UPDATE: We’re working out some last minute glitches and the new site should be up soon.

At about noon today, we will switch over to the beta version of the new TucsonCitizen.com.

The new site will appear fairly basic for a couple of weeks while programmers and designers work on its ultimate look and function.

About a dozen people have agreed to begin blogs or transfer their blogs to our new site. Some will begin blogging today, others throughout this week and next.

Another dozen or more have expressed strong interest and are likely to begin blogging before the month is out.

Thus begins this new chapter of the Tucson Citizen, The Voice of Tucson. This is a work in progress. We hope to have the first version of the site redesign finished by the end of June. From there, we will continue to recruit new and existing bloggers to help increase the universe of knowledge in Tucson and to add perspective and understanding to the issues affecting our region through intelligent, informed debate.

As the months roll on, the site will change again as we work to make the site the most engaging and useful opinion and commentary site in the state.

The old Tucson Citizen Web site will still be available for anyone searching for archived Citizen stories. It will be a link on the new site.

If you have an idea for a blog on local issues on the new TucsonCitizen.com, e-mail Mark B. Evans, mevans@tucsoncitizen.com (mevans@tucsoncitizen.com), or Ryn Gargulinski, rynski@tucsoncitizen.com (rynski@tucsoncitizen.com). Or you can call us at 573-4561.

1. Leap in U.S. debt hits taxpayers with 12% more red ink – USA Today Bottom line: The government took on $6.8 trillion in new obligations in 2008, pushing the total owed to a record $63.8 trillion.

Put on a coat before reading this story, ’cause it will chill you to the bone.

2. Many small businesses lose their credit - USA Today When credit lines are reduced — or outright severed in this case — businesses could have problems such as buying needed supplies or equipment. Nearly 60% of small-business owners said they’ve used a credit card as a financing tool in the last 12 months, according to a NSBA survey released this month.

One of the pillars of the economy is credit. Ironically, abuse of credit is what got us into this mess but it is its proper use that is going to get us out. These microloans to small businesses are vital to keeping the economy from continuing to fall and for the long slog out of the hole. If the federal stimulus had been used to prop up economic engines like this rather than being doled out to state and local governments, the climb out would have been faster and less painful.

3. It’s bad timing for Bank of America to be puttin’ up a Ritz – USA Today “It’s again about the whole idea of excess and not spending money wisely,” says Hebert of the i2i consulting firm. “Somebody in those mahogany-coated rooms should have said, ‘Come on guys.’ ”

I wish I was fabulously wealthy so I could be as clueless as bankers and Wall Street financiers. Isn’t ignorance supposed to be bliss?

4. Microsoft announces big Bing theory – USA Today Bing will lead to faster, better organized and more relevant results, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said. The service, which is available to a few test users now, will be widely released by Wednesday.

Will the maker of the most prevalent but least useful computer operating system finally “get” the Internet? I doubt it.

5. Publicity push to tout Brewer budget plan; Dem budget plan bridges gap between GOP, Brewer- Arizona Republic As the minority party at the Statehouse, the Democrats are trying to chart a middle course between the deep cuts of the Republicans’ budget plan for fiscal 2010 and the 1-cent-per-dollar sales-tax hike that they believe Gov. Jan Brewer is promoting.

Wednesday is June 3. There will be 27 days left in the fiscal year before the next fiscal year’s budget has to be passed. And we get a detailed budget from the governor and the Democrats only now? What the hell have they been doing the past four months? And with a month to go, the majority Republicans still don’t have a budget? We don’t pay these guys very much, but I’m beginning to think we pay them too much. PASS A BUDGET!

6. An old tradition for tough times: Money sharing – Arizona Republic The popular monetary practice based on rotating credit is deeply rooted in Mexican culture but little known to outsiders. In a cundina, participants – typically about 10 family members, friends, neighbors or colleagues – contribute a set amount of money each week. Those contributions are pooled, and each week, a different participant takes home the entire pot.

Interesting idea. Better trust your partners, though.

7. Homeowners fall behind at highest rate since ’72 – USA Today; Delinquent mortgages, foreclosures up in Ariz. – Arizona Republic Foreclosures were started on an additional 2.52 percent of Arizona mortgages, bringing to 5.56 percent the proportion of Arizona loans in foreclosure during the quarter. Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada accounted for 46 percent of all foreclosures started last quarter.

Whatever happened to TARP buying up all those “toxic assets” and the foreclosure stability plan (Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan)? I guess the Autoworker’s Union has to get paid off first by saving a mostly dead auto behemoth. Oh, that’s right, Michigan and Ohio are swing voter states and Arizona, California and Nevada are not.

