So let me tell you a little bit about my dad.

Lloyd C. Nintzel loved his seven kids—Chris, Jeff, Ken, Diana, Doug, Bill and me. He loved his 18 grandkids and his three great-grandkids.

He was born on Dec. 29, 1923, in New York City, and spent most of his life as a New Yorker.

His love affair with baseball started when he was just 8 years old, listening to the radio as the Yanks swept the Cubs in the ’32 World Series. That was the year Ruth called his shot in Game 3 and drove a legendary home run deep into center field. Dad was hooked. The next year, he went to his first game; his mom took him and his younger brother Chub across the city on the train on Sunday, Oct. 1, 1933, to see Ruth take the mound against the Red Sox. He later marveled to me that his mom braved the trek across the city with two young boys.

He was the first kid in his family to go to college—and he picked one of the best, Dartmouth, though it was something of an accident. He didn’t know anything about going to college and neither did his parents, but some of his high-school friends were aiming for Dartmouth, so he figured: Why not? After a few hurdles, he got his real letter of acceptance and his parents drove him up to Hanover, N.H., for the first time when he started his fall semester in 1941.

That December, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and Dad, like many of his generation, wanted to enlist. The Army wouldn’t take him because he was colorblind, but he kept trying to sign up and discovered the military needed meteorologists, but there was a snag: He needed to be drafted. So he convinced a draft board to come together for the purpose of drafting him and he went off to training around the country. He shipped out to Greenland, tracking radio transmissions and doing who knows what else. Following the Allies’ victory in Europe, he ended up in France, where he joined some of his fellow soldiers on an impromptu (and evidently unapproved) trip to Paris, until the MPs caught up with him and sent him over to England.

He came home, finished his undergrad work at Dartmouth, met my mom out at the family’s summer beach cottage in Mattituck, Long Island, got married, and then went back to Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business for his MBA. He moved back to the city, worked as a CPA in the financial field in Manhattan, moved out to the suburbs of Jersey, had his seven kids.

Two proposals are being pushed by Republican state lawmakers that would make it harder for medical marijuana patients to access their medication.

Both want to amend the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act to limit which types of doctors can issue referrals for medical weed, establish stricter restrictions on who can get those referrals, and require patients to get new referrals more often, according The Associated Press (the article was originally posted on KJZZ'.org).

Rep. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa, introduced House Bill 2061, which would remove pregnant women from the list of patients who qualify for medical weed. But she'll most likely need three-fourths of votes in the state House and Senate to amend the law, because the Medical Marijuana Act is a voter-approved initiative, AP says.

The proposal by Rep. Jay Lawrence, R-Scottsdale, would remove physicians who practice alternative medicine like naturopathy and homeopathy from the list of doctors who can issue medical marijuana referrals, "leaving only doctors of medicine and osteopathy," AP says.

It also would set requirements that qualifying patients acquire a new referral every six months, instead of once a year like they do now.

Figures from July 2015 say that more than 87 percent of medical marijuana referrals come from naturopaths and homeopaths, according to a report by the Arizona Department of Health Services.

Lawrence introduced his measure as a bill and as a House Concurrent Resolution, meaning it would only become law if enacted by the voters. That way, HCR 2019 can become law without needing three-fourths of the votes in both houses to pass in the Legislature.

J.P. Holyoak, president of the Arizona Dispensary Association told the AP that he questions the legality of the bills. Also, he says, the state's medical marijuana industry has proven to be successful, and new laws trying to cripple it are "unnecessary and counterproductive."

"It's disappointing to see some legislators are trying to roll back a voter-approved law that is helping tens of thousands of seriously ill Arizonans," Holyoak told the AP in an email. "Our state should focus on moving forward, not backward."

As of December, roughly 88,000 people in Arizona are registered medical marijuana patients, the AP says.

North Korean scientists—and every drinker out there—have a lot to celebrate: They have created hangover-free alcohol.

An article by Foreign Policy says that according to the Pyongyang Times, the liquor, which is called Koryo, is roughly between 30 to 40 percent alcohol and “exudes national flavor," thanks to its two main ingredients, ginseng and rice.

And it could even classify ginseng as a miracle plant: In August, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un claimed that a drug made with it can also cure Ebola, AIDS, and cancer.

