Random Musings rounds it up here. The Arizona Capitol Times has deets here. Howie's story here.

It gets heard in today's Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. The agenda includes the birthright citizenship bills, a bill requiring hospitals to check immigration status before treating patients, a striker calling for drug testing of welfare recipients and the complete elimination of Arizona's participation in the federal Medicaid program. Yes, the complete elimination of federal funding for health care for the destitute. Here's one unintended consequence we can see from that one: The complete collapse of Arizona health-care system. That'll show the feds!

Rhonda talks to Hispanic activists who are making more noise about a boycott. She gets great quote from Sen. Ron Gould:

Republican Sen. Ron Gould of the Lake Havasu area said he wasn’t too concerned about the threat. “I suspect it will work about as well as the last boycott,” he said, adding, “With any luck, we can get Raul Grijalva to endorse it again and then we can go after him next election.”

Mayor Bob Walkup will deliver his State of the City speech today. The big question on our mind: Will he announce his plans for this year? A graceful retirement? A vow to stand by the city in hard times and fight to steer us to a brighter future? We'll do our best to liveblog it via Facebook, if we can get the iPad to work down there in bowels of the TCC.

Now that Arizona voters have approved the use of medical marijuana, employers need new ways to deal with employees who are impaired for any reason, a state lawmaker said Tuesday, Feb. 15.

“Employers were left with their hands tied because they didn’t know what to do when it came to dealing with impaired workers who came to the workplace,” Rep. Kimberly Yee, R-Phoenix, told the House Committee on Employment and Regulatory Affairs.

Yee authored a bill, HB 2541, that would give employers the right to reassign or put on leave someone who works in a “safety-sensitive” position if they have a “good-faith belief” that person has used or intends to use a legal or illegal drug that causes impairment.

This judgment could be based on a drug test, though the bill’s definitions of good faith include observed conduct, lawful video surveillance or “information reported by a person believed to be reliable.”

Businesses would have immunity from litigation when taking any of the actions covered by the measure.

The committee endorsed the bill on 6-2 vote despite concerns raised by dissenters and even some who voted in favor that the bill could grant employers too much power at the expense of employees’ rights.

Eat at any of the three local Sauce locations tomorrow, Tuesday, Feb. 22, and 20 percent of your bill (excluding alcohol) will be donated to Tragedy in Tucson Victims' Fund.

Sauce restaurants are located at 7117 N. Oracle Road, 2990 N. Campbell Ave. and 5285 E. Broadway Blvd. There’s more information here.

For more information on the Tragedy in Tucson Victims’ Fund, click here.

Well now, the Onyx Room sure looks like it'll be fun when it opens. It’s like a hybrid soul-food joint and cocktail lounge, with a big dance floor thrown in for good measure. It’s going in at the huge building at 106 W. Drachman St. that’s housed several Mexican restaurants over the years.

We’re still digging up information about the new restaurant, but for the time being, you can follow it on Facebook here.

[Note from web producer Dan Gibson: While the Strong Beer Festival in Phoenix isn't exactly a Tucson-related event at first glance, the Tucson brewers were in attendance and it's always good to have a list of new beers worth trying, so here's a report from Range contributor Jordan Green who was there for a day of miserable weather and a lot to drink on Saturday.]

There were about 45 minutes, from the time I entered the gate to the point where 30 mile per hour gusts were threatening to send beer tents flipping through throngs of people, when the 11th Annual Arizona Strong Beer Festival was nearly perfect.

There isn't a modern author that means more to me than David Foster Wallace, so even seeing a reminder on Facebook this morning that today would have been his 49th birthday is still weird and disconcerting. I guess it's still a little strange to me that he's gone, but there's still a lot to appreciate in the work he left behind (and an unfinished novel to be released in April).

With his work, there's a lot I would consider among my "favorites", but the graduation speech he gave at Kenyon College (published in 2009 as This Is Water) is what sticks in my head:

Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you're "supposed to" think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it, because it's hard, it takes will and mental effort, and if you're like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat-out won't want to. But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-lady who just screamed at her little child in the checkout line — maybe she's not usually like this; maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who's dying of bone cancer, or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the Motor Vehicles Dept. who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a nightmarish red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness.

Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible — it just depends on what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important — if you want to operate on your default-setting — then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying. But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars — compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't.

[WSJ]

My co-worker and general smart-woman-around-town Linda Ray said something the other day about how everyone is convinced the music they listened to in their teens was the best ever, and even though I try to spend more time listening to new music than older stuff, all it takes is some sort of 90's indie rock reunion show to come to town and I'm as predictably nostalgic as anyone.

That being said, you really should go see Sebadoh tonight.

Sure, they've been on the road doing the reunion thing recently with their more original lineup including Eric Gaffney, but the group coming to Tucson drops the angry/terrible drummer and songwriter Gaffney to focus on the band's 1994 album Bakesale, a wildly underrated college rock masterpiece where Lou Barlow and Jason Lowenstein could really delve into their misery and angst.

"Rebound":

"Skull":

Quasi opens for Sebadoh tonight at Club Congress at 7 pm. Tickets are $14.

I get a little enraged when people are making excessive noise at the movies as well, but the end of Black Swan was definitely not worth shooting anyone over:

A man has been shot dead at a cinema in Latvia after a fellow movie-goer objected to the volume at which he was eating his popcorn. The assailant, 27, reportedly had a brief argument with the man, aged 43, who was sitting next to him during a screening of Black Swan in the Forum cinema, one of the largest in the city of Riga.

When the credits rolled, the younger man pulled out a legally registered firearm and shot the other man dead. Other audience members then phoned for the police and an ambulance. The younger man — a graduate of the police academy who holds a doctorate in law from the University of Latvia — waited to be arrested.

[The Guardian]

Funds set up to honor slain Gabrielle Giffords staffer Gabriel Zimmerman are both over the $30,000 mark, although they seem to be leveling off.

The Gabriel Zimmerman Memorial Fund has collected 182 donations collectively worth $32,000, up from $25,000 three weeks ago, says Colleen Bagnell, development director of Child and Family Resources in Tucson, the organization that started the fund.

The fund had reached $25,000 after just three weeks in existence. Zimmerman served on the board of Child and Family Resources while working with Giffords.

Meanwhile, the Gabriel Zimmerman Scholarship Fund has reached about $35,000 in total donations, an increase from $30,000 three weeks ago, says Marcus Frost, assistant director of development for social sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Zimmerman’s alma mater.

The fund needs to reach $50,000 for endowment at the university, a goal fund organizers are trying to reach “as soon as possible,” Frost says. “Time is of the essence, but there is not a deadline.”

To donate to these funds, contact the following:

Gabriel Zimmerman Memorial Fund
Child and Family Resources
2800 E. Broadway Blvd.
Tucson, AZ 85716
To donate, contact Development Director Colleen Bagnall at (520) 321-3778 or go online to [email protected]

Gabriel Zimmerman Scholarship Fund
Joop Rubens, Social Sciences, UC Santa Cruz
1156 High St.
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
To donate, contact Joop Rubens at (831) 502-7275 or [email protected]