According to a press release today from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), state Attorney General Tom Horne can't get involved in the Tucson Unified School Desegregation case which has a strong chance of bringing Mexican-American studies back to TUSD.

The press release is below the cut:

Heard of the Pichuberry? I hadn't either until I ran into my old friend Keith Green the other day and he handed me a couple of the unique South American berries.

It looks like a tomatillo due to its green papery husk, but it tastes sweet and berry-like. The flavor does not really compare to anything I've tried before, but it is very good and I want to eat more of it.

More intriguing than all of that is the fact that this strange little berry is apparently some sort of superfood that is teeming with antioxidants, vitamins and other things scientists say are good for us. Che's Lounge is making cocktails out of them - I haven't tried them, but have heard they're quite good - and Green says the fresh berries can be bought at a couple of farmers' markets around town.

I spoke with a company representative yesterday and he told me that people at the UA are working on perfecting techniques to grow these berries locally. The challenge for now, he said, is to build a market so farmers will have a reason to cultivate the fruit in the first place.

There's more on this radical little berry here.

We can’t say we’re terribly surprised to learn today that Jesse Kelly will not running in Congressional District 2 later this year after losing to Democrat Ron Barber by nearly 7 percentage points.

Sure, Kelly said he was “absolutely” going to stay in the race before the election, but Kelly said many things during the campaign that weren’t true.

Kelly has now gone 0-2 in a GOP district. His negatives are huge; even if Public Policy Polling’s sample of the district was a bit off in the survey done right before the election, the numbers there were grim: 59 percent of the voters had an unfavorable view of Kelly, compared to the 37 percent who had a favorable view.

Part of that comes from the drubbing that Kelly took through the Democratic Party’s TV ads, but part of it comes from his general approach to politics. He is a very superficial candidate who can smoothly deliver talking points, but he can’t discuss any policy in any kind of depth. That’s why he avoided interview not only with the Weekly, but with the morning daily and other press outlets. By the time the weekend before the election arrived, Kelly was being kept under such tight wraps that he wouldn't make his campaign schedule public, outside a brief dog-and-pony show at his campaign office on Saturday morning.

(And how about Kelly's disastrous interview with KGUN-9? Admittedly, that meltdown was mostly the fault of his spokesman, John Ellinwood, but Kelly’s weird repeating of his talking points should be used in a classroom as an example of how to not deal with the media.)

At any rate, Kelly might have been competitive in the CD2 GOP primary, but as a general-election candidate, he had no path to victory. He would have struggled to raise funds and there was no way, given finite resources, that the National Republican Congressional Committee was going to pour more money into a Kelly campaign this fall. The D.C. establishment has given Kelly support twice now and it has nothing to show for it. There was not going to be a third time.

The focus now turns to Republican Martha McSally, who will be facing Barber (unless state lawmaker Matt Heinz manages an unlikely upset in the August Democratic primary.)

After seeing a few tweets about Tiger Woods today, I decided to flip over to Yahoo to see who was atop the leaderboard for the U.S. Open golf tournament in San Francisco.

Then I had a major flashback to my days covering prep sports in this town.

Former Rincon/University High School standout Michael Thompson shot a 4-under 66 during the first round Thursday at the Olympic Club, giving him (for now) a three-shot lead over the rest of the field. Including Tiger, who is at 1-under 69.

Thompson, whom I recall having many wonderful and intelligent conversations with — not a common situation when covering high school sports — graduated from Rincon about 10 years ago, and went on to be a stud at the University of Alabama as well.

Since turning pro in 2008 he's amassed a cool $1.5 million in earnings.

• Joie Horwitz

Jesse Kelly has announced on his Facebook page and in a message to the media that he's dropping out of the forthcoming CD 2 race:

I would like to thank our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, my wife Aubrey, and our supporters for their unwavering commitment to the values that make America great. Looking at the results from Tuesday, we have decided to withdraw from the race for Congress in AZ-02 and to seek other opportunities. I will forever be thankful to our generous supporters and volunteers.

This move leaves Martha McSally and Mark Koskiniemi in the running in the Republican primary August 28th.

