• Mr. SMith
• Look for s steady stream of Mr. SMith memes on MassRoots.

There's a new app in town that aims to connect cannabis users - ostensibly medical - around the globe. MassRoots, which is available only as a phone and tablet app, lets you post status updates and photos to document your stoner life.

It's a fun, hashtag-driven app that helps you spread the love and post pictures of your awesome wake 'n bake sesh.

• Photo courtesy of Ike's Coffee & Tea Facebook page.
• Ike Isaacson is closing his second coffee shop in the Whole Foods Shopping Center this Sunday.

The Speedway Ike's Coffee & Tea location will shut its doors next week to make way for a new restaurant. The coffee lounge has been located in the Whole Foods shopping center on 3400 E. Speedway for more than 11 years. Coffee shop owner Ike Isaacson, 39, broke the news to his 13 employees that the landlord had the opportunity to re-tenant the space Wednesday night.

"I love my employees," Issacson told The Range. "Last night, when we broke the news, they couldn't have be more kind and understanding."

Issacson is paying his employees severance for the next two weeks. Ike says there's no hard feelings towards the landlords because he has been treated so well throughout the years.

Isaacson says there are currently no plans to reopen another location, but he recently signed a five-year lease for the original Ike's java lounge located in downtown's Pioneer building.

A sea of civility flooded the Hotel Congress patio on Sunday, Jan. 19 — the kind of day that makes nearly everyone cordial: sunny, 75 degrees and filled with music to make all ages dance. It was the sort of afternoon where everyone knew everyone, whether you'd ever met them or not. And it benefited a cause on which everyone can agree: We'll never accomplish anything if we can't have a civil conversation.

Of course, cheating on standardized tests hasn't, and doesn’t, and couldn't happen here. At least, no one has proved any cheating in Arizona because our Department of Education doesn't think it's worth looking into. (See Carpe Diem charter school note at the end of this post.) But in Atlanta, teachers and principals have pleaded guilty to tampering with student tests, and last week, three Philadelphia Public School principals were fired.

Three Philadelphia Public Schools principals were fired last week after an investigation into test cheating that has implicated about 140 teachers and administrators, a spokesman for the district said Wednesday.

The action follows years of investigating the results of state standardized math and reading tests taken from 2009 to 2011. The investigation, conducted by the school district and the state department of education, in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Office of Inspector General, identified 33 schools — including three public charter schools — where an analysis of test answer sheets found a suspicious number of wrong answers that were erased and made right.

We've always known Arizona lawmaker Steve Yarbrough as a defender of public education, and now the Republican is showing us that he's also a defender of freedom.

The senator recently introduced SB 1062 because our state's religious-freedom laws just needed an extra boost, or what he calls a "modest clarification," according to a report in The Arizona Republic.

Real defenders of freedom, however, point out that his bill would actually allow businesses to discriminate against LGBT people, unmarried women or even non-Christians. And of course that other fellow defender, Center for Arizona Policy, is saying this is a way to protect photographers and bakers from providing services for same-sex weddings (which are illegal, thanks to the Center's director Cathi Herrod and her coven, er, organization).

Maybe the problem is that Herrod and Yarbrough just need some freedom-hugs. After all, they seemed to work for Gov. Jan Brewer after she expanded Medicaid and hugged it out with Democrat Rep. Chad Campbell.

Wonkette puts it all into perspective:

And Yarbrough told The Sierra Vista Herald that the bill would allow hotel owners to refuse to rent rooms to LGBT people and would protect businesses that had a religious objection to hiring unmarried women.

What could possibly be wrong with that?

It is a simple FACT that married heterochristians are being persecuted all over the damn place, what with all the gay marriage throat-cramming and the unmarried whores popping their no co-pay slut pills and the lamestream media banning Christmas. That’s why it’s vital to the survival of our derpocracy that good Christian business owners have a special law that protects their right to discriminate against people they think are icky. If, for example, a wedding photographer cannot tell a gay couple who wants to get married — even though they’re not allowed to do that in Arizona, so it’s sort of moot, but shut up — that he does not want to take photographs of their hypothetical wedding, why, it will be the end of freedom as we know it. And if a business owner thinks hiring a single lady will make said business owner burn in the fiery pits of hell like Jesus did not actually say, well, who is the stupid government to tell him he can’t do that? Someone must put his foot down against the ickiness, and that foot is Yarbrough.

It’s nearly the anniversary of Winston Churchill’s death on January 24, 1965. When he was on his way out, Churchill commented that he was ready to meet his maker, but “whether my maker is ready for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.” Touché.

• Photo courtesy of The District Tavern Facebook page.
• The District Tavern looking to relocate due to rent increase in 2015.

District Tavern owner Noël Chester tells The Range this afternoon that the downtown tavern will celebrate its 10th anniversary by relocating in 2015 after she learned that her rent would be going up next year.

Chester said that she couldn't justify paying $28 a square foot for an establishment that lacks air conditioning, water pressure and a walk-in freezer. The bar suffered a 30 percent decrease in business since the closing of Fourth Avenue underpass, fencing down East Congress for the streetcar construction that began in 2012.

But she's still profitable and hopes to continue to be successful somewhere in South Tucson, where rents are lower.

"I'm in the black and I'm blessed," Chester said.

Chester has expressed unhappiness with the city and foreseen the day would have to relocate.

Chester says establishments like The District, that cater to a certain demographic downtown, are being "systematically decimated."

• C. Elliott
• Brian Lopez at Plush Jan. 18

Modestly populated for opener Maria del Pilar, the Plush music room filled with fans as Lopez took the stage. He brought a crowd with him onstage, too, for fully fleshed out renderings of new material and some songs we last heard solo-gypsy style at the Casa Maria Thanksgiving benefit at Club Congress.

• Photo courtesy of Cynthia Gerriets

It's hump day, so you need to buy some new funny books. Luckily, Cynthia and Jenny are here to tell you what book you need to buy right now. This week the dynamic duo reviewed another new series from Image Comics: Black Science.

Arizona schools want the legislature to add over $300 million to K-12 funding in next year's budget. Not much chance that's gonna happen. Brewer is calling for a lower number, $70 million, which makes her a big spender compared to her Republican counterparts in the legislature. Both of those are serious chunks of change. Brewer’s $70 million figure actually sounds moderately generous, and the $300 million request might sound a little greedy. But neither number makes much sense until we know how much difference it makes in the grand education funding scheme of things.

To understand what's going on, here are the two numbers you need to start with. About a million students attend Arizona’s K-12 public schools — that's district and charter schools combined — and the school year is 180 days long. So when you add a million dollars to the education budget, you’re adding a dollar per student per year, or a half a penny per student per day. A million dollars doesn’t go very far when it’s spread over all our public schools.