8. ‘UFO’ spotted in Southeast Valley no longer unidentified – Arizona Republic “It was some kind of electronic device,” airport spokesman Brian Sexton said of the plastic object whose owner was identified as Space Data Corp., a Chandler firm whose products have logged 250,000 hours of flying time over the United States.

When will people finally get that there are no extraterrestrials? Once you learn the science behind the speed of light, the relationship between mass and energy (E=mc2) and the distances of the galaxy and the universe you quickly realize that if not impossible, interstellar travel is extremely impracticable.

If Internet news aggregators, free content, low margins on Internet ads and a splintered Internet advertising market, more than the cruddy economy, are what’s killing newspapers, then this meeting is long overdue.

One of their top discussion topics is free content but I don’t see how you can unring that bell. Newspapers in the 1990s saw the Internet as added value to their flagship newsprint products. They started out giving away on the Internet what they were charging people to read in print.

Now the Internet is the future and they’re stuck with the free content model.

Or are they? According to Warren, the focus of the meeting is to find a way to charge for content. The reason for the meeting of the top poobahs is that all of them have to charge readers for it to work. If the New York Times charges to read but the Washington Post doesn’t, the Times will lose readers to the Post.

But if they all agree to do it, I’m sure the Justice Department will be interested to know how that bit of corporate serendipity came about, what with that pesky Sherman Anti-Trust Act and all.

The problem is not free content, it’s stolen readers. Aggregators are what’s killing newspaper advertising. Google, Yahoo and friends steal the Times,’ the Post’s, USA Today’s, the Arizona Daily Star’s and every other newspaper’s stories and delivers them to Google readers, who are then exposed to Google’s ads.

But Google bears none of the cost of gathering and reporting that news.

The key is technology – newspapers must invest in IT eggheads to write the code that will wall off the aggregators. Then, if you want to read a New York Times article, you have to go the Times’ site.

And there’s no antitrust problems to worry about, it’s just good business.

To read Warren’s blog, click here.

1. Student routinely restrained to fence – Arizona Daily Star The bus monitor involved said the exceptional-education student, whose feet remained on the ground, was attached to the spoke of the fence so he wouldn’t fall over or wander away while he waited for his escort.

So, the monitor gets off the bus with a special needs student and there’s no teacher or aide there to take the student and his solution is to tie the kid to the fence so he can do something else? His solution isn’t to wait? Or to take the kid to the office? Or to get on a cell phone and throw a fit with his bosses or the school principal that the teachers are routinely late to pick the kid up from the bus drop off? When did common sense die in this country? Was there a date it happened, or has it been a long slow bleed?

2. So, City High student, you’ve earned promotion? Prove it – Arizona Daily Star “If you can’t fail it, then it’s not an assessment and it becomes a ceremony.”

Great idea. Works in a charter school with a few dozen students. Will it work at a school such as Mountain View High School where there are 500 students per grade? Let’s see, 2,000 students make a 20 minute presentation, that’s 666 hours of presentations. At 8 hours a day, that’s 83 days to get through the presentations, including weekends. If you had one panel per grade going simultaneously, that’s still 20 days to get through the presentations. Looks like standardized tests are here to stay.

3. Get ready to pay more in city taxes – Arizona Daily Star Trasoff wanted some agencies to get zero funding, because she said an equal decrease isn’t necessarily fair, given the different functions they perform.

A bunch of liberals pass a tax increase. No surprise there. But a bunch of liberals passing brutal regressive tax increases that stick it to the poor? That’s a head scratcher. That said, I’m at a loss figuring out what progressive taxes might have been available to them. So maybe the thing to do instead was cut city programs and staff to balance the budget?

4. Drop impossible dream of total security – Arizona Daily Star/Miami Herald As President Eisenhower reputedly said, “If you want total security, go to prison.”

I agree completely with this columnist. He could have gone further. While the Bush Administration and Cheney talked tough they ended up doing mostly that, talk. While they poured billions of dollars into Iraq, they let bin Laden get away with murder. While they tortured supposed and real terrorists at Guantanamo for relatively worthless or suspect intelligence, they failed to protect U.S. ports and borders. Not a single government official lost their job for failing to act on the detection of the terrorists cells that conducted the Sept. 11 attacks, or for the no WMD in Iraq fiasco. There are things we can be doing to improve our security but in the end, someone who is willing to die to kill is almost impossible to stop. Plus, we have more to fear from each other than from Islamic terrorists. About 14,000 people were murdered in the United States last year, not one of them by a terrorist.

