Arizona 8th just picked up former District 8 Republican candidate Randy Graf as a guest blogger, who writes about the conviction of two U.S. Border Patrol agents who were convicted for shooting a drug dealer who was escorting 800 pounds of marijuana.

It may be possible that Mr. Graf’s blogospheric audio debut, at least as an interviewee, was from the interview I did with him back in early October.  Either way, welcome to the blogosphere.  I’m looking forward to reading more.

Update: Hot Air has an interview between Bill O’Reilly and Tom Tancredo concerning the case.

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 been really boring as of late.  Much petty bickering about nothing.  At least I have something to make fun of when they’re hyper-stupid.  Now I’m bored.

Let’s hope the following events relieve me of said boredom!

• University president Robert Shelton will discuss how minorities apparently can’t make friends if there’s too many white people on campus in Gallagher Theater from noon until 12:50 tomorrow.  This won’t relieve my boredom, as I have a class I can’t skip with those exact times.

• The UA Voter Block Party is on Main Gate Square (University between Park and Euclid) starting at 5:00pm.   This is the event still known to the ASUA Calendar as the Rock the Vote Concert.  Earlier I posted and wrote a letter to the Wildcat concerning this, and ASUA President Erin Hertzog has tried to alleviate my fears both via a response letter to the Wildcat and email.  I appreciate the replies, but only my attendance and observation will be the correct measure of whether they’ve done it right.  Expect a podcast.  At minimum, I intend to grill Gabrielle Giffords on her integrity.
• There will be a gubernatorial debate in the Student Union Ballroom starting at 7:00pm on Tuesday, October 10.  Napolitano was a no show in Show Low, but I suppose college students in Tucson are easier to appease on illegal immigration and disgracing 9/11 victims than rural Arizonans are.

With the huge elections brouhaha from last semester, I’ve discovered that corruption digs deeper than college student councils. 

A 14-year-old West Miami-Dade boy ran away from home last week, boarded a plane and took a startling international flight alone — to Havana, his father said Tuesday.

Alfredo Diaz, a 10th-grader at G. Holmes Braddock Senior High, cleared an American Airlines security check and boarded a Miami-to-Nassau flight on Thursday, even though the carrier requires escorts for anyone under 15.

[…] 

Alfredo may have been caught up in some typical teenage angst. He had met a special girl during a visit to Cuba this summer, his father said. And in school, he was accused of cheating to try to win the class presidency.

[…] 

Alfredo returned to Miami three days before school began and decided to run for class president, his father said. The effort soured when Alfredo was accused of voter fraud for casting votes for himself in the name of friends, his father said.

I once said that ASUA acts like a glorified high school student council.  I guess this proves it in more than one way! 

ht: Disturbingly Yellow 

Immediately following university President Robert Shelton’s declaration of support for becoming an "Hispanic-Serving Institution," the Wildcat looks alone in its support.  Yesterday and today, letter writers blasted the plan.

Okay, so one of those letters was mine.  And the supporters probably aren’t the vocal type, either.  Let’s see what this does.

Update: Later on, one guy did post in the comments of today’s mailbag.  Perhaps he’s a good example of Tucson High Magnet School’s lack of effectiveness in civic education.  After all, we are talking about a school where teachers openly encourage students to skip school in favor of pro-illegal immigration rallies and guest speakers tell students about how "Republicans hate Latinos."

Update II: Moreover, another teacher at Tucson High opposed a 9/11 memorial there.  One particular Republican henceforth called the school a "sweatshop of liberalism." (ht: Flopping Aces)

I once met Len Munsil.  It was Sanctity of Life Sunday at First Southern Baptist Church, and Len Munsil was the president of the Center of Arizona Policy.  He joked about his attendance of ASU rather than UofA and on the reputation of lawyers he had to inherit.

His issue list looks strong on eminent domain abuse and illegal immigration.  In fact, he looks to be doing his best to distinguish himself as being stronger on the latter issue than Don Goldwater.

Internet-wise, Munsil had been the candidate using it best so far, at least for me.  The primary feature of his website is not a platform or fancy graphics; it’s a blog.  But recently, I noticed that my Firefox live bookmark for his site wasn’t working.  I didn’t take much note of it at first, but I took a look at his main site today, performed some investigation, and concluded that his RSS feed was completely gone, probably intentionally.  With that alone, Munsil isn’t going to get his propaganda to me very well, so my chances of voting for him in November just went down significantly.  Neither Goldwater nor Napolitano ever had RSS feeds to my knowledge, so we’re basically in a situation where Napolitano has the best-designed website (VERY professional-looking), Munsil has a blog with a mediocre design (lose the horizontal solidity please) and no feed, and Goldwater’s site looks like a 13-year-old designed it.  I started making money in amateurish freelance web design at age 14 or 15, but by golly not for a gubernatorial candidate.

