I hadn't revisited Dr. Faustus by Shakespeare contemporary Christopher Marlowe since I read it as a high school junior, but I often think of it when I walk down the produce aisle in winter and see fresh grapes and berries on display. After my most recent visit to Sprouts, I decided to take my first look at the play in decades to see if my memory was accurate. Turns out it was.

I remember two things from my high school reading of "Dr. Faustus," which retells the old legend of a doctor who sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for power and knowledge. I remember the first lines of a passage I had to memorize, where Dr. Faustus asks Mephistopheles to conjure up Helen of Troy. On seeing her, he says,

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium—
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

And I remember a brief scene where Faustus is showing off, using his devilish powers to perform parlor tricks for a Duke and Duchess. The Duchess asks for a dish of grapes even though it's the dead of winter. No mortal could produce fresh grapes at that time of year, but Mephistopheles leaves and returns a moment later with the fruit, which the Duchess says are "the sweetest grapes that e’er I tasted." When the Duke asks how he did it, Faustus replies, Mephistopheles sped to the far east where it was summer and brought back the grapes.

EastIdahoNews.com has posted the audio of two pot smugglers who got a bad case of The Fear after smoking their own stash:

Authorities have released a 911 phone call from a drug trafficking arrest that has people shaking their heads.

The call, released by the Rexburg Police Department and obtained by EastIdahoNews.com, details an incident nearly a year ago on Jan. 23, 2015, when two out-of-state drug traffickers got high and called police to turn themselves in.

Leland Ayala-Doliente, 22, and Holland Sward, 23, were traveling from Las Vegas to Bozeman, Montana, with some 20 pounds of marijuana. Court documents show the men were using marijuana during their trip and when they entered Idaho, they felt they were being followed by undercover police officers.

Rexburg Police Cpt. Randy Lewis told EastIdahoNews.com that at the time they weren’t being followed by anyone.

Once they reached Rexburg, the pair exited U.S. Highway 20, parked their car and called 911. They said they just wanted the police to stop following them. 

You know, most weeks we talk about the Casa Video Top 10 as an alternative to spending the weekend actually doing things. But this weekend, there's a lot going on. You should go to Hotel Congress' Dillinger Days, watch This Changes Everything and/or do your part to beat back buffelgrass. And when you're done kicking ass and having fun, you should reward yourself with a night in, some salty popcorn and a film you didn't manage to catch in theaters. 

These were the most rented DVDs at Casa Video last week:

1. The Martian 


2. Sicario


3. Hotel Transylvania 2

On last night's Late Show, Stephen Colbert declared "the Original Material Girl" was back. And, sure, Sarah Palin and her quotable face are trying to "Make America Great Again," but the person I was most excited to see in last night's segment was sassy Stephen Colbert. 

The Colbert Report was all sass, all the time. Last night, Colbert gave his Late Show audience a taste of his roots when he recapped Palin's Donald Trump endorsement. The entire segment is fantastic but feel free to skip the first four minutes if you're just here to see Colbert in action.

Now, please join me in a celebratory round of the first video game I ever loved, Super Obama World—it's got lipstick on pigs! It's got super-powered pumpkin pie! It's got Sarah Palin on a snowmobile! It's got everything you knew and loved in 2008.

In lieu of the federal government's plans to continue apprehending and deporting immigrant families from Central America, the Guatemalan consulate in Tucson is hosting a legal forum this weekend to ensure Guatemalan and Central American citizens are prepared to face any interaction with immigration officials.

The Department of Homeland Security raids began on the first weekend of 2016, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents coming to the homes of more than 120 asylum-seekers to arrest them. These immigrants were denied refuge in the U.S., and were later issued removal orders.

Oftentimes, immigrants do not have immediate access to legal counsel, and they end up complying to orders that they don't must obey, and that could further harm their cases—many times resulting in their immediate deportation. 

"The problem with any type of legal situation that involves immigration is that, for instance, your neighbor or friend turns out to be an 'expert' in law and tells the person affected what to do, without really knowing anything about [immigration] laws," Guatemalan Consul in Tucson Carlos Enrique de León López says.

At the legal clinic, local immigration attorney Claudia Arévalo will discuss everything from the importance of showing up to court dates, whether ICE agents have the right to enter a person's home or not at the event of a raid, and what undocumented parents of U.S. citizen children should do with their kids in the case they are deported. 