5. New English-learner fight after schools chief alters process – Arizona Republic Arizona schools Superintendent Tom Horne has issued a new mandate that will cut the number of students receiving special help with English, kicking up yet another controversy over the state’s 150,000 English-language learners.

That’s it? What language does your child speak? That single question is supposed to determine if a student should be mainstreamed or enrolled in ELL classes. That’s like asking a parent, “Can your kid do math?” and if they say yes putting them in algebra class. I can do math. I can’t do algebra (anymore, anyway). Sheesh.

6. Recent roof collapses concern parents, schools – Arizona Republic Now, parents and educational authorities are concerned that recent roofing problems at those three Valley schools could indicate a larger, statewide pattern of schools in disrepair.

When did Arizona become China?

7. Speed cameras twice tag Shaquille O’Neal – Arizona Republic Phoenix Suns center Shaquille O’Neal was snapped by Arizona Department of Public Safety speed cameras in December and February, a DPS spokesman said Wednesday. The official declined to say where the violations occurred or exactly how fast O’Neal was going.

Ha Ha. (You don’t need to click on the story link, I posted the entire story)

8. Judge speeds up Coyotes timetable – Arizona Republic U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Redfield Baum on Wednesday put on a fast track a decision whether the highest bidder could relocate the team.

How much did that new Glendale arena cost Maricopa County tax payers? Are you paying attention Pima County Sports Authority? Don’t get in bed with professional sports teams. If they want a stadium or an arena, let them spend some of the billions they make each year and build it themselves.

9. Stimulus projects bypass hard-hit states – USA Today – But, with few exceptions, that money has not reached states where the unemployment rate is highest, according to a USA TODAY review of contracts disclosed through the Federal Procurement Data System.

I knew I didn’t feel stimulated.

10. Supreme Court pick Sotomayor faces nomination politics – USA Today The Coalition for Constitutional Values began television ads nationwide on Wednesday in support of Supreme Court nomineeSonia Sotomayor. On the other side, the Judicial Confirmation Network sent an online ad opposing her to 2.5 million people on its mailing list.

Anybody remember Antonin Scalia’s Senate confirmation vote in 1986? It was 98-0. He’d never get confirmed today, no matter the party in the majority. Wish we could turn back the clock to more sane times.

1. McCain: Both parties to blame for US woes – Arizona Daily Star “We Republicans let spending get out of control, and we paid a very heavy price in the election,” McCain said, adding that Republicans “are in step 1 of a 12-step program. We’re still in denial. We need to move on from that.”

If he had picked Colin Powell for veep, or someone similar, i.e. competent, McCain would be president today. Is he young enough to lead his party out of the wilderness? I think he’s the only guy who can do it but time is not on his side. If not him, then who? Lindsey Graham? I’d vote for him. It sure ain’t Mitt Romney.

2. AZ bill: US med plan optional – Arizona Daily Star Christie Herrera, who works for the American Legislative Exchange Council, said the measure is needed to preclude the kind of “socialized medicine” being considered in Washington, which exists in some other countries.

Oh, come on, get off the socialized medicine schtick. We already have socialized medicine for the very old and the very poor. It’s everybody in the middle who is screwed. We need a single payer system in this country with an opt out for those who can afford to choose private plans. A couple of years ago my employer-subsidized insurance plan changed and my family was forced to change all of our doctors because they weren’t providers on the new plan. I tried to buy private insurance to keep our doctors, but every insurance plan had stiff pre-existing condition clauses that refused to pay for chronic health problems for at least a year and never for some of my wife’s health problems. So we changed doctors. Then the plan changed again a year later as the company shopped around for a cheaper plan yet again. I wasn’t a proponent of a state-run single payer insurance plan until I got screwed by our nation’s broken health care system. Now I am. We need to decide in this country if health care is a right or a privilege. To that end, see below.

3. Health-care issue hashed out – Arizona Daily Star The notion of making health care in the United States a right rather than a privilege touched a nerve in Tucson on Tuesday night. About 1,000 people filled the auditorium at Sahuaro High School for a town hall meeting focusing on national health-care overhaul — twice the number expected by organizers from the Tucson office of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.

If health care is a privilege, stop requiring hospital ERs to treat everyone who comes in the door. If it’s a privilege, eliminate medicare and medicaid, why should old and poor people get government health care and the rest of us don’t? If it’s a privilege, let people get the health care they can afford, and if they can’t afford any, tough, the more people dying from cancer, the flu, heart and lung disease at an early age will help with Baby Boomers breaking the Social Security bank. Or, we can call it a right, create a government system that relieves employers of the crushing burden of health insurance subsidies.