The alcohol was reportedly made with insam—a North Korean-kind of ginseng. According to the article, scientists replaced sugar with scorched rice, which is the ingredient credit to reducing the chances of a hangover the following glorious day. 

The Taedonggang Foodstuff Factory is responsible for this week’s success, and the Pyongyang Times said it won a “quality medal for preserving national smack.”

“Koryo Liquor, which is made of six-year-old Kaesong Koryo insam, known as being highest in medicinal effect, and the scorched rice, is highly appreciated by experts and lovers as it is suave and causes no hangover,” the article says. It also adds that the alcohol “has already been registered as a national scientific and technological hit.”

A young woman (Brie Larson) and her five-year-old son, Jack (Jacob Tremblay) are held prisoner in a backyard shed. When Jack manages to escape, mother and son must learn to cope with life outside of their prison walls, and reacquaint themselves with their immediate family.

While Larson is excellent here, Tremblay is the biggest reason to see this movie. His portrayal of a small boy who has only known one room his entire life is revelatory, a performance like none other. While Larson has picked up a Golden Globe and a much-deserved Oscar nomination, Tremblay was robbed. Joan Allen delivers strong work as Jack’s grandma, dealing with the horror that brought him into the world and loving him the instant they meet. William H. Macy has a small but memorable part as Jack’s grandpa, a person who can’t get over what happened to his daughter. Lenny Abrahamson, who made last year’s excellent and relatively unknown Michael Fassbender comedy, Frank, directs the movie. Based on his work with these two films, he’s one of the industry’s most interesting directors.

The movie basically plays out in two parts, the imprisonment and the aftermath. Larson delivers a performance deserving of the accolades, but it’s Tremblay who makes the biggest mark.

Several of the militia members who have seized an Oregon wildlife refuge headquarters to protest the prison sentences of two Oregon ranchers for arson (who, incidentally, have said they'd rather not have the militia group's help) are from Arizona, including dumbass John Ritzheimer, who has been widely mocked for his "Daddy-swore-an-oath" explanation of why he abandoned his children at Christmas for this occupation nonsense.

Another one of the militia members is an Arizona rancher who evidently draws most of his income from raising foster kids at his Chino Valley ranch. But now Arizona officials are removing foster kids from his ranch, threatening his livelihood.

Oregon Public Broadcasting reports:

Robert “LaVoy” Finicum and his wife Jeanette were foster care parents for troubled boys. Finicum estimates that over the past decade, more than 50 boys came through their ranch near Chino Valley, Arizona. The boys often landed there from mental hospitals, drug rehabs and group homes for emotionally distressed youth.

“My ranch has been a great tool for these boys,” Finicum said. “It has done a lot of good.”

Jeanette Finicum cared for the four children while her husband traveled between the refuge in southeastern Oregon and Utah, as part of a press tour in support of the militants’ occupation.

Finicum offers the implausible argument that federal officials have convinced Gov. Doug Ducey to act on their behalf:

The removals coincided with Finicum’s involvement in the occupation of the refuge, outside of Burns. He blamed the removals on “pressure from the feds.”

“They were ripped from my wife,” Finicum said. “We are very successful (foster parents). Our track records are good, it’s been a good relationship. (Federal authorities) must have gotten to the governor, who told the state to get them out of there.”

Ducey spokesman Daniel Scarpinato told The Range today that Ducey had no role in the decision to remove the children from Finicum's ranch.

"This is absolutely false," Scarpinato said. "The governor is not involved in individual foster child placement decisions. Those are left to professionals at DCS and charity programs and the courts. And all of the decisions that are made through our agencies with the filter of what is in the best interest of the child and their safety."

Whatever reason the Arizona authorities had to remove the kids from Finicum's ranch, it's very hard to believe that the Obama administration somehow forced Ducey's hand.

TPM's Josh Marshall makes two points:

The Supreme Court will consider a lawsuit that challenges President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration, meaning the fate of two programs that have been blocked for nearly a year could be decided by June, before the court wraps up its term.

In November 2014, Obama issued an extension to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals—granting undocumented youth brought here as children a three-year renewable work permit—and DAPA, which offers a similar relief for parents of U.S. citizen and legal resident children.

Two months later, Texas, and 25 other states including Arizona, filed a lawsuit claiming Obama had overstepped his constitutional authority. In February, a federal court ruled to temporarily block DACA II and DAPA, while the suit was reviewed. Both programs could benefit at least 4 million people, according to the Immigration Policy Institute. 

