What is it about Stephen Colbert and Southern Arizona's congressional delegation?
Two years ago he took on Raúl Grijalva, offering him a nickel to ride his famous mustache.
Now, the Comedy Central host is targeting our congresswoman in his latest narcissistic quest — this time to outer space.
The whole feud started when Colbert won a NASA contest to have a room on the International Space Station named after him. NASA wasn't amused and decided Colbert wasn't up to its standards.
Then, Gabrielle Giffords — the wife of an astronaut and the chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics — got herself in hot water with Colbert for opting to stay out of the fight, saying she'd leave the decision up to NASA.
"Hey, Giffords," the hyper-active commentator said on his show Monday, "I won this contest with 230,000 votes."
People are also reading…
That's almost twice as many, he pointed out, as Giffords received in her 2006 bid for Congress.
"You, Miss-Pink-SweaterSet," Colbert continued, "are just jealous because I'm just going to have a space node and all you're going to have is half of Tucson.
"Not even the good half," he said. "I'm kidding. There is no good half."
Giffords, it seems, took the attack in stride — although that Tucson comment may have sent her over the edge.
In an interview with reporters after her Wednesday "State of the District" speech, Giffords called those "fighting words."
"Steven Colbert can mess with me, but when he messes with my hometown, he's asking for it," Giffords said.
So will she go on his show to tell him a thing or two?
"I'll go on his show if he comes to Tucson to personally apologize to the people of my hometown," Giffords said.
A representative of Comedy Central did not return phone calls.
But Giffords thinks Colbert would look pretty in pink, too. Glamour clamor
Miley Cyrus might be on the cover of Glamour Magazine's latest issue, but we were more intrigued by an interview on Page 148.
In a regular column titled "How I Dealt," Giffords criticizes her former rival, Tim Bee, for running "a negative campaign full of misleading ads about me."
"I was angry, and the urge to retaliate can be strong — but I wanted to win the right way," she says. "So I focused on the issues and only the issues."
What did she learn? "You don't have to be a mudslinger to come out on top," Giffords is quoted as saying.
Giffords' press aide, C.J. Karamargin, says the interview took place on Jan. 12 — before Bee started working for Gov. Jan Brewer.
Now the former rivals interact a lot. "Personally, the relationship is cordial and friendly," Karamargin said.
Bee agreed, although he found Giffords' comments to be "unfortunate." He remembers the election a little differently.
"We focused our ads on issues," he said. And while he admits he was critical of Giffords' voting record, he said he made it a point to never get personal.
"It was a wonderful experience," Bee said. "The outcome is the outcome and I've moved on. I'm a positive person and I'm looking forward. I'm not looking back."
Oh, as for Miley — well, the 16-year-old says there's nothing wrong with the fact that her boyfriend is 20. Help Arizona: Drink up!
As the state looks for any possible option to balance a $3 billion budget shortfall, one local lawmaker has a plan that he says could provide Arizona with $450 million.
But it relies on a lot of people getting a little tipsy.
Sen. Jorge Garcia, D-Tucson, says if lawmakers equalized taxes on alcohol, an additional half a billion dollars would funnel into the state treasury.
Right now, hard liquor, wine and beer are all taxed at different rates — $3 per gallon, 84 cents per gallon and 16 cents per gallon, respectively. The tax is paid at the wholesale level, not directly by consumers.
But bringing wine and beer up to the higher rate of the hard stuff would generate some much-needed revenue, says Garcia, the top-ranking Democrat in the state Senate.
Only a couple of problems. Garcia says he couldn't get his fellow Democrats to get on board with the idea.
And the revenue projections assume that someone who drinks three pints of beer could also handle three pints of Jack Daniel's — in which case we might just forget about that pesky deficit.
