OSIRIS-REx, the NASA space probe built and managed by the UA Lunar and Planetary Lab with various partners, has arrived at Asteroid Bennu, some 80 million miles away, and is ready to begin the next stage of its mission.

Southern Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva today called for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to resign to avoid the scrutiny he will face when Grijalva takes over as chair of the House Natural Resources Committee when the House shifts to Democratic control in January.

From Grijalva's USA Today op-ed:

Ryan Zinke needs to resign immediately as Secretary of the Interior.

I take no pleasure in calling for this step, and I have resisted it even as questions have grown about Mr. Zinke’s ethical and managerial failings. Unfortunately, his conduct in office and President Donald Trump’s neglect in setting ethical standards for his own cabinet have made it unavoidable.

While the secretary continues to project confidence, questions have grown since the election about his future plans, and the White House reportedly fears that he would be unable to withstand scrutiny on Capitol Hill. Those fears are justified. Mr. Zinke has never even tried to offer an explanation for the sheer scope of his well-documented scandals.

This silence is insulting to the American people, and given the Nov. 6 election results it is unsustainable. Continuing in office as though nothing has changed only shows how little Mr. Zinke has learned over the past year and a half. He holds his job as a public trust, not as a stepping stone to his further personal ambitions. He has abused that trust and damaged the Interior Department in the process. The least he can do is step down and give his successor a chance to begin reversing that damage.

Zinke responded on Twitter by calling Grijalva a drunk.

My thoughts on Rep. Grijalva’s opinion piece. #TuneInnForMore pic.twitter.com/VMGxdtHwvU

— Secretary Ryan Zinke (@SecretaryZinke) November 30, 2018

Grijalva response to Zinke's tweet:

The American people know who I’m here to serve, and they know in whose interests I’m acting. They don’t know the same about Secretary Zinke.

Fans of The Music Man will have to wait a little longer for the show to open in Tucson. Technical issues have caused the Arizona Theatre Company to cancel the first preview of the show, initially scheduled for Dec. 1.

“We are truly sorry for any inconvenience this may cause our ticket holders,” said ATC Managing Director Billy Russo. “We have no doubt this will be a sensational production, and want to do our very best to support it with the resources it needs. Right now, the most valuable one is time. Unfortunately, with large-scale musicals, situations like this frequently occur.”

Preview performances scheduled for Dec. 2 to 6 will go on as planned. Ticket holders for the opening show will be offered seats at later performances. 

For questions call the ATC box office at 520 622 2823. 

Three local businesses will be participating in Sahuarita’s 2018 EDGE Competition with a $4,000 prize available to whoever pitches the best business-growth strategy.

Control Vision Inc., Native Gardens of Green Valley, and Suburban Real Estate Group are this year’s finalists. Along with other previous participants, these three groups have spent over 23 hours in workshops with the likes of Profit Mastery and Franklin Covey, to master business skills.

In addition, The Small Business Development Center has counseled participants in the development of their business-growth strategy, and also helped them craft their own persuasive pitches. 

Last year’s winner, Lu Alvarez of Copper Fitness Gym will host the event while the three businesses make their presentations.

The Shark Tank 2018 EDGE Competition will take place from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Nov. 29, at the Sahuarita Town Hall, but the contestants will be specifically presenting from 5 to 6 p.m.

For more information or to RSVP please contact Economic Development Specialist Michael Jansen at [email protected]

Country-radio host Bobby Bones and pro dancer Sharna Burgess are the winners of Season 27 of Dancing with the Stars. They were fan favorites throughout the whole season and surpassed their fellow competitors Alexis Ren and Alan Bersten, Evanna Lynch and Keo Motsepe and Milo Manheim and Witney Carson to be awarded the Mirrorball Trophy.

Their routines were enjoyable, humorous and entertaining. Although Bones was not the most technically skilled dancer, he won the crowd and the judges with his humor and entertainment.

Burgess choreographed a freestyle dance to “The Greatest Show” from The Greatest Showman soundtrack as their finale where Bones was awarded a perfect 10 from the judges for the first time.

It was a shocking win with his competitors leaving stunned and many fans ecstatic while others were upset with the results. 