4. Ariz. drop in smoking is largest in nation – Arizona Daily Star That same year, voters agreed to make smoking more expensive, raising the state tax on cigarettes by 82 cents a pack. That brought the total state levy to $2 per pack.

Great. This is good news. Except for all those programs being funded by the smoking sin tax. Now that the sin tax is having its intended effect, the money it generates will fall, providing less money for the health care programs it funds. However, while the tax income is falling, the demand for the program will remain high well into the future. Classic example of why social engineering might sound good but ultimately fails and ends up costing more than doing nothing.

5. Awash in drugs, America remains a ‘dealer’s dream’ – Arizona Daily Star This array of consumers is providing a vast, recession-proof, apparently unending market for the Mexican gangs locked in a drug war that has killed more than 10,780 people since December 2006. No matter how much law enforcement or financial help the U.S. government provides Mexico, the basics of supply and demand prevent it from doing much good.

We have met the enemy and he is us – Pogo.

6. Bill legalizing sparklers clears a major hurdle – Arizona Daily Star As part of a political compromise, lawmakers agreed to allow city councils to declare the use of sparklers illegal within their own limits. But cities could not bar stores from selling the items or consumers from buying them.

Dear legislators, listen to me very carefully . . . PASS A BUDGET!

7. Wife of Ariz. treasurer dies after childbirth – Arizona Republic Dean Martin liked to refer to the child as “LT,” for “Little Treasurer,” and made up a baby outfit bearing the words, “Deposits up front, withdrawals in back.”

What a horrible tragedy. My condolences to Dean Martin and his family and my best wishes to the recovery and health of his new son.

8. U.S. consumer confidence soaring – Arizona Republic A widely watched barometer of confidence unexpectedly rose to the highest level since September, buoyed by an unexpected surge in the stock market, bringing hope that the job market might turn around and the belief that the worst of the recession is behind us.

Really? Nobody called me and took my poll. My confidence is still in the crapper. But maybe that’s because I’m typing this in an empty newsroom, having escaped the layoff ax by mere inches.

9. Cardinals’ Boldin dismisses agent – Arizona Republic Anquan Boldin took a major step in trying to resolve his contract dispute with the Cardinals and repair his image with fans by firing agent Drew Rosenhaus, a move some teammates applauded Tuesday.

Hallelujah. Now, if all the other athletes would fire Rosenhaus maybe sanity would return to professional sports. (Yeah, right, but it’s a good first step).

10. Restaurants cross lines as they struggle through recession - USA Today The fallout looks — or tastes — surreal. Many of the food innovations appear to be the opposite of some chains’ founding principles, and carefully honed brand image. Could sushi at Taco Bell(YUM) be next?

I learned a very disgusting lesson early in life – never order spaghetti at a Chinese restaurant. Same goes for tacos at a burger joint and burgers at a chicken joint.

1. University construction plan in doubt – The Arizona Republic The delays mean students and faculty may have to endure worn-out facilities and the schools can’t expand certain programs or keep up with student growth for a while.

A state paid for stimulus plan left in the budget lurch. The state is in a fiscal crisis and all pots of money need to be considered, but this pot was considered earlier this year and left alone because it draws from lottery money. Two motivations are at work here, a desire to steal every cent from every program to try and balance the budget without a tax increase and an animosity toward public education of any kind.

2. Obama taps Ariz. for cadre of leaders – The Arizona Republic While Napolitano is serving as Homeland Security secretary, fellow Arizonans will be overseeing the national-highway system, regulating the use of pesticides to protect the environment, working to improve the health of American Indians and providing legal advice to the Air Force.

Good news for Arizona’s Republican party, while the Republicans in the Legislature risk angering every constituency in the state with its proposed draconian budget cuts, potentially handing the state’s mostly moribund Democratic Party a truckload of wedge issue for next year’s elections, Obama raids the state for the handful of competenet Democrats who could help his party capitalize on Republican missteps. While Republicans eat Arizona’s young, the Democrats eat their own. I love this state.

3. Workers now allowed to help deserted pets – The Arizona Republic That will be welcome news for the increasing number of cats, dogs and other pets who have been abandoned when their owners let their homes go into foreclosure.

Good for Gilbert. I understand that people getting evicted because of foreclosure are in a financial crisis, but take the damn dog with you when you leave or turn it in to a shelter. Otherwise, I’ve got no sympathy for you or your plight.

4. Back-to-basics junior high on way – The Arizona Republic The Chandler Unified School District is building its first back-to-basics junior high by going back to the future and remodeling a 1950s-era campus that was the district’s first junior high school.

