The Nogales International (which, like the Weekly, is owned by Wick Communications) reports that officials, business owners and residents on both sides of the border are fuming because of long lines at border checkpoints:

The line, more than 200 people deep, stretched back from the Dennis DeConcini pedestrian border crossing, winding through an open-air corridor and out into the narrow lanes of pharmacies, dental offices and curio shops of downtown Nogales, Sonora.

As the sun set on the barely moving queue, a pre-teen girl waiting with her family shifted back and forth on flip-flop-clad feet in an effort to keep warm. A few steps away, a well-groomed, 30-something man took out a cell phone and dialed his girlfriend on the Arizona side of the border, assuring her that he’d be across soon for their Saturday night date.

“What’s the holdup?” someone asked a security guard monitoring the line.

“There’s only one agent working up there,” the guard answered, eliciting groans and utterances from those within earshot. But there were few options other than to wait; the pedestrian-only crossing at Morley Avenue, two blocks east, had already closed for the day, and Nogales’ third crossing point, Mariposa, was a mile-and-a-half walk away.

In all, it would take more than an hour for this section of the line to pass through U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) turnstiles into the United States.

Lines like this one on March 6 have become a familiar annoyance for residents of Ambos Nogales who regularly walk back and forth between Arizona and Sonora for legitimate purposes like shopping, dining, and visiting family and friends. Business leaders on both sides of the border say the pedestrian queues are interfering with shopping flows and discouraging tourists, who are already frightened by news reports of violence along the border.

The long lines are not a result of greater demand: CBP statistics show that pedestrian crossings at Nogales’ three ports of entry held relatively steady throughout 2009 before spiking predictably during the Christmas season and falling in January and February. Instead, customs and immigration officials say that increased security concerns and responsibilities at the ports are stretching resources thin. Over the past year, for example, agents have had to step up inspections of Mexico-bound foot and vehicle traffic while also maintaining their vigilance over U.S.-bound travel.

Local officials and civic leaders say the solution is simple: CBP needs to add more agents to the Nogales ports.

Read the rest here.

The morning daily reports that a "newspaper article" examining the car-bomb killing of real-estate hustler Gary Triano had Pamela Phillips, who is accusing of hiring Ronald Young to kill her ex-husband, ready to kill herself.

The article in question: The late Chris Limberis' examination of the Triano killing, five years after the bomb went off:

In all likelihood, Triano was killed instantly. Only an instant to erase a man who came to symbolize Tucson real estate boom and bust, and speculation roller coasters. A mercurial sort who showed off an association with Donald Trump, who burned through millions of dollars and who pined for his children lost in a nasty divorce.

For a better understanding of the Triano trial, read the whole thing here.

The latest dispatch from Sandy Bahr, legislative lobbyist for the Sierra Club:

Hi everyone! You would think that after all of the havoc they wreaked last week, the Legislature might give us a small break, but no. They moved forward a long list of bad ideas — from providing more exemptions for large mining conglomerates, weakening groundwater protection, allowing more illegal lot splits, stealing all the Clean Elections dollars, and setting up a good ol’ boy network for Game and Fish. Needless-to-say, they did nothing for Parks and still refuse to hear HCR2040 sustainable state parks fund (Jones, Brown, Ch. Campbell, et al). They are proposing a voluntary fee instead, as well an unconstitutional raid on voter-protected funds.

SB1200 NOW: game and fish commission; recommendation board (Nelson) passed out of the State Senate 16-7-7. (It failed on the first vote but was brought back for reconsideration.) Please thank the following senators for voting no and for supporting public involvement in good wildlife

There have been persistent rumors that the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee is trying to recruit somebody other than City Councilman Rodney Glassman to run for Sen. John McCain's Senate seat, especially with McCain facing a hard challenge from the right in the form of former congressman J.D. Hayworth.

Now Politico names Democrat Nan Walden as a potential candidate:

As Sen. John McCain works to beat back a primary challenge from the right, Arizona businesswoman Nan Stockholm Walden is taking a look at entering the Senate race on the Democratic side, according to Democrats in Arizona and in Washington.

Walden, an executive at Farmers Investment Co. who served as a staffer for former Democratic Sens. Bill Bradley and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, could provide her party with a credible, well financed candidate in the event that McCain loses or is severely wounded in his nomination fight with former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, Democrats said.

"She could be quite formidable. She has a national network. She's been very plugged in with women donors — particularly, I think, in Senate races," one Arizona Democrat told POLITICO.

"Where this thing becomes a real live wire, obviously, is the point at which McCain loses the primary," the Democrat continued. "At that point it's just, who is the person who's there with the right profile, who can reach the kind of Arizona independents with a libertarian streak that runs hard in voters here?"

Walden's company owns a large pecan farm with several hundred employees, and she could be in a position to run as an outsider with private sector experience in an anti-Washington year.

Complete story here.

Rasmussen's latest poll shows Hayworth just seven points behind McCain:

Longtime incumbent John McCain now leads conservative challenger J.D. Hayworth by just seven points in Arizona’s hotly contested Republican Senate Primary race.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely Arizona GOP Primary voters shows McCain ahead 48% to 41%. Three percent (3%) favor another candidate, and eight percent (8%) are undecided.

Following the announcement that Sarah Palin would campaign for his reelection, McCain opened up a 53% to 31% lead over Hayworth in January. The two men were in a near tie in November.

But now Hayworth, a former congressman turned popular local talk radio host, is a formal candidate, and anti-immigration activist Chris Simcox has quit the race and endorsed him. For McCain, the new numbers also show him dropping again below 50%, and incumbents who poll less than 50% at this stage of a campaign are considered potentially vulnerable.

So I don't really have time here to tell you about the awesomeness of last night's SXSW festival; it's my first visit to the musical madhouse and there's a whole day out there to experience.

But, luckily, NPR is here to save the day with lots of coverage, including recordings of the spectacular performances by Broken Bells, Spoon, Sharon Jones and the Walkmen at Stubb's Bar-B-Q last night. Check it all out here.

Give a listen to the Broken Bells here.

"Market," by Ted DeGrazia, is among the works on display in DeGrazia Paintings from Diego Rivera Studio, continuing through April 30 at the DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun, 6300 N. Swan. The gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily.

We've regularly featured images of Mars from the HiRISE camera on The Range, but now here's video of what some guy did with all those pictures: He created a fly-by using the topographical data taken by the camera.

The video (showing the Candor Chasma region) is being billed the most accurate video of the surface of the Red Planet.

Here's more from Discovery News:

Yesterday we featured a trailer from the forthcoming Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls, the sequel to the book that spawned a cottage industry of fusing classic literature with classic horror-film creatures.

Now, Seth Grahame-Smith, the author of the first Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, is out with a new book this month, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Still can’t figure out what happens in the book? That’s why we now have live-action literature trailers (see above).

If you’re thinking that watching our 16th president stake some Antebellum undead might make a decent movie, Tim Burton has already signed on as a producer.

In the meantime, we’re hard at work on our own literary mashup manuscript, tentatively titled Moby-William Howard Taft.