Maybe it's a case of blogger burnout. Maybe I've said my piece. Either way — probably both ways — I'm taking a break from blogging. Whether it's temporary or permanent, I can't say for sure.

Lately I haven't found myself rushing to the keyboard because "Damn it, this needs to be said!" I sidle over, sit down, write, rewrite, hem, haw, read a few emails, reorganize paragraphs, edit, re-edit. If I wanted to be a careful journalist, I would have signed up for that. Blogging is supposed to be more casual, spontaneous, conversational. If it's not flowing naturally, it's time to take a step back.

I started at Blog for Arizona in 2008 when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were going at it in the primaries. Six years later I moved here, to The Range. In both places I've worked without a net and without interference, which has been great, writing and headlining my work as I damn well pleased, even finding and creating my own graphics to put at the top of each post. But it's going on 11 years posting two, three, four times a week. That's a lot of words on a lot of topics.

I used to have a corner of Arizona education pretty much to myself. Not many people in the media were looking into charter schools, let alone cyber charter schools, vouchers or high stakes testing, on a regular basis. I often found myself plowing new ground.

That's changed over the past few years, for the better. More people in the media are peering inside the workings of our schools, our state funding mechanisms and the politics of education. Investigative journalists are digging into stories in more depth and detail than I have the energy and resources for. They're getting the word out to a wider audience than I reach, and often beating me to the punch (though less so here in Tucson, where in-depth coverage of education issues is still lacking). That's a good thing, as I said, but I like getting there first. Lately I've found myself in the role of commentator instead of the role I prefer, a holdover from my teaching years, the role of educator.

Editor Jim Nintzel left the door open for me to return to The Range on a regular or occasional basis. (Thanks Jim.) I'll find out whether I'm taking time off to recharge my batteries for another round of writing or I'm launching into a second retirement — from teaching in 2003, now from blogging 15 years later.

Either way, it's been good for me. Hope it's been good for you.

Not all of El Tour is in Tucson. This year’s new 25-mile segment will start at Marana Heritage River Park, located at 12375 N Heritage Park Dr.

This new option provides cyclists with a shorter distance, later start and easier parking than the 75 or 100-mile routes.

For those who don’t know, El Tour de Tucson is an annual event in the Tucson area that has been going on for 36 years. Cyclists make their way around “the loop,” a 130-mile bike path that goes in and around Tucson and Marana.

This year’s loop will end at Armory Park for the Downtown El Tour Fiesta, featuring live music, awards ceremony, a beer garden and plenty of food vendors to refuel.

The Marana route starting line will also have food trucks, information booths and music. The starting time for the Saturday, Nov. 17 event will be at 1 p.m. sharp. Festivities will begin at the park a little earlier at 12.

The registration fee for the 25-mile route is $125 for cyclists 15 and older and $44 for those 14 and younger.

Learn more about Marana’s El Tour route here.

Less than a day after Sen. Jeff Flake vowed to use whatever remaining leverage he has to push a bill protecting the Mueller investigation, he saw that leverage pulled away from him Thursday, at least for now.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley delayed action on 15 judicial nominees – including Bridget Bade from Arizona – who were scheduled to have their nominations voted on Thursday.

Grassley said the nominees were withheld to settle a scheduling conflict with committee Democrats, who complained that nomination hearings were held during the Senate’s October recess. He did not indicate when they might come up for a vote.

The delay temporarily scuttles Flake’s plan to oppose all judicial nominees until Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agrees to allow a vote on the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act.

That bill, approved by the Judiciary Committee in April but stalled in the full Senate since, would prohibit the White House from interfering in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into possible Russian meddling in the 2016 election. President Donald Trump has often referred to the probe as a witch-hunt.

Flake, an Arizona Republican, and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, said Wednesday that Trump’s decision to force out former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and replace him with a critic of the Mueller investigation makes it more important than ever to pass the bill protecting the probe.

They are also concerned that the acting attorney general, Sessions’ former Chief of Staff Matthew Whitaker, has not been approved by the Senate, which they said is required.

“When you have the attorney general fired and when you have the oversight for the investigation moved to someone who has not received Senate confirmation, who has expressed open hostility to the Mueller investigation, there’s a problem, and I think most of our colleagues feel the same way,” Flake said Wednesday.