The 1950s? Translation: Teach my kids the way I was taught, dang it. Rote memorization, reading the works of dead white guys, history that ignores anything bad. Learn ‘em good. Like me.

5. As funds for summer fun dry up, citizens pool resources – USA Today In Payson, Ariz., businesses and the city have pledged to pay up to $5,000 to reopen nearby Tonto Natural Bridge State Park on weekends. Residents will volunteer at the park to reduce the need for paid staff, Mayor Kenny Evans says

But will they support a tax increase to help pay for services that have fallen under the budget ax that other families might need? Or are they only willing to chip in their own money to serve their own self interest? Maybe we can have a new form of a la carte government in which each year state, cities and counties put up lists of departments and programs to fund and you can go through it and pick the ones you’re wiling to pay for and the amount your willing to pay. If you chose not to pay for police, the police department can purge your name from 911 list.

6. Dogs sniff out phones hidden by AZ inmates – Arizona Daily Star Inmates usually get or buy the cell phones from visitors, contractors who work at the prison and staff members who sneak the phones in, said Kenny Vance, a service-dog trainer for the Corrections Department.

This is cool, but it seems to be more of an indictment of DOC’s inability to stop smuggling and staff corruption. While the dogs are treating the symptom, the disease lies elsewhere. Where there’s a will, there’s a way (and a bribe).

7. Simple Chinese shoe strives to be hip – Arizona Daily Star The story is that Brandt decided to settle in Shanghai, China, after college in California, noticed the crew rebuilding his street wore identical, but cool, canvas sneakers, and tracked down the source.

They’re cool shoes. They’re pinko, commie shoes made in a country hell bent on destroying the world, but they’re still cool.

8. AZ centennial lags on funds, planning effort – Arizona Daily Star Officials say there are almost no funds for the centennial celebration in next year’s budget, and nothing is being raised by the agency in charge of planning the event.

Save the state first, then the centennial celebration. At least they’ve got that priority straight. See below.

9. Budget work will ‘get done,’ Brewer insists – Arizona Daily Star “We’re going to have a budget,” the governor insisted. “It’s going to get done.”

Yeah, right. The state needs roughly $10 billion to pay for all the things past Legislatures and voters have done. About two thirds of that $10 billion is protected from cuts by voter initiatives. That leaves about $3.7 billion available for cuts with the state facing a roughly $3.3 billion income shortfall. The Guv wants a tax increase on the table, the Legislature’s Republican leadership says no way, it’s cuts and budget tricks or nothing. We’re all doomed. See below.

10. Lawmakers fiddle around, ignore reality – Arizona Daily Star You begin to wonder whether the GOP leadership of Arizona’s Legislature lives in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

See, told you so. We’re all doomed.

1. Pixar moves ‘Up’ with its 10th movie – USA Today – Disney might own Pixar after buying the company for $7.4 billion in 2006. But when it comes to brand loyalty among family moviegoers, Pixar is the new Disney.

Is it weird for a middle-aged man to be excited about going to see a “kiddie” movie? Pixar rocks.

2. 100 years at the Brickyard – USA Today – Conceived by four local businessmen as a venue for the city’s competing automakers to test their mettle (and metal) as the machine grew in stature, the Brickyard quickly evolved into a drawing board in the development of cars, racing and safety.

They still have this race? I used to love open wheel racing back when A.J. Foyt was wheel-to-wheel with Rick Myers and Al Unser in hot pursuit. Now, it’s all about Danica Patrick’s underwear ads and a bunch of foreign guys from Formula 1. Plus, all racing, including NASCAR, has become go really fast, crash. Go really slow under caution. Go really fast again, crash. Go really slow under caution. Go really fast again … Blech.

3. Grief and honor at Arlington – USA Today – Each day, as I walk among the headstones lining these rolling hills, I’m mindful that more than 300,000 veterans and their dependents are buried here.

One of the most emotional days of my life was an afternoon I spent at Arlington. When my father died a few years ago, he was buried at the military cemetery in Phoenix. He spent nine years in the Air Force, 1946-1955, and was medically retired after an auto accident. Nevertheless, he raised a military family. I spent five years in the Army, two active, three reserve. He had Alzheimer’s and the last year of his life he was only capable of staring at the ceiling and moaning or whistling, strangely. So when he died, I was more relieived than sad. I’d said my goodbyes long before his death. At the various funeral events, I didn’t shed any tears. But at the graveside, when the Air Force honor guard leaned over and gently offered the American flag to my mother, whispering to her “On behalf of a grateful nation” I lost it. When you’re out grilling your hot dogs or whatever Monday, be sure to take a moment and remember what Memorial Day is really all about.

