump.

Arizona Illustrated Christopher Conover also had a story on the recall tonight.

Our first Blogislature update: HB 2650, which would lengthen the amount of time it takes to get a divorce from 60 days to six months, passed the House Health and Human Services Committee today. It's heading to the full House.

BTW: Legislature fans, feel free to submit additional ideas for bills you'd like us to follow, along with any updates about the bills we're now tracking. We already know there are a couple of bills we'll need to add to the list this week.

• NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Now up for your viewing pleasure: A fresh batch of Mars images from the UA Lunar and Planetary Lab's HiRISE camera

Speaking of Mars: We ran into Peter Smith, the principal investigator of the LPL's Phoenix Mars Mission, last week. He said they were still listening to see if their plucky robot survived the harsh winter on the Arctic plains of Mars, but they hadn't heard anything yet.

He also mentioned a recent story we missed: The LPL is one of three finalists in a competition for a NASA space mission. The plan: Drop a robotic spacecraft named OSIRIS-REx onto an asteroid, take same samples and snapshots, and come back home to earth. How cool is that?

Here's the UA's release on the project:

OSIRIS-REx will usher in a new era of planetary exploration. For the first time in space-exploration history, a mission will return a pristine sample of a carbonaceous asteroid.

The mission executes precise spacecraft navigation to the surface of the asteroid, thoroughly characterizes the asteroid and the sample site, acquires a significant quantity of