Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller has finally started to cough up the public records originally sought by the Tucson Sentinel and Arizona Daily Star related to the bizarre case of her former communications staffer, Timothy DesJarlais, and his efforts to masquerade as a reporter and launch an online newspaper while in her employ.

If you’ve followed this screwy story over the last month, you know that DesJarlais spit out a series of increasingly hard-to-believe lies about his involvement in his blogging activities before he finally confessed. As we note in this week’s Skinny, very few people outside of Ally and her cheerleading section were taken in by this nonsense.

While Desjarlais has finally confessed, there’s still the outstanding question of whether Miller was aware of what DesJarlais was up to or whether he was moonlighting as crusading reporter Jim Falken on county time.

The records that the media have requested could go a long way toward resolving that, but Miller has been in no rush to produce them. (She has totally ignored the Weekly’s request to review them.)

But earlier this week, she finally sent over a batch to the Pima County Clerk of the Board for the press to review without having to cough up more than $1,000.

Miller’s motivation in releasing the records could be related to a letter from the County Attorney’s Office. Several sources have told the Weekly that the letter informed Miller that her efforts to extort the press before releasing the records would not stand up in court. That letter is protected by attorney-client privilege, at least until next week.

This weekend is supposed to be hellishly hot and I'm not going outside. Stock up on some movies, blend a margarita and settle in for a weekend away from the sun. 

1. Zootopia
   

K12 Inc. was quick to respond to the report put out by a few charter school organizations saying virtual schools should be better regulated, which I posted about yesterday. Unfair! the press release complained. Based on old data! We've changed our ways!

Well, not so much. The publicly traded corporation is still using the for-profit model, which includes the dictum, grow or die, as well as the necessity of putting stockholders' interests over the needs of its students. It has an incredible churn rate; about a third of the students leave every year. That means it needs to use every means possible to replace those students and add more. Its recruiters use the kinds of high power, coercive sales techniques which have gotten for-profit colleges in trouble, luring in students who are unsuited to online schooling where personal motivation and parental involvement are keys to success.

Online education can be a valuable addition to classroom learning, and for a small slice of the student population it can be a substitute for brick-and-mortar schooling, but it fails when it's sold as a mass education model. K12 Inc. ends its press release by saying, "We are a company of educators dedicated to putting students first." Massive research on the corporation gives the lie to that assertion. The sooner the stockholders jump ship and the company sinks, the better.

UPDATE:
We're extending the contest because APPARENTLY you guys are a little shy. Come on: Grab some wine and some face paint and have fun with it. Email me pictures your face with black and white makeup all over it. Give it a shot and don't let these tickets go to waste!

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Let me see your KISS makeup! On Monday, July 4 KISS will be performing at AVA Amphitheater and you and a friend could be there—if you've got what it takes.

To enter, email [email protected] by noon on Friday, June 24 with the subject line KISS Contest. Include a photo of your KISS-inspired makeup masterpiece and the best way for us to contact you should you win.

Some inspiration: 


The show is Monday, July 4 at 8 p.m. Tickets can be purchased here.

Good luck!

I met Kyle Catlin almost one year ago. As I'm writing this, he sits in protective custody at the Marana Community Correctional Facility, afraid for his life after an inmate recently jumped him and then threatened to kill him for being "a snitch."

The inmate split Kyle's lip open. The inmate now sits in solitary because of the fight. Kyle is also in "the hole" for protection. Both of them were issued a complaint even though Kyle didn't do anything, according to his father Marvin.

This wasn't the first time. A couple of months ago, another inmate in a different correctional facility jumped Kyle and split his head open.

"His appeal for the guy punching him in the mouth was denied, he has one more appeal and is working on it now. If he is denied again he will have to be put in a medium security facility," Marvin told me through Facebook a couple of days ago. We've been in touch here and there since Kyle's trial.

"He is being threatened by a group of inmates. He should be moved to protective custody tonight.
I fear for his life," Marvin said last night. 