4. 6 money fixes you should consider now – Arizona Republic – The economy has been under so much strain lately that it pays to know where you stand financially and devise a plan to solve your money problems.

My wife and I started doing almost all of these last year, the most important completely eliminating our credit card debt. But we’re a consumer economy and reduced consumer spending is part of what’s causing the economic crisis. But after just surviving layoff by a whisker, I’m in no rush to start spending again.

5. Leinart shows signs of growth on, off the field – Arizona Republic – He is somewhat chiseled now, hardened by a new commitment to the weight room and life in the NFL. He takes pride in being the second-team quarterback.

If he keeps throwing more interceptions than touchdowns, he’ll always be the second-team quarterback.

6. Detention facility near Sahuarita is ruled out – Arizona Daily Star – Now, the district will work with the Tohono O’odham Nation to build the facility on tribal land near South Sandario Road and West Ajo Way, said district Chairman Austin Nuñez.

Nimbys win again. I wonder what the folks over at Sandario and Ajo think?

7. AZ Senate bill would let offenders skip traffic school – Arizona Daily Star – A provision buried in the package of bills for the 2010 budget would let errant motorists essentially buy their way out of trouble. They could pay a flat fee of $282 and walk away, with no ticket, no record — and no time lost.

They need to hurry up and pass this bill, get it signed by Brewer and make it retroactive so I don’t have to go to traffic school next Saturday.

8. Legislation would replace vouchers with tax credits – Arizona Daily Star – Legislation introduced in both the House and the Senate would allow corporations and insurance companies to divert up to $5 million a year from what they owe in taxes and give it instead to organizations that help certain students pay the cost of attending private or parochial schools.

Same stink, different pig.

9. Sources: FBI asking questions on Arpaio – Arizona Republic – Five public officials involved in ongoing disputes with the Sheriff’s Office confirmed federal agents asked them questions that seem to focus on one theme: possible misuse of power by Arpaio and other sheriff’s representatives, perhaps related to the ongoing disputes between the sheriff, county supervisors and top county administrators.

Arpaio’s toast.

10. State should heed bulletin from Calif. – Arizona Republic – Nevertheless, the message from California seems to be that, while voters don’t like budget cuts and will complain bitterly about them, they like the probable alternatives even less.

Don’t listen to California. To argue that because California voters rejected a tax increase to fix their state budget, then Arizona voters will do the same is fallacious. We have no idea what Arizona voters will do if offered the opportunity to chose paying more taxes to preserve education funding and whatnot. The real motive here is a fear that Arizona voters will pass a tax increase. Don’t be afraid of voters, let them decide. This is a democracy, after all.

Some stories I used to forward to reporters, others to family and friends.

There’s no reason I still can’t do that for the good and loyal readers of TucsonCitizen.com.

Every morning I will post my top 10 stories I’m digging that day with a little commentary to go with each.

Here’s today’s list (and I know it’s not morning but from now on it will be in the morning):

1. Pelosi’s struggle with truth exposes deeper problems – USA Today – Now that it’s politically expedient to denounce torture, Pelosi denied knowledge and smeared the CIA.

Ain’t she great? Blue Dogs better wise up and start pushing their weight around the House and find a new Speaker or Dems may find their rise to power short lived (assuming Cheney and Steele go away before the ‘10 elections)

2. Faith, medicine at odds – USA Today – Most states have legal exemptions that provide some protection to parents who withhold medical care on religious grounds.

The First Amendment runs into parental rights and the state’s duty to protect children from abuse. When is a mother deeply religious and entitled to raise her children under the edicts of her religion, even though those edicts may prohibit modern medical practices, and when is she just stone cold crazy and needs to have her kids taken away? Glad I’m not the judge.

3. City takes hit on bond rating – Arizona Daily Star – “What it means is the cost of borrowing will be higher,” Plagman said, adding the timing is particularly bad because the city is “already in a budget crisis position.”

Former Citizen reporter Carli Brosseau was working on this story before she was laid off. She told me she heard this from several people in the city on the day Mike Hein was fired who told her that the bond rating was toast because of Hein’s outster. Apparently, the bond people had told the city Hein’s firing would affect the bond rating. Not sure how or why that might be but he sure was a nice guy. Most affable person I’ve ever met. Even when he hated me he still greeted me with a big smile, warm hello and a firm handshake. Hein’s firing probably had nothing to do with it, but it’s interesting to me that the bond hit was predicted the day he was fired and now it’s come true. Coincidence?