Arizona's Superintendent of Public Instruction doesn't have much power or authority. An Ed Supe can work with the legislature to pass legislation, like Huppenthal did putting an anti-Mexican American Studies statute on the books, then declaring TUSD's MAS program out of compliance and demanding that it be dismantled (Douglas has done nothing similar, and I dearly hope she never does), but it's the legislature and the governor-appointed State Board of Education that actually make the big education-related decisions. So there's not much sense grading Douglas on how much she's actually accomplished during her tenure. Instead, I want to look at how she did in her recent ascension to the bully pulpit in her State of Education Address. Let's look at the positives, negatives and neutrals in order, one by one.

⬆️ "For education, it is too early to tell if we are only spending enough money to settle a lawsuit and temporarily placate the public, or if we are seriously taking the first step to building the best education system in the nation, right here in Arizona." Absolutely right. This legislative session will let us know if Ducey and his legislative enablers hope to "placate the public" by paying 70 cents on the dollar on what they owe the schools by law or plan to increase the K-12 budget in a more substantial way.

⬆️ "During my first year in office I saw firsthand the barriers keeping many of our children from an excellent education." Yes, there are barriers to education, and Douglas has done a credible job of describing them during her tenure.

↔️ "But there is reason to be cautiously optimistic." I wish I could agree, but since Douglas said "cautious," not just "optimistic," I'll give this a neutral rating.

⬆️ "AZ Kids Can’t Afford to Wait! turns voter feedback into actionable proposals to improve Arizona’s education system." The document Douglas put together had lots of "actionable proposals" which are generally sensible and reflect comments and suggestions from people across the educational spectrum. It's more of an educational document than a political document, which is a good thing.

⬆️ "While on my We Are Listening tour, the call for more education funding was loud and clear. Arizonans asked me to fight for more money for our classroom teachers. It didn’t matter if the attendees were urban or rural, conservative or liberal, or Republican, Independent or Democrat―no other topic came close in terms of the volume of feedback I received." Recent polls indicate that a majority of Arizonans think we should raise teacher salaries. And they're right, we should.

⬆️ "In response to that clear message from the people of Arizona, in September I called for an immediate appropriation of $400 million for this fiscal year to go to classroom teacher salaries and classroom size reduction." Good proposal. It's worth noting that it's more than the $300 million-plus in Ducey's proposal, and Douglas is only talking about teacher salaries and classroom size. She's not saying it's enough to cover all our educational needs—unlike Ducey, who says less than what Douglas proposed is plenty enough.

In northern Turkey, four sisters opt to play on the beach, and some boys are present. Their innocent activity turns into a town scandal, with the girls being imprisoned in their own home and, one-by-one, shipped out in arranged marriages.

Denis Gamze Erguven directs this Oscar nominated film with strong performances from the young actresses, based on a screenplay she co-wrote with Alice Wincour. The most memorable of the performances comes from Ilayda Akdogan as the youngest sister, a girl who watches her family get torn apart by strange traditions and incest. There’s a liberating spirit to character that makes this film more about hope than it could’ve been. The adult portrayals aren’t as strong as the young women’s, but that’s okay.

Truth is, it’s there story that really matters, and Erguven tells it fearlessly. It’s a little dispiriting to see what these young women go through, but Erguven’s movie is an optimistic one, and the performers make it engaging.

Gov. Ducey wants to add something like $300 million a year to K-12 funding, pending approval from voters. For the moment, let's forget about all the problems involved in using the students' trust fund money to cover the tab and adding all kinds of triggers which could mean the money would stop in a few years. Let's just look at that number, $300 million a year.

That sounds like a lot of money to put into our schools, $300 million. The first thing to remember is, it's not new money. It's the amount the legislature took away from our schools in 2009. That's what the courts say we need to bring us back to where we were before the 2008 recession—and it's really only 70 percent, not the whole amount. But still, $300 million. Sounds like a lot of money. Unfortunately, in terms of what we spend per student on K-12 education compared to other states, it's not much at all.

Let me explain Arizona's education funding situation in a way that even an English teacher like me can understand.

