As most have already heard, astronaut Lisa Nowak has been arrested for kidnapping in what appears to be an odd “love triangle” including two astronauts.

As I watched the Fox News report on the ordeal this morning however, I noticed someone else: Nowak flew aboard STS-121 alongside Mark E. Kelly, who is engaged to District 8 Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. You may remember back in October that Kelly and Giffords were accused in the blogosphere of dating while Kelly was married. That turned out to be a last-minute defamatory cheap-shot at attempting to keep Giffords from getting elected. I’m surprised the blogger who reported that didn’t get sued.

Nowak is likely to receive life imprisonment. Frankly, I’m compelled to pray about the whole situation; this looks to be a huge mess.

Friendly reminder: Please consider voting for yours truly for the 2007 Political Blogging Scholarship.

The Politico has two stories (1 | 2) concerning the departure of Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) and others from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus after Sanchez accused its chairman Joe Baca of calling her a “whore.” Count Rep. Grijalva in among the defectors according to the first article there.

If you’re from Yuma, attempt to combine the kooky, hat-wearing mentality of former mayoral candidate Carol Engler combined with a teenage girl’s affinity/tendency for showing off her legs, except that Sanchez has a cat, not a hat. That’s Loretta Sanchez.

• Christmas card #1
• Christmas card #2
• Christmas card #3 (INNUENDO WARNING. I’M SERIOUS.)

I may be a conservative blogger, but I’m also completely against animal brutality. Somebody please rescue the cat.

I just noticed in my statistics this afternoon that somebody had clicked to the Growler from the Wikipedia article of Rep. Raúl Grijalva, with whom I had a well-known incident back in early October.

During the winter break, I’ve been a regular contributor to Wikipedia, making over 400 edits.  Some have been mistakes, but otherwise, I’m glad to have been fighting hundreds of vandalism cases inbetween working out and resting back in Yuma.  Nonetheless, I affirm that this was not my edit.  As evidenced in the article’s history, user Kynn Bartlett made the edit at 10:51 MST yesterday.

I will be contributing to the discussion in order to have a more-specific link included, but I will refrain from editing the article myself, as Wikipedia is rightfully strict concerning neutral point of view.  I expect Congressmen’s pages may receive extra traffic and editing today, as the new Congress has been sworn in.

Speculation is now out that AZ-7 Democratic candidate Gabrielle Giffords is a "homewrecker."  Giffords is currently engaged to astronaut Mark E. Kelly, whom according to multiple sources was married to the former Amelia Victoria Babis, with whom they had two children.

A newly set-up blog dedicated to the speculation also notes:

It appears that Ms. Gifford’s fiancé, astronaut Mark Kelly, may have still been married when the two started dating. Gabby has been very mum about it, but it appears that he was still a married man when the two met in China on one of her “junkets.” And it has been funny how the date of when they started their courtship has “mysteriously” been moved. What is known for sure is that Mark Kelly was still married as recently as 2003 and that he has two small children with his first wife. If he was married when they started dating, that could mean one of two things, he was dishonest with her, which means that she should have dumped him when she found out, or even worse, she was a willing participant and ruined a family.

It’s unfortunately not sourced, so I’m not taking that as truth just yet.

Regular readers and listeners of the Growler will note however that when I interviewed Giffords’ Arizona House of Representatives roommate Linda Lopez, I was corrected when I said "Mrs. Giffords" when I should have said "Miss Giffords."  It seemed odd to me that both Kelly and Giffords would have been single all this time, and it seems my thoughts were right at least on one side of the house.  Giffords herself appears to have been single this entire time, as she serves as a managing partner at Giffords Capital Management, a Tucson-based financial firm.  I highly doubt that she would remain if Giffords was the name of an ex-husband, unless she just didn’t change her name.  I don’t have word on whether she’ll change her name to Kelly this time around, but she may want to stick with the alliteration for political purposes.

Via Sonoran Alliance, here’s a little something about Gov. Napolitano’s record you might enjoy. I couldn’t find whom to credit, though, other than YouTube user AZGovernorVideo.

The Wildcat has the story on the Grijalva incident today.

Natalie Luna, press secretary for Grijalva, said O’Hara passed himself off as a journalist although he was a blogger.

