Health reform prayer. Chant three times, daily:
Please Lord Vishnu, now more than ever, do what you need to make sure our government passes health reform.

From Rush Limbaugh yesterday:

I’ll just tell you this, if this passes and it’s five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented — I am leaving the country. I’ll go to Costa Rica.

Read more here.

NPR recently paid tribute to Sparklehorse, musician Mark Linkous who took his own life at the age of 47 on Saturday, March 6. You can hear and read more here.

Republican state lawmakers were finally releasing details of their spending plan for the upcoming year earlier this week—and, to no great surprise, the proposals are brutal to anyone who cares about the citizens of the state.

Among the lowlights:

• All-day kindergarten is gone.

• KidsCare, the program that provides health insurance to children in households below 200 percent of the federal poverty line, is gone. That means we’ll lose a lot of federal dollars that come into the state because the feds provide a 3-1 match for the program.

• Healthy Arizona, the program that provides health insurance to people below the federal poverty level, is gone, with eligibility rolled back to one-third of the federal poverty level. If you’re a single mom with two kids making more than roughly $6,100 a year, you will no longer qualify for state-subsidized health insurance.

Even the Arizona Chamber of Commerce is against that one. Executive Director Glenn Hamer—a former executive director of Arizona Republican Party—says the move is just plain foolish.

“If you’re taking 300,000 people off of health insurance,

• Josh Goldberg
• Yud, or the End of Night

"Yud, or The End of Night," by Josh Goldberg, is on display at The Davis Dominguez Gallery , 154 E. Sixth St., in Redefining Space: Abstract Paintings by Josh Goldberg and David Pennington. The show runs from March 11 until April 24. The gallery is open Tuesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The UA College of Science's Tuesday night lecture series, "Mind and Brain," is drawing near-capacity crowds at UA's Centennial Hall, which is no small accomplishment.

Here's a video of the first lecture by Dr. Lynn Nadel, who talked about "Building Brains, Making Minds."

This week in the free series: Anna Dornhaus, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, talks about the evolution of mind and brain. Here's what you have to look forward to:

What does anybody need a brain for? Brains are energetically expensive to make and to use, and susceptible to making mistakes. Accordingly, not learning, i.e. sticking to an innate or random strategy, is often the best thing to do. Still, humans and other animals display sophisticated learning and cognition. Recent research shows that each animal has specific learning abilities and lacks others according to its environment and evolutionary history. Understanding what different brains are used for can help us understand why they evolved.

Also happening tomorrow night: A Science Cafe talk focusing on Biosphere 2, which is now under the management of the College of Science, at 6 p.m. at Cushing Street Bar & Restaurant. Details here.

More on the Mind and Brain series here.

If you'd like to listen to podcasts of the series, you can get them from iTunes by starting here.

Last week, we were skeptical about a Republican Jonathan Paton's vow to stop the tradition of earmarking in Congress as he sought to unseat Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. We argued that it seemed an unlikely proposition.

This week, Democrats are now talking about banning earmarks, according to Roll Call:

As they try to reclaim the ethical high ground during a difficult stretch, House Democratic leaders are considering a dramatic move: declaring a party-wide ban on earmarks this year.

The idea, floated by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a leadership huddle Tuesday, is for House Democrats to outflank their Republican counterparts, who have mulled and rejected such a moratorium in recent years.

The discussion was brief and inconclusive, sources with knowledge of the session said. Leaders decided they needed to explore it further with Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.). But if top Democratic brass decides to embrace the ban, it would likely have far-reaching consequences — and meet stiff resistance from some corners of the Democratic Caucus that cherish earmarks as a constitutionally protected legislative prerogative and a political necessity in an increasingly hostile environment for incumbents.

For the current fiscal year alone, members of both parties in both chambers secured 9,499 earmarks worth a total of $15.9 billion, according to a study by Taxpayers for Common Sense.

BTW: OpenSecrets.org can give you a list of Giffords' earmarks.

Borderbeat.net reporters Amanda Portillo and Lauren Adams have a little fun with educational first-aid videos when out in the desert.

Photographs by John deDios

Former congressman J.D. Hayworth’s challenge to U.S. Senator John McCain in this year’s GOP primary is exposing all sorts of fault lines in the Arizona Republican Party.

Hayworth himself has noted that the race was “a classic political confrontation: John McCain and the Washington establishment on one side, and we the people on the other.”

Those fault lines are extending into Southern Arizona’s Congressional District 8, where four Republicans—former state senator Jonathan Paton and political newcomers Jesse Kelly, Brian Miller and Andy Goss—are duking it out in the August GOP primary to see who gets to challenge Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in the November general election.

Kelly, who was gathering the most media attention before Paton got into the race in January, has endorsed Hayworth in the race.

“I support conservatives,” Kelly says. “It’s not an indictment of John McCain. But I support J.D. Hayworth because he stands more with the conservative principles that I believe.”

By embracing Hayworth, Kelly is setting himself up as the outsider who is

Borderbeat.net reporters Amanda Portillo and Lauren Adams have a little fun with educational first aid videos when out in the desert.

The audio slideshows are a fun watch for anyone who enjoys taking a walk in any outdoorsy landscape.

(Photographs by John deDios)

Watch for the next video: How to stop a bleeding wound.