4. Bill expands state gambling venues – Arizona Daily Star – The plan is open-ended. Anyone who sets up a new racetrack elsewhere in Arizona would also have the right to operate a casino on site, though Tobin’s measure would set a limit of 10 track-based casinos.

Do we really need more places for poor people to lose their money? Their’s a sucker born every minute. (My friend Patrick Cavanaugh calls the state lottery a tax on stupid people. I love that. Still buy a ticket every week, though.)

5. S. Ariz. may need 3 more trauma-care centers – Arizona Daily Star – Paying for the new trauma centers will present a challenge, Rhee said. Currently, there is no public funding from the local, county or state level to support trauma, according to the report.

Should have been on the front page, IMHO.

6. Panel says 3 years of job losses likely – Arizona Republic – Metro Phoenix is likely to experience an unprecedented three consecutive years of job losses in a recession expected to last at least two years, experts predicted Wednesday during the Economic Club of Phoenix’s annual outlook lunch.

Oy. Phoenix is the state’s economic engine – so goes Phoenix, so goes Arizona. This is not good.

7. Prison officials suspended in inmate death – Arizona Republic – Three prison officials have been suspended while the state investigates the heat-related death on Wednesday of a woman who had been placed in an outdoor cage for several hours.

We still put people in cages? Can’t we do better than this? I’m all for punishing criminals but this is ridiculous. Was Carr, the floor walker, in charge up there? “These here spoons you keep with you. Any man loses his spoon spends a night in the box…”

8. Why do atheists feel they have to bore us? – Arizona Republic – Charlotte Allen is the author of “The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus” and a contributing editor to the Minding the Campus website of the Manhattan Institute.

If this woman is looking for Jesus, I think she missed him. What a (dirty word).

(This story was in the print edition of the Arizona Republic but not on its web site. The same column ran in the LA Times Sunday, so I grabbed the link from there.)

9. Bill revives land swap for copper mine – Arizona Republic – U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., introduced legislation Wednesday that throws her support behind a controversial underground copper mine near Superior that developers say could turn into the largest source of copper ore in North America.

A Democrat floats a bill that would help start a mine? Must be a lot of Republicans in her district.

10. In space, anyone can hear you tweet - USA Today – “Astro Mike” to his followers — has fired off nearly two dozen missives known as tweets, musing on such experiences as looking out the shuttle’s windows.

Story’s OK, but I thought the headline rocked. Then I tried to find its link on the web and saw that every news outlet on the planet that ran this story used the same or similar hed. Still cool, though.

TucsonCitizen.com will be the voice of Tucson.

That’s the goal.

How is that going to happen? There’s the rub.

Over the next two weeks and beyond, the site will be redesigned and improved to give Tucsonans a place where they can have a say on any number of topics.

What you see now is a site created for a metro daily newspaper’s online operation. That’s over.

What will come is a more user-friendly site created to reflect the fast-paced, edgy nature of the Internet age.

Most of what’s been discussed about this new site has been long on generalities and short on specifics.

I wish I could reverse that and give you more details but we’re still working that out.

That said, I’ve been tasked to make it work, along with my compadre, Ryn Gargulinski (and, I hope, a sports writer to be named later).

We have some ideas and we’re reaching out to the Tucson community for theirs, since in the end it will be more their site than ours.

But there is a loose framework we’re discussing.

What’s the BIG idea?

The operating model we’re using is The Huffington Post. Don’t jump to conclusions about political bent, it’s the way the Huffpo site operates, not what’s on it that I’m talking about.

The site is a collection of blogs and bloggers who post news, information, opinion and more on the site everyday.

There are dozens, if not hundreds of Tucson bloggers. They add a tremendous amount of knowledge and perspective to the total universe of Tucson.

But each is unique and mostly stand alone. All rely on Google searches, word-of-mouth and a few other modestly effective means to market their work.

Our idea is to offer them the economy and power of scale. To bring them in under the TucsonCitizen.com‘s big tent where the traffic for each benefits the other.

What’s in it for Gannett and Tucson Newspapers? Readers. Site traffic. Page views. Impressions. The things the companies sell to advertisers (this is a business, after all).

What’s in it for the bloggers? Scale. Site and CMS assistance, perhaps free site hosting. Maybe even a piece of the revenue action (pay based on percentage of site traffic generated is only fair and something I’m advocating for during this “transition” phase. Making that happen and how to do it will take a lot of negotiation and discussion with the powers that be here and in Virginia).

They toil away part-time, some full-time, on their blogs, using any number of content management systems. All bloggers have to learn to be a bit of a web monkey to make their blogs look good. Some become quite good at it, but most quickly reach their Peter Principle after learning how to upload photos and video. But the web is a much more powerful broadcast medium than that.