From an article in the New York Times:

If the Supreme Court upholds Mr. Obama's actions, the  White House has vowed to move quickly to set up the DAPA program and begin enrolling immigrants before his successor takes over early next year. Democratic presidential candidates have said they will continue the program, but most of the Republicans in the race have vowed to dismantle it and redouble immigration enforcement.

The administration, fearing that the program could remain frozen through the balance of Mr. Obama's presidency, had asked the court to move quickly. On that point, at least, the court agreed, and it now appears that the case will be argued in April and decided by the end of June.

Ducey can spin his budget priorities however he wants in his pronouncements, but a budget is a moral document. It indicates what you value. And Ducey, contrary to his pronouncements, does not value education, or children in general, especially poor children.

Lots of ink and pixels have been spilled talking about Ducey's proposed budget, its priorities and deceptions. I'm going to narrow-focus on his statements about K-12 education versus his actual budget proposals, but there's so much more to look at. Howard Fischer gave us a sense of the whole budget picture in his opening paragraph about the budget plan Saturday:

Gov. Doug Ducey proposes to restore less than 10 percent of what was cut last year from state universities, give the Department of Child Safety just two-thirds of what it requested, but add another 2,000 beds to house inmates.

Today, Fischer notes that Ducey has decided to "ignore what, for the moment, is free money from the federal government to provide care to more of the children of the working poor." If you're turning down free money from the Feds for children's health, knowing you can cancel the program in the future if you think it's costing the state too much money, that speaks volumes.

But back to K-12 education. Let's look at how Ducey described that part of his budget in his op ed published Friday, the same day he released his budget proposal. First statement:

On Friday, I announced an additional $106 million for K-12 education – that is on top of the $224 million supplemental for fiscal year 2016, which was part of our $3.5 billion funding package.

Question: When is additional education money not additional education money? Answer: When it's a mandatory increase based on inflation and the increase in our student population. That accounts for $47 million of the $106 million. Almost half of Ducey's "additional" money is really stay-even money.

Here's another statement from the op ed.

But not every child plans to go to college – their K-12 experience also needs to prepare them for life. Which is why we’re targeting high-need employment sectors with a new, $30 million investment in career and technical education.

A "new, $30 million investment"? It's hardly new, when that's exactly the amount Ducey and his legislative enablers cut from JTED (Joint Technical Education District) programs last year. So it would be slightly more accurate to call it a restoration of funds—except that would be wrong too. The "new, $30 million investment" is actually $10 million a year spread over three years, and instead of restoring the money to existing JTED programs, it's a matching funds grant for programs sponsored by businesses to train people for jobs the businesses think they need. The general consensus is, if the cut JTED funds aren't restored, the program will die.

The Pima County Board of Supervisors picked Matt Kopec to replace state Rep. Victoria Steele, who stepped down last week to focus on her congressional run.

Kopec captured the seat with a 4-1 vote with little discussion. Republican Supervisor Ally Miller voted against him.

Kopec, who has worked on many local campaigns and as an aide to Tucson City Councilwoman Karin Uhlich, beat out fellow Democrats Pamela Powers Hannley and Ted Prezelski.

Hannley is already running for a seat in LD9, which includes the north side of Tucson, the Catalina Foothills and Casas Adobes.

The second seat in LD9 is held by Democrat Randy Friese, an emergency-room doctor.

Learn the ancient art of seed saving from the folks in town who do it best when Native Seeds/SEARCH offers up a workshop on the basics of seed saving. Focusing on beginning techniques to show how to preserve seedlines from your own garden, this free event is a great place to start learning about how to make your little home farms more sustainable season after season.

You can join in by going to the Martha Cooper Branch Library (1377 N. Catalina Ave.) on Saturday, Jan. 23 at 10 a.m.

Hi I’m Kevin!

I’m a strong two year old boy who is looking for his forever home! I was adopted a few months ago but brought back because the family wasn’t able to care for me. I’m looking for a home where I can get a lot of exercise and love! I am really sweet and get along well with other dogs. I like to run, play, jump and maybe even hike! I’m working on my leash manners and know how a bunch of basic commands. If you think I’m the perfect dude for your family stop by the Humane Society of Southern Arizona Main Campus at 3450 N. Kelvin Blvd. to meet me!