The U.S. Senate went with the nuclear option of voting to eliminate the filibuster that Republicans have been using to block the White House's judicial and executive nominees. Slate explains what it all means.

Talking Points Memo reports that Sen. John McCain predicted that the vote will hurt Democrats in the future:

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that Democrats would "pay a heavy, heavy price" for changing the Senate rules for judicial and executive nominees.

"They're governed by the newer members... who have never been in a minority, who are primarily driving this issue," McCain told reporters after the vote. "They succeeded and they will pay a very, very heavy price for it."

McCain said moments later, though, that he did not believe it would be a major election issue. "I don't think Americans understand it very well," he said.

Save the Scenic Santa Rita's yesterday released a copy of the Environmental Protection Agency's Nov. 7 letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the Augusta Resource Corporation's Rosemont mine proposal water permit.

According to SSSR, this is a "dramatic and potentially devastating blow to Augusta Resource Corporation’s proposal to build the Rosemont mine, a massive open-pit copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains just south of Tucson."

You can read the letter here. A snippet from SSSR:

In a Nov. 7 letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA recommended that the proposed Rosemont copper mine should not receive a permit that would allow the company to dump potentially toxic mine wastes into area waterways.

After completing a comprehensive and detailed analysis, EPA concluded that Rosemont’s proposals to mitigate the mine's severe and permanent damage to area water supplies are "scientifically flawed" and "grossly inadequate," and advised the Corps of Engineers that the project "should not be permitted as proposed."

The EPA’s recommendation to deny Rosemont’s permit application is a potentially devastating blow to the mining project because EPA has veto authority over the permit, which would be issued by the Corps of Engineers only if the proposed mine meets Clean Water Act standards. The permit is required before construction could begin on the mile-wide, half-mile deep open pit mine.

US Congressman Raul Grijalva chimed in this morning with his own statement in support of SSSR and the EPA finding, and pointing out a story published last year in the Tucson Weekly.

• Photo from shutterstock.com

R. Kelly is the master at creating music about sex. The King of R&B can take any topic and turn it into a song you will play when you make love to that special someone. RollingStone interviewed R. Kelly and gave him a few random phrases to make R&B hits on the spot.

Why? Because he can.

"I know how to put it into a melody and make it comical, but sexual at the same time," the R&B star explains in the next issue of Rolling Stone. "With my gift, I can pretty much write a song out of anything."

One of the most popular stories on the Tucson Weekly's website is one former staff writer Saxon Burns wrote about The Cool Church in 2007. There was a somewhat predictable bit of drama at the time between the church's pastor, late night TV commercial star David McCallister and Wingspan about the multi-location church and their views on homosexuality, so Saxon went to check the place out himself. Our article is still on the first page of Google results for the church's name, so every few days, there's a surge of traffic when someone new is looking for info on the place. You'd think at some point in the church's twenty year history, they'd figure out that trying to be cool is the least cool thing you can do, but whatever. Evangelicism is notoriously slow at figuring things out.

However, being the butt of a joke in one town isn't quite enough, so The Cool Church is expanding to Mesa on Jan. 12 of 2014, bringing odd necklace choices, bad hair-bleaching and creepy tans to the East Valley.

Of course, one might wonder why an area with nearly 20 Protestant churches with a two mile radius (and one of Phoenix's largest churches, Christ's Church of the Valley less than three miles away) would need another competitor for worshipers, but maybe those houses of worship lack the same icky sheen that The Cool Church brings to the party. Good luck, East Mesa, and we're sorry. We tried to contain him. We really did.

Sylvia Browne, who was scheduled to appear at Desert Diamond Casino's Diamond Center on December 14, died Wednesday in a Northern California hospital. She was 77.

Browne was the subject of a great deal of public scorn last year when kidnapping victim Amanda Berry was discovered alive in Cleveland. Browne had told Berry's mother on a 2004 episode of the Montel Williams show that her daughter was dead. Browne later sort of apologized on her website.

I guess when you have AmeriKa's Sheriff in your backyard and you have a morning show like Good Morning Arizona in Phoenix, it's best to share recipes and make the stinker seem like not such a bad guy after all. Oy vey.

You may also want to consider returning some of your unopened purchases that may not seem appealing as they did. Selling some of your unwanted possessions on eBay or Craigslist could bring in some quick cash.