Public Policy Polling delivers a variety of new survey findings about Arizonans:

-Arizona voters are pretty evenly divided in their feelings about Governor Jan Brewer. 46% approve of her to 47% who disapprove. Her numbers are up a little bit from November when she was at 42/49. The effort to recall her is a non starter. Only 35% support removing her from office while 58% are opposed. There are a decent number of voters who don't like her but don't favor a recall either.

-John McCain remains unpopular but actually has his best approval numbers in our polling since September of 2009. 41% of voters approve of the job he's doing while 48% disapprove, up from a 34/55 spread in November. He's seen a little bit of improvement with both Democrats and Republicans but the biggest gain is with independents, who he's gone from 23/66 to 37/51 with.

-Jon Kyl's seen his numbers improve over the last few months as well. His approval rating is now back on positive ground at 48/40, after being 41/44 in November. Voters may be softening towards him as he heads for the exits.

-62% of Arizonans have a favorable opinion of Gabrielle Giffords shortly after her retirement from the House to only 16% with a negative one. She is easily the state's most popular politician. Her popularity carries across party lines- she's at 88/6 with Democrats, 62/13 with independents, and 43/25 with Republicans.

-Arizona and Arizona State fans are both taking a wait and see approach with their new football coaches. Wildcats fans are more enthused about their new hire- 28% are happy with Rich Rodriguez and only 5% are unhappy with the choice. But 67% have no opinion either way. A similar 68% of Sun Devil fans have no opinion on the Todd Graham hire, but only 19% are pleased that he was chosen while 13% disapprove of his selection.

While there's more and more happening these days up and down Toole Avenue between Sixth Avenue and Stone Avenue, that part of the downtown area hasn't received the same attention as the revitalization of Congress, bookended by the Fox and Rialto. One would be sorely mistaken, however, to ignore the curved road by the railroad tracks. Behind closed doors, there is a tremendous amount of art being created, and sometimes the creativity spills out into the public space.

The Battle Stags Fine Art Garage doesn't have the same level of fame of, say, Solar Culture or Dinnerware on that street. But now, thanks to sculptor and painter Ed Muren III, you know at least have a totem out front to give a quick guidepost to where it is. Tucked behind the BLX Skate Shop at Toole and 7th Ave, Battle Stags now has a pretty killer mural that hints at the creative forces surging behind the roll-up door.

Former U.S. Senate candidate and community organizer Randy Parraz, of recall Russell Pearce legend and fame, will be in Tucson this Sunday, Feb. 26, 1 p.m. meeting with community leaders, members, activists and organizers interested in beginning a recall effort to force Tucson Unified School District governing board member Michael Hicks back on the ballot.

Recall paperwork is expected to be filed with the Pima County Schools Superintendent's office in the next two weeks. The meeting on Sunday is at 1 p.m. at the Valenzuela Youth Center, 1550 S. 6th Ave., South Tucson.

"I'm coming in to see what extent people in Tucson are willing to work on this issue and see if we can provide our expertise," Parraz told the Range.

Parraz said he hopes people who attend the meeting leave their affiliations or camps behind — Grijavalistas, Eckstrom supporters, Save Ethnic Studies and everything in between and on all the sides. From his perspective, Parraz said success will come from looking at this as a First Amendment issue and academic excellence versus political extremism.

"It's not about what camp you're from," Parraz said. "This is the type of thinking I am going to bring down here — what do you want and what do you need to make that happen? It's not about chanting and yelling, but what's an effective strategy to counter what's taking place in Tucson."

Parraz said he's excited to come to Tucson, but emphasized the work that needs to happen depends on who shows up to the meeting and who stays the course. In Mesa, when he and Republican Chad Snow joined forces to lead the Russell Pearce recall, Parraz said it was a group of 35 core people who "came in every day and weekend consistently over that 160-day period. We just need that core group of people walking in the same direction in Tucson and combined that with the biggest vision - hell they can change anything they want in Tucson."

Why a recall effort against Hicks?

Hicks has spoken out against the Mexican-American studies classes, but an interview he did recently on the Garret Lewis A.M. show on KNST AM 790/FM 97.1 is what's motivating the recall interests. During the interview, Hicks lied about where he was during the school board meeting on April 26, 2011 painting a picture of that he feared for his life and felt intimidated by the student protest. This is the school board meeting in which the student group UNIDOS took over the dais and prevented the school board meeting from continuing.

