Tucson Police have arrested two Flowing Wells High School students for impersonating one student, and threatening five others, as well as making threats to harm teachers and "shoot up" Flowing Wells.

According to Tucson Police, Charles Schaming, 17, and Guillermo Acorn, 16, used the Facebook photo of a student from another school to create a false Facebook profile with which they threatened and harassed other Flowing Wells students.

Detectives were able to track down the offenders by tracing the IP address of the profile that had posted threats on the profile pages of five students.

Schaming and Acorn have each been charged with two felony charges, including one count of interference with an educational institution, and one count of identity theft; Schaming, however, faces 24 misdemeanor counts, while Acorn faces eight, as Acorn wasn't involved in making threats against each student that was victimized.

Really, these idiots should be thanking their lucky stars that they did this now, rather than if/when Michelle Ugenti's H.B. 2004 becomes law. That would have stacked the charges even higher against these kids who apparently didn't realize that Facebook is for secretly following crushes and shameless self-promotion, not threats.

Looking at the Tucson streetwear scene is kinda like looking at the downtown's retail scene.

It's sparse.

VII Grand Premium Streetwear and Sneakers, located at 178 E. Broadway, looks to change that—and with the backing of one of UA's favorite sons, current player for the NBA's Minnesota Timberwolves Derrick Williams, they've got a good shot.

The shop was the brainchild of Mario Escalante, a Tucson native, Air Force veteran and Pima Community College grad who had originally planned to get into graphic design.

But when he had trouble finding work during the summer of 2012, his attention started to shift.

"I wasn’t getting a fast enough response, I was getting nervous — I always wanted to do the boutique, and I thought, 'why not try?'," he said. "You ask anyone who knows me, I've always been into fashion, sneakers. It’s always been something that I've wanted to do."

Enter Derrick Williams.

Escalante and Williams rolled in the same friend circles during Williams's time with Arizona, and bonded over a shared passion for sneakers and streetwear.

“The whole Arizona basketball team was really known for wearing the best sneakers on the basketball court, so I'd encourage them to outdo everyone,” Escalante said. “Him being from California, these type of stores are everywhere. It’s not uncommon to go down the street and see a sneaker shop or streetwear shop in L.A.”

“In Tucson, it’s something that he noticed and that I noticed, we really don't have anything. We really need it here.”

So, he decided to float the idea to Williams via text.

"I told Derrick, 'out of all the people you know, who would you say would be successful at opening a streetwear and sneaker store?' and he got back to me and said 'Paul George (current player for the NBA's Indiana Pacers), or you,' and I was like 'wow, to be mentioned as one out of all the people he knows...I figured if he said so, I’d be successful at it."

Via their new group Americans for Responsible Solutions, Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly release a video of highlights from yesterday's testimony on gun violence.

The Canadian investment company Augusta Resource Inc. announced today that it has received an air quality permit from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality for a strip mine in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson.

That represents a bureaucratic victory over Pima County, which in September 2011 denied Augusta the air quality permit necessary for its proposed mine in the Rosemont Valley. At the time, Ursula Kramer, director of the county’s Department of Environmental Quality, said Augusta didn’t offer a compelling argument that federal air quality standards could be met by its plan.

Augusta responded by threatening a lawsuit against county, and floating plans to ask that oversight of the permit be handed to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.

Eventually, the floundering ADEQ agreed to make the determination.

“Rosemont has now received seven major permits required to commence construction,” wrote Augusta CEO Gil Clausen on the company’s web site. “Only one major permit is remaining, the Clean Water Act Section 404 Permit from the US Army Corp of Engineers, which the Company expects to receive upon the issuance of the Record of Decision…on the Plan of Operations from the U.S. Forest Service.”

But that is by no means a done deal. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has raised major red flags with the Corps over the effects that a mine in the Rosemont Valley could have on the area’s waterways.

If the EPA balks, Augusta’s whole foreign adventure could be down the tubes.

!!!!

The Daily Show boils down the GOP's new embrace of comprehensive immigration reform to a brew of shamelessness and political opportunity. Gotta love the reference to Gov. Brewer's fear of the pervy-sounding "back-door amnesty."

After the latest massacre (the one right before Christmas), the public outcry was so intense that the guys at the NRA were actually forced to peek out from their bunker and (ahem) go on the offensive. Chief phlegm-wad Wayne LaPierre has basically been on the how-can-I-top-my-previous-stupidity tour ever since. His message is simple: Gun violence has nothing to do with guns; it's just that liberals put the word "gun" in there to mess with people's minds.