The second issue I’ve found came up in the top post from the day I checked his site: John McCain has endorsed him.  McCain’s campaign finance reform act just killed free speech this past Monday (ht: Karen of Scottsdale), so I was hoping that a candidate from either side would be willing to give him the middle finger, but I’m apparently too hopeful of a guy.  Munsil’s website contains no mention of the term "campaign finance", so we can’t really be sure that he’s even against the bill.  His only critical mention of "clean elections" (besides the accusation flap from earlier) is that it’s "rife with problems." 

Searches on Goldwater’s site yield similar results with a few exceptions.  First, Goldwater didn’t have a Clean Elections flap, and mentions of "clean elections" include a column that explains why even conservatives are currently justified in running as Clean Elections candidates.  Secondly, as reported on the Goldwater home page, it looks like there might be a fake push-pollster out there trying to discredit Goldwater and/or Munsil.  What isn’t mentioned is whether either candidate is in favor of the Clean Elections law in the first place.  It would certainly be nice to get a statement against it from the candidates.

Goldwater looks to be more pro-gun at this point.  Without eminent domain or campaign finance / clean elections to argue, the Second Amendment is the primary issue.  Both of these guys had better shape up their campaigns.

• ASUA president Erin Hertzog responds (somewhat indirectly) to my Rock the Vote letter and former ASUA senator Matt Loehman responds to the article concerning senators’ effectiveness in today’s mailbag.
• Thoughts of Carl has now enabled posting from people without Blogger accounts.
• I wrote another letter today, this time concerning David Francis’ column about President Bush’s guest-worker program proposal.  Letters have to be intially unpublished, so you won’t see it here unless they reject it.  I basically equated his economics argument to the arguments of slave owners who didn’t know how they could manage without slave labor.
• The Wildcat also has more concerning the student code of conduct extension.

After clicking a link on the right side of the Tucson Citizen local page, I noticed this morning that Gannett’s "Border Divide immigration debate portal" has a Jeopardy-style online quiz consisting of government-printed citizenship test flash cards.  Some of it is what you’d expect: questions about who wrote the Declaration of Independence, what the stripes of the American Flag mean, etc.

Then I started going through the 1,000-point questions just to see if I could get one wrong.  I’ll take U.S. Rights for 1,000, Alex.

Well, that’s actually kind of debatable.  Rights are important, but valuing one or the other isn’t pertinent unless you consider that without the right to bear arms, the government can easily take away the other two without redress.  Naturally, (a), not (b), is considered the correct answer in the government-printed flash cards.

Let’s move one question up: U.S. Rights for 800!

This one’s on Gannett, not the government, as the former made up the multiple-choice answers.  Way to mock the Second Amendment, you objective journalists. 

30 MILES NORTH OF YUMA, AZ — A smuggler stuffs his Chevy Suburban with 20 additional people, enters the U.S. illegally, is seen by the Border Patrol, accelerates to 80 mph, and swerves around a spike-strip, rolling his vehicle over, killing nine and injuring everybody else including a pregnant woman.

In light of this, I would expect Yumans to be outraged.  Not only did the smuggler endanger his passengers, but he also endangered everybody else on the streets.  How are Yumans reacting?

“The Border Patrol is exaggerating its actions because they know they (smugglers) are not going (anywhere). There are ways to prevent those deaths. Everything is preventable. The coyotes are not guilty because they don’t force the people (to) cross the border.”
Gabriel Acevedo

Mr. Acevedo, the driver rolled over the vehicle.  If he had stopped, none of this would have happened.

“(Border Patrol) should evaluate their ways to chase people. They have a lot of ways to chase a vehicle, instead of chasing them at high speed. The Border Patrol needs to look at its policies. They are doing their job, but need to protect people, too. It’s not going to be the first, and it’s not going to be the last one.”
Marco Diaz

Mr. Diaz, the Border Patrol didn’t decide the speed to which the driver accelerated!

“My first reaction to that was how they stuck so many people in one vehicle. I mean, I’m surprised they weren’t dead in the first place by suffocation. The smugglers don’t care about anybody. The Border Patrol is doing its job. They are doing what they are supposed to do, what they are trained to do. People who are smuggling people know it’s illegal — that is why they are trying to get away from the Border Patrol. They are endangering those people’s lives, not only those people in the vehicle but other people around them. It just amazed me, he did make an U-turn with all those people in it. It’s always sad to hear that somebody gets killed when something like that happens. But, again it goes back to the smugglers. They are not thinking about the lives they are endangering. The smugglers are very irresponsible.”
Dorothy Higuera

Phew, rationality!  Individual responsibility!  Yes!

Granted, this polling by the Yuma Sun isn’t exactly scientific, but it does say something when two out of twelve people won’t put blame where it belongs.  How are we supposed to solve the immigration crisis like this?

I agree with Arizona Watch in that legalizing more immigrants would be a good thing, but with a few conditions.  Immigrants must learn English and American history, and they must be patriotic.  That’s it.  Let’s debate that, not whether immigration laws that already exist ought to be enforced.