Bloggers have more of a "mouthpiece," as they can be objective or not objective as they choose, Luna said.

Luna said there was initial confusion because Grijalva though O’Hara was a reporter with the Arizona Daily Wildcat.

However, when O’Hara did not get the answers he wanted, he began attacking Grijalva, Luna said.

Funny how other candidates didn’t feel I was "attacking" them, let alone think I was trying to turn public schools into "armed camps."

I’m currently trying to figure out the best way to include links to the rest of the Grijalva story to accomodate usability.  Expect a few random changes throughout the morning. 

After the collapse of the Alliance of Free Blogs, I am glad to have been found by the Cactus Alliance, a growing collective of some of Arizona’s most interesting conservative and pro-life blogs.  Yes, I am stealing some of Austin Bay’s language there.

Now that we’ve won the blog war against Glenn Reynolds and the Axis of Naughty, I suggest blog war against an even more dangerous foe: Jim Pederson.  Imagine: we can lie about how Jim Pederson sticks cute puppies in blenders and drinks them, thereby causing him to lose his far-left, pro-animal rights voter base, guaranteeing a win for Jon Kyl.

The narrative could go something like this:

Hey, everyone! It’s Garrett. I hope you’re having a good week, but I have to tell you about this horrible thing I found out. See, I ran into Jim Pederson today and he was drinking what looked like some sort of smoothie. So I asked him, "Hey, Jim Pederson, what are you drinking?"

And he said, "It’s my special energy drink to keep me fit and my intellect sharp."

"Wow," I responded, "How do you make it?"

"I put a puppy in a blender!" Jim Pederson laughed and then took an extra long sip.

"You can’t put a puppy in a blender!" I said in complete horror.

"I can do whatever I want! I’m Jim Pederson!"

"You monster!"

He took another drink. "Mmmm… puppy. And, the cuter the puppy, the better the energy drink. Muh ha ha ha ha!" He then ran off, drinking his puppy.

Okay, so I stole the whole thing from IMAO.  Perhaps we could come up with some other filthy lie and go with that?  It’s not like Pederson isn’t lying through his teeth himself, right?

What do you think? 

Here’s something I forgot to post earlier.  Bethany over at Hot Air did a report on what not to do in political ads.  Jim Pederson earned the number-one spot in the report for apologizing for his wealth.  Fun stuff.

Hoo boy, that guy is creepy. 

Update: I didn’t get to watch the most recent senatorial debate, but Hot AZ It Gets (ht: Cactus Alliance) gets the gold star for analysis: Pederson was Gerald Ford without any class.

Update (October 9th): Expect a podcast report with my interviews of other candidates either tonight or tomorrow. You will find that the responses of the other candidates, even when we disagreed on many fundamental things, were very respectful and always ended with a genuine handshake. I unfortunately cannot say the same of Congressman Grijalva. Members of the press who seek direct comment may contact me at my email address: gpohara-at-gmail.com.

Update II (October 9th): I had never figured out why Grijalva and his staffer were so sensitive to having the conversation recorded, but perhaps it’s because they’re in a dispute over which debates they actually agreed upon. With this recent incident, Rep. Grijalva might be more likely than ever to avoid the University of Arizona as a debate site.

Update III (October 9th): The other interviews

THIS IS NOT A SATIRE.

I’m not going to delve into legal details here; I’m just going to say what happened and give myself some time to decide a course of action. Interviews of other candidates as well as further personal analysis of what happened will be posted at a later time when I can muster a more professional voice.

In short, I became involved in what I will term an "incident" with Representative Raul Grijalva (AZ-7) and one of his staffers during the October 6, 2006 Voter Block Party held at Main Gate Square by the Associated Students of the University of Arizona. The recording explains the rest.

While I wait upon my senses to allow me to choose a course of action, I urge my fellow District 7 voters to take this into account when marking the ballot on November 7th.

Garrett P. O’Hara
University of Arizona political science senior

P.S.: If you subscribe to the podcast, you might notice that the server I used for the other files is down. I’ll let you know when it’s back up.