No, the blame lies elsewhere...and everywhere. LaPierre pointed the finger in all sorts of directions. A poor mental-health system. The breakdown of the American family. Gangs. Drugs, illegal and prescribed. Rock and roll. Gun-free zones. And violent video games, television shows, and movies.

It would be easy to dismiss everything that LaPierre says because he's a narrow-minded moron. But that last thing kinda nags at me.

I grew up in an incredibly violent neighborhood. We had 42 kids in my sixth-grade classroom (yes, 42; it was the height of the Baby Boom, plus everybody was moving to Southern California). By the time we got out of high school, 12 of those 42 kids were dead, including two girls. I've never been a big fan of violence on the screen. I like a good action movie (like Die Hard), but I never fancied myself the action hero. I like it when good triumphs over evil, but I don't get a particular visceral jolt when the villain takes an ass-whuppin'.

However, many people do get such a jolt and, in most cases, it's all in good, relatively clean fun. Then, there are those for which it is not just fun, but some kind of juice. (I'm not going to discuss video games here. I don't like them, I don't understand them. I haven't played a video game since Tetris and the only thing that died then was my belief that I had an infallible ability to recognize spatial configurations.)

If violent images are creating little monsters, what responsibility do we have as a society to rectify the situation? If we are asking responsible gun owners to give up certain weapons because a handful of knuckleheads use them to shoot up schools and shopping malls, should we also ask responsible TV viewers to forego certain types of programs because those shows have an adverse effect of a small portion of society? Maybe we do.

State Auditor General's Office presents finding of its recent audit of Pima County's bond program tomorrow, Friday, Feb. 1, 1:30 p.m. in the Board of Supervisors hearing room, 130 W. Congress, first floor.

From county press release:

The presentation will be open to the public. It is possible a quorum of the Pima County Board of Supervisors or the Pima County Bond Advisory Committee may be present, but the presentation is for informational purposes only and no official action will be taken.

The audit, released Tuesday, determined bond proceeds have been used for authorized purposes and have been administered without bias for the benefit of citizens throughout the County. The audit found Pima County’s approach unique in the state for its collaboration with an appointed Bond Advisory Committee that includes representatives of other governmental jurisdictions.

County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry will also present a performance audit plan for completed bond projects, which will summarize the public benefits of the projects, as well as their utilization in the community and conformance with any intergovernmental agreement terms.

To see the report in its entirety, please visit http://www.pima.gov/bonds/pdf/bd- auditor.general.bond.audit.report.pdf.

The Out in the Desert LGBT film festival is over and here are the 2013 Crystal Cactus Award winners. Congratulations filmmakers, and of course, Out in the Desert:

Out in the Desert 2013 Festival Director's Choice Award
Fallen Comrade

Out in the Desert 2013 Program Director's Choice Award
Slant

Best Youth Related Film
Steam is Steam

Thanks to the relentless Loft Cinema crew, Tucson gets a little taste of the Sundance Film Festival every year.

Tonight, the Loft screens one of the best-received films at Sundance this year. The Spectacular Now, starring The Descendents’ Shailene Woodley and newcomer Miles Teller, generated a lot of buzz at the festival for filling an all-too-familiar void in the film world: substance in a high school-set romance. The pair took home the Special Jury Prize for Acting at the festival, while the film was picked up by A24 after outbidding the Weinstein Co. for distribution rights.

Fellow intern Kyle Mittan previewed the screening in last week’s edition of City Week:

If you couldn't make the trip up to north to catch this year's Sundance Film Festival, The Loft Cinema is bringing a piece of it to Tucson.

The Lesbian Looks film series celebrates its 20th anniversary next month with three screenings at the Loft Cinema, a visit from award-winning filmmakers Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss, and a new collection of Virtual Lesbian Looks webseries linked directly from lesbianlooks.org.

First screening is the acclaimed Mosquita y Mari at the Loft at 7 p.m. on on Wednesday, Feb. 13. From the press release:

Opening night features MOSQUITA Y MARI, an exquisitely-crafted coming of age tale that follows a pair of Latina teens who gradually fall in love against the backdrop of East LA. Studious, sweet-natured 15-year-old Yolanda feels the pressure to succeed under the eyes of her hard-working immigrant parents. When she meets her new neighbor, the feisty and alluring, BMX-riding Mari, Yolanda's humdrum high school routine gets a jolt. The two girls don't have much in common on the surface, but they become fast friends and their deep bond develops into a tension that neither one expected nor quite knows how to handle. Director Aurora Guerrero’s impressive feature film debut (which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival) features two breakout lead performances by Fenessa Pineda and Venecia Troncoso, who perfectly embody the awkwardness and cautious desire of two teenage girls experiencing love and desire for the first time.