Forget about coffee this morning, the great news about the federal appeals court decision today that struck down California's Prop 8 could be enough to make you think sanity has entered the picture again. OK, I just remembered we live in Arizona. Go get that coffee, but smile while you sip.

For right now, let's be giddy for California and this good fight, and hope the Ninth Court will be equally good to Arizona in the ongoing lawsuit against the anti-Mexican American Studies law. You can read the decision here.

From Judge Stephen Reinhardt: "Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples. The Constitution simply does not allow for 'laws of this sort'."

Of course backers of the anti-gay law see things a bit differently as they figure out next steps in an appeal — they blame Hollywood, of course. From the LA Times:

Opponents of gay marriage expressed disappointment that an appeals court ruled Proposition 8 unconstitutional, blaming "Hollywood-orchestrated attacks" for the loss.

ProtectMarriage, which sponsored Proposition 8, said it expected the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn Tuesday’s ruling.

The 2-1 decision by a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that limited marriage to one man and one woman, violated the U.S. Constitution. The architects of Prop. 8 have vowed to appeal.

The ruling was narrow and likely to be limited to California.

“Proposition 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California,” the court said.

Prop. 8 forces had a forceful response.

“We are not surprised that this Hollywood-orchestrated attack on marriage — tried in San Francisco — turned out this way,” said Brian Raum, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, a religious liberties group that helped form ProtectMarriage. “But we are confident that the expressed will of the American people in favor of marriage will be upheld at the Supreme Court.”

Some Hollywood actors and executives had been major backers of gay marriage.

The new café Brewd is open at 39 N. Sixth Ave, right across from the Ronstadt Transit Center. The coffee served there is roasted by Tucson's own Adventure Coffee Roasters and we hear the scones aren't bad, either.

If you like live jazz, they've got that as well. More on that over here.

It’s not uncommon today to hear songs on the radio that seem to have taken a song that was popular in years passed and remixed it into something new. The film RE:GENERATION documents five popular DJs — DJ Premier, Mark Ronson, Skrillex, Pretty Lights, and The Crystal Method — as they target beloved music genres like classical and jazz and collaborate with famous artists to create new sounds and “discover how our musical past is influencing the future.”

Download the entire soundtrack for free and buy tickets to see the film when it hits Tucson's Harkins Spectrum theatres on Feb. 16 at regenerationmusicproject.com

While the idea of buying tickets in February for a show in October is a little strange to me, I guess Madonna has been savvy in limiting how often she tours in order to make her shows events, so her show on October 16th in Phoenix at the US Airways Center seems significant somehow. However, it's possible her halftime show at the Super Bowl wasn't the best advertisement for the tour, unless you prefer Cirque du Soleil acrobatics to the actual sound of the human voice performed live. Also, her new album is probably awful. And the tickets will likely be outrageously expensive. Still, it's Madonna. Decide for yourself before tickets go on sale Feb. 27.

The culinary world snickered when Ray Flores said he was opening a garage-themed taco shop at exactly the same moment the recession had the entire country collectively soiling its economic trousers. Sir Veza's Taco Garage ended up being a hit though, enabling Flores to open another Tucson location and a super-high-profile spot at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

The new location of Sir Veza's opened Sunday at 220 W. Wetmore Road, and we hear from the architecural firm that designed it that the interior is something else. That stands to reason being that the same firm handled the creation of HUB Restaurant and Ice Creamery, Playground an many more hot restaurant concepts around Tucson and beyond.

I guess we can chalk another one up for the Flores and his crew, who established El Charro (and maybe the chimichanga) back in 1922 and have been running strong ever since. Don't forget that Flores is also one of the people spearheading the effort to have the chimichanga declared the state food of Arizona, which would add another historical achievement to the family's already impressive portfolio.

Slideshow

Fred Eaglesmith at Plaza Palomino

Click to View 10 slides

Fred Eaglesmith performed, as part of the Rhythm and Roots concert series founded and promoted by the late Jonathan Holden, at Plaza Palomino, Saturday, February 6.

Salomón Baldenegro Sr. recently shared his perspective on an interview Tucson Unified School District board member Michael Hicks did on the Garrett Lewis A.M. show on KNSR 97.1 in which Hicks lied about where he was during the school board meeting on April 26, 2011. This is the school board meeting in which the student group UNIDOS took over the dais and prevented the school board meeting from continuing.

In light of a recent editorial from Hicks published in the Sunday morning daily, Baldenegro is right to question Hicks' motivations and ask the greater community to do the same. Here's the Three Sonorans' video Baldenegro refers to that shows Hicks smiling, standing with other board members, talking to media and talking with TUSD school board candidate Miguel Ortega — a room Hicks said he was too scared to enter:

Estimadas/os: Lying is the native language of the Mexican haters. The entire campaign against Mexican American Studies in the Tucson Unified School District is based on lies and misrepresentations (e.g., that the courses preach the overthrow of the U.S. government, etc.). Nothing illustrates that strategy clearer than the following:

Tucson Unified School Board member Michael Hicks was on radio station KNST 97.1 (the Garrett Lewis A.M. show) on February 2 purposely misrepresenting the events of April 26, (2011) when MAS students engaged in a non-violent action at the TUSD board room.

