According to the Arizona Students' Association, students at all three Arizona university campuses plan to rally tomorrow, Wednesday, March 23, against the state Senate's plan to cut university funding by $235 million—including $92 million from the UA.

The rally at the UA takes place at 11:30 a.m. at the Alumni Plaza (in front of the Administration building).

During discussions on immigration reform, people desperate to prove we are living in desperate times often turn to FAIR, aka the Federation for American Immigration Reform. The acronym that sounds downright saintly, so how can they be wrong?

The organization has a lot of fans, many of whom love to comment on The Range to prove their desperate points. Capt. Al Melvin even got busy on Twitter during the past couple of weeks regarding the cost of "illegal aliens."

Love this one:

Illegal aliens cost AZ citizens 2-3 Bil $ per year. We must act now or we'll also lose AZ to them politically as has already happened in CA.
18 Mar

Here comes FAIR:

I urge everyone to check out the Federation on American Immigration Reform's website www.fairus.org which shows illegals cost AZ 2-3 Bil$/yr
17 Mar

OMG, bring your children indoors:

It is critical that we get control of the illegal alien situation in AZ. 20 to 30 % of people in AZ schools, prisons & med sys are illegals
17 Mar

Go to the center's fact page to get info that will help Capt. Melvin and others get some much needed information before they send off erroneous tweets. Times are tough, and the state's Legislative majority is operating on failed policy, but rather than change, they realize now is the best time to blame immigrants for budget woes and just about everything else.

"But what about chupacabras?" you're probably asking right now. Well, it may not be obvious to Cappy Melvin and Russell Pearce, but I think Arizona has a bigger problem here. We've heard reports are increasing along the border regarding chupacabra sightings, and a few reports indicate this could be a bigger issue in larger urban areas.

After the jump is a handy list from the Discovery Channel on "How to Spot a Chupacabra." Keep it handy and stay safe.

Looks like TW isn't the only publication getting the cold shoulder from Sen. Al Melvin:

BTW, Atomic Al's bill to have a nuclear waste dump in Arizona that funds schools passed the Senate today.

I have a long-standing dislike for Blink-182, so it's a little strange to think of drummer Travis Barker as a legend, but regardless of that, seeing the announcement of a April 20th show called Higher Education (sigh) at Club Congress was exciting if only because Mixmaster Mike is coming to town. Mixmaster Mike might be best known these days for his role as the Beastie Boys' DJ, but there's really no way to describe how ridiculously good this guy is with a set of turntables. The legend is that along with DJ Q-Bert, he was so dominant at the world championships of turntabling in the mid-nineties that the organizers asked him to quit entering to let other people have a chance. That he's going to be at Club Congress is still a little difficult for me to process.

Live at Teddy's in Los Angeles:

At some trade convention this year (note Phoenix's DJ Z-Trip nodding in admiration in the background):

More information on the show and where to get tickets at PhatEntertainment.com.

An interesting article in the New York Times this weekend about how quinoa's recent popularity in the United States has made the product outside of what Bolivians, who lived off quinoa for centuries, can afford:

Now demand for quinoa (pronounced KEE-no-ah) is soaring in rich countries, as American and European consumers discover the “lost crop” of the Incas. The surge has helped raise farmers’ incomes here in one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries. But there has been a notable trade-off: Fewer Bolivians can now afford it, hastening their embrace of cheaper, processed foods and raising fears of malnutrition in a country that has long struggled with it.

The shift offers a glimpse into the consequences of rising global food prices and changing eating habits in both prosperous and developing nations. While quinoa prices have almost tripled over the past five years, Bolivia’s consumption of the staple fell 34 percent over the same period, according to the country’s agricultural ministry.

The resulting quandary — local farmers earn more, but fewer Bolivians reap quinoa’s nutritional rewards — has nutritionists and public officials grasping for solutions.

“As it’s exported, quinoa is now very expensive,” said María Julia Cabrerizo, a nutritionist at the Hospital de Clínicas, a public hospital here. “It’s not a food of mass consumption, like noodles or rice.”

Should be an exciting evening at the School of Law tonight.

AG Tom Horne will address the University of Arizona Latino Law students to discuss HB 2281, Ethnic Studies Law, on Tuesday, March 22 at 5:45 p.m. at the University of Arizona College of Law, Ares Auditorium, Room 164. Horne will be on a panel.