Arizona has a million students in K-12 public schools, give or take. A million students. So if the lege says, "Here's a million dollar education present kids, enjoy!" that means each student gets a crisp, new dollar bill. "Buy yourself a dollar meal at McDonalds, kid, you deserve it. If you want fries or a drink with that, you're on your own."

That's what a million dollars is worth when it's spread out over all our public school students. That's our starting point. Each million equals one dollar per student.

So, Ducey's $300 million proposal amounts to $300 per student. As a friend of mine used to say, that's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but when schools need to replace aging educational materials and provide materials they've had to cut, fix their under-maintained buildings and buses, lower class size and raise teacher salaries, $300 per student doesn't stretch very far.

So what do we need? What's a reasonable figure that would help Arizona dig itself out of its education underfunding, give students the resources they need and give teachers the salaries they deserve, enough to keep them from fleeing the profession?

A group of immigration rights organizations filed a lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and nine other federal agencies demanding transparency on a Department of Homeland Security deportation program.

As the Obama administration continues plans to deport Central American asylum-seekers, these organizations say the ongoing deportations are largely fueled by DHS's "Priority Enforcement Program."

The groups argue every step of the deportation efforts need to be disclosed to the public—yet details of everything that has been going on have not been released, according to the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which is part of the lawsuit. 

More than 10 months ago, the immigration advocacy groups filed a Freedom of Information Act to get PEP documents from ICE and the nine other federal agencies, including the FBI. NDLON says ICE refused to provide any, and, altogether, the 10 agencies merely issued five documents in response.

The federal complaint says:

Immigration reform and deportation policies are now constantly and heavily debated in national and local arenas. Plaintiffs bring this lawsuit because of Defendants' failure to satisfy their statutory obligations to provide information about government activities and because of the pressing need to effectively inform and educate the public about immigration law enforcement policy and practice. 

Without knowledge about the federal government's immigration policy, the public cannot effectively engage in meaningful conversations about immigration reform, or respond to the federal government's assertions concerning its policies and practice.

Defendants have shrouded their immigration law enforcement policies in secrecy, shielding themselves from any public accountability. Defendants' actions directly violate the central objective of the FOIA.

Newly minted state lawmaker Matt Kopec talked with The Range yesterday following his appointment to the Arizona House of Representatives to fill the vacancy created when state Rep. Victoria Steele stepped down to focus on her run for the congressional seat now held by Republican Martha McSally.

Kopec, who was picked on a 4-1 vote by the Pima County Board of Supervisors (with Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller opposing his appointment), said he knows "the challenges of being a member of the minority party and getting legislation passed but I know there's a lot of work that needs to be done and there are a lot of people who need representation up there. I'm excited, but I expect it will be a whirlwind and I'll be drinking from a firehose for the next while."

Kopec, 27, said he'd focus on supporting the rights of cities and towns "to control their own destinies and make sure that they get the state-shared revenues that they should get, the (road repair) revenues that they should get to function properly. I know education is the No. 1 issue but I know for me, I'm going to be looking really, really hard at anything that affects local government."

The Tucson native and Catalina High School grad is giving up his job as an aide to Tucson City Councilwoman Karin Uhlich to take the state lawmaker gig. He told The Range he plans to run for the seat later this year.

Kopec is no stranger to the campaign trail. In the last few years, he's helped Tucson City Council members Karin Uhlich and Shirley Scott win their seats, as well as assisting state Sen. Dave Bradley in his 2012 win over former lawmaker Frank Antenori. But other than party offices, he's never been a candidate before.

With Kopec in the hunt, there's a three-way primary that will be decided in August. Current state Rep. Randy Friese, an emergency room doc who helped save lives during the Jan. 8, 2011, mass shooting in Tucson, will be running for reelection, while Pamela Powers Hannley, a medical journal editor and lefty blogger who was passed over for the appointment by the supes earlier this week, has already been campaigning for the seat. (Democrat Ted Prezelski, an aide to Tucson City Councilman Paul Cunningham, was also passed over for the appointment but we hear he's leaning against launching a campaign for the seat later this year.)

Republican newcomer Ana Henderson is also seeking a LD9 House seat in the November election.

Legislative District 9, which includes central Tucson, the Catalina Foothills and Casas Adobes, leans slightly Democratic but remains a competitive district; in the previous legislative session, one of the House seats was held by moderate Republican Ethan Orr.