• The mugshot slideshow at azstarnet.com

Nearly every news website looking for easy clicks seems to throw up a bunch of local mugshots, the Arizona Daily Star included, but why do we care about seeing our fellow Tucsonans at their worst moment, innocent or guilty? The New Yorker has an interesting article about the sociology of the mug shot online today:

The most ambitious mug-shot blogs present themselves as hybrids of newspaper and fetish sites, with photos organized under section titles that range from “Local News” and “Sports” to “Transgender” and “Beat-Up.” (Some news sites have themselves appropriated the form. The CBS-affiliated, WTSP Channel 10 news, “Tampa Bay’s news leader,” runs a slide show called “Notorious Women” on its Web site, which features dozens of mug shots of attractive women. The entertainment potential of mug shots has crept back to the source: a sheriff’s department in Arizona invites users to its Web site to vote on the “mug shot of the day.”) These sites are full of pathos and picturesque weirdness: little old ladies, suspects whose uncooperative heads are propped up by anonymous gloved hands, characters whose masklike expressiveness seems more appropriate to commedia dell’arte, people done up in elaborate Halloween costumes of animals or devils (or, fatefully, of prison inmates), a mild-mannered looking man with a “FUCK YOU” tattoo covering his entire forehead.

Mug-shot sites brand themselves as a public service, and offer the requisite disclaimers that everyone pictured on them is innocent until proven guilty. But, of course, mug shots are the very image of guilt, and seem almost proof of it, which is why some states caution judges and prosecutors against submitting them to juries. And it’s for this precise reason—instant lurid appeal—that mug-shot blogs can be profitable. Some, like arrests.org and mugshots.com, run ads from major brands: Southwest Airlines, Zipcar, Adobe, Lysol, Nokia. Mugshots.com partners with ten separate vendors with names like mugshotbusters.com that provide a service for people desperate to have their mug shot removed from the site. This semi-extortion scheme is apparently legal.

In case there’s any doubt about the relationship between these sites and online social networks, mug-shot profiles are furnished with a Twitter button. Users can click directly through a particular mug shot to find the person on Facebook. This gets at these sites’ unspoken service as a cultural corrective to the endless self-presentation that happens on social-network sites: here we are allowed to see, or to imagine, what our friends and neighbors look like when they aren’t reclining on the beach or looking good at parties. Mug shots are the gargoyles crouching at the ledges of the cathedral of Facebook.

Every couple years I sit down with Dave Carroll, the kitchen manager at Surly Wench Pub, to sip Jaegermeister and Pabst and wax philosophical about life. He's always got his finger on the pulse of what's happening Downtown and his varied work history at different restaurants down there gives him a unique perspective on the dining scene.

When we sat down this week he was a little bit pissed about the banner that hangs outside of Lindy's on Fourth. It says the place serves the best burger on Fourth Avenue. Carroll says that's an unsubstantiated claim, and I have to agree.

Carroll said they should settle this difference by having a Best Burger on the Avenue competition. This is a good idea. Maloney's serves one hell of a burger, and so does Surly Wench, Delectables and Bumsted's. Hell, it might even be a good idea to hold it sometime this August when the construction creeps down to that portion of Fourth Avenue, slowing business and pissing everybody off in general.

Let's make this happen Fourth Avenue Merchants Association, restaurant owners and anybody else who has something to offer. It would be a blast.

Allen Yap of OM Modern Asian Kitchen will try to dethrone reigning champion Ryan Clark of the restaurant at Lodge on the Desert at this year's Iron Chef Tucson Culinary Weekend event.

The competition, to be held during the Culinary Weekend taking place at Loews Ventana Canyon, will unfold just like the fast-paced television show. A surprise secret ingredient will be revealed and Ryan Clark of Lodge on the Desert will defend his title. He will face off in a serious culinary battle with Chef Allen Yap of OM Modern Asian Kitchen on Saturday, June 23rd. A panel of 3 judges will sample the dishes and determine who will be crowned the winner.

The Culinary Weekend also includes; a showcase of products and services for foodies and those who enjoy cooking and entertaining.

The Culinary Weekend will run for two days, Saturday, June 23 and Sunday, June 24 from 10a-4pm.

Check in over at the event website for tickets or more information.

Happy 53rd birthday to the Disneyland Monorail, which was the first daily operating monorail system in the Western Hemisphere and the launch of the primary transportation for Americans today
a future punchline on The Simpsons. I blame Nixon, who was on hand as vice president to dedicate the monorail, as seen in the video above.

If you enjoy dancing, you should head to Club Congress tonight for Opti Club's Summer Party, featuring Belgian producer/remixer Aeroplane. He generally releases a monthly mix on Soundcloud (although the last one was in May, but they're free, so who can complain?) that gives the listener a sense of his disco-influenced take on music.

Plus, there's going to be a water slide, so dress accordingly.