Union employees at Asarco's copper mines and other facilities will rally at the company's headquarters in Tucson Tuesday afternoon to demand a "fair contract," according to a press release from the United Steelworkers, one of eight unions representing hundreds of thousands of mine workers. 

The previous labor agreement expired at the end of June 2013, but production and maintenance employees at five Asarco locations in the country, including the ones in Arizona, continued to work under existing terms and conditions while current negations continue, the release says. 

The union negotiating committee is supposed to meet with Asarco again on Dec. 14, even though "management has announced its unilateral intention to implement the company's 'last, best and final' contract proposal on Tuesday instead of resolving the outstanding issues in good faith at the bargaining table as the unions have request."

From the press release:

The union considers the move illegal and will follow up with Region 28 of the National Labor Relations Board, which already plans to prosecute Asarco for unilaterally changing working conditions at the facilities on multiple occasions without first negotiating over the changes with union representatives as required by law.

The NLRB has scheduled a hearing for Jan. 12, 2016, when an administrative law judge will review evidence against Asarco and listen to testimony in the case.

Union workers are gathering at 3 p.m. tomorrow, joining employees protesting at four other Asarco locations in the U.S.

The company, which is under the umbrella of Grupo México—Mexico's largest mining corporation—owns three copper mines in Arizona.

Last night, CBS's 60 Minutes discussed Arizona's "botched" July 2014 execution of Joseph Wood, a convicted murderer who took nearly two hours and 15 doses of a lethal drug cocktail to die. The disturbing episode triggered change in the state's execution protocol, including switching which drugs are used.

The segment on 60 Minutes left The Arizona Republic's EJ Montini to wonder, when will the death penalty be abolished in the United States? Arizona's "unethical, possibly illegal purchase of execution drugs from oversees, along with the state's grotesque determination to use those drugs to kill death row inmates, and then botching one attempt," could mark that end. Actually, it should mark the beginning of the end, Montini says in an opinion piece published this morning. 

Here's part of it:

Meet Tiger! This sweet boy loves snuggles and chin scratches and it currently looking for his purrr-fect forever home!

Tiger would really thrive in a home where he has plenty of space to lounge around and have a little bit of alone time. But he also needs lots of love!

If you can open your heart and home to this big kitty please stop by the Humane Society of Southern Arizona, 3450 N. Kelvin Blvd., to meet him!

Holiday shopping is inherently bad for savings accounts. Sometimes it seems like you're blowing through your budget and basically getting nothing in return. Sometimes you're depleting your budget and actually getting nothing.  

Remember last Black Friday when 30,000 people bought actual poop from Cards Against Humanity for $6 a pop? This year, the card game team wasn't looking to sell anything—They were more excited about the idea of buying some things for themselves.

They say:

This year we offered our customers the ultimate Black Friday experience - the ability to buy nothing from us for $5. We took our entire store offline, and put up a simple payment form where people could give us $5.

11,248 people gave us $5, and 1,199 people gave us more than $5 by filling out the form more than once. One enthusiastic fan gave us $100. In the end, we made a windfall profit of $71,145.

Cards Against Humanity is known for our charitable fundraising - since 2012 we've raised nearly $4 million for organizations we love like Worldbuilders, the Sunlight Foundation, the EFF, DonorsChoose.org, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the Chicago Design Museum. We even started a $500,000 full-ride scholarship for women getting degrees in science.

There's been a lot of speculation about how we would spend the money from Black Friday, and we're happy to announce that this time, we kept it all.

 There's a (long) illustrated list of how the team spent the cash on their blog. 

Evan Wyloge of Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting brings us this brief from Attorney General Mark Brnovich's press conference this morning:

Susan Bitter Smith, the chairwoman of the Arizona Corporation Commission broke the state’s conflict of interest laws by continuing to work as a lobbyist for companies the commission regulates, an Attorney General’s investigation has found.

The state’s top law enforcement office filed today a special action with the Arizona Supreme Court to have Bitter Smith removed from office.

Arizona law specifically addresses the Corporation Commission, barring them from working for, or having a financial interest in the companies the commission regulates.

“We believe she is ineligible to hold this office,” Attorney General Mark Brnovich said at a press conference Monday.

The motion asks for immediate action, but the Supreme Court could send it to superior court for review. 

This movie’s cast is jam-packed with talent. Diane Keaton, Marisa Tomei, John Goodman, Anthony Mackie, Alan Arkin, Amanda Seyfried, Ed Helms and even the voice of Steve Martin all show up in this supposed holiday film. If you are looking for a Christmas movie to add a little joy to your holiday season, this movie will not do the trick. If you are looking for something totally weird, dark and unfunny while being sort of stupid and wasteful overall, this one might please you.

Coopers obviously has a lot of characters played by those performers I listed above, and a lot of plot lines to go with them. It gets a bit tiresome trying to follow all that’s going on, and I’m not going to recount everything for you. I would need this entire publication’s space to do that effectively. Well, I say effectively, but it would probably be a horribly boring description so saying I would do the whole description thing effectively is actually total bullshit. A bunch of family members come together for the holidays and stupid stuff happens. Too many characters, not enough good zingers, and a genuinely nasty vibe make this a total waste of time for everybody.