How to listen:

Play episode (128 Kbps MP3) | Play episode (64 Kbps MP3) | RSS 2.0 Feed (podcasts) | Subscribe with iTunes or other podcatcher

Addition: This audio work falls under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License. Content on the rest of this blog falls under the license seen at the bottom of the right hand column of the page unless otherwise noted in a post. Added October 9th: As stated in the license, this in no way affects your fair use rights.

What the heck is this guy talking about?

It sickens me that Republicans, who always tout their "tough-on-national-security" stance, have resulted to one thing in trying to regain the confidence in Americans before the Nov. 7 general election: politicize 9/11. We have seen this recently with baseless attacks on two of Arizona’s strongest leaders, Democratic Congressman Raúl Grijalva and Gov. Janet Napolitano. The governor’s ultraconservative opponent, in trying to criticize Napolitano for politicizing 9/11 is, ironically, politicizing 9/11. With nonpartisan help from state leaders and Arizonans directly affected by the attacks, the governor turned an idea to establish a permanent 9/11 memorial in Arizona a reality. Rather than criticizing her work, her opponent should stand with her in honoring those who died and the numerous Arizonans who assisted in relief efforts. Republicans have also attacked Congressman Grijalva, who stood courageously when he voted against HR 994, which lost its true focus of honoring the victims and their families when Republicans entered into the bill language that was essentially equivalent to hammering a campaign yard sign at ground zero. The resolution also claimed our "nation is safer than it was on Sept. 11, 2001," when in fact, a recent assessment commissioned by this current government found otherwise. If Republicans actually cared one bit about keeping their jobs, they’d take a big dose of reality and try to remedy the worsening conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq instead of attacking Democrats and politicizing 9/11.

David Martinez III
pre-education senior
president, UA Young Democrats

That’s right, Mr. Martinez.  Completely avoid what the memorial actually says.  If you actually cared about logical debate rather than just winning, you’d stand with those who the memorial insults.  I see you found it in favor of your winning not to say what the memorial actually says that might be controversial.  Go ahead.  Read it.  Publish it in a letter.  Show us why it shouldn’t be reviewed and destroyed.  Justify it line-by-line.  I dare you.

Remember the whole 9/11 memorial deal?  I’m not sure if Len Munsil was aware of it, but if not, the blogosphere in general (and perhaps my email in particular) made him aware of it.  This could be a huge blow to Napolitano’s claim to patriotism.

EspressoPundit, who originally posted the story onto the blogosphere, has received much coorespondence asking for Napolitano’s contact information.

Flopping Aces’ report on the proposed Arizona 9/11 Memorial makes me want to puke just as much as Refuse and Resist did during the 9/11 anniversary.  And guess what?  Janet Napolitano likes it.

I hate to be politicking over this, but what say Len Munsil? 

Correction (9/21): Not proposed.  It exists.  Disgusting.

I posted earlier concerning Len Munsil’s blog, including how it didn’t have an RSS feed, which would enable users of aggregators like Bloglines and Google Reader (my personal choice) to bring his blog into a central location along with the other favorite blogs of his readers.  It looks like the feed is back now.  Moreover, he’s challenged Janet Napolitano to a blog-off (ht: Karen of Scottsdale).

I’m liking this.  Except that Janet hasn’t replied, of course.  And she’s probably ahead in the polls, too.

Gabrielle Giffords’ busted ad Photo taken from Arizona Daily Star article

Former Wildcat editor Daniel Scarpinato may have been accused as being part of some liberal conspiracy to kill public democracy.  I think he’s just being a good journalist.

His latest furor-raising article is an investigation over Arizona District 8 U.S. House candidate Gabrielle Giffords’ latest television ad, entitled ‘Blocked.’ (video)

Giffords claims that she blocked a late-night "vote" to cut health-care funding while serving in the Arizona State Senate.  Not only was it not actually dark outside, as Scarpinato’s look into U.S. Naval Observatory data shows, but it wasn’t actually a vote.  Rather, it was a quorum call.  Moreover, Giffords was absent when she could have cast a vote to kill the move.

The Star’s editorial board agrees, too.  Major kudos.

Update: Wizbang has picked up on the story.  I definitely want to see this go national for a little while; Giffords deserves some negative blogosphere attention.