It was a three-digit-hot August day last year, and the young medical marijuana patient/caregiver and I were supposed to talk about his upcoming two trials for nonviolent marijuana sale, possession and cultivation felony charges over some iced coffee or tea at Cafe Passé on Fourth Avenue. Kyle called me to let me know he couldn't make it because his car had broken down and he'd taken it to a shop in South Tucson. I met him there and we talked in the waiting room for at least three hours.

Before we got into the serious talk, he chatted about his upcoming birthday party on Aug. 15. It was his 27th birthday. 

Tall, the blondest of hair, soft spoken, kind eyes, beyond family-oriented and a die-hard fan of car racing—I remember thinking, how can he be facing the possibility of going to prison?

At the time, he had at least 10 felony charges on him. (Read more about the charges, In Defense of Marijuana, September 2015.) He told me he was afraid of going to prison. He was afraid of getting pulled into a gang, being jumped. He, without shame, said he wasn't a fighter. He'd lose a fight. But probably the biggest fear was separating from his family. They were always together.

During days of anxiety, stress and confussion, I have found Guatemalan (represent) songwriter and artist Ishto Juevez gives me a great dose of chill pill. 

I first heard of his majestic existence from my cousin, Ana Isabel. She is a connoisseur of all-things art and music in Guatemala. She caught Ishto Juevez a few years back while he sang at an eco-friendly hostel in Antigua Guatemala called Earth Lodge.

Ishto Juevez, which roughly could translate to kid Thursday—since ishto is a Guatemalan slang word that means kid—is a regular live act at bad ass bars like Café No Sé (where the mezcal brand Ilegal Mezcal was born) also in Antigua.

If you ever get the opportunity to travel to my home country, and I, from the bottom of my heart, really recommend you make some room in your life for it, keep an eye out for Ishto Juevez, either performing at a hip bar in Guatemala City or the colonial beauty of Antigua, about 40 minutes from the capital.

Here's a piece of Ishto Juevez. I really hope it makes you feel as good as it's made me in certain days of desolation.

It's been four years since hundreds of thousands of young immigrants, who were brought to the U.S. as children, received a relief from the Obama administration that granted them a work permit and permission to remain in the country without fearing deportation.

On June 15, 2012, President Barack Obama issued Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program for undocumented youth who came to the U.S. before the age of 16 (many were brought to the country by their families when they were just babies and toddlers). With DACA—eligible immigrants who passed a background check, were under 31 years of age and over 15 when the program was issued, were enrolled in school or had a high school degree or GED, and passed other qualifications—young immigrants, or DREAMers, were given temporary relief from deportation and a renewable two-year work permit. The program does not offer a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship. 

Most recent numbers from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services show the agency has approved 728,285 DACA applications, with the greatest number of recipients in California, Texas and Illinois, according to the American Immigration Council. 

Thanks to DACA, hundreds of thousands of fellow young immigrants were able to start working, get licenses and expand educational opportunities. The benefits vary from state to state, and we all know Arizona politicians have not been welcoming to DREAMers. It took years for them to be able to issue driver's licenses and, last year, we all celebrated when the Arizona Board of Regents allowed the state's three public universities to grant DREAMers in-state tuition. 

Still, Arizona DREAMers continue to fight to qualify for federal financial aid (thanks to organizations like the Tucson-based Scholarships A-Z, DREAMers get help in applying to scholarships). And, ultimately, they continue to fight for a permanent solution to their status in this country.

In November 2014, Obama expanded DACA. The executive action got rid of the age restrictions to apply and the renewable work permit and deportation relief went from two years to three. Sadly, the program was blocked last year. It is up to the U.S. Supreme Court to decide what the fate of DACA II will be.

Now this is an interesting development. Some prominent charter school organizations have published a report advocating stricter regulations to improve the performance of virtual charter schools, also known as on-line schools. This isn't an entirely new development. Charter school organizations have been trying to weed out poorly performing schools from the charter ranks, and this is their latest effort. More at the end of the post about the positives and negatives of this push.