Hicks was filmed by Three Sonorans that evening walking into the meeting room, talking to MAS supporters and even the media. But what fuel the recall fire more, were his additional comments about students who participated in a teach-in at the University of Arizona, comparing the event to the Penn State child molestation case. The community demanded an apology.

Blog for Arizona's David Safier had a great post on Feb. 12 about communication he had with Hicks, and Hicks sad non-apology apology that didn't come through a TUSD governing board meeting in front of his constituents but a letter to a UA dean.

You can catch-up and read the post here. Here's the letter Safier refers to in his story hicks-letter-to-ua—-jones-02.10.12.pdf and here's a snippet from the conversation he had with Hicks:

Remember, earlier in the conversation, Hicks said I was putting words in his mouth when I asked if he thought any harm could have come to the students in the classroom. Now he was saying, in essence, yes, the students could have been physically harmed and, like Penn State, it's possible no one would have reported it.

I pushed a little farther and asked about this portion of his letter to Dr. Jones:

"I apologize for choosing to use Penn State in my comments about this concern. I understand how that can be interpreted as insensitive and inappropriate." [boldface added]

I said I'm not sure there is a question of interpretation relating to his Penn State comments. They clearly compared the UA situation to Penn State. Did he feel he went a bit too far during the radio show and actually said something that was "insensitive and inappropriate," not just something "that can be interpreted as insensitive and inappropriate"?

That question went farther than Hicks was willing to go. Soon after, he hung up. That was the end of the conversation.

Read past the jump for recall information from the Pima County Schools Superintendent's office.

Local chef, restaurateur, author and all around decent fellow Janos Wilder has been named a semifinalist in the Outstanding Chef category of this year's James Beard Foundation awards. Wilder has made this list many times in the past and the foundation named him the top chef in the Southwest back in 2000.

I've never met any other James Beard award winning type folks, but have spent a tiny bit of time with Wilder. Frankly, he's the man. Not only is he sort of an unofficial historian when it comes to various aspects of Southwestern cuisine, but his dedication to the community is consistent and impressive. Here's hoping he takes the award when the winners are announced later this year.

• Edward M. Pio Roda/CNN

Takeaways from last night’s debate:

• Rick Santorum needed to score a knock-out blow to turn things around for him in Arizona. He didn’t. Baring something completely nutty over the weekend, Mitt’s gonna win the Grand Canyon State next week; Nate Silver is now giving him an 89 percent chance of victory here.

• Michigan remains up for grabs, but Santorum has been running on fumes for a long time and his bubble is set to pop. It appears to me that Republicans will settle on Romney as their nominee, despite their misgivings that he’s too liberal, too rich, too much of an android, etc.

• I suspect there’s truth to the theory that Ron Paul was helping Mitt out by ganging up on Santorum.

• Newt Gingrich was unusually kind to moderator John King. Maybe he really is cheerful these days. I came away wondering which of his ideas was less crazy: The whole moon-base mining colony by the end of his first term or the double-layer border wall by the end of the first year of his administration? In case you missed it, here was his promise, from the CNN transcript:

Now, the thing that's fascinating, though, John, is you quoted a government study of how much it would cost. That's my earlier point. If you modernize the federal government so it's competent, you could probably do it for 10 percent of the cost of that study.

The fact is —

(APPLAUSE)

GINGRICH: — what I would do, I would — I have — I have a commitment at newt.org, I would — to finish the job by January 1, 2014, I would initiate a bill that would waive all federal regulations, requirement and studies.

I would ask Governor Brewer here, I would ask Governor Martinez, Governor Brown, and Governor Perry to become the co-leaders in their state. We would apply as many resources as are needed to be done by January 1 of 2014, including, if necessary — there are 23,000 Department of Homeland Security personnel in the D.C. area.

I'm prepared to move up to half of them to Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. This is a doable thing.

Leaving aside the potential environmental damage that could result from building a fence willy-nilly across the border, we'll see how the Native American tribes deal with that whole "waive all federal regulations, regulations and studies" thing.

Also: Whatever you might think of the Department of Homeland Security's bloat, I'm skeptical that the country will be safer if we put those folks all to work building a fence.