How the hell did they get all of those great cast members to sign up for this thing?

I subsidized my time in Salvador by working at a youth hostel. Work resembled a Pitbull song and every night brought a new cast of travelers from around the world who there on vacation. Most nights I hung out with whoever was staying at the hostel, with the exception of Fridays. I don’t bro out at bars with the guys and typically went to the lighthouse to watch the sunset with my girlfriend at the time. She worked late one night, so I went alone and explored a new part of the city.



I enjoy seeing new cathedrals and churches, so when I saw a large one with the lights on I went in. I sat in the back and tried not to draw attention to myself. After about two minutes I saw the rest of the crowd walking towards the front and a women in the aisle motioned for me to come forward. I wasn't sure what was going on, but it looked like a weird time so I followed the group towards the front. We then stood in a line facing the stage. Three pastors came to the crowd and started barking commands at a man. The pastors put their hands on the man's head and started yelling and shaking their hands. I stood and wondered what was going on when they finished with him and a pastor walked to me. He was much friendlier with me than he was with the first man. After a minute of talking, he put his hands on my head and started chanting. At the end of each sentence he chanted OUT or NOW and would throw his hands up. This only lasted around two minutes and then he looked at me, smiled, and walked to another person.

Welcome to the "holiday season," everybody.  Personally, this is my first winter not working retail and nothing is going to make me face the horror of a mall this weekend...Then again, Christmas is less than a month away and I haven't done a bit of shopping. Perhaps I'll have to venture off into a store after all. 

Perhaps. But a weekend of movies sounds way better.

Here are Casa Video's Top 10 most rented DVDs of the week:

Trainwreck

Inside Out

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Terminator Genisys

PolitiFact calls U.S. Rep. Martha McSally's recent claim comparing the number of IRS employees vs. the number of people dedicated to "countering violent extremism" in America "mostly false."

From Politifact: 

A revenue agent, the research service told McSally, "typically is an accountant who audits and examines the tax returns of individuals, businesses, and tax-exempt entities to determine whether they are meeting their tax obligations."

In other words, the work of the 10,000 IRS agents is much broader than merely checking whether a taxpayer improperly claimed a tax deduction for making a charitable donation.

It’s also not necessarily surprising the number is as high as it is, given that millions of people and entities file federal income taxes. And only a federal agency, not state or local authorities, would be involved in auditing federal returns.

That’s in contrast to the approach taken in countering violent extremism.

Now for the second part of McSally’s claim — that there are fewer than two dozen people "focusing on countering violent extremism" in America, which isn’t exactly the same as fighting terrorism.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, citing a White House strategy document on countering violent extremism, says violent extremists are "individuals who support or commit ideologically-motivated violence to further political goals."

So, countering violent extremism is an effort to prevent such violence.

We asked for more clarification from Amy Pate, research director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland. She said: Think of a 20-year-old, marginalized, radicalized American who one day shows up at the airport with a ticket to fly to Turkey and join ISIS.

Countering violent extremism is aimed at preventing that sort of thing from occurring. It’s done through a variety of outreach and education programs, social media and other efforts, aiming to get down to the local and even the individual level — such as showing parents how to spot whether a son or daughter might be becoming radicalized.

"The more local it is, the more successful it’s going to be," Pate told us.

Indeed, the White House strategy document, issued in 2011, outlines how the federal government will "support and help empower American communities and their local partners in their grassroots efforts to prevent violent extremism."

The White House also said, in February 2015, that "communities provide the solution to violent extremism; and CVE efforts are best pursued at the local level, tailored to local dynamics, where local officials continue to build relationships within their communities through established community policing and community outreach mechanisms. The federal government’s most effective role in strengthening community partnerships and preventing violent extremism is as a facilitator, convener, and source of research and findings."

In other words, unlike auditing federal tax returns, which is done at the federal level, countering violent extremism has a federal component but is designed to be an effort that is spread out throughout the country.

You could say that McSally was engaging in a bit of rhetorical flourish for the sake of emphasizing the importance of increasing the effort against ISIS' push to recruit operatives to act in the United States as they did in Paris earlier this month.

Julianne Moore is one of the great actors of her generation, finally rewarded with an Academy Award this year for Still Alice. She can play just about anything she wants to, and while she’s very good in Freeheld, it suffers from the same illness many of Moore’s films do: It’s just not all that great beyond her performance.

She plays cancer patient Laurel Hester in this drama, a tough New Jersey cop fighting not just a terminal disease but also the system. Laurel wants to leave her pension and other benefits to her partner (Ellen Page), and given that this story unfolded in real life in 2003, you can kind of guess the state’s position at the time.

The mistake Freeheld makes as a story is not trying to convince you, because it thinks you’re already on its side. It’s a pretty shallow version of what this could be.