Three organizations, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, National Association of Charter School Organizers and 50CAN, joined together to publish A Call to Action To Improve the Quality of Full-Time Virtual Charter Public Schools. The organizations support virtual charters, but they've read the reports about how poorly students at those schools perform compared to students at other public schools and believe the schools should be more carefully regulated.

The facts about the virtual schools in the report look to me to be accurate. A vital bit of information is that 70 percent of the schools are run by for-profit organizations, directly or indirectly, which means the profit motive is going to trump education whenever the two are in conflict. Some other facts: there are 135 full-time virtual schools in the country; 79 percent of their students are in virtual schools with more than a thousand students; virtual school serve more students in poverty and fewer English language learners than traditional public schools.

The report's recommendations are specific and, if implemented, could doom one of the biggest players, K-12 Inc., a publicly traded corporation (Arizona Virtual Academy, or AZVA, in one of its schools) whose many sins I've written about over the years and whose failings are being subjected to increasing scrutiny. The proposal is that enrollment be limited to hundreds, not thousands of students, and if the schools want to grow, they need to meet performance goals. That would be a stake in the heart of K12 Inc. whose profits are based on continual growth and whose stockholders are growing increasingly skittish (its stock is currently trading at about 11, down from a 2011 high of 36). AZVA has over 4,000 students. Another branch, Ohio Virtual Academy, has over 10,000 students. The corporation would crumble if it had to cut its schools' student populations dramatically.

Tucson as a whole calms down in the summer, with many desert rats retreating to their homes and whiling away the hours watching movies and spooning swamp coolers. 

Tohono Chul (7366 N Paseo Del Norte) has a different experience. 

Every summer thousands of Tucsonans visit the gardens at Tohono Chul to catch a glimpse of the majesty and beauty of the Queen of the Night, the night-blooming cereus Peniocereus greggii. When the summer heat begins to build, the buds of the Sonoran Desert native night-blooming cereus begin to appear. After a period of start-and-stop growth, the buds blossom in a mass blooming on one night.

...

Bloom Night guests will experience the magnificent Peniocereus greggii in its full glory with luminaria illuminated trails leading to each plant, delectable bites and refreshments from The Garden Bistro, lectures, and the chance to win or purchase a Queen of the Night. Marvel at the gorgeous flowers and breathe in the intense and intoxicating scent at this one-of-a-kind event found nowhere else.

While Bloom Night arrives with little warning, the park is says it will likely occur this weekend: Friday, Saturday or Sunday, June 17-19.

AP reports this afternoon that Arizona Senator John McCain, who facing challenges both from the right (mostly from former state lawmaker Kelli Ward) and the left (Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick) as he seeks his sixth Senate term, said that President Barack Obama is "directly responsible" for the Orlando massacre:

Republican Sen. John McCain said Thursday that President Barack Obama is "directly responsible" for the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, because Obama has allowed the growth of the Islamic State group on his watch.

McCain, who lost to Obama in the 2008 presidential election, made the comment to reporters Thursday while Obama was in Orlando visiting with the families of those killed in Sunday's attack and some of the survivors.

ETA: Kirkpatrick responds:

Elected leaders have a moral duty to work together to root out terrorism and keep Americans safe. But today, we saw John McCain cross a dangerous line in comments that undermine our Commander in Chief on national security issues — at the very moment the president was in Orlando to comfort victims' families. It's difficult to imagine the old John McCain being this reckless with something so serious. John McCain has changed after 33 years in Washington.

ETA: McCain is backtracking from his comments. His official statement says he "misspoke":

I misspoke. I did not mean to imply that the President was personally responsible. I was referring to President Obama’s national security decisions, not the President himself. As I have said, President Obama’s decision to completely withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 led to the rise of ISIL. I and others have long warned that the failure of the President’s policy to deny ISIL safe haven would allow the terrorist organization to inspire, plan, direct or conduct attacks on the United States and Europe as they have done in Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino and now Orlando.