We can help them podcast, vodcast, live stream, create interactive graphics, find and use government data and much more.

But most significantly, instead of a few hundred or a few thousand page views a day, they will get tens or even hundreds of thousands. The reach and impact of what they write and post will exponentially increase. And isn’t that the point?

If they blog because they want to inform, then informing more people under the TucsonCitizen.com umbrella than they could on their own is a win-win.

If you have a blog and are interested in what we can do for you, or you want to start a blog for TucsonCitizen.com, e-mail me, mevans@tucsoncitizen.com (mevans@tucsoncitizen.com).

Blogging convention

Irrespective of whether only some or all of the above happens, today I have begun to scratch out the rudimentary plans for a Tucson bloggers convention. It would have guest speakers who will lead breakout sessions on copyright and libel law, the DMCA Safe Harbor Act, using public records, effective web searches, CMS add-ons and widgets, marketing your site, advertising and more.

Regardless of whether bloggers blog on TucsonCitizen.com, our site will be an advocate for online news, opinion and commentary. A convention such as this will help connect bloggers with each other, promote online debate and discussion about Tucson for Tucsonans and encourage and teach those who want to jump into blogging but may be intimidated by the depth of the pool.

I have no budget for this yet, but I’m working on it. If you have ideas for such a convention or believe you have the expertise to be a presenter or panelist, e-mail me at mevans@tucsoncitizen.com (mevans@tucsoncitizen.com).

Take your micro community macro

We humans like to divide ourselves into communities. The web is chock-a-block with them: Knitters, hikers, bikers, geocahers, foodies, book worms, movie buffs, sports team fanatics etc., etc. etc.

Those, too, are spread out in the great expanse of cyberspace, hoping some passing web spider hears their signal and aggregates them into the great RSS feed in the sky, routing them to computer screens of other like-minded people.

TucsonCitizen.com will seek to find and foster these local online communities, or help create and support new ones.

If you want your online group, even if it’s just an old-fashioned e-mail listserve, part of TucsonCitizen.com, or just talked about and discussed on our site, e-mail Ryn at rynski@tucsoncitizen.com.

The power of many

The hallowed halls of journalism schools and the stately board rooms of newspaper and TV news companies were shaken to their core a few years ago by two little words: Citizen Journalist.

TucsonCitizen.com will eventually be the publishing arm of a multitude of Tucson citizen journalists – bloggers and others who will report the news of their community to their community.

There are a million people in this valley and there are a million stories to tell. The handful of paid journalists in this city only begin to scratch the surface on the amount of news out there. Those stories will find an audience at TucsonCitizen.com.

There will be a how-to for using the state’s public records law and other news reporting tips to help citizens report and publish news.

If you need or want a public record and don’t know how or where to get it, or the government isn’t giving it to you, e-mail me, mevans@tucsoncitizen.com (mevans@tucsoncitizen.com), and I’ll help you get it.

A work in progress

All of this is in the discussion stage. It is what we’re working to create. Some of it may be available in a week, other aspects more than a week. Some may be a good idea that remains just that.

But Ryn and I will work every day to make as much of this as possible happen.

The key to this is you.

If you have other ideas than the above that you want this site to be, or comments or feedback on any of the above, e-mail Ryn or me and we’ll see about getting to work on it.

A federal judge yesterday rejected an attempt by the state Attorney General to force Gannett Co. Inc., publisher of the Tucson Citizen, to resume printing the Tucson Citizen newspaper.

But if you read the Arizona Daily Star today, it’s headline says “Judge upholds Citizen closure.”

Nowhere in the story does it say the Tucson Citizen has been closed. If it is, what the hell am I doing here?

The Tucson Citizen lives on, albeit with a two-person crew tasked with creating a “robust” online opinion and commentary community portal.

Though the online version of the Tucson Citizen was discussed in court, neither the Star’s story nor The Associated Press story that has gone out over the wire to thousands of newspapers across the world, mentions that.

Last night the TV news broadcasts on all three stations said we were shutdown. None of the broadcasts I saw mentioned the continued online version of the Tucson Citizen.

This morning, driving in to work at the TUCSON CITIZEN, the rip-and-read Arizona Public Media reporter said the Tucson Citizen was shut down.

If I was editing those reporters, I would have changed the copy to say “the Tucson Citizen has ceased printing a newspaper but continues to have an online presence and a skeleton staff.”

The lights are still on. The computers still work. The site, TucsonCitizen.com is still up. We may be a work in progress, but we are still at work.