Hicks’ assertions on the radio program lead the listeners to believe that he did not enter the TUSD board room on April 26 because…

The student demonstration was violent…and

He was scared…he felt endangered.

And who can blame him? That’s a good and reasonable reason not to enter a room, right?

Of course it is, if it were true…

But it isn’t!

Read more after the jump.

This morning at 10 a.m., Pima Community College faculty received an e-mail from the PCC Education Association's Scott Collins regarding the selection of the college's next chancellor in reaction to PCC Chancellor Roy Flores' recent announcement he's stepping down the end of the year and a recent story in the morning daily about Provost Suzanne Miles stepping in to take his place without much input:

• Jim Nintzel
• Ron Barber touring the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona with Gabrielle Giffords during her final day as a congresswoman in Congressional District 8.

It appears increasingly likely that Ron Barber, who has served as the district director for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords since her election in 2006, will enter the race to finish out her term in Congressional District 8.

"I would be shocked if we didn’t hear an announcement soon that Barber is running for the interim position and that Team Giffords doesn’t endorse him in that run," says Jeff Rogers, chairman of the Pima County Democratic Party.

The 66-year-old Barber, who was nearly killed after being shot twice on Jan. 8, is not likely to run for the new Congressional District 2 later this year.

Barber's entry into the race will likely clear the Democratic field, with aspiring candidates now free to build campaigns to battle it out in the Democratic primary for the new Congressional District 2 seat.

If that's how it plays out, Barber will face the winner of the April 17 GOP primary. Three Republicans—state Sen. Frank Antenori, 2010 nominee Jesse Kelly and businessman, sports broadcaster and rugby coach Dave Sitton—have already announced bids in that contest.

Barber's entry into the race would put the GOP candidates in something of a political bind: At least two of them will lose in the primary and the winner will have exhausted a significant amount of campaign funds before needing to pivot to face Barber, who will have Giffords' seal of approval and an enormous amount of goodwill among voters.

After the special election is decided on June 12, the Republican candidates will have to decide whether to mount new campaigns for the regular election later this year in the new Congressional District 2 against Democratic candidates who have had the opportunity to build their campaign organizations. The new CD2 covers much of the same territory as the current CD8, although it does not include GOP-heavy precincts in Marana, Oro Valley and SaddleBrooke. The voter registration is essentially evenly split between Democratic and Republican voter registration in the new district, eliminating what had been a slight GOP edge in CD8.

For more on Barber, who decided to form the Fund for Civility, Respect and Understanding while still in the ICU in January, we turn to a TW story from March 2011:

"I've never aspired to public office, but I've always wanted to serve in some capacity and give to the community, which is just what I've done," Barber says.

Barber spent most of his 30-plus-year career with the state heading up the Southern Arizona branch of the state Division of Developmental Disabilities. Although he served for a few years as acting head of the entire division in the late 1980s, he was happy to relinquish control and return to Southern Arizona.

"I couldn't wait to get back to the regional directorship, where I could talk to a family that had a child with disabilities, or meet with a group of people with disabilities. Or I could influence or help set up a new program," he says. "For me, that's where it's at."

He's proud that during his tenure, the state closed down homes for the mentally challenged.

If there's anything lucky about Jan Brewer's plan to dismantle unions in Arizona is that she and her friends are including fire and police (public safety unions) — and perhaps that's what it is going to take to fight this latest attack on labor and get other Arizonans to pay attention.

Her proposed "reforms" would make it illegal for government bodies to collectively bargain; make it illegal for government bodies to collectively bargain with employee groups; end the practice of automatic payroll deductions for union dues; and ban compensation of public employees for union work.

Friday AFSCME Local 449 held a rally downtown in front of the state building and you can go here for more updates and to send a message to state lawmakers that you support Arizona workers. The local also started a Facebook page for updates.

Who or what's behind these series of bills? Donna Gratehouse, who blogs at DemocraticDiva, shared that information in a post on an AFL-CIO blog post you can read in its entirety here. Snipet:

The Goldwater Institute is the Arizona affiliate of the State Policy Network, a national right-wing consortium created by Heritage Foundation members to bring “free market policy solutions” to state legislatures. The Goldwater Institute touts itself as libertarian and generates reams of policy papers, which invariably lead to the same conclusions: Taxes are bad and privatization is good. The Goldwater Institute’s public relations arm is hugely influential over Republican politicians in Arizona and the editors of the largest newspaper in the state, the notoriously anti-union Arizona Republic. Yet despite its considerable input into public policy in this state, the Goldwater Institute does not have to register as a lobbyist organization in Arizona due to its status as an “educational” association.