Horne was invited by the Latino Law school group to discuss HB 2281, and welcomed the opportunity to discuss the issue with the law students and other panel members.

Horne stated: “TUSD’s Ethnic Studies program divides students by race and promotes ethnic chauvinism, rather than teaching students to treat each other as individuals. I am committed to educating the public on what is really happening in these classes.”

WHO: AG TOM HORNE TO ADDRESS UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA LATINO LAW STUDENTS

WHERE: UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
JAMES E. ROGERS COLLEGE OF LAW
1201 EAST SPPEDWAY
TUCSON, AZ 85719

DATE: TUESDAY, MARCH 22, 2011

TIME: 5:45 P.M.

[Attorney General's Office]

From the Arizona Guardian twitter feed:

[Note from TW Web Producer Dan Gibson: Reader Gregory Heathco sent in a eulogy for the HBO series Big Love, which ended on Sunday. Since The Range's regular TV columnist, Jordan Green, is on a not-really-at-all deserved vacation this week, Gregory provides a nice perspective on a show that ran for quite a while, but didn't grab the popular success of The Sopranos or Six Feet Under or the critical success of The Wire.]

Bill Hendrickson passed away on Sunday and with him an era of series drama that may never be equaled. That era was a twelve year stretch of story-telling excellence brought to us by the once peerless HBO. It began in 1999 with the ground breaking first episode of The Sopranos and ended with the heart wrenching finale of Big Love. My own appreciation of good television was born during this era, along with so many others, and I find myself grappling with the fear that my best viewing years are behind me.

It's a shame that Loleatta Holloway wasn't a bigger star; her first label, Aware, went out of business, and most of her hits were for Gold Mind and Salsoul, labels that did well in dance circles, but didn't have much success in the pop realm. Still, whether you've heard of Holloway or not, in the late 80's and early 90's, her voice was featured on two gigantic pop hits, Black Box's "Ride on Time" and Marky Mark's "Good Vibrations", both of which sampled her #1 dance hit from 1980, "Love Sensation". Black Box pulled the terrible trick of having a model lip sync her vocals in their video, not even giving Holloway credit on the song (she later successfully sued), but to his credit, Marky Mark had her appear in the video for "Good Vibrations" and paid her royalties.

Holloway's larger than life gospel-inflected vocals never had the pop or R&B chart success that she might have deserved, but she was a legitimate disco star with her tracks fronting the Salsoul Orchestra and her influence can be heard all over house music still heard on dance floors.

"Hit and Run":

Fire Island featuring Loleatta Holloway, "Shout to the Top":

Loleatta Holloway, who died Monday evening after a short illness, was 64.

Now the question is whether anyone the things he described actually happened or not, or even if Tony Hill has actually taught a class in Glendale, like he claimed:

Tony Hill said an unusually disheartening day of substitute teaching Glendale middle-school students spurred him to write a letter to Senate President Russell Pearce.

He didn't intend for that letter to be read on the Senate floor by Sen. Lori Klein, R-Anthem, or for it to become the center of an immigration legislation debate. He didn't intend for it to become the focus of a public-records fight between Pearce and the media, or to find himself the center of media attention.

But it was, and now he is.

Hill said he wrote the letter Klein read last week, and he said every word is true. Klein did not name the author during her speech.

He said the letter was about an experience with a history and language class in a grade 4-8 public school in Glendale, but he would not name the school. Glendale Elementary School District reported it has no record of a Tony or Anthony Hill subbing in the past couple of years. Hill's employment could not be confirmed at other districts in the city by press time.

In the letter, Hill said that a majority of students in that class refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance and when asked why told him "we are Mexicans and Americans stole our land." He said "most" of the students wrote in papers that "they were in the country illegally, White Americans are racist, and that they came here for a better life."

Hill said that when he asked the students to stop speaking Spanish in class, they told him that "Americans better learn Spanish and their customs because they are taking the land back from us." He said most students refused to open the textbook, tore out pages, and threw them at each other.

Senate staff originally released the letter following a public-records request, but did not include the name of the author. Sen. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, demanded during the Senate floor session Monday that the author be identified. He questioned the legitimacy of the letter.

Pearce told the media he would not release the author's name because the teacher would "probably be attacked, probably be fired."

[AZCentral]