• Romney was careful to say that he didn't want to round up illegal immigrants now in the country illegally, although he did say he wanted to do more to prevent them from being employed.

• Rick Perry was in the audience, sitting with Calista Gingrich a few seats down the row from me. He looked fairly sleepy throughout most of the debate—but then again, that's how he often looked when he was actually onstage in the earlier debates, so he was probably relieved to be in the audience instead. He left his seat before the debate wrapped up, so I wasn’t able to ask him how he felt about Al “Dick” Perry's presidential campaign here in Arizona.

• CNN was making a big deal about the fact that during this debate, the candidates would be sitting at a table. You know who had that idea first? The answer after the jump.

Jon Wayne and The Pain, playing The Hut this Saturday, may not be at celebrity status just yet, but they certainly seem to be gaining popularity with reggae-rock lovers, with fans often referring to their music as "redemption reggae." They operate in a similar musical genre as Sublime (and people like Sublime) with an island-style mix of ska, reggae and rock, and Jon Wayne's vocals mesh well with the different genres, but they still remain distinct enough to not be a knockoff act.

To listen to more from the band, visit the John Wayne and The Pain website.

What was going to be called the Trainwreck Saloon at 213 N. Fourth Ave. is now known simply as The Wreck, and it's open.

I received a strangely brief e-mail this week that said the original name would not be used, which sort of explained why the Trainwreck Saloon's Facebook was abruptly pulled from the internet last week. I called last night and the guy who answered the phone says the place is now called The Wreck. We're guessing that one of the other Trainwreck Saloons across the country, and there are a few, wanted their name back.

So anyway, it looks like people are pretty much getting wasted down at The Wreck. Perusing their Facebook account brings forth tales of people getting impromptu haircuts and removing brassieres in public. There also appears to be an abundance of bar-top dancing and daisy-duke wearing. More on all that over here.

Maybe you're ok with Google combining all the information its gathered about you into one database of knowledge that certainly won't be used to take over the world, but certainly will be used for goodness and for the benefit of humanity. Maybe you don't have weird items in your Google web search history. Maybe you haven't looked up "Cleveland Steamer" once or twice.

However, if you'd like to perhaps make it slightly harder for Google to assemble a genetically assembled copy of your brain in a lab somewhere, you might want to follow the instructions put together by the Electronic Frontier Foundation ahead of Google's new privacy rules kicking in on March 1st.

This week, Eric and Arnie discuss Battle Scars.

Also, their store Heroes & Villains is hosting an instore concert with Mega Ran this Saturday at 5 p.m. ahead of his show at Vaudeville that night. There's more information about the show on Facebook.

Eric has generously offered three pair of free tickets to the Vaudeville show. If you'd like a set of them, head to the in store, find Eric (you should recognize him from the Talking Comics series), and yell "ALL HAIL THOR, THE UNKILLABLE THUNDER CHRIST" at him. He will then give you tickets (supplies are limited, however).

The Arizona House on Tuesday passed a bill to allow schools to offer a course on the Bible's influence on American history and culture.

House Bill 2563, sponsored by Rep. Terri Proud, R-Tucson, allows public and charter schools to offer a high-school elective called "The Bible and Its Influence on Western Culture." The course must address the influence of the Old and the New Testaments on laws, history, government, literature, art, music, customs, morals, values and culture.

The bill passed the House 42-15. It now goes to the Senate.

It could be that teaching more courses about the Bible might lead to fewer people believing in it. The New York Times has reported:

Researchers from the independent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life phoned more than 3,400 Americans and asked them 32 questions about the Bible, Christianity and other world religions, famous religious figures and the constitutional principles governing religion in public life.

On average, people who took the survey answered half the questions incorrectly, and many flubbed even questions about their own faith.

Those who scored the highest were atheists and agnostics, as well as two religious minorities: Jews and Mormons. The results were the same even after the researchers controlled for factors like age and racial differences.

“Even after all these other factors, including education, are taken into account, atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons still outperform all the other religious groups in our survey,” said Greg Smith, a senior researcher at Pew.

That finding might surprise some, but not Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists, an advocacy group for nonbelievers that was founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

“I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people,” Mr. Silverman said. “Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That’s how you make atheists.”