If Rasmussen is doing business as usual, we'll get some more poll results this week. What do you bet that Gov. Jan Brewer will be shown to be crushing Democrat Terry Goddard? We'd also wager that McCain holds a double-digit lead over Hayworth and that both of them beat the potential Democratic nominees. And what will the Democratic Senate primary look like? Low support for all the candidates and a lot of undecided voters?

New numbers from Rasmussen show that Brewer is surging against her GOP opponents:

Incumbent Jan Brewer now earns 61% support in Arizona’s Republican Primary race for governor, marking her second big monthly gain in a row.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely GOP Primary Voters in Arizona finds businessman Buz Mills a far distant second with 16% of the vote, followed by State Treasurer Dean Martin at 12%. Two percent (2%) prefer some other candidate in the race, and nine percent (9%) are undecided.

Brewer has had a remarkable surge in support since signing the state’s new immigration law and becoming a forceful national advocate of the measure despite criticism from President Obama, Mexican President Felipe Calderon and others

Keep in mind that some folks are skeptical of Rasmussen's accuracy.

A bulletin from the Arizona Department of Transportation:

To aid summer travel, the Arizona Department of Transportation will reopen five of the state’s highway rest areas by the end of July, helping to expand the opportunities for travelers to make rest stops along some of the busiest routes in Arizona.

Another four rest areas will undergo repairs in an effort to open in the fall. When the nine closed rest areas reopen, bringing the total number of operational rest areas to 14, services will again be provided to more than 50,000 drivers and passengers each day.

When ADOT announced plans to temporarily close some rest areas in October 2009, the agency pledged to reevaluate its financial situation before the July 1 start of the 2011 fiscal year. Closed as the result of the state’s budget crisis, declines in transportation revenues and a need to focus

Another hole has been blown in the state's budget. AP reports:

A new court ruling says the Arizona Legislature's raid of nearly $4.7 million from a special fund for injured workers was illegal.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Larry Grant says the money to be transferred into the state general fund was private money held in trust by the state, not public property.

More details here.

More of these challenges are in the works.

BTW, here's a recent budget update sent to lawmakers from the Joint Legislative Budget Committee staff:

In April, JLBC Staff published updated budget estimates that placed the FY 2011 budget shortfall at between $368 million and $1.2 billion. We will next update our estimates in July after receiving the FY 2010 year-end revenue numbers. In the meantime, we have developed a slide show presentation on the status of the budget for your information.

The size of the FY 2011 budget shortfall will depend on 3 main factors. At the $1.2 billion high end of the shortfall range, each factor contributes roughly $400 million to the size of the problem:

1) revenue collections. Based on our April estimates, we did

A new Gallup poll shows Republicans are much more enthusiastic about voting than Democrats. That's more bad news for Democrats in swing districts, like Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Congressional District 8:

An average of 59% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have said they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting this year compared with past elections, the highest average Gallup has found in a midterm election year for either party since the question was first asked in 1994.

The prior high for a party group was 50% more enthusiastic for Democrats in 2006, which is the only one of the last five midterm election years in which Democrats have had an enthusiasm advantage. In that election, Democrats won back control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since 1994.

The current average is based on four measures of this enthusiasm question since February, including the recent June 11-13 USA Today/Gallup poll. In that poll, 53% of Republicans said they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting and 39% were less enthusiastic, while 35% of Democrats said they were more enthusiastic about voting and 56% were less enthusiastic.

More details here.

• NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

The UA Lunar and Planetary Lab has posted new photos from the HiRISE camera in orbit around Mars. See them here.

HiRISE team member Nathan Bridges tells us about the above photo:

This observation shows dark dunes and light polygonal terrain in Olympia Undae, also known as the North Polar Erg.

Two sets of dunes are obvious. The major set trends North-South, indicating winds from the East or West. Between the crests of these dunes is a second set oriented mostly East-West.

Zooming in on the dunes, a rippled texture is apparent, probably due to

The three Democratic candidates for Arizona Attorney General—Vince Rabago, David Lujan and Felecia Rotellini—will appear at tonight's meeting Saguaro Eastside Democrats at 6:30 p.m. at New Spirit Lutheran Church, 8701 Old Spanish Trail (northeast corner of Camino Seco).

Dennis Wagner of the Arizona Republic asks what is meant by securing the border:

Is a border secure only when no one crosses illegally and when no contraband slips through?

If some permeability is acceptable, what is the tolerable amount?

Political leaders mostly dodge those questions, and for good reason: Anyone with a minimal knowledge or understanding about the nearly 2,000-mile swath of land between Mexico and the United States realizes that requiring a secure border establishes an impossible standard.

Randal C. Archibold of The New York Times examines whether the situation is really growing worse:

It is also an election year, and crime and illegal immigration — and especially forging a link between the two — remain a potent boost for any campaign. Gov. Jan Brewer’s popularity, once in question over promoting a sales tax increase, surged after signing the immigration bill, which is known as SB 1070 but officially called the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act.

No matter that manpower and technology are at unprecedented levels at the border, it may never be secure enough in Arizona’s hothouse political climate when Congressional seats, the governor’s office and other positions are at stake in the Aug. 24 primaries.

It took the Obama administration a few weeks to bow to that political reality and go from trumpeting the border as more secure than it had ever been to ordering National Guard troops to take up position there — most of them in Arizona, Mr. Obama assured Ms. Brewer in a private meeting — because it was not secure enough.

• State Sen. Al Melvin (R-LD26)

“I told her I’m busy,” Melvin says. “I’m going door to door.”

Cage, who lost the Legislative District 26 Senate race to Melvin in 2008 by fewer than 2,000 votes, says she thinks Melvin won’t debate her because he would have to defend his “abysmal” voting record.

“I mean, it’s completely against what the voters of LD26 want,” she says. “He voted for payday loan people to stay in business and 63 percent of our constituents voted against that. He voted 100 percent of the time against public education and we passed Prop 100 by a two-to-one margin.”

The latest bulletin from the Center for Biological Diversity:

In the largest citizen enforcement action ever taken under the Clean Water Act, the Center for Biological Diversity today sued BP and Transocean Ltd., for illegally spewing more than 100 million gallons of oil and other toxic pollutants into the Gulf of Mexico. The suit was filed in federal court in New Orleans.

The Center is seeking the maximum possibly penalty against BP. If BP’s violations are found to have been the result of gross negligence or willful misconduct, the maximum fine is $4,300 per barrel spilled. At this rate, the company is already liable for approximately $11 billion