But Grassley challenged the claim that Whitaker needs Senate approval to work in an acting capacity, and called it “incredibly ironic that members are now distraught over Attorney General Sessions’ resignation last week” when they so vigorously challenged his appointment in 2017.

“President Trump acted in strict conformance with the law, and Acting Attorney General Whitaker’s appointment is perfectly legal,” said Grassley, adding the he is confident Whitaker “will carry out the functions of the Justice Department to the best of his abilities.”

Grassley vowed that the Senate will “properly vet” whomever Trump nominates to be the next attorney general, saying the Senate is “never a rubber stamp for any president.”

Flake remained firm Thursday in his criticism of Whitaker’s appointment.

“To have the president go and elevate someone who would then stop the probe, that has to provoke a constitutional crisis,” Flake said. “I think all of us on my side of the aisle have said that at one point or another.”

He said he stands by his original plan to withhold his vote on judicial nominees – a threat that has to be taken seriously with Republicans holding only a one-vote majority on the Judiciary Committee.

Flake conceded that McConnell could simply wait until January, when Flake will be out of office, or call in the vice president as tie-breaker, so that nominations could “theoretically … still pass” without his vote. But that hasn’t changed his plan.

“All I can do is say, ‘I’m not going to vote to advance anybody who is before the committee, and I won’t vote for any of these nominees until we have a vote on the Mueller probe,'” Flake said.

For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.

Arizona Sen.-elect Kyrsten Sinema was already in Washington Tuesday, just one day after Republican Martha McSally conceded in the one of the narrowest, most closely watched races in the country.

With more than 2.2 million ballots counted as of Tuesday evening, Sinema had a 38,295-vote lead, a 1.72 percentage point margin that made her not only the first woman elected to the Senate from Arizona, but also the first Democrat to hold the seat since Dennis DeConcini in 1994.

“I think she did it by positioning herself as a centrist, as somebody that would work on both sides, and that’s what I’d like to think I was able to do for my 18 years,” said DeConcini, echoing most experts on the race to replace Republican Sen. Jeff Flake.

While Sinema could claim the middle ground early, experts noted that McSally was forced to tack right to survive a bitter primary against two conservative challengers – a move that cost her in the general.

“McSally’s embracing of Trump sealed her GOP victory while it alienated key swing voters, for women and moderate independents, and it ultimately cost her the general election,” said Mike Noble, chief pollster at OH Predictive Insights.

Sinema, he said, “planted her flag right in the middle and she never deviated.”

Leah Askarinam, an analyst for Inside Elections, said McSally’s “strategy was riling up the base and playing to the right, rather than moderates … and it seems like there wasn’t enough of that Trump base to win an election for a Republican statewide.”

It turned out to be a Democratic wave election, even if it didn't look that way the night of Nov. 6. It wasn't the tsunami some of us hoped for. It wasn't even a Waimea Bay wave with Democrats riding the barrel while the crest of the wave crashed down on Republicans' heads. It was one of those Southern California waves immortalized by the Beach Boys, a breaker just big enough to surf, then grab your board and strut over to talk with your friends about the ride.

It was a good wave, but not a great wave. Still, it beat hell out of being dragged out to sea in a Trump undertow.

How did education fare in the election? Again, it wasn't a major pro-education wave, but it was a wave nonetheless. It depends if you're a "wave half empty" or "wave half full" kind of educator, whether you're disappointed or pleased.

A good year for Democrats is a good year for the future of public education, period. But let's break the education picture down to the local, state and national levels.

Local

The big local news is another one of those power shifts for the TUSD board. The voters clearly didn't want Michael Hicks on the board for another term. By his own admission, Hicks didn't much want Hicks on the board either. His seat went to top vote getter, Leila Counts, and Adelita Grijalva held onto her seat. Those two and Kristel Foster share similar educational values, so they're likely to vote together on most issues, a significant change from the Hicks, Mark Stegeman and Rachel Sedgwick majority. Counts brings experience in counseling and special education with her, which will add a valuable perspective to the board's discussions and decisions.

I'm happy with the new board makeup, even cautiously optimistic. It's possible Superintendent Trujillo, who doesn't draw enemy fire like the last two superintendents, will be able to work with the new board majority to effect positive change in TUSD. Here's hoping.