As we note in this feature story, our state legislators have filed more than 1,200 bills and a bunch more resolutions and memorials, ranging from a bill that provides new ways to hassle anyone who looks like an illegal immigrant to a resolution praising the Chicago Cubs for continuing to hold spring training games in Mesa.
How can you, as a good citizen, keep track of all of this? Well, we’re going to make it easy by highlighting some of the most interesting bills and following them at the Arizona Blogislature, a brand-new feature here on The Range. We’ll also be bringing you update in our dead-tree edition as space and circumstances warrant.
Between now and Sine Die, we’ll follow these key bills as they fight for survival through the perilous committee process, battling everything from strikers to the COW challenge in their race for the governor’s desk.
The NRA got most of its agenda through the Legislature last year—reforms like allowing guns into bars, for example, or allowing you to brandish your weapon if you felt threatened in some way.
But there are still some things that stand between you and total gun freedom. One of them is Arizona’s law regarding concealed weapons, which requires you to take an eight-hour class on gun safety to get a permit to carry a hidden gun. (You can carry a gun openly in Arizona without a permit.)
Evidently, requiring any sort of gun-safety training is a terrible infringement on our God-given rights. Senate Bill 1108 and House Bill 2347, identical bills which are both up for a vote of the House and Senate on Monday, March 29, eliminate any kind of criminal penalty for carry a concealed weapon.
• HB 2148 puts married couples ahead of single persons and gay couples when it comes to legally adopting children in Arizona. The bill, sponsored by a crew of Republican lawmakers, passed the House passed the House of Representatives on Tuesday, Feb. 23 and passed the Senate Public Safety and Human Services Committee on March 17. It's headed for the full Senate.
Tags: Arizona Legislature , Frank Antenori , Russell Pearce , Jack Harper , Jonathan Paton , illegal immigration , guns , porn , Chicago Cubs , college football playoffs , fireworks , sexting , concealed weapons
Leslie Tolbert, regents' professor in neuroscience and vice president for research, is the speaker tomorrow in the latest free talk in the UA's Mind and Brain Tuesday night lecture series at 7 p.m. at Centennial Hall.
The human brain is the most complex object known to us. It contains billions of nerve cells, each of which may make thousands of connections, in immense networks of circuitry that control our sense of self and our appreciation of—and interaction with—the world around us. In the last half century we learned that we are born with raw circuitry that quickly tunes itself to the environment we encounter. Now we are learning that the properties that allow nerve cells to achieve this "plasticity" in response to the early environment are controlled by the very same genes that drive learning and memory in adults.
District 30 precinct leaders have picked three names to forward to the Pima County Board of Supervisors to pick a replacement for Republican Jonathan Paton, who stepped down from his state Senate seat last week to run for Congress.
The nominees are Rep. Frank Antenori, former state lawmaker Randy Graf and Ted Vogt, the District 30 chairman.
The Arizona Illustrated Friday Roundtable gang discusses the state budget, the race in Congressional District 8 and more! Watch it after the jump.
City Manager Mike Letcher stopped by Arizona Illustrated's Friday Roundtable this week to discuss the city's financial troubles, the proposed downtown hotel and more.
Watch it after the jump.
Tags: Mike Letcher , City of Tucson , Arizona Illustrated , Video
If you missed out on last night's fabulous opening party for Andy Warhol Portfolios: Life and Legends at the Tucson Museum of Art, you still have a few months to get over there to see the show itself—and you really should. TMA deserves buckets of praise for bringing a show like this to Tucson. That joint was jumping!
And if you missed after-party at the Rialto Theatre, you missed one weird festivus. Congrats to Pauhaus Productions for packing the house for a dance party unlike any we've ever seen in this town. Get to the next one at the end of March.
BTW: The Warhol fun isn't over. Tonight at Firestone Gallery's new home on Sixth Avenue, there's a big party for the opening of Warhol: Dylan to Duchamp. We hear you can look forward to great music, go-go dancers and a mechanical bull. Really! Details here.
The bottom appears within sight. The latest state financial report notes that we had our first single-digit drop in year-to-year revenues since September 2008. This is good news, in the I've-been-down-so-long-that-it-looks-like-up-to-me sense.
A few highlights noted by the JLBC staff:
The January revenue results broke several long term trends. General Fund revenue collections were $1.44 billion. Excluding one-time proceeds, collections were (2)% less than last January. This was the first single digit year-over- year loss since September 2008.In addition, January General Fund revenues were $14.2 million above the forecast, which marks the first time since March 2007 that revenue collections exceeded
A fascinating clip exploring "temporal discounting" from last Tuesday's lecture on "Building Brains, Making Minds" by Lynn Nadel, a Regents' Professor in Psychology. The The UA College of Science continues its spring lecture series, focusing on the mind and the brain, next month.
In an interview with blogger Mike Stark, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) appeared to say that African-Americans are worse off today because of legalized abortion, than they were compared to slavery."It seems like humanity is very gifted at hiding from something that's obviously true. I mean in this country we had slavery for God knows how long. And now we look back on it and we say, 'Well how blind were they, what was the matter with them, you know, I can't believe, I mean four million, this is incredible,'" said Franks. "And we're right. We're right, we should look back on that with criticism. It is a crushing mark on America's soul. And yet today, half of all black children are aborted. Half of all black children are aborted. Far more black children, far more of the African-American community is being devastated by the policies of today, than were being devastated by the policies of slavery.
"And I think, what does it take to get us to
Tags: Trent Franks , abortion , slavery , Video
Another snapshot after the jump.
Tags: McKenzie Sheldon , Boys and Girls Club , Edith Morton Clubhouse